Stephen Cannell - The Tin Collector

Shane slowly lowered her to the floor. When he looked up, he saw Alexa staring at him from the door.

"Shane, we've gotta get outta here," she said.

Suddenly, Coy Love's face appeared at the window. Then his gun came up, aiming at Shane, who snatched Calvin's.38 out of his belt and fired twice just as Alexa peeled her last two rounds at the ex-cop. The window shattered as four bullets hit Coy Love, blowing him backward into the brush outside the chauffeur's cabin.

"Let's go!" Alexa screamed, and Shane got to his feet.

They could hear more voices screaming outside. They found the back door and threw it open. It led into the six-car garage. A black Lincoln Town Car was parked inside. Shane grabbed the keys off the pegboard, then he and Alexa jumped into the car; he started the engine, pulled the garage-door opener off the visor, and pushed the button. The door opened while Alexa was digging into her purse for a spare clip. She jammed it into the grip of her Beretta just as he floored the Lincoln, hurtling out of the garage and onto the driveway.

Armed men in black suits blocked their path but scattered as he plowed through them.

Out the front window, he could see security men running at them from several directions, all digging under their coats for weapons. Shane yanked the wheel and bounced the car up over the curb and onto the newly sodded front lawn. They shot across it, taking the direct route to the front gate, tearing up chunks of grass before finally bounding back over the curb onto the main driveway.

With four men chasing them on foot, they sped out the front gate, Alexa holding her gun at port arms. The Town Car skidded onto Casuarina Concourse, then a mile and a half later rounded the corner onto Cutter Road. Soon they were speeding under the leafy banyan trees, heading toward the airport.

"Get Bob at the flight center. Tell him we gotta get moving."

While Alexa turned on her cell phone and dialed, Shane got a Miami all-news radio station. It had been only five or six minutes, but the story was already breaking.

"Our field news team covering the plush NFL party Logan Hunter is throwing at Elton John's Coral Gables mansion has reported a shooting," the announcer said. "We're still awaiting more details, but as we have it so far, several people have been gunned down. A man and a woman are identified as the shooters and have fled the scene in one of Elton John's personal vehicles. Stand by as we get more information."

Shane let Alexa off at Million-Air Charters, then parked the car around the corner and up the street in a dense growth of oleander bushes, out of sight of the road. He wiped their prints quickly, using his old shirt, not forgetting to do the back of the rearview mirror, the place most car thieves miss. Then he walked around the corner and met Alexa. They entered the office and found Bob in the pilot's lounge, filing his FAA flight plan.

"Ready to go?" Bob said. "That was quick."

"Can't afford the hangar time." Shane smiled, but the grin felt wide and shiny and about as genuine as an Amway salesman.

"Be right out," Bob said.

They quickly boarded the plane, this time without waiting for the red carpet. Shane and Alexa sat in tense silence as the two pilots finally got aboard, shut the door, and smiled warmly. "We've got a slight tailwind for a change," Bob said happily. "Should get us back in four and a half hours or so." He settled into the right seat and wound up the engines.

Moments later they were rolling down the runway, taking off, leaving Miami and four dead bodies behind.

Shane sat stoically in the cabin, unable to deal with his thoughts. Alexa reached over and took his hand. "You okay?" she asked. "What did Sandy say to you?"

"Nothing," he answered. He couldn't tell her yet, couldn't quite admit it to himself.

His mind went back almost sixteen years, recapturing a memory long forgotten: it was his second summer on the job, right after the first arrest Sandy had arranged on the Valley bond trading case. They'd gone to dinner several nights later, to celebrate. Sandy had made her pitch to him, offering to work for the police as an informant. They'd had too much to drink, and in the car outside her apartment, he had shucked her out of her dress, then in awkward, thoughtless passion had entered her. There had been no tenderness in the coupling, and surely no love. It had been pure sex for him, raw and unadorned, an act he thought held no consequences. For Sandy, it was like a handshake to close their new deal. He had been just twenty-two years old.

The next morning he had felt cheap and ashamed of himself. She was a prostitute, and since he had always demanded more from his intimate relationships, he had never made love to her again. Instead, they'd gone into business together. Over the years he had managed her informant's career, making her rich while getting his share of class A busts in the bargain. The drunken romp in the backseat of his car was all but forgotten.

All these years later, the consequences of that mindless act had finally come due. If what Sandy had told him was true, she had changed his life forever with her one dying sentence.

Then he remembered what she had said in the doorway of her Barrington penthouse two days before. It had made no sense then, but now it spoke volumes: "You weren't doing me a favor," she had told him solemnly. "I was doing one for you."

The road was dark and winding, and he was going too fast, overdriving his headlights.

"For Chrissake, slow down. We're gonna die on one of these curves," Alexa barked at him.

Shane momentarily lifted his foot off the gas and then, without realizing it, slowly sped up again, impatient to get there.

They had turned off the car radio because he and Alexa had just been named as the shooters at Elton John's Florida home and were now dominating every national newscast. Somebody at the party in Florida had made them, probably one of the ex-cops from Sheets's old Coliseum detail. They were the subjects of a national manhunt. Shane knew it was only a matter of time before their sleeping pilot would get up, turn on his TV, and see the story. He would inform the police that Shane and Alexa were back in L. A., thereby narrowing the manhunt.

The national news story was snowballing, becoming as big as when Andrew Cunanan shot Gianni Versace, each broadcast digging deeper into their pasts. Shane was now being described as a rogue cop prone to violence. His moment of self-defense when he protected Barbara and himself from Ray's insanity was now being called the cold-blooded murder of an exemplary police officer that launched a coast-to-coast crime spree. The news media was having a party with Alexa's involvement, calling her his Internal Affairs prosecutor, accomplice, and partner in crime. Her Bonnie and Clyde joke had come true.

Shane had chosen to take the back road up to Arrowhead. They were on 1-18, known as "the Rim of the World Highway," heading through the mountain town of Snow Valley. There were patches of snow visible at the highest elevations, distant reflections glimmering faintly in the moonlight.

Shane took another turn too fast, and the tires on the Crown Vic screamed in protest.

"For Chrissake, Shane, slow down!" she repeated, then reached out and switched on the police-band radio but got only static. They were too far up in the mountains to get anything, so she turned it off.

They slowed down to drive through the small town of Running Springs. At Crest Park Drive they took 173 along Burnt Mile Creek and finally dropped down into Lake Arrowhead. Shane knew the route to Ray's house and quickly found his way there.

He drove slowly past the party house on Lake View Drive. It looked dark inside. If they were holding Chooch and Brian, he reasoned, they would probably try to make it look deserted. Shane turned the car around before parking it. He wanted no cul-de-sac mistakes this time.