KnockOut - Catherine Coulter [46]
“What do you think?” Victor whispered against her temple.
“Mama always said the cops were stupid, didn’t know their butts from their earlobes.”
“Yeah, but she’s dead, now, isn’t she, so maybe she wasn’t right all the time.”
“Mama was never wrong. Those guys just got lucky,” Lissy said. “I don’t see anything, do you?”
“No, nothing.”
“Maybe they’ve already been here, searched for the money, and left. You think it’s okay?”
He started to say yes when Lissy saw a tiny arc of light come from her bedroom, then disappear. She grabbed his arm to pull him back and it hurt so bad she sank down against a tree. She was gasping a little. “You see that? Someone’s in my bedroom with one of those little flashlights.” She cursed. “I knew they wouldn’t just leave, I knew it. Victor, let’s sit down and let me rest a minute.”
Victor saw she was in pain and said, “All right, Lissy, rest. When you’re ready, we’ll get out of here. We can hide someplace close by and come back for the money in a couple of days.”
Lissy jerked awake when a blade of sun slashed through the oak branches and splashed across her face. She blinked, tried to remember where she was.
“Good morning,” said Special Agent Cawley James, standing above her, his gun aimed at her heart. He was wearing black slacks, a white shirt, and loafers, as if he’d just been to church. Lissy jerked up her gun, but he kicked it out of her hand. “No, you’re not going to shoot me, little girl.” He took a step back and said, “Hey, Victor, time to rise and shine and let me escort you to jail.” Then he spoke into his radio. “Hey, Ben, Tommy, I’ve got them, a hundred yards southwest of the house. Get over here!”
Victor moaned where he lay and twitched. But didn’t move. He turned his body slightly away.
“Come on, let’s go,” Cawley said, and nudged him with his toe. He raised his head, shouted, “Tommy, Ben, get yourselves over here.”
Victor moaned again, turned fast, brought up his .22, and shot Cawley in his right arm. Cawley’s gun went flying. He yelled out and kicked at Victor, but Victor was already rolling, twisting around to shoot again. “Stay out of the way, Lissy! Do you see his gun?”
Cawley ducked behind a tree and kept yelling for Tommy and Ben.
“Victor, we’ve got to get out of here!” Lissy was scrambling around, looking at the ground. “He kicked my gun away, I can’t find it. I don’t see his either, it’s still too dark. We’ve got to go.”
Victor cursed, fired the rest of his clip toward where the cop was hiding, then jerked Lissy into the woods. They ran, branches cutting their arms and faces, not stopping until they drew up, panting, to jump into the Corolla he’d left sheltered beneath the full-leafed branches of an oak tree just off the two-lane road.
They heard male voices yelling, heard them crashing through the trees. The Corolla screeched off in two seconds, Lissy leaning out the open window, dry-heaving, Victor’s empty .22 loose in her hand.
Victor looked in the rearview mirror, saw the men burst out of the trees, guns in their hands, one of them on a cell phone. They were a long way from their cars.
But they didn’t have much time. Lissy spotted an old black Trailblazer in the driveway of a house at the end of Miller Avenue, eight twisting blocks from Denver Lane. It took Victor three seconds to hot-wire it. Lissy stayed in the Corolla, Victor on her bumper in the Trailblazer, to the woods outside of Fort Pessel, then he drove it into the trees.
“We’re going to Winnett,” Victor said. “Maybe they don’t know about me yet, and I know that place, know where we can hang low. If they do know about me, it won’t matter. We’ll trade out this piece of junk in another fifty miles. We’ll stay there until it’s safe to come back here and get the money.”
“Okay, let’s do it,” Lissy said, her face tight with pain. He handed her a couple of pain pills, watched