Bad Guys by Linwood Barclay Read Free Book Online Page B

the embankment, all four tires kicking up sod and dirt, its headlight beams dancing in the night sky like a searchlight. The vehicle bucked and jerked as it climbed, the embankment clearly a challenge even for an Annihilator.
    “He’s going for the highway,” Lawrence said. “He’s creating his own shortcut, the son of a bitch.”
    The Annihilator crested the embankment and hung a right onto the ramp, then, with another roar of its massive engine, sped off in the direction of the highway. There was no way Lawrence’s old, two-wheel-drive Buick could even begin to scale the hill. And by the time we’d wound our way out of the mall lot, onto the street, and found that ramp, our friends in the Annihilator would be home, tucked into their beds.
    Lawrence brought the car to a stop, and neither of us spoke for a moment as we listened to the motor idle and tick, as though trying to catch its breath.
    “Fuck me,” said Lawrence.
    “I take it that’s not an actual invitation,” I said.
     
6
     
    I GOT HOME around three in the morning, and rather than try to sneak into our bedroom without disturbing Sarah, I turned on the lights, plopped myself down on the bed next to her, and said, “You won’t believe what happened! We started following them, and then they were following us, and things were getting smashed, and then they started shooting, and we lured them into the parking lot at Midtown, and we came up around behind them, and that’s when Lawrence tried to shoot out their tires, and then they drove right up the side of a hill and took off and I can’t fucking believe it happened!”
    Sarah sat up in bed, bleary-eyed. “Huh?”
    I told it all to her again, more slowly this time. She asked a couple of clarifying questions, and then, once I was finished, said, “Are you out of your goddamn mind?”
    “I was fine, really, Lawrence knew what he was doing. He’s a professional.”
    “You are. You are out of your goddamn mind.”
    I shrugged, then realized she might be onto something, and suddenly felt that I was going to lose my coffee and doughnuts, because car chases laced with gunplay are not typical activities for former-science-fiction-authors-turned-newspaper-feature-writers. I was breathing pretty rapidly, and Sarah let me fall into her arms. It’s possible that I was, perhaps very slightly, shaking.
    “You are a stupid, stupid man,” she said quietly. “You’re not cut out for a life of adventure. You’re not Indiana Jones. If you tried to be, instead of carrying a whip tucked into your belt, you’d have a bottle of Maalox.”
    “We’re going back out there tomorrow night,” I whispered into her hair, and she shoved me away abruptly.
    “You really have lost your mind,” she said, suddenly looking angry enough to slug me.
    I held up my hands, as much to protest as to defend myself. “We’re going into it with our eyes open this time. And Lawrence will be talking to the cops, and it’s not going to be the same kind of thing at all. We know what we’re up against.”
    “So what does that mean? You’re taking a bazooka next time? Something big enough to bag an SUV?”
    Seriously, I said, “I let Lawrence make the firepower decisions. It’s really not my area.”
    She got up, stormed into the bathroom, and closed the door behind her. From inside, she shouted, “You’re done. This assignment is terminated. Write what you’ve got, it’ll be a fine feature.”
    Whoa. Wait a minute.
    “Who’s that in the bathroom?” I asked. “Is that my wife in there, or is it my editor?”
    Sarah opened the door abruptly, a fierce expression on her face. “Take your pick.”
    “Is that what you’d tell Cheese Dick Colby? If he was on this assignment, would you pull him off it, just when it was getting good, because he might hurt himself?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t sleep with Colby.”
    “I don’t even know how he sleeps with himself. You gotten close to him?”
    She went back into the bathroom