“Got you!” Dr. Clemons called out playfully, grabbing the boy in a playful football hold. This was definitely a different side of the perverted doctor than I was used to seeing.

  Dr. Clemons bounced the boy, giggling and kicking his legs, as he carried him to the back seat of a red Chevy Tahoe. My heart throttled up in my chest; I had to act now if I was going to save the kid. My eyes searched the surrounding yard, looking for anything that could help. As I grabbed the car door handle, I heard the child say, “I gotta go potty. Now!”

  The woman laughed and moved to pick up the boy. “All right. Let’s go back inside and handle this. Honey, why don’t you warm up the car?” Without waiting for an answer, she walked back to the house with the boy.

  Thank God! “He’s getting in the fucking car, Lisa. They went back inside, but he’s getting in the fucking car,” I whispered almost breathlessly, my legs trembling now.

  Lisa closed her eyes tightly and shook her head from left to right and started to mouth a prayer, but before she could complete one sentence—

  Boom . . . Boom . . . Boom . . . three huge blasts made us jump almost out of our skins.

  “Oh my God!” Lisa gasped out.

  My ears were ringing from the loud blast. The force of the blast sent dirt and soot flying all over the car.

  “Ouch,” Lisa winced, covering her ringing ears with her hands and rocking back and forth. Dirt covered the car and made it hard for me to see out of the windshield, but I knew we needed to get out of there and fast. The blast also made my head feel like I’d been hit with a sledgehammer, but I still had our escape plan at the forefront of my mind.

  My hearing was slightly impaired and my back ached from sitting so long, but I was ready to get moving.

  “We gotta go! C’mon! The cops and the bomb squad will be here any minute,” Lisa huffed.

  “Is it done?” I asked. “Is it really done?! Is he really gone?!” I screamed out.

  “Sh!” Lisa scolded.

  “Oh my God!” I said, hitting the steering wheel. “We did it!”

  I reached over and shook Lisa’s arm. “We fucking did it! Thank you so much,” I cried out.

  “Shhhh. We need to go!”

  I wanted to sob from relief and happiness and all kinds of emotions, but I knew we did have to leave. “It was either him or us. Him or us,” I reiterated. “Now we just have one last thing to do and our plan will be done,” I said.

  “Misty, I am suggesting that you run, drive, and never look back. The way shit looks, you will not only be blamed for the CO’s murder, but you will also be charged with this now. They will send you to prison for the rest of your natural-born life. You know how the feds are,” Lisa said to me sincerely.

  I could tell she was serious and sad when she thought about everything that had happened. I felt the same way. “Look, Lisa, I have to go. I don’t know what I’m going to do or how I’m going to get away. If I never see you again, just remember that I’m grateful for what you did for me,” I told her. I meant my words too. I was really feeling like I would die at the hands of the police or the feds at this point.

  “Everything you did brought the attention we needed at the prison. I am going to make sure the girls know you got rid of that monster for them and kept your promise,” Lisa said.

  My heart just melted hearing her say she would let the girls know and that they wouldn’t have to suffer anymore. I was a wreck. Here I was thinking I was going to bring in the cavalry to those other girls. That plan was out of the window and now I wouldn’t get to see it come together.

  * * *

  I sat in that vehicle crying hysterically and sick to my stomach. I suddenly felt dizzy. I opened the door, leaned out, and threw up. After I did that, I realized that I just needed to get back to my mother and Sandra and really get the fuck out of Dodge now. Another wave of panic came over me. I knew it wouldn’t be long before my enemies or the cops would come to my location and put my mother back at risk, and now Sandra too. Too bad I wasn’t going to be around to see all of the rest of the bastards at the prison being led out in handcuffs.

  I made up my mind that I was taking Lisa’s advice and getting the fuck out of there. I reached over into the passenger seat and picked up the gun. I placed it in my lap, just in case I needed it right away. Then I looked around suspiciously, made sure there was nobody watching me, and I pulled the car back onto the road and started to drive the hell out of there. I planned on getting far, far away. Wherever I ended up, I knew it would be a better life than I had now.

