Liars & Thieves by Stephen Coonts Read Free Book Online Page A

made the turn and fell into trail behind us. It wasn’t the one I had parked when we transferred to this car—it had come from the wrong direction, and besides, I had the keys to that one in my pocket.
    “Those bastards,” Kelly Erlanger said hoarsely. “Goncharov and the others didn’t have a chance. They were slaughtered like steers. Murdered. Gunned down.”
    I glanced at her. Tears were leaking from her eyes. She was staring straight ahead at nothing at all, remembering …
    The SUV was still in trail, back there eight or ten car lengths. I was making fifty-five along the narrow, straight, wet highway, charging up the valley. A plume of road spray rose behind me. I slowed to fifty. The SUV stayed the same distance behind.
    Shit!
    “His wife defected with him. I don’t know what happened to her.”
    “There were two dead women in the kitchen,” I said. “One of them was in her late fifties maybe. Perhaps early sixties, gray hair, sorta plump. The other was maybe thirty, tall.”
    “Bronislava Goncharova was the older one. She didn’t speak any English. The tall woman was Natasha Romerstein. She was a translator, too—she and I worked together at the agency. Her parents were Ukranian; she was born in America. She had a two-year-old son.”
    We were approaching a Y intersection. The road to the right was the one I had always driven to and from this valley—it was the only one I knew—so I took it. The SUV followed me.
    We were still in a narrow valley. The stream meandered back and forth, but the road ran straight for almost a mile, crossing the stream several times on small bridges. Then it went into a long sweeping left turn and continued for another mile. Only at the head of the valley did the road began to wind and twist as it climbed Allegheny Mountain. I checked to see that Kelly had her seat belt on. She didn’t.
    “Put the belt on,” I said over the growl of the engine.
    She snapped herself in, then looked behind us. The SUV was not falling back. I kept the car at fifty.
    “They’ve been behind us since Bartow, keeping their distance,” I told her. “If we can’t outrun them going up the mountain, this is going to get messy. Can you shoot an MP-5?”
    “No.”
    She pulled a cell phone from her pocket, looked at it, then announced, “No service.”
    “Who you gonna call?” I asked.
    “Why .. . the agency! My supervisor.”
    “Those guys weren’t Russians. They were Americans. I listened to them talk.”
    “What are you saying?”
    “Don’t jump to conclusions. Yeah, the Russians may have hired some Americans to assault that house to kill Goncharov and burn the notes, but how did they know he was there?”
    While she was mulling that over, we reached the head of the valley and started climbing the mountain. I downshifted and put the hammer down. Although the road was wet, the Mercedes had good rubber.
    The SUV wasn’t as agile in the curves as the coupe. They must have had a hell of a mill under the hood, because even with my maneuvering advantage the big SUV hung in there. I felt my back end start to break loose on one of the horseshoe turns halfway up … I managed to save it and kept the throttle on the floor as the SUV slid into the berm and gravel flew. The driver swiftly recovered without losing much momentum and stayed on my tail.
    Right, left, higher and higher on the mountain, working the clutch and stick, I kept the Mercedes as near the adhesion limit as I could. Kelly used both hands to brace herself.
    We didn’t pass a single car climbing the mountain. We topped the ridge—blew by the sign that read radar detectors were illegal in Virginia—and went into a long, descending sweeper down the eastern slope. I let the Mercedes accelerate . .. past sixty, seventy . . . the distance was opening … then braked hard for a blind right-hand turn.
    Too fast. . . the rear end broke loose and we slid across the road, headed for the berm and the edge. Of course, on that curve the