High Country Nocturne - страница 4

But that was old school.

I cursed aloud.

“What it is, David?”

“It’s some inside baseball cop stuff. Probably nothing.”

She didn’t push it. It wasn’t inside baseball. Inside cop world.

Snap.

No.

Most law-enforcement officers didn’t use those retention straps now.

Manufacturers had advanced the security of holsters substantially so that it was much more difficult for the weapon to be taken in a struggle. It helped that the semiautomatic pistols cops carried had smooth butts, no exposed hammer like the Python’s to accommodate.

I stared into the red lights of a truck several car-lengths ahead, then signaled and moved to pass.

Now cops carried holsters classified as Level 2, Level 3, and even Level 4, based on the degree of protection they provided. But almost all had one element in common-to unholster the gun, the officer moved the strap forward. In the more advanced holsters, the pistol must be properly gripped and a lever switched.

None of these regulation holsters made a snap.

“She wasn’t…” I absently let the car slow down against the gravity of the mountain it needed to climb.

“What?” Sharon asked.

I pushed down the accelerator and we surged forward. “I was thinking. Always a surprising thing when I do it.”

She laughed and I kept silent.

I was thinking that perhaps the DPS officer was old school like me and refused to adopt a new holster.

Thinking perhaps she was not a police officer.

She pointed the gun at my crotch and said, “Where…?” Where, what? Where were we going? Where was Peralta?

As the cold sweat stayed with me, another thought came. If I saw her again, it would once more be in darkness and I wouldn’t get a second chance.

Sharon said, “Do you still get panic attacks, David?”

I ignored her and held my iPhone against the steering wheel, shakily texting Lindsey one character, an asterisk. I watched the iPhone screen as the message was delivered.

After a few tense seconds, Lindsey texted back. Another asterisk.

In our personal code, it meant one thing: leave the house immediately. Go.

The blue and red police lights were visible even before I took the Ash Fork exit off Interstate 40-the vision of Dwight David Eisenhower flowing from Barstow, California, to Wilmington, North Carolina.

We descended onto a two-lane road, crossed a wash, and I pulled the car into a broad, flat lot surrounding what had once been a gas station. All that was left was a rectangular streamline moderne building, long-abandoned, with an office on one end and two garage doors on the other, with a single yellow streetlight burning above.

I pulled in behind a Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department cruiser with its light bar flashing. Nobody seemed to notice us. The cops were on the other side of yellow crime-scene tape, milling around a pickup truck illuminated by multiple spotlights.

It was a new Ford F-150, extended cab.

Mike Peralta’s truck.

“David.” Sharon touched my hand. The poor lighting couldn’t conceal the agony in her eyes. “If he’s…”

She stopped, squeezed my hand hard.

“It’s going to be fine.” I gently disentangled her hand, took off my gun, slid on my leather jacket, and stepped out into the chill. The wind was coming hard from the west and the air smelled of pines.

My stomach was tight, but after the encounter with the woman in the DPS uniform, I was focused and calm. Thanks to some fluke of brain chemistry, I usually excel in these situations. Panic only hits me later, when I am safe and alone.

But I had no confidence that it would be fine, as I had assured Sharon. He might have come up here and blown his brains out. He might have been murdered. His body might be in the truck awaiting me.

Another black SUV rolled past us down the street, turned around, and came back to a halt at the far end of the lot. It didn’t take a Ph.D. to guess this had been the vehicle tailing us, which had chosen to come down the off-ramp at the right moment to save our lives. The SUV’s lights went out, but no one got out.

As I drew close, gusts caused the yellow tape to make a snapping sound. A voice ordered me to stop. Two burly deputies and a woman wearing an FBI windbreaker came toward me, hands on their weapons.