Fear is the Key by Alistair MacLean Read Free Book Online

the time I had finishedsmearing it with her moistened mascara pencil, itdidn’t look like any hair I had ever seen, at leastit didn’t look red.
    Under the blouse and coat I carried the gun.
    Walking slowly so as to minimize my limp, wereached the sports car in three minutes. This,too, like the one we’d just tucked away in thegarage, was a Chevrolet, with the same engineas the other, but there the resemblance ended. Itwas a plastic-bodied two-seater, I’d driven one inEurope, and I knew that the claims for 120 mphwere founded on fact.
    I waited till a heavy gravel truck came grindingpast from the north, started the Corvette’s engineunder the sound of its passing – the group of peopleI’d seen earlier were on the shoreline now but theymight just have heard the distinctive note of thiscar’s engine and might just have been suspicious– made a fast U-turn and took off after the truck.I noticed the startled expression on the girl’s faceas we drove off in the direction from which we’djust come.
    â€˜I know. Go on, say it, I’m crazy. Only I’m notcrazy. The next road-block won’t be so very far tothe north now, and it’ll be no hurried makeshiftaffair like the last time, it’ll stop a fifty-ton tank.Maybe they’ll guess that I’ll guess that, maybethey’ll conclude that I’ll leave this road and makefor the side-roads and dirt-tracks in the swamplandsto the east there. Anyway, that’s what I’dfigure in their place. Good country for going toground. So we’ll just go south. They won’t figureon that. And then we’ll hide up for a fewhours.’
    â€˜Hide up? Where? Where can you hide up?’ Ididn’t answer her question and she went on: ‘Letme go, please! You – you’re quite safe now. Youmust be. You must be sure of yourself or youwouldn’t be heading this way. Please!’
    â€˜Don’t be silly,’ I said wearily. ‘Let you go – andwithin ten minutes every cop in the state willknow what kind of car I’m driving and where I’mheading! You must think I’m crazy.’
    â€˜But you can’t trust me,’ she persisted. I hadn’tshot anybody in twenty minutes, she wasn’t scaredany longer, at least not too scared to work thingsout. ‘How do you know I won’t make signs atpeople, or shout out when you do nothing aboutit, like at traffic lights, or – or hit you when you’renot looking? How do you know –?’
    â€˜That cop, Donnelly,’ I said apropos of nothing.‘I wonder if the doctors got to him in time.’
    She got the point. The colour that had come backto her face drained out of it again. But she had thebest kind of courage, or maybe the worst kind, thekind that gets you into trouble.
    â€˜My father is a sick man, Mr Talbot.’ It was thefirst time she’d used my name, and I appreciatedthe ‘Mister’. ‘I’m terribly afraid of what will happento him when he hears this. He – well, he has a verybad heart and –’
    â€˜And I have a wife and four starving kiddies,’ Iinterrupted. ‘We can wipe each other’s tears away.Be quiet.’
    She said nothing, not even when I pulled upat a drugstore a few moments later, went insideand made a short phone call. She was with me,far enough away not to hear what I was sayingbut near enough to see the shape of the gununder my folded coat. On the way out I boughtcigarettes. The clerk looked at me, then at theCorvette roadster parked outside.
    â€˜Hot day for driving, mister. Come far?’
    â€˜Only from Chilicoote Lake.’ I’d seen the turnoffsign three or four miles to the north. Myefforts at an American accent made me wince.‘Fishing.’
    â€˜Fishing, eh?’ The tone was neutral enough,which was more than could be said for the half-leer in his eyes as he looked over the girl bymy side, but my Sir Galahad