“You need to get the girl tested for bacteria-for real this time,” Skillings said. “Let’s take her in now before something else happens.”
Mariella’s once limp hand slid up and gripped Moni hard around the back of her neck. The girl unconsciously pulled herself up around Moni. Mariella depended on her, Moni thought. Skillings cared about her career, not protecting the girl. Her rival sought to embarrass her in front of Sneed and steal the most precious thing that had ever come into Moni’s life. Mariella couldn’t be infected, Moni thought. She knows the girl. She loves her. She doesn’t love some bacteria or an experiment by a deranged scientist.
“Get out of our way,” Moni told Skilling.
She put her hands on her hips and stood there as if she were cast in granite. “Bring the girl in.”
Without a second of thought, Moni drew her pistol. She brought it halfway up to Skillings’ chest. Then she stopped. In one flick of her wrist and tug of her finger, all her problems would get blown away. Usually so hesitant to use her weapon, Moni felt an insatiable urge to send a bullet through Skillings’ throat so she’d shut the hell up and leave poor Mariella alone.
“You really wanna go down this road with me?” asked Skillings, who didn’t appear intimidated in the least. She obviously didn’t believe Moni would shoot because she had heard the stories. The last time one of her partners got in a shootout with a suspect, Moni had ducked behind a wall and let the other officer take care of it. He nearly got his head blown off but the suspect ran out of ammo and surrendered.
Moni knew she should put the gun away. She couldn’t-not until Skillings backed off from Mariella.
What am I doing? What am I doing? She might be a bitch supreme, but I can’t shoot her.
Suddenly a patrol car pulled into the sheriff station’s parking lot and its headlights grazed past them. Moni quickly put her gun away and turned around so the light wouldn’t hit Mariella in the eyes and wake her up. That move solved one dilemma for her, but it created another one. When Moni glanced across the street as the headlights briefly illuminated the parking lot of a retail plaza, she saw a blue pickup truck with two reflective circles in the driver’s seat. Moni knew right away that those were binoculars. They were pointed right at Mariella and her.
Chapter 25
The parking lot across the street darkened when the patrol car moved on, but Moni knew the man inside the pickup truck still watched her and the girl as they stood underneath the bright lights around the Melbourne sheriff’s station. When Moni stared back at him for too long, the truck sprang alive like a lion roaring in the middle of a jungle night. It jumped the curb from the parking lot onto the street and burned rubber down Sarno Road. It sped east in the direction of the Indian River Lagoon.
Moni’s skin crawled as she thought of how the man had been observing her and the girl the whole time. and lord knows how many other instances. If she had left Mariella alone for one minute, she might have lost her girl forever.
“It’s a blue pickup truck like the one the Lagoon Watcher drives,” Moni told Skillings, who finally set her hawkish gaze elsewhere. “He was outside Mariella’s school one day too. He’s stalking her. So there’s your suspect.”
Skillings growled as she sprinted towards her car. “This doesn’t change anything I said. We’ll finish this after I bring him in.”
“No, after I bring him in,” Moni corrected her as she finally unlocked her Taurus so she could give its six-cylinders a workout. “That asshole’s gonna pay for the hell he put my baby though.”
Moni swung open the back door and placed Mariella in the seat as gently and quickly as she could. Her nerves must have rattled her hands, because when she finished strapping the girl in she noticed Mariella staring at her-not with sleepy eyes but fully alert and razor sharp. She sensed Moni’s urgency.
“I’m gonna catch the man who did bad things to your parents,” Moni said as she jumped behind the wheel.
She peeled out of her parking space and leapt the curb. Skillings’ patrol car had a good lead on her. She saw the red taillights of the Lagoon Watcher’s truck farther down the road. After11 p.m., there weren’t many other cars on the quiet Melbourne streets. Moni radioed for backup. She didn’t count on it getting there before the stalker had plenty of chances to escape..
A sedan pulled into the road ahead of her. Ignoring the brakes, Moni swerved into the oncoming lane and back again as she zipped around it. Suddenly, the suspect’s truck barreled onto the grass on the right side of the street. It headed straight for an elementary school. Skillings’ patrol car raced behind him. He spun up chunks of turf-with one a big clump splattering off Skillings’ windshield. The truck shredded some bushes and then rumbled into the school’s empty parking lot. The Lagoon Watcher turned toward a building, then swerved the truck the opposite way and burst through a chain link fence that led him back onto Sarno Road. Skillings’ car was slowed down by the muddled grass and whacked by the fence as it reentered the roadway. That gave the Lagoon Watcher plenty of distance from her.
Moni hadn’t fallen for the bait. She had stayed on the road the whole time and found her car right on the truck’s tailpipe. She could only imagine the look on Skillings’ face when she saw that the “kiddie cop” had out-maneuvered her.
Of course, following the Lagoon Watcher like a tick on a dog’s ass wouldn’t get the job done. This wouldn’t end until she stopped that truck and yanked him out by the hair on the back of his neck. Moni pumped the gas. Her car rammed the pickup’s bumper on the right side. It drifted slightly left, toward the oncoming lane, but quickly straightened out.
It would take a much harder blow if she wanted his truck spinning across the road. With a quick glance over her shoulder, Moni saw Mariella on edge in her seat like a cat spooked by a thunder storm. She couldn’t play bumper cars at 90 miles an hour with her girl in the backseat.
Looking for a glancing blow that would slow him down, Moni pulled even with the truck along its right side. She nudged her car into its door. Sparks flew. The pressure forced the truck toward the opposite lane, where a pair of headlights sped toward them. Seeing the oncoming car, Moni disengaged the truck, and pulled back into her lane. The truck pulled left-straight at the car racing toward it. Moni flinched. The oncoming driver, who got a rude surprise on his twilight drive, sounded his horn. The Lagoon Watcher swung his truck back into the right lane, sideswiping Moni’s smaller car.
“Hold on!” Moni cried as her car shot over the sidewalk and onto the lawn of a church. She struggled for control over the vehicle. Her headlights caught sight of a large gazebo; it was the kind used for a wedding, or maybe a memorial service. Rejecting the brakes for fear of skidding through the grass, Moni banked the wheel hard left, and revved the gas. Her car responded so well that it brought her back onto the road, and straight into the oncoming lane. She saw the glare of headlights ahead. A horn shrieked. Moni weaved back into the right lane an instant before the tow truck sped by. She hoped she would need its services later, but not for her car.
The truck she had a fix on wrecking opened a sizable lead on her. He didn’t have it all in the clear, though. Moni’s ass-busting work had helped Skillings and her patrol car slide right onto the Lagoon Watcher’s tail. They crossed the train tracks within moments of each other. Moni lagged behind. She didn’t mind trailing so much anymore. She could nearly feel Mariella’s tremors of terror from the backseat. Moni’s assault had nearly gotten her killed. It frustrated the hell out of her, but she couldn’t take any more risks with the girl in the car.
That’s exactly what everyone says about me; that I always find an excuse to back down. Damn it. I have no choice this time. If I get Mariella killed trying to arrest him, then the Lagoon Watcher will have gotten exactly what he wanted. He might even have baited me into this chase so I would risk her life. That lagoon-loving vegan son of a bitch.