Edge

Chapter 28

AS THE PARTNER pressed his gun harder into my spine, I thought: Is this what Abe Fallow had heard not long before Loving had gone to work on him?

Hands out to the side…

I was about to die too.

But not right away.

Because like my mentor, I was valuable. I wondered if Loving had created a flytrap of his own. Maybe he’d used the girl not as an edge on her father but to get me to give up the detective, speculating that it might be logistically difficult to let Ryan know they had his daughter.

I’d been the bait in our flytrap; Amanda was the bait here.

“I told you. Gun. Drop it.”

I did. You can’t spin around faster than a bullet.

How long could I hold out? I wondered.

Sandpaper and alcohol…

Memories of Peggy and the boys, Jeremy and Sam, surfaced.

Then the voice behind me whispered, “Wait.”

Curious. It seemed that he was speaking to himself.

Then I heard pleasantly, “Oh, that’s you, isn’t it, Corte?”

My hands started shaking and I turned around slowly to see Bill Carter, holding a twelve-gauge over-under shotgun pointed directly at my chest. His finger wasn’t outside the guard. Amanda was behind him, eyes wide.

Breathing hard now. So hard my chest hurt.

He lowered the scattergun.

“You didn’t go to the clearing,” I whispered.

“No. Seemed too far. And looks like you weren’t in any big hurry to come visit either.”

True, I reflected.

Amanda gazed at me with cautious but steady eyes. Definitely her father’s eyes. She still had around her shoulder her plush bear purse.

I studied the area around us. It wasn’t defensible-we were in a low point. I wanted to get back to the car and leave as fast as we could.

We crouched. “He’s in the house. He’ll know you’re not there any minute now.”

I gestured toward the road and to the right. “My car’s past the rock fence in front. About two hundred yards. Let’s go now. Come on, Amanda. It’s going to be fine.”

She didn’t look like she needed reassurance. I got the feeling she wanted to go after Loving herself.

Grit…

I guided us up the incline of the ravine and toward the road. We moved slowly and I was getting dizzy from looking from side to side and behind us so often. There were a thousand configurations of shadow and shapes of green that took on the dimensions and postures of a hostile.

Still, none broke away from the backdrop and became an armed human.

Twenty yards, then thirty, then fifty.

Suddenly Amanda gasped. Our weapons up, Carter and I dropped to our knees and I pulled the girl down, looking in the direction she was.

The deer emerged from the bushes he was grazing on and stared at us with a face both blank and cautious. Two others joined him. Carter picked up a rock and was going to toss it to scare them off, presumably to make Loving think that any noise he might’ve heard was from this fauna. But I shook my head, opting for quiet.

Sometimes you can outsmart yourself.

Looking down and verifying that there were no signs the partner had come along the path I’d chosen to follow, we continued on silently. The deer went back to destroying a bush for lunch.

More noises near us.

Animals? Or Loving? The partner?

We came to a bald strip of the property, about fifty feet across. To keep to cover, going around, would have taken too long. I motioned us across the open space.

Just as we reached the other side, I looked back. About a football field’s distance, I caught a glimpse of the house.

And I saw Henry Loving stepping into the front yard. He looked our way and froze.

Then dug into his pocket for a radio or mobile.

“He spotted us. Move fast!”

I indicated the asphalt and we started to run.

“Bill, watch the rear. If you see him, aim low. He’ll be crouching.”

Better a minor wound on the feet and ankles than a miss over the head, Abe used to say.

“Got it.”

I whispered, “Come on, Amanda. We’re doing fine.”

Keeping low, gasping, we ran through the thinning undergrowth, not caring about noise. I expected to hear at any moment the near simultaneous snap of the bullet and the boom of the weapon from behind us. But neither Loving nor his partner fired. Amanda was no good to them dead. You need your edge relatively healthy.

Finally, all of us breathing hard, we approached the road. About fifty yards away was my car, on the other side of the stone fence. We sprinted through the low brush.

