Extreme Denial by David Morrell Read Free Book Online Page B

about up ahead? he wondered, his hands tense on the steering wheel. The street was so narrow that if fire trucks or police cars sped around a corner, heading in Decker’s direction, there’d be no way around them. The Fiat would be trapped.
    A rain-slick corner loomed. Decker swerved, finding himself on a street that was wider. No approaching lights flashed in the darkness ahead. The sirens were farther behind him.
    “I think we got away,” Decker said. “How’s your father?”
    “He’s still alive. That’s the best I can say.”
    Decker tried to breathe less quickly. “What did Renata mean about threatening to do what she did at the other apartment buildings?”
    “She told me she rigged explosives at some of them. After I showed up, looking for her and the others ...” Brian had trouble speaking.
    “As soon as you were out of the area, she set off the charges?”
    “Yes.”
    “You’d made such a commotion, barging into the apartments, that the other people in the building would have come out to learn what was going on? They’d associate you with the explosions?”
    “Yes.”
    “Renata wanted an American to be blamed?”
    “Yes,”
    “Damn it, you let her use you again,” Decker said.
    “But I got even.”
    “Even?”
    “You saw what I did. I shot her.”
    “ You ... ?” Decker couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He felt as if the road wavered. “You didn’t shoot her.”
    “In the throat,” Brian said.
    “No.”
    “You’re trying to claim you did?” Brian demanded.
    My God, he truly is crazy, Decker thought. “There’s nothing to brag about here, Brian. If you had shot her, it wouldn’t make me think less of myself or more of you. If anything, I’d feel sorry for you. It’s a terrible thing, living with the memory of ...”
    “Sorry for me? What the hell are you talking about? You think you’re better than I am? What gives you the right to feel so superior?”
    “Forget it, Brian.”
    “Sorry for me? Are you trying to claim you did what I did?”
    “Just calm down,” Decker said.
    “You hate me so much, the next thing, you’ll be claiming I was the one who shot my father.”
    Decker’s sense of reality was so threatened that he felt momentarily dizzy. “Whatever you say, Brian. All I want to do is get him to a hospital.”
    “Damned right.”
    Decker heard a pulsing siren. The flashing lights of a police car raced toward him. His palms sweated on the steering wheel. At once the police car rushed past, heading in the direction from which Decker had come.
    “Give me your revolver, Brian.”
    “Get serious.”
    “I mean it. Hand me your revolver.”
    “You’ve got to be—”
    “Just once, for Christ sake, listen to me. There’ll be other police cars. Someone will tell the police a Fiat sped away. There’s a chance we’ll be stopped. It’s bad enough we have a wounded man in the car. But if the police find our handguns ...”
    “What are you going to do with my revolver? You think you can use ballistics from it to prove I shot my father? You’re afraid I’ll try to get rid of it?”
    “No, I’m going to get rid of it.”
    Brian cocked his head in surprise.
    “As much as I don’t want to.” Decker stopped at the side of the murky street and turned to stare at Brian. “Give ... me ... your ... revolver.”
    Squinting, Brian studied him. Slowly he reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out the weapon.
    Decker pulled out his own weapon.
    Only when Brian offered the revolver, butt first, did Decker allow himself to relax a little. In the courtyard, before he had helped to lift McKittrick’s father, he had picked up the elderly man’s pistol. Now he took that pistol, his own, and Brian’s. He got out of the Fiat into the chilling rain, scanned the darkness to see if anyone was watching, went around to the curb, knelt as if to check the pressure on one of his tires, and inconspicuously dropped the three handguns down a sewer drain.
    Immediately he got back