pocket.
What the fuck was it with this woman? Every time she was left alone with a man she landed up killing him.
'Give me the gun, Sarah ... Give it.'
She looked up into the sky, as if I were being boring, pulled it from her pocket and threw it over to me. I crawled back out. It was pointless keeping a low voice now; half the state would know where we were. I snapped, 'What the fuck are you doing?'
'He wouldn't stop, believe me. He would try and join up with the other two or carry on himself. I know these people. I know Lance very well.
Look, the other two they know where, how and when to do the hit. What you did this morning won't stop them.' Her face had taken on a manic look.
'For rack's sake, Nick, I'm beginning to wish I'd just killed you and opted to carry on with him.'
There was no time for debate. We'd been compromised. We had to be like animals now and run as fast as we could; it didn't matter where, we just had to get out of that immediate danger area. Only when we were a safe distance away could I stop and assess.
Assuming the shot had been heard, there would be chaos at the police control center as it was reported over the radio net. They would just have been starting to work through all their post-incident procedures when, literally, bang!' another problem. Initially they'd be confused, but they'd soon figure out where it had come from, and direct the helicopter and follow-up our way.
We legged it. We could move much faster now than before, even with Sarah wearing her size-eleven Nikes. I was severely pissed off with her for what she'd done, but fried to control it. Once you allow yourself to get angry, you stop concentrating on the aim, which in this case was to make distance. Whether or not she was lying wasn't an issue at the moment, I didn't care. The only thing that mattered right now was escape.
The helicopter swooped over the canopy. We stopped in our tracks and took cover beneath the trees. But the aircraft wasn't hovering this time, it was moving fast and low. It crossed directly overhead, blasting torrents of rain water from the trees onto our heads, then roared away at speed.
I decided to keep going in the same direction, a straight line away from the house. I wanted to find a road or some habitation. A house should mean a vehicle.
It was fully light now. Our faster pace had got some body warmth going, and if anything I was starting to overheat. Just like me, Sarah was puffing and panting as we scrabbled up the rises and stumbled headlong downhill. There was no need to explain to her what I was doing. She was actually a help, because it was so much easier to have two sets of eyes and ears.
After thirty minutes of hard running we finally hit a road. It was a single carriage way potholed and no more than three or four meters wide. I paralleled it to the right, running through the trees about ten meters to its side. We hadn't gone far when I heard a vehicle. We stopped, got down, and I rested on my elbows and knees to keep myself out of the mud and preserve body warmth. It was approaching fast from behind us, engine roaring and tires splashing on wet tarmac.
A blue and white appeared and sped past, its roof-mounted red and blue light bar flashing brighter than was normal in daylight because of the cloud cover. The police would have things squared away by now; they were probably placing a cordon around the whole area. They'd then either wait for us to emerge, or come in and flush us out.
The moment the cruiser disappeared from view we got up and started moving. The wind had strengthened and I could see waves of heavier rain coming in ahead. After twenty minutes of running through deeply rutted, puddled ground we came to a large open area, a perfect square of about five acres cut out of the forest, with a white cattle fence around the perimeter. Sitting in the middle, and approached by a driveway from the road, was a two-story ranch house built of wooden slats, with a pitched roof, tiled with gray slates. A square extension had been added onto the far end, and I could see an open garage at ground level. Inside were a pickup truck, two other cars and a small powerboat on a trailer. The building and two of the three vehicles looked as if they'd seen better days.
There was no approach to the garage that avoided open ground. I guessed there would be windows on every side of the house, to take advantage of the views. Six or seven horses were loose in the field, but there was no evidence of dogs and the house itself seemed quiet enough. Maybe everybody was still tucked up in bed.
'You stay here,' I whispered to Sarah.
'I'm going to go and get a wagon. When you see me drive out, move up to the road.'
'Why aren't I coming over with you?' She sounded suspicious, as if she thought I'd get in a vehicle and just leave her stranded. If only she knew.
She was in no position to question my decisions, but I answered.
'Number one, it's quieter if I go on my own I know what I'm doing, you don't. Number two, I don't want you killing anybody else. And number three, you have no choice. I have your documents in here.' I half turned to show her the bag on my back.
'You want me to help you, you wait here.'
The plot of land was as flat and green as a pool table, not a single fold in the ground. Checking the road for vehicles and the sky for helis, I set off across grass that was about three inches high and full of moisture, running but trying to keep as low as possible. I didn't know why, because it didn't make me any less visible, but it just seemed the natural thing to do. I was leaving a clear track in my wake through the wet grass, but I couldn't do anything about that.
I kept looking at the windows for movement. As I got closer I could see that the upstairs curtains were drawn. I wondered if Mr. and Mrs. Redneck were sitting in bed watching the news about last night's events down the road. For sure, there'd be more news crews at the lake by now than there were police.
Reaching the house, I bent down below a side window with open curtains.
In this weather there would have been a light on if people were up and about, and there wasn't, but even so I didn't chance looking inside. I held it there for a few seconds and listened. Nothing. Now that I was close up to them I could see that the slats weren't wood at all, but aluminium painted to look that way, and the roof was just felt, masquerading as tiles.
I moved around to the opposite side of the house, toward the garage extension, making sure that I kept low to avoid the windows.
I shook my head to get the rain out of my face. There were no wet tire marks on the garage floor or rain on the wagons. There had been no movement since at least last night.
The first thing to do was check whether any of the vehicles were alarmed. I couldn't see any warning signs, flashing LEDs, or other telltales.
An alarm would probably have cost more than the two cars anyway.
I tried all the doors on the vehicles, starting with the pickup truck, then the two others a small, rusting red Dodge, a bit like a bottom-of-the range Rover, and an elderly, olive-green estate car, with fake wood paneling along the sides that made it look like a stagecoach. Everything was locked. The rain was drumming on the garage roof as I went back to the muddy white Nissan pickup. It had a double cab, with a flat bed on the back, protected by a shaped, heavy plastic liner. I had a quick mooch in the boxes next to it against the wall, then moved aside the plastic bottles of two-stroke mix for the boat engine, looking for something to jimmy the door open with.
I found a toolbox and was bending over it, moving the tools really slowly and carefully so I didn't make any noise, when there was a shout that made me jump.
'Don't move! Freeze, yo' sum of a bitch!'
Whoever it was, he must have spent his life stalking animals in the woods, because I hadn't heard a sound. I didn't move a muscle.
'Keep still or I'll shoot yer so'ry ass,' he said in a really cool, calm, deep Southern drawl. He was directly behind me.
Fucking right I stood still. I also made sure he had a good view of my hands. I had a pistol tucked down the front of my jeans, and another in my jacket, but they were staying where they were. I didn't know what he was pointing at me, or even whether he had anything at all, but I wasn't going to take the chance. I stayed bent over the toolbox and kept my mouth shut;
I didn't want to say anything that might antagonize him, especially in my bad American accent.
