Packing Heat by Penny McCall

Author:Penny McCall [McCall, Penny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780425228050
Publisher: Berkley Pub Group
Published: 2009-04-06T23:00:00+00:00

chapter 16

COLE FOUND HIMSELF ON THE OFF-RAMP OF I-44 alone in the dark. Tulsa was a bit under four hundred miles from St. Louis, as the crow flies, and a crow could probably make it in a few hours. It would take a man on foot a lot longer.

He had a phone, a wad of money, and absolutely no game plan except to take the quickest route. Stay on I-44, Harm had said, probably because she knew he didn’t have the kind of skills it took to be on the run for long. It didn’t bother him. She was right. He didn’t carry a gun, he couldn’t hot-wire a car, and he didn’t have the first clue about how to blend in and fly under the radar. If he hadn’t learned to think like a criminal after eight years under the tutelage of some of the best in the world, it was probably a lost cause.The only thing he had going for him was unrecognizability. His mug shot was eight years old; he’d changed so much since it had been taken he was basically a different person now. But he was still a person on foot. He took out the untraceable cell and called information. The nearest bus station turned out to be in St. Louis, and heading back the way he’d just come, where people had already connected him to the guy on TV and the cops were probably all on alert, didn’t seem a very bright idea. The next bus station was in Springfield, over two hundred miles away.

Hopefully he’d find some sort of transportation before then, but at the moment he was surrounded by a whole lot of nothing. Walking along the highway, where he’d be at the mercy of every dozing driver and backlighted by every car that went by, including state police cruisers, was out of the question. Cole opted for the service drive, keeping just off the shoulder. He could still see the road, but the dark hid him pretty well, and if anyone did see him and got nosy, he could disappear into the wilderness.

Two hours later, he was willing to try his hand at car theft. Or bicycle theft. Or horse theft. Any mode of transportation besides his own two feet would be a welcome relief. He could just imagine Harmony in some nice, warm car, gliding comfortably through the night, while he was cold and tired and pissed off, and wondering if it could get any worse. And then it began to rain. Torrentially. A gully-washing, cats-and-dogs, Noah’s Ark downpour that had him scrambling for high ground. That part of Missouri had clearly had a lot of rain over the last couple of weeks; there was standing water everywhere, and the dirt and gravel shoulder was striped with runoff channels. Even as he made that observation, the ground beneath his feet washed away, dumping him into the overflowing ditch, along with a ton of mud.

Cole came up, sputtering for air and clawing the phone, his only lifeline to Harmony, out of his pocket.

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