Endless Night Part 53

I'd d.a.m.n well better try to kill them first.

It might not be as impossible as it sounds.

There'll be Tom. And Mitch and Chuck. That's three. Minnow makes four. No, wait. Minnow's dead. Jody busted his head in with her baseball bat, at least according to Tom.

Of course, I've only got his word for it.

Why would he lie? Maybe so I won't be expecting Minnow, and ... I should've asked Ranch about him. Oh, well. Minnow must be dead, now that I think about it. He went off down the hall to look for more prey, but he didn't come back.

So that's three: Tom, Mitch and Chuck. Plus Clement Calhoun, and ... and who else?

My G.o.d! There used to be twelve of us! Twelve! Of course, that was before Tex, Dale, Private and Bill got their tickets canceled.

Eight of us went into that house on Friday night. Minnow, Ranch and Dusty are down the tubes since then, and I'm not exactly one of the gang anymore. So there are only four of them.

If I go in with a gun in each hand ...

No. One against four is extremely s.h.i.+tty odds.

I know!

What I do is go in with Jody-or a gal who'll pa.s.s for her. So it'll look like I'm keeping my part of the bargain. Also, I can hold her in front of me, use her as a s.h.i.+eld.

d.a.m.n it! Why didn't I take Dusty's vest off him? That'd be the thing, go in there with a Kevlar vest under my s.h.i.+rt.

s.h.i.+t!

It'd take me an hour to go all the way back to that house. I should've done some heavy thinking about the whole deal before I started shooting my mouth off into this tape recorder. s.h.i.+t, the thing is like a ... an addiction. The f.u.c.king world could be coming to an end, and I'd start the tape rolling so I could get in my two cents.

s.h.i.+t!

I wasn't even to the freeway before I dug the thing out of my purse and ...

s.h.i.+t!

Okay, okay. Calm down.

What's done is done, right? Water under the f.u.c.king bridge. No way I can go back and get Dusty's vest. I'd have the time to do it, but for all I know the bodies might've already been found. Forget it.

Who needs a bulletproof vest, anyway? Look at all the good it did Dusty.

Besides, it's not like the guys are gonna be waiting in there tonight to ambush me with guns. Mitch'll have his f.u.c.king saber, Chuck his ax, Clement his hammer and straight razor, Tom his Bowie knife. They'll have firearms handy, all right. We've got a real a.r.s.enal in the garage. But that stuff is for emergencies, so they aren't likely to have me covered if I walk in dragging along a sweet young thing so it looks like I'm playing along.

The problem is, I've got to find one.

Shouldn't be too hard. She won't have to be a dead ringer, or anything, now that Dusty's out of the picture.

Anyway, enough about all that. Time's running out, and there's no telling how busy I might get before the deadline tonight, so I'd better go ahead with the history of our little gang while I've got the chance.

Where the h.e.l.l did I leave off?

I don't know. Did I tell about the time we went after Denise Dennison? That was our first house raid, and ... yeah, I already went into all that.

What about after Denise?

Geez, get a load of her!

Where was I?

Things were awfully hot around L.A., so we drove all the ...

Never mind.

I can't think.

It's this car I just pa.s.sed. The girl in back looks just like Jody. I mean, maybe she's not the spitting image, but she's close-very close. About the same age. Cute face, very short blond hair.

I'd been creeping up on the car for a pretty long time. A white Nissan Sentra. It was going just a little slower than me. I didn't want to get stuck behind it, though, so finally I swung over to the left and put some speed on. The idea was to race by, then get back into the slow lane.

Coming up alongside it, that's when I spotted the girl in the back seat.

Just when I'm trying to resume the history of our gang, I'm suddenly looking at exactly the gal I need.

f.u.c.k the history.

I've slowed down now so that I'm going the same speed as the Sentra. It's about fifty feet behind me.

In the front seats are a man and a woman. They're probably her parents. The way things are these days, though, who knows? Nothing's the way it looks. Everything's twisted and odd.

It doesn't really matter who or what they are, though.

If they aren't her parents, big deal.

Just so they aren't a couple of undercover Green Berets or Ninjas or some such s.h.i.+t.

I don't think there's anyone else in back with the girl.

Just the three of them.

The girl's too good to lose. I've got to have her. It's just a question of how to do it.

They're close enough, if I stand on the brakes, they'll probably rear-end me. Maybe that's the way to go. They'd have to stop, or the driver could get into big trouble for hit and run.

It's risky, though. My Caddy is a lot bigger than their little heap, so I'm not likely to get hurt. But you never know what might go wrong. For one thing, you don't know how hard we might hit. Wouldn't it be great if I got them to pile into me, and both cars got put out of commission?

It's not likely, but it could happen.

Or what if the other guy loses control, maybe spins out, flips his car or gets broadsided by a truck or something? Naturally, I wouldn't pick a time when there's a lot of traffic around. Even still, they might crash and burn.

Forget staging a crash.

