Grave Secret - Charlaine Harris [52]
I unzipped my shorts pocket, withdrew the cell phone, and flipped it open, keeping a hand curved around it to dim the light. I punched in 911, and a woman’s voice answered. “I’m hiding in the driveway of a house, in the business park behind the Holiday Inn Express,” I said, keeping my voice as low as I could. “Detective Parker Powers has been shot. He’s lying out on Jacaranda Street. The shooter is after me. Please come quick.”
“Ma’am? Did you say an officer’s been shot? Are you wounded?”
“Yes, Detective Powers,” I said. “I’m not wounded yet. I have to hang up.” I couldn’t be talking on the phone. I needed to be listening.
Now that my own breathing had moderated, I was sure I could hear someone else breathing, someone else stepping very quietly through the front yards. Someone who didn’t want to be out in the middle of the street. Weren’t any of these people aware of what was going on around them? Where were the armed householders with guns when you needed them? I didn’t know whether to break and run, or stay where I was and hope he didn’t find me.
I found the tension almost intolerable. Waiting crouched beside that car was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. I didn’t even know if this quiet street went through. Maybe it dead-ended just around the slight curve. I’d have to plunge back through the yards so I could emerge on Jacaranda Street to get back to the hotel. There might be fences, there might be dogs . . . I could hear one barking now, and it sounded like a big one.
The footsteps, very quiet footsteps, came a little closer and then stopped. Could he see me? Would he shoot me in the next minute?
Then I heard the wail of sirens. God bless the police, God bless their lights and noise and guns. The shadow that had crept almost up to where I crouched made a rapid retreat as the gunman abandoned caution and ran back down the street in the direction I’d come from.
I tried to get up but I couldn’t. My legs just wouldn’t work. I could see the beam of a large flashlight coming closer and closer, and then it danced over me. It returned to fix me in its glare.
“Lie down with your arms extended!” said a woman’s voice.
“Okay,” I said. “I will.”
At the moment, that seemed a lot better than standing up.
Ten
IN the end, I went back to the hospital and spent the night with Tolliver. I simply didn’t want to be by myself, and I felt safer around him even though he had been shot.
Detective Powers was still alive. I was profoundly glad to hear that, profoundly grateful that his courage would be rewarded in this life rather than the next. I had caught snatches of conversation from the cops around me, who’d pretty much treated me as if I weren’t there.
“Powers is going to be all right,” the female officer, who’d finally let me get up, had told me. “He’s too tough to kill.”
“All those years playing football, he’s got to be tough,” said one of the ambulance attendants who’d been summoned to have a look at me. He was taking his time packing up his stuff, having determined that I was pretty much okay.
“Yeah, those knocks in the head didn’t do him any good, though,” said another officer, a young guy with a shaved head. “Powers played one season too many.”
“Hey, respect the detective,” the older ambulance attendant said. “He’s a good spokesman for the department.”
Reading between the lines, I gathered that Detective Powers