Free Shady Cross by James Hankins Page B

one of the voices again.
    “There it is.” A male voice.
    “Man, they look messed up,” a second voice said, also male.
    Based on what little he’d heard, Stokes didn’t think they were cops. They sounded young. But still, he waited.
    “What’s this bag on the ground?”
    “Check it out while I call 911.”
    He’d heard enough. He let out a loud, dramatic groan and turned his face to the window, directly into the flashlight beam, careful to keep his eyes mostly closed so he wouldn’t lose his night vision completely.
    “Jesus Christ.”
    “Holy shit.”
    The flashlight dropped to the ground. Two young men, teenagers from the looks of them, backed away from the car. The fear on their faces was almost comical. They stopped, looked at each other, then looked back at Stokes. Then they squared their shoulders, trying to look unaffected by what they were seeing.
    “Shit,” the taller of the two said, “that one guy’s still alive.”
    The other kid pulled a cell phone out of his coat pocket. “We gotta call the cops.”
    Stokes didn’t want that. Moving only his arm, he nudged the door open so they could hear him better. “Please,” he groaned, “come here.”
    The kids hesitated before slowly stepping forward.
    “I need your phone,” Stokes said.
    “I gotta call the cops,” Shorty said. “You need an ambulance, man. You’re pretty jacked up.”
    “Please,” Stokes said, raising his head briefly before letting it drop to the dashboard again. “Please give me your phone. I may not make it. May not . . . live long. Need to call my wife. Tell her . . . good-bye.”
    Shorty looked at Tall, who shrugged. “His funeral, right?” Tall said.
    Shorty still looked unsure.
    “Please,” Stokes croaked. He added a hacking cough for good measure.
    “Shit, give him your phone,” Tall said.
    Shorty stepped up to the car, handed his phone through the open door. He watched as Stokes struggled to sit up, fumbling with the phone. Stokes punched a few random digits, then paused. He turned his head weakly to look at the kids.
    “Did you find the guy on the bicycle?” he asked.
    They frowned.
    “What guy on a bicycle?”
    “The one we hit with our car. Did you find him?”
    “We didn’t see any guy on a bike.”
    “We hit him a few hundred yards back, I think,” Stokes said. “Please . . . you have to go find him. See if he’s OK.” He coughed again.
    “I should call the cops,” Shorty said again.
    “I’ll call them. I’ll say good-bye to my wife, then call 911. You go look for the cyclist.” Stokes gave a gasp loaded with fake pain. “He might need help. My buddy here is dead and I don’t know if I even have a chance, but the guy we hit . . . maybe he can be saved. You gotta find him.”
    Shorty eyed his phone in Stokes’s hand.
    “My phone . . .”
    “I’ll make the calls. You’ll get your phone back.”
    “But . . .”
    Stokes fixed him with a hard gaze. “I’m dying here . . . and some poor guy might be dying on the road up there . . . and you’re worried about your phone?”
    The kid looked confused. Maybe he was worried about losing his cell phone. More likely, he was afraid Stokes would die before he called 911, and then everyone would wonder why the hell he’d given a dying man his phone without first calling the cops himself.
    “Where am I gonna go with it?” Stokes asked. “I’ll be here when you get back. Hopefully, I’ll still be alive. Now please, go look for the guy we hit.” He let loose a horrible, wracking cough. “For God’s sake, go .”
    The kids scurried away, scrambled through the trees, back toward the road, their flashlight bobbing before them. How the hell had they found the car? It was practically dark out, and Stokes thought he’d wiped away all traces of the tire tracks. Whatever—he needed to move. Stokes kicked open the door, stood, and wiped down the kid’s cell phone with the bottom of his shirt before letting it fall to the forest