  As I got out of there, I was flying down that little road, trying to hurry up and get to the highway. When I got almost halfway up the road toward the highway, just like I suspected, I started seeing a bunch of black vehicles speeding down the opposite side of the street toward Dr. Clemons’s house. I knew right away it was the ATF and bomb squads.

  They were really flying by, so they didn’t even notice me. I had the car headlights turned off. The vehicles had lights on the tops of them, but no sirens were blaring. They were trying to make a sneak attack. They just didn’t know that I had fucking spotted them before they spotted me. Those bastards. Little did they know when they got to the house, they wouldn’t find me there. All they were going to find was a dead doctor who deserved to die.

  Lisa was right. Those bastards were coming, but they were coming for me.

  “Damn, I really have to get out of here!” I said out loud as I watched them flying by me. It was like my worst nightmare as I watched those cars. Not before long, they would figure out the whole thing, and soon they’d really be looking for me. Now they could really say I was a fucking armed-and-dangerous fugitive, because they had made me one.

  I swerved the car off onto the side of the road so they wouldn’t notice me. It was a long line of vehicles flying by; and so far, they weren’t paying me any attention, but I had to make sure. When I pulled the vehicle off into the bushes, I ducked down in the front seat. I couldn’t take a chance that any of them would recognize my silhouette in the vehicle. I knew they couldn’t see me because of the dark tints, but I couldn’t risk it.

  It was about ten minutes until I saw the last set of lights fly past. I was gripping the gun I had in my hand so fucking hard, my hand started to hurt. I wanted to wait a good amount of time before I pulled out of there, just in case. Finally I took a deep breath and decided that I was finally ready to make a move to get my mother. I sat up in the seat and looked around nervously. I didn’t see any more cars on the road, so I pulled out of the bushes and started for the highway and toward my escape. I drove for a few feet and, all of a sudden, a car flew out of the side of the bushes in front of me.

  “Oh shit!” I screamed, slamming my foot on the brakes. The tires started screeching; that is how short I had to stop. I just barely missed hitting the vehicle that had pulled in front of me. My chest was heaving in and out. All I could see was my life flashing before my eyes if I would’ve slammed into that fucking car. My nerves were even more on edge now.

  “You fucking dummy! What are you doing?!” I screamed at the strange car.

  They had almost caused me to hit them and, oddly, they had pulled their car horizontally into the road. I was blocked so I couldn’t move.

  “Get the fuck out of the way!” I screamed, but all of my windows were up and I knew the person driving the car couldn’t hear me. I couldn’t see inside the windows of the strange car. It didn’t look like one of the FBI cars. So I figured it was probably somebody who had gotten lost on that little road.

  “Move!” I screamed, finally rolling the window down a little bit. I didn’t want to call that much attention to myself, so I couldn’t blow my horn for fear that I would attract the attention of all of the state and FBI activity, which was now going on up the street at Dr. Clemons’s. As I sat there and waited for this car to move, I suddenly noticed headlights approaching from behind me. “Oh fuck!” I screamed. The headlights were not relenting. They were coming toward me, full speed ahead, and I knew right way that they were going to slam into the back of the vehicle. I was being trapped in. These motherfuckers were ambushing me.

  “Fuck this!” I screamed. I mashed down on the car’s accelerator so hard, I could feel the floor of the vehicle. The car barreled into the stopped car and pushed the car a few feet, but not before the other vehicle slammed into me from the back. My body jerked and I hit my head on the back of the seat. I was dazed and in pain for a few minutes. As I tried to get myself together, the next thing I heard were loud bangs and glass crashing all around me.

  “Oh my God!” I screamed. Whoever was in both cars was shooting at me. Bullets were flying at me from the front and the back.

  Just as I lifted up my hand to return fire . . . bam! A bullet hit the inside of the car.

  “Agh!” I screamed out. It had just missed me.