I want her alive.

Here's an idea. I could drop back and tail them. Sooner or later, they'll take an off-ramp. I can wait till they reach their destination, then figure out a safe way to s.n.a.t.c.h her.

Lousy idea.

They might not stop for hours. And when they do, it might be at someplace crowded.

This stretch of freeway is just about perfect. The traffic isn't real heavy, and there are long stretches with nothing on either side except desert.

Here's another idea.

I'll put some distance between us, then pull over and stop. Make it look like something's wrong.

I'm a gal, remember? And not a bad looking one, at that.

Let's see if the guy will stop for a damsel in distress.

Chapter Thirty-six.

Oh yeah! Oh yeah! What a RUs.h.!.+

I was brilliant! Brilliant!

Whew! I'm out of breath. Hard work.

Wait'll you hear ...

How do things look back there?

Fine ... fine. Made a ... clean getaway ... looks like ... Yeah. I go around this bend and ... Yeah, can't see their car now ... Home free.

Whew!

Gonna shut this off a minute and catch my breath.

All right, I'm back. Gotta tell you what I did. It worked great. did like I said and sped up for a while to get out farther in front of them. While I was busy putting some s.p.a.ce between us, I took the .45 out of my purse and shoved it down the front of my skirt. Not the best place to put it. For one thing, I couldn't get the barrel down far enough. The muzzle pushed right against my d.i.c.k and I had this awful picture of the d.a.m.n gun firing. But I worked on the problem and managed to get the barrel down into the crack between my thigh and nuts. Guys were never meant to carry guns in front like that.

The Derringer would've fit perfectly, by the way. But it only had a two-shot capacity, and I wanted more firepower than that.

By the time I got the Colt the way I wanted it, I was far enough ahead of the Sentra. Plenty of room to stop and climb out while it was still coming.

When you see somebody pull over in front of you, you always watch them. So I knew their eyes were on me. My plan was to hurry and put up the hood so it would look like I had engine trouble.

But one of those huge eighteen-wheelers rushed by when I climbed out. It must've just pa.s.sed the Sentra, because I hadn't seen it before. The truck blew a gust of wind against me. I clapped a hand down on my wig to keep it from flying off. The blast of hot air whipped against me so hard that it jerked open a couple of b.u.t.tons at the bottom of my s.h.i.+rt and flapped the s.h.i.+rt away from my belly. Which was no big deal except for the fact that it showed off the .45 that was stuck down my waist.

I hunched over and hugged my belly to hide the gun.

Just after I did that, the Sentra pa.s.sed me.

Its brake lights were on. But only for a second. When they went off, I realized the guy wasn't planning to stop. He'd only slowed down as a safety precaution, and now he was ready to speed off.

Doing the quick hug to hold my s.h.i.+rt down is what gave me the idea.

I suddenly jerked and hunched down as if I'd been struck in the belly by a terrible pain. I staggered forward a couple of steps, then dropped to my knees beside the front tire.

Chivalry ain't dead.

The joker must've kept his eyes on me in his rearview mirror.

My knees no sooner hit the dirt than his brake lights came on again. He pulled off the highway and started backing toward me with his tires flinging up clouds of dust.

I saw the face of my sweet piece in the rear window. She looked very worried about me.

Glad to report that today's fall was a lot better executed than the one last night. This time, I didn't bash my knee. And fortunately there was no dog handy to bite my face. A few other cars and trucks were roaring closer. I didn't want any of them stopping, so I got to my feet and hobbled, still bent over and hugging my belly, but in a way that didn't look so drastic.

I had one hand inside my s.h.i.+rt, of course.

A few yards in front of me, the Sentra stopped. I staggered between the two cars and eased myself down till my rump came to rest on the edge of my hood. I tried to smile at my sweetie in the rear window. But I was supposed to be hurting, so my smile twisted into a major grimace of pain.

Oooo, I'm good.

Not only good, but lucky. Instead of just one adult getting out of the car to help me, they both did. A couple of very good Samaritans. Either that, or the guy came after me because I gave him the hots and the gal came along to keep an eye on him.

They looked like a real dynamic duo, both of them in their thirties, slim and trim and tanned, decked out in sungla.s.ses, polo s.h.i.+rts, white shorts, white crew socks, and topsiders. Maybe they were on their way through the desert to a distant marina for a day of yachting.

The man stopped a little short of me and asked, "Are you all right?"

"Of course she isn't all right," the gal said.

Obviously his wife. n.o.body but a wife-or maybe a really overconfident fiancee-talks to a guy that way, as if he's a dope.

She put her hand gently on my upper arm. "Is it your stomach?"

I bared my teeth and nodded.

And listened. Some major traffic was bearing down on us from the rear.

"Must've hit you awfully hard," the man said. Actually, he was almost shouting. Because of the traffic noise, you could hardly hear yourself think. "Was it something you ate?" he asked.

A semi roared by, and I could hear another on the way.