Page 88 of Devil's Due

She didn’t trust luck. She jumped the last five rungs of the ladder, landed flat-footed in a crouch and had her gun in a two-handed grip as she advanced to the door.

No sound beyond. She eased it open a fraction of an inch, but the basement hallway was empty.

“Right.” She shut the door and turned to look at McCarthy. “We need to make it to the Hummer. They’ll be waiting somewhere along the line. They may even have the garage exits blocked off.”

“They could have towed the truck,” he reminded her.

“No, I don’t think so. Not many towing services could handle it, and they’d have a hard time getting a flatbed truck down where we parked it, or getting the Hummer out if they did. Low ceilings. They’ll just guard it. Less trouble.”

He nodded. “I’m right behind you.”

“I know.”

“Try not to shoot anybody.”

“Funny,” she said grimly, “that’s what they said. They want me alive.”

That sparked something in his eyes that was hot and hungry. “I take it back,” he said. “Shoot somebody. Preferably that rat bastard Stewart, if you see him.”

She took a deep breath and swung open the door, then ran, light-footed, to the end of the hall. The parking lot beyond seemed deserted. No sign of surveillance or ambush. The Hummer loomed huge and black at the far corner, apart from the smaller cars and trucks.

She started to move forward, but McCarthy caught her arm and shook his head. He mimed splitting up, him to the right, her to the left. She shook her own head and fished the keys out of her pocket.

“Together,” she whispered, making barely a sound. He stared at her face, and nodded.

“Together.” It wasn’t more than a movement of his lips, but it was a promise.

They broke from cover and ran for it.

Nobody stopped them. She hit the alarm remote control and unlocked the doors, threw herself into the driver’s side and put the backpack on the floorboard as Ben climbed in the passenger door. The interior looked cool, dark and untouched.

“Too easy,” he said, and immediately began to look for trouble out the windows.

Nothing moved.

“Maybe the alarms upstairs distracted them,” she said, and hit the ignition. The SUV started up with a rumble, and she backed it fast out of the space, not particularly worried about crumpled fenders or damaged quarter panels.

“They’ll have us blocked in,” McCarthy warned. His gun was out.

She nodded and gave him a lupine grin. “Let me worry about that. The army doesn’t use these monsters just because of their pretty paint jobs.”

“Manny’s going to kill you.”

“Better him than Ken Stewart, wouldn’t you say? And if you’re going to shoot, roll down the window.”

He shook his head and watched the parking garage whip by as she accelerated the Hummer up the curving ramp toward escape. “Wild woman.”

Bet your ass, she thought, and pressed the accelerator to the floor when she saw daylight, and two police cars blocking it. She honked, a loud blare, though they could hardly have missed a huge, black SUV barreling upward, engine roaring. Sure enough, the cops had prudently decided to leave empty cars in her path.

The Hummer hardly even shuddered at the impact. It slewed out into traffic as she whipped the wheel, burned rubber, and it stayed upright only because of the wide wheel base as she steered it down Vine Street.

“You realize that I’ll be going to back to prison,” McCarthy said, almost casually. “Doing crash tests with squad cars, that’s some kind of crime. I know—I used to be a detective.”

“Shut up. You’re a hostage.”

“I’m a what?”

“Hostage. You can truthfully say that I abducted you. I’m driving, after all.”

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