  More bullets started flying over my head and I got down low. I was scared; I could feel urine leaking down my legs. I was starting to feel dizzy from the fear. Bam! Then another one of the wild shots licked off; this time, it hit me somewhere on my body. Fire lit through my veins.

  “Help me!” I let out a bloodcurdling scream. I felt like my heart was beating in my shoulder. That’s when I realized the shot had hit me in the shoulder. I was in severe pain. I was trapped—a car in front of me and one behind.

  I lifted my opposite hand and let off a few shots from the gun I had. But I couldn’t see if I hit anybody. Finally the shots stopped raining down on me and I didn’t hear shit for a few minutes. I said a silent prayer, and just as I did, the driver’s-side door to the car flew open. I could see body silhouettes, but the faces were blurry. The gunshot wounds I had suffered were making me real dizzy. I must have been losing a lot of blood. Still, I managed to get off a kick, but it was all for nothing. I was snatched out of the vehicle. My body was way too weak to fight.

  “Get her into the other car,” I heard the voice say.

  I knew right away it was the voice of one of Ahmad’s men. I couldn’t mistake the accent anywhere. He had climbed out of the car that had stopped in front of me.

  “I thought . . . I thought you were in prison,” I rasped. “I didn’t know you got out!” I was barely able to get the words out of my mouth. I was in shock. I looked at his evil face as he contorted it into a wicked smile.

  “Misty, you are not smarter than me. You just don’t know how many connections I really have. You have to be taken out, once and for all,” Ahmad said.

  “You might as well. You and a whole bunch of people are after me,” I said weakly, and let my head droop to the side.

  “Let’s get her out of here. I have to take care of her and get far away from this place,” he said to his men.

  There was another car way up in front waiting for us. I was forced into the back seat and handcuffed. One of the guys tied a handkerchief around my arm and leg to stop my gunshot wounds from bleeding.

  “I need a doctor, or else I will bleed to death,” I said.

  “Well, if you bleed to death, it was all your own fault,” the boss said to me.

  Just as the car started to pull out, I heard them start speaking in their language rapidly.

  “Go, go! Hurry up!” Ahmad screamed out in English.

  I couldn’t figure out what the panic was all about, at first. Then I heard a loud noise outside. It was the sound of helicopters hovering over the area. Then I heard the distant sound of sirens wailing too. I knew then that the police and the feds had finally caught on that I was in the area. Ahmad just didn’t know what he had walked into with me being with him. I knew they weren’t coming to save me; instead, they wanted to take me down too. The police cars started gaining on the car I was in. They were all panicking. Ahmad’s henchmen started shooting at the cop cars.

  “Oh shit!” I screamed out.

  Once again, bullets were flying everywhere. The helicopter overhead was now shining a bright light on the vehicle we were in. Ahmad had never anticipated that whenever he got his hands on me, I would be a fugitive from the law—with every law enforcement entity on my ass and his at the same time. More bullets were flying, and all of a sudden, one of Ahmad’s men in the front seat got hit in the head.

  “Aggh!” I screamed. My yell was so loud, I could feel the veins in my head and neck pop up. The henchman’s body slumped over, and the driver started swerving because the other guy’s body fell on him.

  “Drive! Get us the fuck out of here! Now!” Ahmad screamed out, and he held a gun to the driver’s head now.

  At this point, I didn’t care either way. This shit was a lose–lose situation for me. Either Ahmad and his men were going to kill me, or the feds would kill me or take me back to prison for life for the crimes that I actually did do this time. We kept driving and now I could tell there was more than one helicopter in the sky trailing the car.

  The helicopter got really low toward the highway. It was so low that I could see it from inside the car. That was the first time I had seen something like that, but I also remember Terrell telling me that the DEA sometimes used snipers in helicopters to take down fleeing drug dealers. I had a feeling this was one of those instances.

  Just as that thought entered my mind, I heard a loud bang; then the windshield shattered and the driver of the car slumped over. Blood splattered all the way into the back seat and got on Ahmad and me. The car was out of control and I just knew we would die.

