She looked at him inquiringly.
“I’m not taking you with me.”
“What?” She frowned, not understanding.
“Now that everything is in place, now that the hunt’s been called off and all the bad guys are converging on Murfreesboro, you’re safer without me. I’m gonna drop you off at the first reasonably well-populated place we come to, and I want you to call your sister in Knoxville to come and get you. If you’ll give me her number, I’ll call you there tomorrow and let you know how things went.”
Summer stared at him. “Not on your life!”
His lips twisted into a wry smile. His eyes were both warm and rueful as they met hers. “Now how did I know you would say that, I wonder?”
“You’re not leaving me!”
“Listen,” he said quietly. “I’ll be safer without you, too. You’re just one more person for me to worry about when the going gets rough. My goal is to get Corey—and Elaine—safely away from the goons. If you walk into the lions’ den with me, then you’re just one more person I have to keep safe. One more distraction. See what I mean?”
Summer did see. Instinctive protestations bubbled to her lips only to die unuttered. He was right; there was nothing she could do to help him now, and much she could do to hinder him. The only smart, sensible thing to do was to stay behind.
She would never have guessed how terribly hard it was to agree not to put herself in mortal danger.
“I see what you mean,” she said in a tone as neutral as she could make it. Inside, her heart screamed and wept.
He put her helmet down on the vinyl seat beside his, reached out and took her face in his hands. “I just found you,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to lose you again.”
It was the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to her.
Summer’s arms went up around his neck. She pressed herself close to his hard, warm body. Tears welled up in her eyes, but—heroically, she thought—she fought them back. Crying would not help either of them.
“I don’t want to lose you either,” she whispered against his weather-dry lips.
“Baby, I’m harder to lose than a bad penny,” he said with a crooked smile. Then he kissed her.
It was infinitely slow, and sweet, and tender. Almost as if he was saying good-bye.
When Steve lifted his head at last, and she reluctantly opened her eyes, Summer’s vision was blurred with unshed tears. But just momentarily. As her vision cleared, her eyes widened. Over Steve’s broad shoulder she saw that a police car and two other vehicles, a white Ford and a navy blue Lincoln Continental, were pulling onto the gravel shoulder of the road not two hundred feet away. Her gaze skipped right over the Ford. The flashing blue light of the police car mesmerized her. The navy blue Lincoln terrorized her. She was unable to move, unable to say a word; frozen with fear.
Steve must have sensed her horror, because, before she could choke out so much as a syllable, his head swiveled toward where she was staring.
“Jesus,” he whispered, releasing her and grabbing for the nearby bike. For a moment Summer thought he meant to leap aboard the motorcycle and make a run for it through the forest. Her muscles tensed as she prepared to leap with him.
But it was already too late. The cars had stopped, and men, some uniformed and some not, spilled from their depths.
“Freeze!” a uniformed officer shouted, leaning over the just-opened door and snapping a pistol into two-handed position atop the closed window. Its barrel was pointed directly at Steve. “Get your hands in the air!”
But Steve wasn’t looking at that man, or the other uniformed officer who popped up on the opposite side of the patrol car, his gun pointing across the roof of the car at them too. He wasn’t looking at the middle-aged man in a white shirt and tan Sansabelt slacks who was standing beside the Ford, talking excitedly into a cellular phone, either. He was looking at a balding man with a black mustache who emerged from the driver’s side of the van. The man appeared unarmed, but as he stepped down the breeze caught the edge of his tan linen sport jacket and Summer saw that he was wearing a shoulder holster complete with shiny black pistol.
One of the thugs from her basement. Summer recognized him at once. The one Steve had identified as being known to him, as a cop. What had he said the man’s name was?
Not that it mattered. A thug by any other name was still as deadly.
Another man walked around the van to join Black Mustache. This guy was short, stocky, fiftyish, with a graying crew cut. Like his partner, he was dressed in a sport coat and slacks, although his were navy and gray, respectively. On his feet he wore shiny tasseled loafers.
