Copp in Deep by Don Pendleton

Author:Don Pendleton [Pendleton, Don]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781453629659
Publisher: HarperPrism
Published: 1989-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Ever noticed how time can expand or contract at certain times to manipulate our sense of reality? The hours I had spent with Toni that spanned our first meeting outside the consulate on Tuesday night and my awakening alone at the mountain retreat on Wednesday morning had seemed like a fingersnap of time while I was experiencing them, yet those meager hours contained practically all of my direct experience of her and in retrospect they seemed a lifetime. I had to keep working the time through my mind to keep the reality in grip. This was Thursday night. Tom Chase had contacted me on Sunday night and I'd invaded the consulate on Tuesday night. So this was merely Thursday of the same week and that did not add up to anything like a lifetime, yet the feeling was there.

I have been married several times, and each time for several years. Each marriage contained some good and some bad times and I had never regarded any of them with bitterness. But all those years and women combined could not add up to mean as much in the sensing of my life as those few hours spent with Toni. I did not understand it and I did not like it, but there it was anyway.

I was giving it a lot of thought as I whiled away the night in my car beside that Malibu mountain road. I was positioned in good enough cover with a good enough view of the roadway and I had a night 'scope which would help me pick out faces in the darkened interiors of cars passing by, and of course I was waiting for a particular face to come my way.

Gudgaloff and crew were the first to pass, about thirty minutes after I'd begun the wait. I sent a mental salute to Toni and let them pass. Twenty minutes later another car came down, and then another shortly thereafter, but I waited until two o'clock for Frank Dostell. He was driving a hot looking Ferrari and a woman was in the seat beside him. I gave it ten seconds and pulled out behind him and took up the track. Wasn't a very long one. Ended at a beach house several miles along the highway toward L.A., one of those that are jammed in side by side with backsides and garages butted directly onto the highway.

I made a mental note of the location and went on by as he was wheeling the Ferrari into the garage. By the time I got turned around and found a place to park, lights were on inside the house and I could hear angry voices raised against each other as I felt my way toward the ocean side. These places are built for maximum exposure to surf and sand. Every year, it seems like, when

the winter storms come in across the Pacific, the houses along here get battered and flooded and one or two washed away, but you couldn't pay these people to live somewhere else.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.