  “Oh my God!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. Even with our impending deaths, Ahmad wasn’t giving up on his mission. He put his gun to my head. He was about to shoot me, but he wasn’t fast enough. Suddenly another shot whistled through the vehicle and Ahmad’s head just exploded.

  “No! What the hell is going on?!” I screamed out again.

  All of a sudden, the vehicle slowed down and crashed into a tree. The fucking fed had thrown out a spiked strip on the highway, which punctured all of the tires on the car, stopping it instantly. There was only one other guy alive in that car with me. He pointed the gun at me and told me to get out of the car.

  “I’m scared. They will shoot both of us,” I said, trying to buy some time.

  He wasn’t trying to hear me. He grabbed me and we exited the car together. He was using me as a human shield. He had the gun up to my head and was screaming something in his language. The state agents had surrounded the car and there were guns drawn all over the place.

  “Please! I’m not the criminal here! Please believe me! I was kidnapped and forced . . . ,” I started screaming. With his broken accent, the man holding me told me to shut up.

  “Release her or you will die! She is a fugitive from justice!” I heard some of the agents yelling.

  I felt like I was dead already. He was choking the shit out of me and he was crying. He knew that his life was over. He knew that this shit had all come to an end. I also knew my fucking life was over, because those state agents had fire in their eyes. As far as they were concerned, I had killed three people now.

  “I said let her go!” the agents yelled again.

  But the man just pressed the gun to my head even harder. The next thing I heard was a bullet whistle past my head. I even felt the heat from it up against my face. Suddenly the man’s arm was released from choking my neck and his body collapsed on the floor. It was a sniper from the bushes. At that point, I knew I had nowhere to run or hide. I threw my hands up in surrender. My bullet wounds were killing me. I was ready to face whatever came next for me.

  Those state agents descended on me like I was holding an arsenal of weapons. They wrestled me to the ground and roughly handcuffed me behind my back. I was screaming out in pain, but they didn’t give a fuck about my injuries. One of them started reading me my rights. I kept trying to plead my case.

  Finally, I told one of the agents they needed to speak to Lisa. I told them she would be able to tell them everything that had happened to me and how things went down in the prison.

  21

  IS IT OVER?

  I was taken to the hospital and my wounds were treated. I was locked down at the hospital and chained to the bed. There was a bunch of girls there from the prison. Obviously, my plan had worked, after all. The feds were having them treated for injuries they had suffered at the hands of Dr. Clemons. So all of my work wasn’t for nothing; at least the girls had been saved.

  As I lay there and thought about how I was going to spend the rest of my life behind bars, I noticed Lisa walking by. My heart jumped. She winked at me. I let a smile spread over my face.

  “Lisa?” I whispered.

  She stopped walking and looked in my direction. She put her fingers up to her mouth as if to tell me to be quiet. They couldn’t stop her; she was dressed like a nurse who worked in the hospital. The agent that was guarding me wasn’t happy when Lisa told him he had to leave the room.

  “I need to see this patient in private, sir,” Lisa said to the agent. “Maybe you can take your break, and I should be done in about fifteen to twenty minutes,” she told him.

  “Okay, but keep your eye on this one. She may be injured, but she’s a crafty one,” the agent said. He looked skeptical about leaving, because no one could take the chance of me escaping again.

  When I was alone with Lisa, her eyes lit up. “Misty, thank you for keeping your word. I am sorry for what happened to you,” she said.

  I started crying. I knew that I had to do it. There was no doubt in my mind that if I had gotten out, I’d have to save the rest of the girls.

  “Lisa, I need your help. I just need you to make sure my mother remains safe. I probably will never see the light of day again, but she doesn’t deserve to keep going through this with me. Tell her I said to take the money, pay Anderson even though our plan failed, and then move to an island somewhere,” I whispered to her.

  Lisa nodded her head in agreement. I whispered Sandra’s phone number to her and she told me she already memorized it from before.