Jeffery Deaver - Edge

I was sure I saw Loving behind us, not far away, maybe sixty, seventy yards or so. He too had ducked behind a tree next to the wall.

I said to Carter, “We’re going to move up close to the car. I’ll be in the rear. I’ll start it remotely. When it starts, fire both barrels into the woods across the road. This time I want you to aim high. Reload and fire two more. Fast. Then, you both go over the wall. Amanda, get in the backseat and get down. Bill, drive maybe twenty feet or so forward, then stop, cover the forest across the road with your sidearm. I’ll join you in a minute.”

“The partner’s over there?”

“That’s right.”

He didn’t ask how I knew and I wasn’t inclined to explain that it was simply rational.

A glance at both faces, sweaty and flecked with leaf debris. “Ready?”

Nods.

I pressed the ignition button and the engine came to life. Our cars have special mufflers to deaden the exhaust sound but there’s nothing you can do about a starter.

Carter didn’t hesitate. The instant the car started, he did as I’d asked: rising over the fence and firing two hugely loud rounds. He reloaded, fired two more and reloaded again, as I fired a burst of six in the direction where Loving was hiding. Carter grabbed Amanda by the hand. They ran to the car.

It squealed away, while I rolled over the stone fence and lay in tall grass on the shoulder of the road, prone, aiming back toward Loving.

I felt a tickle on my spine. Loving would think I was in the car but the partner might have seen the ruse and gone for a shot at me in the shallow weeds.

Come on… come on …

Then Loving presented.

He jumped over the wall and started to aim at the car.

I didn’t have much of a shot, with the brush and the wall partially blocking my view, yet it was something. But just as I started to fire, Carter slammed on the brakes-as I’d asked him-and Loving realized my strategy. He didn’t see me but he knew what had happened. He spun around and started back over the wall. I emptied my magazine at him. Chunks of rock flew from the wall and dirt from the ground. Loving vanished over the rock. I couldn’t tell if I’d hit him.

Reloading, I saw motion in the leaves across the road-it would be the partner-and I sprinted to the car. I leapt into the driver’s seat as Carter scrabbled over to the passenger’s.

I floored the accelerator and we sped away.

Carter was looking behind us. “Yeah, there’s the partner, climbing out of the woods. And Loving’s joining him, they’re in the road. Loving’s hurt, I think. Doesn’t look too steady.”

A few minutes later I skidded around a bend in the road and slowed from eighty-five.

Carter laughed, pointing up. “Your boys’re here.”

A chopper swooped in fast, descending as it sped directly for Carter’s house. A moment later a stream of black SUVs, in the oncoming lane, braked to a stop, blocking me. They approached with weapons drawn, cautious, and I held my ID out the window.

A young agent, covered by two others, looked into the car and then motioned the vehicles containing his fellow agents around him, to continue on to the house.

“You all right, sir? Everybody’s fine?” The agent looked us over.

“Yes, we are. Is Agent Fredericks here?”

“He’s about five minutes behind us.”

“All right, tell your agents there’re two of them. Loving and his partner, both armed. Loving may be wounded. I don’t know where they stashed their vehicle.”

“We’ll check it out, sir.”

“I was looking over a map earlier and saw across the lake there’re a dozen houses and some easy routes to the interstate. I’m thinking they may try to row over, hijack a car.”

“I’ll get some of the team over there,” the agent said.

I told him, “Can you patch me through to the chopper pilot? I’ll give him a description of the property.”

“Chopper?”

“Your tactical air unit.” I gestured toward the sky.

He looked confused. “Well, sir, we don’t have a helicopter involved in the operation.”

BILL CARTER SAT silently beside me and a glance in the rearview mirror revealed Amanda in the backseat, staring out the window at the overcast fall afternoon. We were ten miles from Carter’s lake house.

I was not thinking of what had just happened at Carter’s property but was wrestling with a difficult memory. Peggy, the boys and I were driving in the country and I spotted a bad roadside accident ahead. I’d stopped to see if I could help the stoic but young and shaken county troopers. They say that mothers are better than fathers at remaining detached around accidents and blood and trauma. Not Peggy. She’d climbed into the back with the boys and clutched them to her. The ostensible purpose was to make sure they looked away from the overturned cars and the mangled bodies, as yet uncovered, but in fact she was hiding her face, as well as the boys’. (Thinking again about another similarity between Maree and my wife: the whipsawing between carefree optimism and edgy distress.)

Back then, at the site of the accident, Sammy and Jeremy had managed to peek, despite their mother’s huddle. Jer, the oldest, was horrified at what he saw and began sobbing uncontrollably. Sam, though, said, “Daddy, that man lying there. He doesn’t have a hand. How can he eat ice cream?” Not a tragedy to him; a mystery.

You just didn’t know how young people would respond to trauma.

I saw Sam’s face, unperturbed and curious, reflected in Amanda’s.

“You all right, honey?” I asked, surprised I’d used the endearment.

She looked toward me, nodded and then studied Carter’s Beretta shotgun, open and sitting on the seat beside her.

Hitting a speed dial button, I called Freddy.

“Hey,” he said.

“You there?”

“Nice place. I may retire here.”

I hadn’t really appreciated the comforts of Carter’s summer home.

“Anything?”

“They’re gone.”

“The chopper?”

“Had to be.”

“No,” I said. “I know that’s how they were extracted. I mean do you have any details on it?”

“Negative. So far. We’re still canvassing. Some wits reported hearing a helicopter low and nearby. They thought it was going down, you know, crashing. A couple nine-one-one calls. Nobody-”

“Saw anything?”

“Interesting question, son. They looked but they heard only a ruckus and saw leaves and dust. Landed between two stands of trees thirty feet apart. That takes some skill.”

“More, it takes some equipment. Expensive… Find the car?”

“Stolen months ago. Somebody else’s tags. We were hoping to get the partner’s prints but didn’t find a single, solitary swirl.”

“The neighbors?”

“They’re fine.”

I told Carter and Amanda about their friends, then turned my attention back to Freddy. I told him, “I’ll get Claire tracking down the chopper.” Our organization is always flying our principals around the country, sometimes internationally, so we had good contacts with the FAA and private charter companies. The fact that the craft seemed small, which meant it had a short range and would have to be based somewhere near here, would give duBois some guidance in finding the lessee.

Freddy continued, “Somebody’s hurt. We found blood.”

“Where?”

“Roadside. The wall and some bushes. A path too.”

“It’s Loving. I got him. He was on his feet afterward. How much blood?”

“Not a lot. Found his footprints and the partner’s.”

“I’ll have Claire look into medical treatment.”

“Who is this gal of yours, Corte? She Claire-voyant?”

Jokes again.

“Listen, Corte…”