Bond of Darkness by Diane Whiteside Read Free Book Online

the radio's silence. Oh damn, that must have been why the first cop had called for backup. The unmistakable staccato drumbeat of heavy weaponry reaffirmed the alarm call. "Officer down! Officer—"
    A single, loud
bang
! cut off his words, followed by a muffled thud.
    Steve's heart slammed into her chest.
    Oh hell, may neither of them have been hurt too badly
. Two cops shot, one of them for trying to help a lady and the other for coming to their rescue. Damn the trigger-happy bastard, whoever he was.
    She slammed the accelerator down, sliding her Expedition against the speed limit's edge. A quick grab shoved her blue flasher onto the dashboard and flipped it on, sending its eerie warning whirling through the night and her siren howling. She raced along the road's center line, watching for headlights, and praying she wouldn't meet a stray cow. Her hands were light on the wheel but adrenalin pulsed through her blood like a rock band's heavy bass guitar, hammering out the chase's fundamental chord.
    "All personnel, signal thirty-seven at five-nineteen Sunflower Street. Both officers down. Actor has left the scene in a late model, light-colored Porsche…"
    Her mouth stretched in a mirthless grin. Late model, light-colored Porsche, huh? Good luck with that city car on these excuses for roads. He was probably racing for shelter on the far side of the border. Only three roads out of Gilbert's Crossing for that: the river road, the main highway, and her route.
    Goddamn murdering bastard, whoever he was. If those two cops died, the Texas courts would have a lovely party with the killer's worthless carcass—and she'd make very sure he showed up in time to be the guest of honor.
    She picked up the mike, long practice making it easy to handle both it and the car. "Reynolds here. I'm inbound on Avenida dos Lagartos ten miles west of town."
    "Copy that, Reynolds." Imelda's relief was painfully obvious.
    Steve clicked off automatically, already calculating the road's potential for pure speed. It was charcoal gray, silvery where moonlight hit it and shadowed by ribbons of black, like a network of snakes. Once colorful mountains faded into pewter, their boundaries outlined by the moonlight, while their weather-beaten sides rolled onto the highway's edges. The highway's yellow line ran down the center, drawing everything else together—the asphalt, her eyes, every other vehicle.
    What were the odds of Gilbert's Crossing finding enough cops to block all three routes? About as good as her finding a foolproof spot for a roadblock—plumb pitiful. For every narrow gap between a rocky turn, there was an arroyo spilling onto the plain which led down to the Rio Grande and Mexico and offering an escape route. Or a small ranch, laden with hostages, or campfires encircled by campers or scientists planning to ogle the ancient fossils, drat their naive hearts. There was next to no place where she could trap a fleeing suspect, without endangering civilians.
    She'd just have to get creative.
    The speedometer crept higher and she encouraged it to run. Her mouth was dry, her pulse humming in her veins.
    The radio squawked and fumed like a committee of buzzards determined to get their share of a corpse, but not close enough to use their own beaks and talons.
    The Feds were promising to close the main highway—toward San Antonio. Wonderful. As if anybody expected a shooter to hurl himself into an American jail.
    But a truck's brakes had caught on fire, while waiting to cross at the big border crossing—a not unexpected event on such a brutally hot day, given the long lines. The resulting upheaval had triggered a couple of accidents, shutting down the main highway just inside the border. Nobody would be crossing there much before dawn.
    So the killer would have to choose between the two much-smaller routes.
    One city cop had managed to put his car on the river road. He hadn't seen that light-colored Porsche yet but he was still looking.
    Which left Avenida