Summer wondered if they were the same ones Muffy had christened.
“Fuck,” Steve said under his breath, and lifted his hands into the air.
37
“Get your hands in the air! You, lady! Get your hands in the air!” The uniformed cop’s order was a staccato bark.
Summer, unused to being on the wrong end of a policeman’s pistol, held her hands up, palms pointing outward, at about shoulder level. She felt like a spectator, not a participant, in events that had no reality.
As if she were caught up in a really, truly, hideously bad dream.
Her most rational thought was, These guys constitute a major spanner in Steve’s plan. Even her little insurance policy would not help in this case.
“Get those hands up!” The cop screamed.
“She’s not armed,” Steve called. “We’re not armed.”
“Get them up!”
The second uniformed cop, pistol wavering dangerously, slid on his heels down the small hill that separated the roadway from the picnic area while the first stayed on top of the hill and kept them covered. Summer, her hands at eyebrow level now in imitation of Steve’s, just out of instinct sidled a little closer to Steve for protection.
Of course there wasn’t anything he could do to protect her now.
“Don’t move!” The second cop stopped about a yard away, the mouth of his pistol aiming first at Steve, then at Summer, then at Steve again. He seemed nervous, and more frightening because of it, as his buddy came down the hill, his pistol at the ready too.
“Both of you, hit the dirt! Now!”
“The lady is the daughter of Murfreesboro’s police chief. She’s not with me of her own free will. Go easy on her, will you?”
“I don’t care if she’s the daughter of the President! I said hit the dirt!”
“It’s okay. Lie down on your stomach on the ground. Keep your hands where they can see them.” This quiet instruction from Steve was vaguely reassuring. He didn’t sound panicked. He didn’t sound as if he were on the verge of despair. He sounded calm, cool, and collected.
Maybe the two guys in uniforms were good cops. Maybe they would take them to jail and thus save them from the bad cops. Summer clung to that thought.
Following Steve’s example, Summer dropped rather awkwardly to her knees, then lay flat on the ground. It was damp from last night’s rain, and the leaves were slippery wet beneath her cheek and knees and hands. With her head turned to one side, she watched as one of the uniformed cops ran his hands swiftly over Steve’s prone body, patting him down. Then he dragged one of Steve’s hands down behind his back, snapped a handcuff around it, and secured the other the same way.
Seconds later the same procedure was being performed on her. The young cop’s hands ran over her everywhere, touching her in places he had no business touching. Thankfully, though, the search seemed to be entirely impersonal.
Summer’s wrist was grabbed and dragged behind her back, and seconds later she, too, was handcuffed. The metal was cold and unfamiliar-feeling around her wrists. In a few minutes, she thought, being shackled in such a way might start to feel uncomfortable.
Steve was already on his feet and being marched toward the patrol car when Summer was half lifted, half dragged upright. In minutes she was being helped up the hill. Ahead of her, Steve slipped and almost fell on the
slippery slope. Summer remembered his lightning-fast move in her basement, and for a few seconds waited hopefully for all hell to break loose. It didn’t. Steve was dragged to his feet and shoved up the hill in Summer’s wake.
“Get the dog,” Black Mustache ordered abruptly. They were the first words Summer had heard him say.
“Yes, sir.” One of the young cops scowled, but obediently went to pick up Muffy, who backed away, yapping at him like a Fury.
Apparently Muffy had more intelligence than Summer had given her credit for. She was learning to tell the bad guys from the good. Or vice versa. At this point, Summer had no idea which was which.
“Come on, doggy. Here, doggy,” the young cop coaxed. Muffy growled, the first hostile sound Summer had ever heard her make. Her respect for the little dog, already far higher than when Muffy had arrived for her visit, increased again.
“What’s the damned thing’s name?”
Summer didn’t reply. A hand gripped the back of her neck, hard. She glanced around to discover Shiny Shoes’ grayish eyes on a level with her own.
“He asked the dog’s name,” Shiny Shoes said softly.
