Packing Heat by Penny McCall Read Free Book Online Page A

get my laptop we might as well give ourselves up.” She opened the rear passenger door just as the two cops came out of the restaurant and shouted at them to stop, crossing the parking lot at a dead run.
    Their hands were on their holsters, but they hadn’t drawn their weapons, and Cole wasn’t giving them the chance. He headed for the bigger of the two, walking calmly, hands spread to show he wasn’t armed. When the cop got close enough, Cole sucker punched him. The officer went down, not out cold, but definitely groggy. Which left officer number two. He was smaller than his partner, but he had a good sixty pounds and six inches on Harmony. What he didn’t have was a takeout container of lemon meringue pie.
    Harmony opened the little takeout box, scooped out the pie, and hit the cop square in the face, all in one slick Three Stooges move that left him blind. And enraged. He swiped at the lemon in his eyes with one hand, swinging wildly with the other.
    Cole slipped up behind the officer, wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, and had him folding in a boneless heap to the pavement.
    “Pie?” he said to Harmony, his eyes on her mouth.
    “I didn’t want to shoot him,” Harmony said, choosing to respond—at least verbally—to the professional criticism rather than the way Cole had watched her lick lemon meringue off her fingers. Her physical response was completely involuntary and absolutely inappropriate given the fact there was an unconscious police officer at their feet and a groggy one just a few yards away. Not to mention the whole convicted felon thing.
    And on that note, Harmony hit the locks on the Explorer’s key fob and pulled out a duffel and a laptop case, slinging the latter over her head so the strap lay between her breasts.
    “Not taking a chance on losing the computer,” Cole said. “A woman after my own heart. What’s in the duffel?”
    “My clothes, and I don’t want to lose those, either.”
    He took the duffel from her and said, “We can work on that. Do you have any idea where we are?”
    “A small town in western Pennsylvania.”
    “Not a lot of options.” He cocked his head and smiled. “But there are possibilities.”
    He wrapped his hand around her wrist and took off for the street, putting as much distance between them and the state cops as he could.
    It would have been a good plan, if not for porch lights and barking dogs marking their path through the pitch black. The residents of this little town might be in for the night, but they weren’t sleeping. And they were probably armed.
    “We have to get out of town,” Cole said, echoing her thought process. “Every one of these people has a gun in the house, a hunting rifle if nothing else. We keep this up and it’s only a matter of time before somebody takes a shot at us.”
    “Not if the police get to us first,” she said, red and blue lights flashing against the white siding of the nearest house.
    The police cruiser pulled into the driveway and two state troopers jumped out, one of them sporting a lemon meringue hairstyle, the other a nice lump on the jaw. Both of them displayed a singularity of purpose born of humiliation.
    Lemon Meringue Guy stayed in front of the house, but the other cop came around the back, right toward the spot where Cole and Harmony crouched behind a rotting old shed Harmony suspected had once been an outhouse. This time his gun was in his hand.
    “Keep to the shadows,” Cole said, which was great in theory, not so much in reality.
    Harmony took off after him, but suddenly there was light everywhere, not to mention puddles, ditches, fences, a variety of gardening equipment, and the odd gnome. Cole blasted through every obstacle, Harmony struggling to keep up in his wake and quickly losing him in the darkness. The good news was that she’d lost the cop, too. She didn’t delude herself he’d stay lost forever.
    “Man,” she wheezed when Cole appeared out of nowhere, dragging her behind a