Primal Threat - Earl Emerson [71]
Finally, Kasey spoke without looking at him. “Nadine used to collect lost pets. We had a stray parrot in the house for almost a year. She grew out of it. She’ll grow out of you, too.”
“Where’d you get the shiner?”
Newcastle reached for his eye. “Caught an elbow playing basketball, if it’s any business of yours.”
He left the water running, fired up the Porsche, and roared out of the driveway, narrowly missing Zak’s van. Moments later Nadine appeared and chirped, “Have you been waiting long?”
“Not long at all. I was having a nice little chat with your brother.”
Nadine walked over and turned off the water faucet. “He’s been in a foul mood all day.”
“I thought I heard arguing inside.”
“Yes, you probably did. Everybody’s in a bad mood. I won’t dance around it. My dad and I were fighting. Daddy doesn’t want me going out with you anymore.”
“Why not?”
“He thinks we’re not right for each other. How would he know? He hardly knows you. Plus, he thinks you’re after my money. I don’t even have any money.”
“You will have.”
“But that’s not why you’re going out with me.”
“No? Why am I going out with you?”
“Because you like getting slaughtered at tennis.” She laughed at the look on his face, and after a few moments he laughed, too.
“You still want to go out with me?”
“Daddy says he doesn’t think you’re good enough for me and that any other guy in your position would bow out politely. He said you simply don’t have the common sense to select yourself out. He thinks life is this Darwinian thing. Well, it’s not worth talking about, because I don’t listen to him anymore. Of course I’m going out with you.”
30
August
Zak felt something whir past his ear and then heard a sonic-boom crack open the morning; it was a moment or two before he connected the events. Somebody was shooting at them, and the bullet had passed so close he wondered why it hadn’t ripped through the back of his brain at two thousand feet per second.
After the first shots resounded, Giancarlo sped ahead as if scalded, and so did Stephens. Muldaur was already in the lead, which gave Zak the number four position on a road that cried out to be ridden single-file: steep, barely negotiable, full of loose rock and off-camber grades on either side. Without hesitation, he tried to pass Stephens, who now was slowing him down. Out of some sense of fair play, he took the worst part of the track and left the better section for Stephens, but Stephens felt him coming and swerved in front of him, rubbing Zak’s front tire with his rear. For a moment Zak was on the verge of crashing.
Regaining his balance, he tried to move up once more, but again Stephens swerved in front of him until it became obvious that his plan was to hold Zak back. Although Zak was the stronger rider, he was being forced to linger behind Stephens, who didn’t want to be the last man in line and the first target any more than Zak did. Apparently it wasn’t strength that would decide the last man, but dirty tricks.
After they rounded the bend, they continued to press on at a rapid pace, knowing that this next stretch through the trees was steep and straight for almost an eighth of a mile; if the Jeep people got motivated, they might sprint up the road on foot in time to pick them off one by one.
As the road opened, Zak pushed harder on the pedals until he pulled alongside Stephens, who gave him a leering grin, and then alongside Giancarlo. Both were breathing hard, maybe too hard.
Zak knew he wouldn’t catch Muldaur, at least not on this first stretch—he was already fifty feet in front—but he tried anyway. He felt sick to his stomach, both with the effort and the thought that his friend Giancarlo was now last in line and in the first position to take bullets. Devil Take the Hindmost was the informal name of a race on the bike velodrome. The last guy around on specified laps had to drop out. This could turn into the same game, except here the last guy might be dead.
By the time they’d ridden the long straight stretch, Zak realized they were probably safe for a while. “They