Page 89 of No Safe Place

“No. She was still on the pole. I heard dogs as I crossed. We have to assume they’ve caught her. But we can’t worry about that. We’re of no help to her unless we get out of here now.”

“Come on, then,” Mathias said. “Let’s get to the truck. Hurry.”

We climbed up a steep bank onto the bike path and then ran up toward the Route 4 parking lot. We were in the trees approaching the guardrail about fifty feet away from it when a police SUV blew past us and screeched to a stop behind the truck.

Seeing that there was only one cop in it as it went past, without thinking I leaped over the guardrail and tore across the parking lot and crouched at the back of the SUV just as the driver door opened and a cop stepped out and began turning at the sound of me.

But I was already off my feet.

I knocked the gun clear out of the cop’s hand as I slammed into him like a wrecking ball. I heard the back of his head clunk loudly as it bounced off the doorframe as he fell.

We came down in a pile to the asphalt and after I quickly retrieved his gun, I rolled him over and realized that it was a female cop, a surprisingly pretty one with her blonde hair tied up in a bun.

I saw I had knocked her clean out. I had just taken her pulse to confirm she was still alive when I heard Mathias roar on the panel truck.

“Come on!” Mathias called.

77

Shaw, along with Travers and Chief Garner, stood along the side of Route 4 beside the Beckford PD SUV watching an ambulance take away the injured female cop. Chief Garner sighed as its red running lights receded and then disappeared around a distant curve in the empty country road.

As the three of them looked at each other, from somewhere an owl hooted and in the silence that followed, they could hear the humming gush of the nearby falls.

“She has a concussion,” Chief Garner said.

Who cared, Shaw thought.

“She’s lucky to be alive,” Travers said.

Not the only one, thought Shaw as he remembered the roof landing on the BearCat’s windshield.

They looked at each other again. There was a feeling in the air like after losing a football game.

And it was Shaw himself who had blown it. He was the one who’d blown the crucial end zone tackle and let a runner slot through the gap.

They had gotten the Irish beauty, but the cop was nowhere to be seen. He was in the wind.

“Any description of the van they left in before Blondie didn’t do her job?” Shaw said.

“None,” said Chief Garner with a scowl.

“Where’s Doherty?”

“At police headquarters,” Garner said.

The cop had cut out on her, Shaw thought. After all that tough talk, too. Typical. Talk was cheap.

Or maybe he had drowned in the water? Shaw thought, suddenly hopeful. A body would wash up in a day or two? He had successfully shot apart the cable and the fall into the river was a doozy.

As if he could be so lucky with this snake bit job, Shaw thought.

“And we’re positive she doesn’t have a video on her? A phone? Maybe a thumb drive?” Shaw said.

“Positive,” Garner said. “I frisked her myself.”

Shaw allowed himself a groan. He’d been through the ringer all right. And not just mentally either, he thought as he rubbed his shoulder where the Barrett had kicked it. It felt sore, tender. The skin there, no doubt, was already black and blue. He’d once dislocated an elbow and now he wondered if he’d done the same to his shoulder.

He was exhausted and had the beginning of a splitting headache.

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