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Surely he’d become aware of Carson and Michael by some stroke of luck, not because his perceptions were those of a highly trained operative Somehoare of their presence but not of their exact positions, he’d fired two rounds in their general direction, which was a waste of aht in the act of murder
This company hack, this amateur, was no match for two forhly rowing family to support Carson at first saw no need to retreat from a corporate bureaucrat even if he was ho lot behind her provided the shooter with no silhouette at which to aim, she raced toward him Beyond her quarry, the security lamps on the warehouses backlit hiht-vision caht be able to see her
Carson’s initial boldness was vindicated when, instead of again firing blindly, Chang snared the shopping bag hich he’d arrived and the attaché case that Beckmann had dropped when shot He sprinted toward the nearest warehouse
Running, Carson are of Chang putting round between theht She rehter back at the house, not because she possessed the psychic power of re, which she did not, but because she was a mother noith responsibilities that had not burdened her when she had been a kick-ass cop in the Big Easy
She had often been called a ies and corrupt cops who didn’t relate well to the straight arrows on the force, but they hadn’t been praising her co
In those days, she would never have iined that she would want a child, let alone that she would get married and produce one She’d had too much to prove, no time for ro who killed her mom and dad execution-style, with bullets to the back of their heads
The word mother, coupled with six other letters and issued with a vicious snarl and a spray of spittle, never offended her because the creeps who called her that were really using it as a synonym for incorruptible, dedicated, and relentless
In pursuit of the elusive shadow that was Chang, as her sla of her feet on blacktop, she began to wonder if she was as dedicated and relentless now as she had been back in the day Maybe her little Scout gave her pause, a reason to hesitate Maybe Chang was putting ground between theer and faster than Carson but because subconsciously she didn’t want to risk getting too close to hi Scout motherless
Although she yearned to deny it, the possibility existed that she didn’t have the right stuff to be both a iven birth to the prettiest baby on the planet, she was henceforth better suited to diapering a butt than to kicking one
Still to her right, MichaelWhen they were partners in the NOPD homicide division, she’d always been faster than Michael, driving or running, confident that she could chase down any perp ever born
Now she was a plodder, her heart racing faster than her feet, her legs heavy A leaden weight in her abdoht have been not real synancy and a reations
She had beco less with her brain than with her heart, cautious whereas she’d once been fearless She was hter hostage and alould, de a ransom of worry and prudence, payable in installhway of the Fainthearted, the ultiht be cowardice
"Screw that," she said, and by the ti disappeared around the nearer warehouse, Carson sprinted ahead of Michael, to the building
With her back against the corrugated-metal wall, pistol in both hands, irl but because-- a bullet in the face at point-blank range She could hear Michael approaching behind her, but she couldn’t hear Chang’s receding footsteps
Carson no longer enjoyed the advantage of cloaking darkness The security laht fans across the blacktop immediately around the structure
She lowered the ht, wrists locked Crouched low, she took the corner fast In harht to left, froround to warehouse wall
About sixty feet ahead, Chang ran along a surfline of gray shadohere the waves of light dissolved against the shore of night
Carson couldn’t shoot him in the back She had to catch hiave her a legal target
Michael reached her, but she was no longer in a h encu--which was most likely full ofthe trade secrets that Beck away Carson couldn’t allow that He had shot at them Shot at them Twice He had tried to make an orphan of Scout The sonofabitch
With the confidence of a panther in the wake of a fatigued gazelle, Carson pursued him
Chapter 6
Rafael Jesus Jarmillo, the elected and popular police chief of Rainbow Falls, had not been assigned to the graveyard shift since he was a rookie on the force more than twenty years earlier He ca prior to daith h no crisis had arisen, the watch officer, Sergeant Seth Rapp, and the dispatcher, Valerie Corsair, were not surprised to see the chief Without a word, Rapp left his post at the front desk and followed Jar the hallway that served various now dark offices, and out to the garage, where six black-and-whites not currently in use were ready for the day-shift patrol teams
A paneled truck stood in the space reserved for the four cars currently cruising the town Neither the o compartment bore the name of a business or any other identification
The truck had just arrived Its driver stood watching the big sege door roll down between his vehicle and the dark alleyway behind the police station
At the back of the truck, as the driver’s partner opened the cargo doors, he said to Rafael Jarmillo and Seth Rapp, "For the Coeant replied
To the nineteen people inside the truck, thethose who exited the vehicle were Mayor Erskine Potter and his family The last four were the real Rafael Jarmillo, his wife, and his two sons
Awakened from sleep, the nineteen wore pajamas or robes, or just underwear And every one of theht silvery nailhead in his or her left temple
Jessica Wanhaus, the town librarian, wore only pale-blue panties She was thirty-two, pretty by the standards of her kind, with full breasts
Neither the chief nor the sergeant--nor the two er over her physical charms Members of the Community had no need for sex and therefore no interest whatsoever in it