Linwood Barclay - Fear The Worst

The engine was still running, the alarms were still blaring, but a moment of calm washed over me.

“Don’t move, motherfucker!”

I glanced up in my rearview mirror. It was Owen, holding the gun that had flown out of Gary’s hands.

I don’t know quite how to explain this. I’d been terrified through everything that had happened so far, but now… now I was just annoyed.

I put the car into reverse and gave it everything I had.

The tires squealed again and the van powered its way past the Pilot, kept on going, took out my desk, and then there was a huge crash as the tail end went through the massive plate-glass window.

The ass end of the van dropped two feet to the ground, the front end went skyward. The front wheels, suspended in midair, spun at high speed.

I looked down between the seat and the door, knowing Carter’s gun was there someplace.

Now there was a new noise added to the mix. My going through the showroom glass had activated the building’s security alarm.

The van was so out of kilter I couldn’t get a look at the showroom, didn’t know where Owen was. I twisted in my seat, shoved my right arm down in the narrow space between the door and the seat.

I found the gun. I slipped my fingers around something cold and slender, what had to be the barrel. I fished it up between the seat and the door, thought I had it, but as I tried to clear the gun butt past the seatback adjustment lever, it slipped from my hand and dropped back down, farther out of reach than it had been before.

Beneath the sirens, I thought I could hear someone walking across broken glass. Owen was working his way around the van.

“You’re not going anyplace now!” he shouted.

Through the open windshield, there was the flickering of light. It took a second for me to realize it was from flames.

I jammed my hand down into the space again, hunted around for the gun. It was caught under the edge of a floor mat. I got my fingers around the barrel again, pulled the gun back up, turned it around so that my hand wrapped around the butt, the finger around the trigger.

Suddenly my door was yanked open. The crash must have somehow released the lock.

Owen said, “Hey, asshole, I’m going to-”

I shot him.

“Fuck!” he screamed, toppling backward onto the asphalt just outside the showroom window. Gravity swung the door closed, but I kicked it open with my foot and scrambled down to the ground, the van’s engine still running.

Fire was spreading through the showroom.

Owen was splayed on his back. I could see red blossoming on his left shoulder. So I hadn’t fired a fatal shot. His right hand still held the gun, but before he could train it on me I stood over him and pointed Carter’s gun directly at his head.

“Throw away the gun,” I said.

“What?” he said. There were so many alarms blaring he couldn’t hear me.

“Throw it!” I said.

He tossed it a few feet away.

“Where’s my daughter?” I shouted at him. “Gary said he knew where she was!”

“I don’t know!” he said.

I fired the gun into the ground between his legs.

“Jesus Christ!” he said.

“Gary said they were on their way to get her. Where is she?”

“I can’t tell you,” he said. “I can’t.”

“I’m going to shoot you in the knee if you don’t tell me,” I said.

“Listen, if I tell you they’ll-”

I held the gun over his knee and pulled the trigger. The resulting scream momentarily drowned out the various alarms.

“The next one goes in your other knee,” I said. “Where is she?”

“Oh God!” he screamed, writhing on the ground.

“Where is my daughter?” I asked.

“Vermont!” he wept.

“Where in Vermont?”

“Stowe!” he said. “Somewhere in Stowe!”

“Where in Stowe?”

“They don’t know! Just somewhere!”

“Who’s going for her?”

Before he could answer, he passed out. Or died.

I walked over and picked Gary’s gun up off the ground. I might need two. As I was heading back to the Beetle, the entire showroom erupted into flames behind me. A car’s gas tank exploded. A fireball blew out one of the other plate-glass windows.

I got into the car and took out my cell, punched in a familiar number. In the distance, I could hear sirens.

Susanne answered. “Hello?”

“Hi, Susanne,” I said. “Could you put Bob on?”

“Oh my God, Tim, the police have been here and-”

“Just put Bob on for a second.”

Ten seconds later, Bob, sounding annoyed, said, “Jesus, Tim, you’ve got the entire police force looking for you. What the hell have you-”

“What are you doing right now?” I asked. “I need a different car. One I can count on, and it needs to be fast.”

I WAS DRIVING THE BEETLE ALONG ROUTE 1 when I noticed, in my rearview mirror, a patrol car that had been heading in the other direction put its brake lights on. I kept glancing at the mirror.

“Don’t turn around, don’t turn around,” I said under my breath.

The cop car turned around.

It was still quite a ways back, so I eased down on the accelerator, trying to increase the distance between us without appearing to take off at high speed. Not that the Beetle was exactly up to that.

The cop car straightened out, and the flashing lights went on.

I hung a hard right down a residential street, then killed my lights so there weren’t two bright red orbs glowing from the back of the car. The streetlights were bright enough that I could see where I was going. I looked in the mirror, saw the police car take the right as well.

I took a random route. A right, another right, a left. I kept looking up at the mirror, looking not just for the car but for the pulsing glow of its rooftop lights.

The driver was probably on the radio now, asking for backup units to close in on the area.

I wasn’t safe in this car. The odds were I wouldn’t make it to Bob’s house without getting spotted.

I made another left, another right, and found myself down near the harbor, not far from Carol Swain’s house. I couldn’t go back there.

I was coming up on a cross street, and a police car zoomed past, siren off but lights flashing. If I’d had my headlights on, I’d have had a perfect look at the driver’s profile.

I wasn’t even going to get out of this neighborhood, let alone to Bob’s house. I wheeled the Beetle into a stranger’s driveway, pulling it up as far as it would go next to the house, killed the engine, grabbed the two guns I’d acquired, plus Milt from the back seat, and got out of the car.

Would it be safe to call Bob and ask him to come pick me up here? And would he even do it? The police-maybe Jennings herself-had been to see them. Even if Susanne and Bob didn’t know why, exactly, the police were hunting for me, they had to know it was serious.

I started running in the direction of the harbor. Bob’s house wasn’t far from the Sound. Maybe I could steal a small boat, head up to the Stratford shore near where Bob lived, beach the boat, then hoof it the rest of the way to his place. Then, with any luck, I could talk him into giving me another car so I could start driving up to Stowe.

I got to the harbor. It was a warm evening, and many people were sitting on their boats, having a drink, chatting with friends, their voices coming through the night like soft background noise. Stealing a boat might not be all that simple.

I was skulking around a parking lot that edged up to some tree cover. I was tiptoeing across gravel to the most remote end of the lot, wondering if there was any chance someone might have left their keys in a car-did anyone do that anymore?-when something about a van I was walking past caught my eye.