He didn’t want to run into the woman and the boy.
After ten minutes of walking, he heard engines stressed to the breaking point.
Two sheriff’s cars shot over the rise, their wigwag lights blinking back and forth.
They blasted past him. He thought he saw the deputy, Tess, driving one of the cars, but wasn’t sure.
He watched them disappear over the rise. Two cars, added to the one that had driven by earlier. In a county this sparse, that could be the whole fleet. Where were they going in such a hurry?
But he knew. Something had happened back at the house. The deputy, the first one, must have encountered the woman and the boy. Maybe they’d shot him.
Whatever the cops found at the house, they would remember him walking along the shoulder of the road. She would remember him.
The deputy with the photographic memory would have him etched in her mind.
She would see the abandoned ranch truck too. She would wonder why the guys in the limo were after him. She would wonder what he was doing walking along the shoulder of the road in the middle of July with the sun beating down on his head, his shirt blotted with sweat and—yes—blood. She would wonder what was in the duffel he carried slung over his shoulder. The female deputy with the photographic memory would know the neighbor who owned the missing truck. The old brown Ford F-250. Of course she would.
She would see the bullet holes and Corey’s blood against the carport wall, the broken glass, all evidence of a gunfight.
Max had to get out of here.
He jogged along the road, looking for a house, someplace to hide, a car, anything.
The road spanned a narrow wash ahead. The wash was overgrown with chest-high grass, green like corn—the stuff that grew up after a rain. He could hide in there. He jumped down into the dry riverbed, and that was when he saw the culvert under the road.
He crawled inside, as far as he could get.
And waited.
SHAUN FOLLOWED THE road all the way to town. They had closed up the bomb shelter and locked the kitchen door behind them. The place was out in the sticks. There were a couple of ranchettes farther up the road, but the bamboo hid most of the front yard from view and the carport was in shadow. It might be days before anyone came by.
Shaun and her son had both washed up at the kitchen sink and rinsed their shirts to get rid of any stray blood spatter. They’d throw their clothing away in a Dumpster somewhere on the road. They dug through their suitcases from the truck and changed hurriedly. Shaun knew they needed to get on Max Conroy’s trail before it went cold.
They needed to split up. Although Max Conroy might still be nearby, Shaun thought he would head for town as soon as he escaped. She left Jimmy to scout the area while she reconnoitered ahead. He was to check the four or five houses and barns in the area and then call when he was done.
She had just made a pass through the main drag and was parking the truck so she could continue her search on foot when she heard a cop car coming, fast. No siren, but cops had a way of driving that made those big engines roar. She got back into the truck just as two sheriff’s cars rounded the corner, lights flashing. She saw them turn in the direction she’d come from, and knew instantly: someone had found the bodies in the bomb shelter.
Who?
Had a neighbor come by? Or did Max Conroy have a fit of conscience?
Jimmy was on his own—for now. He would be all right. He’d hear the cop cars coming and go to ground.
She continued to canvass the town. Didn’t talk to anybody, just played tourist. She knew she didn’t look like a tourist, but she also knew that if she looked at anyone who regarded her with curiosity, the person would likely look uncomfortably away. They said the best assassins were nondescript and blended into a crowd, and that was true. But she’d made a living being the other kind. She knew she could be mistaken for a man, depending on what she wore and how she carried herself. People would remember her. But they usually looked away, embarrassed and guilty because they didn’t want to gawk. They tried to forget her. They thought of her as a freak, not someone who might be dangerous.
She could change clothes, put on a wig, and be a different person. She’d made the transformation dozens of times.
She called Jimmy and he answered on the first ring. “Where are you?”
“I’m laying low,” he said.
“They at the house?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Can you get around them?”
“Sure. I’m up on the hill. They can’t see me, but I can see them.”
“You talk to anybody?”
“I saw one lady out with her horses. She looked smart, though, so I stayed away.”
“So what do you think?”
“I don’t think he’s here.”
“He’s probably headed for town. Meet me outside the Subway, OK? Don’t let anybody see you.”
“It might take a while.”
“That’s OK. I’ll keep looking for him, but now that they know what’s in the bomb shelter, we’ve got to get out of here. So try to get there in an hour, all right?”
“Roger,” Jimmy said.
MAX KNEW AT some point he had to leave the culvert. He could hear thunder, and if the rains came, the dry arroyo would fill up fast and funnel into the culvert—he could drown. But he was tired. After all he’d been through—the adrenaline rush—he could barely keep his eyes open. Being here, under the road, made him feel that he was not only safe, but invincible. He’d locked all three kidnappers into the prison of their own making. He’d survived a gunfight with a tough guy like Corey. He’d managed to give the woman and the boy the slip, as well as the sheriff. The only thing standing in his way now was a need for stealth and a need for transportation.
In fact, he felt better than he had in a long time.
For so long Max had been a victim of circumstances—a victim of his own making. He’d gone along to get along. He’d dutifully done what his press agent told him to do, what his manager told him what to do, what his business manager told him to do, what his CPA told him to do, what his financial advisor told him to do, what his wife told him to do. They all had their own agendas, and Max realized he’d just drifted, hating himself more and more, drinking and taking whatever prescription drug was available at the time. And, since he was a star, the drugs were always available, all the time.
Strangely, he didn’t feel a craving for the drugs. How could he have lost the dependency on prescription drugs so easily? He remembered Gordon telling him that sensory deprivation therapy was the most useful tool in combating addiction, that in many cases, people just…lost the urge.
Here he was, sitting in a culvert with possibly two killers coming after him, and now Max finally felt as if he was his own man.
That feeling lasted about fifteen minutes. Then he heard footfalls.
At first, he thought he was hearing things. The footfalls were so light. Just the faintest tap on pavement, hardly enough to register. But the humming. Tuneless, barely there, like someone was thinking aloud by humming.
Then no sound at all.
He waited.
His heart rate jumped into the red zone. He eased the Smith & Wesson out of the duffel. How many people had he pointed the thing at? How many shots had he fired? It didn’t seem like him, but right now he was the hunted, and he went by pure instinct.