Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #4: Books 13-16 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [story read aloud .txt] 📗

My stomach lurched and I went cold inside. The rain was lashing my face. I wiped my eyes with my hands to clear my vision as I went to the ledge where he had jumped. I could feel the water squelching my shoes and running down the back of my neck. I peered over, expecting to see his broken body on the wet asphalt below. Instead, I saw the roof of a covered walkway that stretched across the parking lot, and Lenny running unsteadily, slipping and sliding toward the far end. I turned and bellowed at the approaching cops. “Seal the exits to the parking lot! He’s in the parking lot! Seal the damned exits!”

They turned and began scrambling back toward their vehicles, hollering instructions to each other. I stepped over the barrier and heard, dimly, Dehan’s voice calling to me. I didn’t wait to hear what she was saying. I jumped and landed in a slipping, sprawling mess on the steel roof. It hurt. I got unsteadily to my feet and ran, trying to ignore the pain, sliding and falling as I went. He was fifty or sixty yards ahead of me and not making much better progress than I was. The rain was coming down hard, kicking up a mist off the blacktop and getting in my eyes. Visibility was poor and I was trying to keep my eye on him as well as run as fast as I dared.

Then I saw his arms go up in the air suddenly and he vanished. I accelerated my pace, thinking maybe he had been shot. I slipped and staggered and fell several times, cutting my hand on the wet steel. And as I approached the spot where he had been, I realized there was a drop of about six feet, to a lower level. I jumped down, then lowered myself to the ground and looked around. There was no sign of him. All I could see was an ocean of wet cars, and in the distance the flashing lights of the patrol cars approaching to seal off the exits. On foot, there was nothing to stop him gaining access to any of the other parking lots, roads or even the freeway. I swore violently under my breath. Then up ahead, twenty or thirty yards away, through the cold sheets of gray rain, I saw the headlamps come on. And the big Dodge Ram accelerated straight at me.

THIRTEEN

The tires spun and screamed on the wet asphalt. Then they gripped and the headlamps glowed and swelled through the mist of rain, heading straight at me. One second of indecision and paralysis is enough to get you killed several times over. One second was how long I stood, staring at the iron beast that was bearing down on me.

I leapt aside when it was just ten feet away. At the same instant, he spun the wheel, aiming to point the nose of the truck toward the gardens that separated the parking lot from the Van Wyck Expressway. The tires screeched, but couldn’t get a grip, and his fishtail turned into a spin. The back end caught me on one of the turns and slammed me against a parked VW. The Dodge wound up on the far side of the covered walkway, facing the wrong way, and I wound up on my back, croaking for breath that I couldn’t get, staring up at the bellying, gray clouds with rain in my eyes and needles of pain shafting through my lungs.

The spasm eased. I managed to drag in air. I heard a powerful engine rev and struggled to lift my head and look. The Dodge Ram was forty feet away. Its headlamps made rivers of light among the spray. I looked behind me and realized that I was lying between the Dodge and the gardens that separated the lot from the expressway. Far off, I could hear sirens through the rain. The Dodge revved, the tires screamed and the truck hurtled toward me. I struggled to one elbow, but my back went into spasm again and pain tore through my lungs. In my head, a voice told me to prepare for death.

Even as I thought it, I saw a shadow, like a ghost, placing itself between me and the truck: a tall silhouette, legs straddled. There was a sound like fireworks cracking. The headlamps loomed around the snaking form. Brakes screeched, the truck careened out of control. I felt its massive form slide past, just feet away, and then there was the shattering noise of steel smashing and tearing into steel, glass shattering and car alarms crying out across the flooded, gray, concrete lot.

And Dehan was kneeling over me. “Are you OK? Tell me you’re OK.”

“Help me get up.”

She hooked her arm under mine and I struggled to my feet. “I’m OK. Check Lenny. Is he alive?”

Her face loomed large in front of me. “Stone! Focus! Look at me!”

I scrunched up my eyes, wiped water from them and blinked. She was hazy. “What?”

“Are you OK? Check! Don’t just say yes. Are you OK?”

I scowled. “Yes! Go check on Lenny!”

“Stay there!”

She ran toward the mangled wreckage where the careening Dodge had plowed into three parked cars. I staggered after her, feeling unsteady on my feet, but managing to breathe a little easier. I could see the red and blue flashing lights of patrol cars speeding toward us from the far end of the lot. I could hear another approaching from behind. Dehan, drenched through, with her long hair shining black, wrenched open the driver’s door on the truck and reached in. I leaned against the side and watched her. It was hard to tell her expression, but she wasn’t happy, and she wasn’t talking.

Two patrol cars skidded to a halt a