V.I. Warshawski 11 Blacklist by Sara Paretsky

Author:Sara Paretsky [Paretsky, Sara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2011-08-04T21:00:00+00:00

28

When You Need a Ride—Steal a Car

When you hear a .45, you never think it was a backfire or a firecracker. Yosano and I froze, and then he ran through the swinging door to the front of the house.

As soon as the door swung shut, I opened the oven.

“Come with me. Don’t ask questions, and don’t speak,” I told Benjamin.

He was giving off the sweet sickly sweat of fear, and he couldn’t stand, he’d been lying doubled up so long. I slung him over my shoulder, fireman-style, and humped to the bathroom double time. He was clutching his book still, and it dug into my sore shoulder. He was fifteen or sixteen, but such a skinny kid it wasn’t as hard a ride as I’d feared.

Inside the bathroom, I set him down and worked on his legs. He was still shying away from my touch, but fear and cold had made him numb; he didn’t resist. As soon as he could stand, I turned off my headlamp, opened the window and looked out. We could hear the excited yelling from the front of the house, but we were clear here in the back.

“I’m going to give you a boost up to this window.” I spoke in the flat, tongueless speech you learn in prison because it doesn’t carry far. “You slide through, you drop to the ground. You lie flat on your stomach and wait for me. Got it?”

I felt rather than saw him nod. I gave him a boost up to the sill and helped him wriggle his legs through. As he twisted, he dropped his book. He cried out.

I stuck up my hand and covered his mouth. “I’ll hand it to you. Get through and get down.”

When he seemed unwilling to leave without it, I pushed him. He clung briefly to the sill, and then fell. He didn’t cry out again, so I assumed he’d landed without breaking anything. I climbed up on the toilet seat, dropped his book through the opening and hoisted myself onto the sill. The stab of pain between my shoulders was so intense I had to hold back my own cry.

I sat for a few seconds, gathering my breath, then began the hard job of wriggling through the window—a grown woman’s hips are wider than a skinny adolescent’s. When a second shot reechoed, it startled me so that I landed in a heap almost on top of Benjamin. The fall knocked the wind out of me and I lay gagging for air, trying not to make any noise.

We were at the southeast corner of the mansion. We could hear excited shouts as the puppies and Schorr tried to figure out where their prey had fallen. They had shot at . . . a raccoon or a deer. They had not shot—not—an ardent teenage girl running through the fields to protect her protégé.

I wanted to dash to the back, what are you morons doing, you macho-drunk fools, shooting at shadows and children? I grabbed the grass in front of me, tying myself to the ground here.

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