“Muffy,” Steve answered for her as he was hustled past. “The dog’s name is Muffy.”
The guy in the Sansabelt slacks approached Summer, cellular phone bulging from his breast pocket, pad and pencil in hand. “Miss, can I ask you a question? I’m James Todd of the Bryson City Post. Were you really kidnapped, or …”
“This isn’t the moment, buddy,” Shiny Shoes growled.
“Steve didn’t kill those women in my basement. He did,” Summer said clearly, nodding toward Shiny Shoes behind her as she seized this heaven-sent opportunity to talk to a real live reporter. He was surely not involved in any of this.
“Him?” Todd looked with lively interest at Shiny Shoes, who shook his head at him and tightened his grip on Summer’s neck.
“Talk to her later,” Shiny Shoes said, and dragged Summer away.
As she was shoved toward the patrol car, she heard the snap of fingers behind her. Glancing back—not easily, because Shiny Shoes’ hold on her neck could more properly be described as a death grip—she saw that one of the young cops was bent over, snapping his fingers at Muffy, calling her by name.
“Put them in the Lincoln,” Black Mustache said. He stood with his arms folded across his chest, one foot resting against the Lincoln’s front fender as he watched the proceedings with an eagle eye.
James Todd approached him, pad and pencil at the ready. “And you are?” he asked hopefully.
“No comment,” Black Mustache snapped, and moved toward where one of the uniformed policemen stood with Steve.
“Hey, kid, I said put them in the Lincoln.”
The cop getting ready to push Steve down into the back of the patrol car glanced up at Black Mustache, surprised. His hand was already on top of Steve’s head. “They’ll be more secure in the patrol car, sir.”
“Do what you’re told,” Black Mustache snapped. The two uniformed cops—one had finally succeeded in snagging Muffy—glanced at each other, gave the impression that they exchanged invisible shrugs, and escorted Steve toward the Lincoln. With Shiny Shoes’ hand still on her neck, Summer trailed behind.
Summer had a gut feeling that if she got inside that car, she was going to die.
Shiny Shoes opened the rear door and released her neck at last. A hand settled atop Summer’s head. Seconds later she was pushed down into a plush velour seat. A combination shoulder/lap belt was pulled across her body. With her hands cuffed behind her back, she was as securely bound as if they had tied her to the seat. Steve, equally trussed up beside her, looked grim, Summer saw to her dismay. Muffy, set inside by one of the young cops, scuttled across the gray-carpeted floor to vanish beneath the front seat.
Smart dog. Summer only wished she could do the same thing.
The rear door closed. She, Muffy, and Steve were locked in the backseat together. Black Mustache and Shiny Shoes had yet to get in the car. The trunk opened, and both uniformed policemen walked past, lugging the motorcycle between them. From the way the car rocked, it was hefted into the trunk. The trunk was secured with something, but it would not close all the way. If she twisted around, Summer could see that it remained slightly open. She assumed the motorcycle’s front or rear tire must be sticking out.
“What do we do now?” she whispered to Steve.
His reply scared her. “Pray,” he said.
An explosion from behind the car, quickly followed by a second and then a third, widened Summer’s eyes and snapped her head up. Goggle-eyed, she watched through the front passenger-side window as James Todd, who had been talking into his cellular phone again while he peered in at them, started to topple forward. The phone dropped from his hand like a stone. A neat black hole punctuated the space between his eyes. A thin trickle of blood was just beginning to run down the bridge of his nose as he fell from sight. It hit her with the force of a revelation: He’d been shot!
Of the young policemen there was no sign.
“Jesus,” Steve said, and closed his eyes.
Only then did Summer realize that the two young policemen had been shot too.
She guessed that made them the good guys.
It was a heck of a way to find out.
Shiny Shoes and Black Mustache got into the car. Shiny Shoes took the driver’s side, dropping a palm-size object onto the dashboard with a solid-sounding thunk. The object slid toward the junction of dashboard and windshield before Summer could get a good look at it.
