Hit List by Jack Heath

Author:Jack Heath [Heath, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409541714
Publisher: Usborne Publishing

Invasion

“Escaped?” Detective Wright roared. “How?”

“We don’t know yet, exactly,” Belle said, her voice fuzzy through the speaker phone. “But it looks like he stole a gun from a guard, shot her and a colleague, took the keys and let himself out.”

Her voice had taken on a flat, calm quality. Belle Evans had been Wright’s partner for nine years, so he recognized the tone. It wasn’t that she didn’t care – she was compartmentalizing, becoming several people at once. One Belle was talking to him, and a hundred other Belles were looking at the problem from every angle, trying to work out where Peachey might have gone and how to get him back.

“How could they be so careless?” he demanded. “Michael Peachey is the most dangerous prisoner they have in that place. Had. He’s a hit man – and a famous one at that.”

“Former hit man. He probably lost his job when he got locked up.”

“And for all we know he’s got it back again now that he’s out. Goddamn it.” Wright grabbed his badge and his gun from out of the desk. He picked up the phone and switched off the speaker as he ran towards the lift. Maybe Peachey is back at work, he thought. Perhaps that’s why he’s out. If he had another job planned, he might have been waiting for the right time to escape – or perhaps it was me, somehow my presence helped him get out...

“There’s a bright side,” Belle said. “His fame should make him easier to catch.”

“Maybe. Or maybe it’ll just force him to become even more violent. We might have a dozen dead paparazzi on our hands by the end of the day.”

“Hey, another bright side.”

Wright’s jaw already ached from clenching. “This is serious.”

“I know.” A few more Belles returned to the conversation. Tactful Belle and Sensitive Belle. “Sorry.”

Wright pushed the button for the ground floor. The doors closed swiftly. “Get his picture out to every TV station and newspaper,” he said. “Make it impossible for him to hide.”

“That’ll cause panic. There’ll be citizen’s arrests and beatings all over the state. He’s too ordinary-looking – there must be hundreds of men in their thirties out there who look like him.”

“Thousands. But if Peachey kills someone – which he will – and we didn’t warn anyone that he was on the loose...”

“I know,” Belle said. “I’m just saying we’ll have to make sure every newspaper and TV or radio station that airs a warning includes a ‘do not approach’ quote from the force. That’ll minimize the damage.”

The doors opened. Wright stormed out into the empty foyer. “Good,” he said. “Get a sketch artist to mock up a picture of him without his hair, and send that to the media as well.”

“You think he’s going to shave his head?”

“It’s the first thing I’d do. And dig up our old sketch of Ashley and redistribute it. She’s connected to this, somehow.”

“Got it.”

Wright hung up, and Peachey’s voice echoed through his head, quiet, glacial. You’re third. First Buckland, then Ashley, and then you.

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