Carter glanced back. “I think I see him. Go on, get in the car. I’ll cover you.”

“No.” We ran a bit farther then I pulled the others down beside me, under the cover of a fallen tree, old enough that as a youngster it might have given similar protection and comfort to Union or Confederate soldiers making their way south after the carnage of the most deadly battle of the Civil War, Antietam.

I was sure I saw Loving behind us, not far away, maybe sixty, seventy yards or so. He too had ducked behind a tree next to the wall.

I said to Carter, “We’re going to move up close to the car. I’ll be in the rear. I’ll start it remotely. When it starts, fire both barrels into the woods across the road. This time I want you to aim high. Reload and fire two more. Fast. Then, you both go over the wall. Amanda, get in the backseat and get down. Bill, drive maybe twenty feet or so forward, then stop, cover the forest across the road with your sidearm. I’ll join you in a minute.”

“The partner’s over there?”

“That’s right.”

He didn’t ask how I knew and I wasn’t inclined to explain that it was simply rational.

A glance at both faces, sweaty and flecked with leaf debris. “Ready?”

Nods.

I pressed the ignition button and the engine came to life. Our cars have special mufflers to deaden the exhaust sound but there’s nothing you can do about a starter.

Carter didn’t hesitate. The instant the car started, he did as I’d asked: rising over the fence and firing two hugely loud rounds. He reloaded, fired two more and reloaded again, as I fired a burst of six in the direction where Loving was hiding. Carter grabbed Amanda by the hand. They ran to the car.

It squealed away, while I rolled over the stone fence and lay in tall grass on the shoulder of the road, prone, aiming back toward Loving.

I felt a tickle on my spine. Loving would think I was in the car but the partner might have seen the ruse and gone for a shot at me in the shallow weeds.

Come on… come on…

Then Loving presented.

He jumped over the wall and started to aim at the car.

I didn’t have much of a shot, with the brush and the wall partially blocking my view, yet it was something. But just as I started to fire, Carter slammed on the brakes-as I’d asked him-and Loving realized my strategy. He didn’t see me but he knew what had happened. He spun around and started back over the wall. I emptied my magazine at him. Chunks of rock flew from the wall and dirt from the ground. Loving vanished over the rock. I couldn’t tell if I’d hit him.

Reloading, I saw motion in the leaves across the road-it would be the partner-and I sprinted to the car. I leapt into the driver’s seat as Carter scrabbled over to the passenger’s.

I floored the accelerator and we sped away.

Carter was looking behind us. “Yeah, there’s the partner, climbing out of the woods. And Loving’s joining him, they’re in the road. Loving’s hurt, I think. Doesn’t look too steady.”

A few minutes later I skidded around a bend in the road and slowed from eighty-five.

Carter laughed, pointing up. “Your boys’re here.”

A chopper swooped in fast, descending as it sped directly for Carter’s house. A moment later a stream of black SUVs, in the oncoming lane, braked to a stop, blocking me. They approached with weapons drawn, cautious, and I held my ID out the window.

A young agent, covered by two others, looked into the car and then motioned the vehicles containing his fellow agents around him, to continue on to the house.

“You all right, sir? Everybody’s fine?” The agent looked us over.

“Yes, we are. Is Agent Fredericks here?”

“He’s about five minutes behind us.”

“All right, tell your agents there’re two of them. Loving and his partner, both armed. Loving may be wounded. I don’t know where they stashed their vehicle.”

“We’ll check it out, sir.”

“I was looking over a map earlier and saw across the lake there’re a dozen houses and some easy routes to the interstate. I’m thinking they may try to row over, hijack a car.”

“I’ll get some of the team over there,” the agent said.

I told him, “Can you patch me through to the chopper pilot? I’ll give him a description of the property.”

“Chopper?”

“Your tactical air unit.” I gestured toward the sky.

He looked confused. “Well, sir, we don’t have a helicopter involved in the operation.”