Mortal Pursuit

51

The Porsche roared alive with a crank of the ignition key.

Gage slammed the passenger door as the car took off, accelerating from zero to sixty in five seconds.

Tyler muscled the coupe through a tight turn, then steered across the manicured lawn, past sprays of roses and stands of eucalyptus.

“Your brother told me you never killed anybody,” he said over the motor’s throb.

Gage swallowed. “Right.”

Squeal of rubber, and the Porsche swung onto the driveway, skidding momentarily because Tyler had let off the throttle.

When he opened it up, the coupe found its footing and barreled forward, streaking between the house and garage into the rear yard.

“Not gonna freeze up on me,” he said evenly, “are you, man”

Indignant: “No way.”

His high beams stabbed the back gate, already open. He had slapped the wall switch after leaving the cellar.

The gate shot past. Gone.

“Because,” Tyler said, “if you are-“

“Hey.” The gold earring flashed. The kid’s mouth trembled, but his eyes were hard. “She might’ve killed Blair. Okay”

Tyler looked at those eyes, flat and stubborn as nail heads, and for the first time he was not unhappy to have at least one of the Sharkey boys on his crew.

“Okay,” he answered with a nod.

He rolled down the windows and unholstered his Glock.

At the edge of the beach Trish hesitated, pulling Ally back behind a profusion of manzanita.

“I left one of them here,” she whispered. “Want to make sure he didn’t get loose.”

She scanned the area. A dozen yards away, a black-suited figure thrashed and squirmed like a landed fish.

He was conscious now, struggling against the nylon cord, but he hadn’t freed himself. Those square knots she had tied must be pretty good. No wonder she’d earned that Try-It patch.

“No problem. Come on.”

Ally’s bare feet kicked up plumes of white. “You took his belt He’s got a hundred pounds on you.”

“Told you I got lucky.”

The yielding sand was harder to cross than the firm macadam had been. Trish puffed her cheeks, blowing hard.

When she glanced toward the killer again, she saw that he had stiffened, head lifted, staring at her.

Even in the dark, across a span of yards, she could read the hatred in his gaze. His face-flushed with exertion, distorted by the gag stuffing his mouth-was a study in still, focused fury.

Though she knew he was no threat, she felt her stomach ice over, felt the short hairs above her collar bristle in alarm.

Someone else, someone in a movie, would defuse the situation with a quip, cutting and smart. Her mind was frozen.

She looked away, conscious of the peculiar fact that nobody, to her knowledge, had ever hated her before tonight.

It was the price of being taken seriously, she supposed.

The path dipped, the lake tilting into view, and Tyler saw them.

Two darting figures. Crossing the beach. Bounding onto the dock.

His mouth stretched in a smile. “Let’s party.”

The Porsche rocketed down the slope.

Trish fumbled the keys out of her pocket as she and Ally reached the ladder.

“Take these.”

She flipped the keys to Ally, already mounting the top rung. The girl snatched them out of the air.

For a heart-stopping instant she juggled the key ring, nearly dropping it into the black water.

Then she got a firm grip, and Trish let herself breathe again.

Ally jumped onto the nearest boat, the Sea Rayder mini-jet. Trish untied the mooring line and tossed it into the stern, then descended the ladder, drawing her gun.

Engine noise.

She looked over her shoulder.

A black coupe careening down the paved path. High beams projecting a white funnel of glare.

From the speeding car-gunfire.

Cain picked his duffel off the kitchen floor and rummaged for his roll of duct tape, the tape that would bind Judy Danforth and Barbara Kent to the headboards of the matching beds.

He had no interest in Judy, of course. But Charles Kent had insisted it would look suspicious if his wife alone was pulled from the closet.

Anyway, Judy would serve as a credible witness to the killing. She would report how the masked man forced himself on Barbara, how he warned her not to fight him, and how in crazed frustration he finally stuck his pistol in her mouth and squeezed the trigger.

Perhaps he wouldn’t even need duct tape for Barbara. Officer Wald’s handcuffs were still in his pocket. He—

Wafting in through the kitchen window on a current of moisture was a string of distant pops.

Gunshots. At the lake.

Lilith heard too. Both of them turned toward the window, then looked at each other.

Cain clenched a leather fist in savage satisfaction.

“Got `em.”

Trish ducked. Sprays of splinters from the planks. Thump of a bullet drilling into a post ten inches from her head.

The coupe reached the bottom of the grade. It charged the dock.

In one continuous motion she swung off the ladder onto the Sea Rayder’s fiberglass boarding step, then pivoted into the stem.

Nice move, said a voice in her mind with peculiarly objective appreciation.

At the helm Ally fumbled with the key set.

Another volley of shots ripped up the dock. The headlights brightened, the car racing closer.

Trish fired three useless shots, not even trying to aim.

Thunder.

The boat’s motor. Ally had found the key. She punched the throttle.

The Sea Rayder lunged forward. Trish fell on one knee. Twist of pain in her ankle.

At the end of the dock, the coupe braked with a howl of tires. Driver and passenger leaned out. Popping corn: a crackle of reports.

The moving boat, low and fast, made a difficult target. Even so, the bullets landed dangerously near. Pockmarks peppered the foaming wake.

Kneeling in the stem, Trish was helplessly exposed. Her body went rigid, every muscle tensing in expectation of a lethal shock.

This was the worst part-to know she might be cut down when she was so close to getting away.

Then the Sea Rayder’s prow lifted, the boat planing on the lake surface, and dock and shore receded, the killers out of range.

Made it.

She expelled a ragged breath, then turned toward the helm seat on the starboard side. Ally hugged the wheel, steering like a pro, the throttle jammed fully open.

“You okay” Trish slipped into the cockpit bench seat alongside the girl.

Shaky nod. “What’ll they do now”

Trish looked back. The coupe reversed off the dock and turned, headlights sweeping the beach like comet tails.

“I don’t know. But they’re not through yet.”