“Me too. And we better get out of the neighborhood before they find that guy in the snow.”
They followed their own footprints out of the cemetery, to the quiet residential street where the rented Chevrolet was parked in the wan light of the street lamp.
As Elliot was opening the driver’s door, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye, and he looked up, already sure of what he would see. A white Ford sedan had just turned the corner, moving slowly. It drifted to the curb and braked abruptly. Two doors opened, and a pair of tall, darkly dressed men climbed out.
Elliot recognized them for what they were. He got intc the Chevy, slammed the door, and jammed the key into the ignition.
“We have been followed,” Tina said.
“Yeah.” He switched on the engine and threw the car in gear. “A transponder. They must have just now homed in on it.”
He didn’t hear a shot, but a bullet shattered the rear side window behind his head and slammed into the back of the front seat, spraying gummy bits of safety glass through the car.
“Head down!” Elliot shouted. He glanced back.
The two men were approaching at a run, slipping on the snow-spotted pavement.
Elliot stamped on the accelerator. Tires squealing, he pulled the Chevy away from the curb, into the street.
Two slugs ricocheted off the body of the car, each trailing away with a brief, high-pitched whine.
Elliot hunched low over the wheel, expecting a bullet through the rear window. At the corner, he ignored the stop sign and swung the car hard to the left, only tapping the brakes once, severely testing the Chevy’s suspension.
Tina raised her head, glanced at the empty street behind them, then looked at Elliot. “Transponder. What’s that? You mean we’re bugged? Then we’ll have to abandon the car, won’t we?”
“Not until we’ve gotten rid of those clowns on our tail,” he said. “If we abandon the car with them so close, they’ll run us down fast. We can’t get away on foot.”
“Then what?”
They arrived at another intersection, and he whipped the car to the right. “After I turn the next corner, I’ll stop and get out. You be ready to slide over and take the wheel.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’ll fade back into the shrubbery and wait for them to come around the corner after us. You drive on down the street, but not too fast. Give them a chance to see you when they turn into the street. They’ll be looking at you, and they won’t see me.”
“We shouldn’t split up.” “It’s the only way.”
“But what if they get you?” “They won’t.”
“I’d be alone then.”
“They won’t get me. But you have to move fast. If we stop for more than a couple of seconds, it’ll show up on their receiver, and they might get suspicious.”
He swung right at the intersection and stopped in the middle of the new street.
“Elliot, don’t—”
“No choice.” He flung open the door and scrambled out of the car. “Hurry, Tina!”
He slammed the car door and ran to a row of evergreen shrubs that bordered the front lawn of a low, brick, ranch-style house. Crouching beside one of those bushes, huddling in the shadows just beyond the circle of frosty light from a nearby street lamp, he pulled the pistol out of his coat pocket while Tina drove away.
As the sound of the Chevy faded, he could discern the roar of another vehicle, approaching fast. A few seconds later the white sedan raced into the intersection.
Elliot stood, extending the pistol in both hands, and snapped off three quick rounds. The first two clanged through sheet metal, but the third punctured the right front tire.
The Ford had rounded the corner too fast. Jolted by the blowout, the car careened out of control. It spun across the street, jumped the curb, crashed through a hedge, destroyed a plaster birdbath, and came to rest in the middle of a snow-blanketed lawn.
Elliot ran toward the Chevy, which Tina had brought to a stop a hundred yards away. It seemed more like a hundred miles. His pounding footsteps were as thunderous as drum- beats in the quiet night air. At last he reached the car. She had the door open. He leaped in and pulled the door shut. “Go, go!”
She tramped the accelerator into the floorboards, and the car responded with a shudder, then a surge of power.
When they had gone two blocks, he said, “Turn right at the next corner.” After two more turns and another three blocks, he said, “Pull it to the curb. I want to find the bug they planted on us.”
“But they can’t follow us now,” she said.
“They’ve still got a receiver. They can watch our progress on that, even if they can’t get their hands on us till another chase car catches up. I don’t even want them to know what direction we went.”
She stopped the car, and he got out. He felt along the inner faces of the fenders, around the tire wells, where a transponder could have been stuck in place quickly and easily. Nothing. The front bumper was clean too. Finally he located the electronics package: The size of a pack of cigarettes, it was fixed magnetically to the underside of the rear bumper. He wrenched it loose, stomped it repeatedly underfoot, and pitched it away.
In the car again, with the doors locked and the engine running and the heater operating full-blast, they sat in stunned silence, basking in the warm air, but shivering nonetheless. Eventually Tina said, “My God, they move fast!”
“We’re still one step ahead of them,” Elliot said shakily. “Half a step.”
“That’s probably more like it,” he admitted.
“Bellicosti was supposed to give us the information we need to interest a topnotch reporter in the case.”
“Not now.”
“So how do we get that information?” “Somehow,” he said vaguely.
“How do we build our case?” “We’ll think of something.” “Who do we turn to next?” “It isn’t hopeless, Tina.”
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