“What’s that?” Black Mustache asked as Shiny Shoes shut the door and started the car.
“Cellular phone. I’ve been wanting one for a while.”
“A cellular phone? You don’t mean to tell me that—damn it to hell, Clark, you are one dumb shit! If you use that phone, they can trace it to you. If you don’t use it, and it’s even found in your possession, your ass is burned. It belongs to that reporter, you lughead! How’re you gonna explain how you got it? That’ll finger you for his murder right there!”
Clark glanced over at his partner. “I didn’t think of that,” he said shamefacedly. Reaching for the phone, he added, “I’ll throw it out.”
“Damn right you’ll—no, wait a minute.” Black Mustache pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I’ve got an idea. Leave it. Just don’t use it.”
Clark obediently withdrew his hand and concentrated on driving. As the Lincoln gained speed, leaving behind the scene of the carnage, Black Mustache leaned an arm across the back of the seat and twisted around to grin at his prisoners.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Calhoun,” he chided with a reproving shake of his head. “Killing cops is not nice.”
“They were just kids, Carmichael. What’d you have to do that for?” Steve asked.
Carmichael—of course, that was his name—shrugged. “One of ’em—Geoff Murray—knew me. He used to date my daughter. Some people back there at the grocery store called the local yokels to report that they thought some armed and dangerous fugitives—that’s you two—had been there and left. Apparently the reporter heard it on a police scanner and hurried over to get in on the big scoop. It was just pure bad luck for those dudes that you were recognized at that grocery store, and more pure bad luck that young Murray was the cop who showed up at the scene just as we got out of the car to take a look at the area around the telephone.” He shook his head, then waggled a forefinger at Steve. “Oh, by the way, it was pretty dumb of you to make that call. We had your ex-wife’s phone tapped and as soon as you made it, zingo, we had you.”
“That still doesn’t tell me why you killed three men.”
Carmichael shrugged. “When Murray recognized me, what was I gonna do, give him a chance to start thinking about how he ran into me up here, checking out a grocery store that he was also checking out? For two fugitives who later wound up dead? With him out of the picture, nobody has a clue that Clark and I were here. Besides, that reporter was nosy.
”
The careless prognostication of her and Steve’s fate sent a chill racing along Summer’s spine. But had she ever doubted for an instant that Carmichael meant for them to wind up dead?
Not since their encounter in her basement.
“Did you hear what that bitch back there said?” Clark growled, jerking his head in Summer’s direction. “She told that reporter that I—that we—killed those cunts at her house.”
“Well, we did,” Carmichael said, and grinned.
“But she told him! And he’s a reporter!”
“Don’t go ballistic, Clark. He’s dead, remember? He ain’t gonna tell nobody nothin’.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Clark, and subsided.
“I had to cover my ass,” Carmichael continued to Steve. “Much as it goes against the grain to waste fellow cops. Oh, well, Murray was a prick to my daughter anyway.” He chuckled suddenly. “You’ll get the blame for this, Calhoun, and when I blow your head off later tonight I’ll wind up looking like a hero for catching a cop killer. They’ll even find that reporter guy’s phone on your body. With that evidence, it’s an open-and-shut case. Pretty stupid of you to keep the phone, they’ll say, but it sure makes a tidy package. Funny, ain’t it, how life tends to work out? Even Clark’s dumb-ass goof winds up helping the program.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then Steve spoke: “I’ve got a deal with some buddies of yours. But I guess you know all about that.”
Carmichael grinned. “Oh, yeah, you mean the deal where you show up at some funeral* home and tell everybody where you hid the van and then we give you back your daughter and you all ride off happily into the sunset?”
“That’s the one.”
“Ain’t gonna happen,” Carmichael said cheerfully. “At least, not like it’s supposed to. You’re gonna tell me where the van is, and I’m gonna make sure you’re telling the truth. Then I’m gonna kill you like the interfering asshole you are.”
Walking After Midnight Page 28
