Escape Route (Murder Off-Screen Book 1) Read Free Page A

boy.”
    King’s second favorite thing was a car ride. He could wedge his whole head out the window and smell everything. He hesitated a moment to see if the kids from the house might be home and want to go along. But they didn’t come out.
    He’d see them at dinner.
    Timmy slipped a bottle of nail polish out of his front pocket. “Nude on the Beach.” He shook it and untwisted the lid. “Kinda pink, but it’s what they had. You hold him.”
    Avery buffed the dog’s ear with the sleeve of his favorite jacket, a green, corduroy number he kept sneaking out of the wife’s Burn This barrel by the garage. “Didn’t know he’d be soaking wet, or I’d have brought a towel.”
    A curtain at the main house was drawn aside, then hastily fell back into place. A tall, elegant shadow moved behind it.
    Timmy slathered a layer of polish over the C and stepped back. The dog sneezed but the corduroy sopped it right up. “That’ll do it.” He opened the back passenger door so the dog could jump in. “Her idea, prob’ly. The wife’s.” He tipped his head in the direction of the window.
    Avery settled behind the wheel. “It’s always the wife’s idea,” he said, mopping at his jacket with a tissue which made things worse. “Dog probably did his business in her flower beds, and she’d had enough.”
    “Women.” Timmy’s side of the car groaned, and sank lower to the ground as he shut his door.
    “Go figure.” Avery tapped the dashboard GPS panel and programmed in two coordinates. “The boss said this is a good spot. Shoot him. Bury him. Outta here.”
    Timmy looked around the estate grounds and down the half-mile drive to the main road, which was nothing more than a two-lane blacktop county job ‘til it reached town.
    “Glad Cuthbart knows where we need to go ’cause everything looks the same around here. Not like Pennsylvania, no how. Nothin’ here but flat and woods.”
    “And private gates.”
    “Money everywhere you look, for sure.”
    King shook once in the backseat. Mud and water and bits of grass peppered the interior.
    “That comes out of your share. I’m not paying to clean this car.” Avery congratulated himself on not bringing the wife’s Buick. She’d have a flying fit if she so much as found a nose print on one of the windows.
    Timmy patted the dog, who’d stuck his head over the front seat and laid his chin flat on the fat man’s cushy shoulder. “He’s a Lab. Labs shake.”
    Avery adjusted the rearview. The curtain was drawn back, again. He waggled his fingers as a farewell. “Happy now?” he said to the councilman’s wife. He imagined claw-tipped fingers snagging the fancy drapes.
    “Huh?”
    “Nothing. You all set?”
    Timmy patted himself down. Checked the glove box. Bent over as far as his belly and seat belt would allow, and slid his hand under the seat.
    “What?” Avery slowed the car to a stop at the security gate, and waited for someone inside the house to press the Open button. “What are you doing?” He’d only worked two jobs with Timmy and wasn’t that impressed, and the look on his partner’s face now wasn’t instilling confidence that this job was on its way to a satisfactory conclusion.
    The security gate swung open. “I can’t find my bullets. Guess I left ‘em back home.”
    Avery sat at the gate so long the fair-warning buzzers started keening. He punched the gas pedal and squealed past the brick columns and lurched onto the main road before the gates nicked the paint on the stupid car. “Are you really a hit man? You’re not, are you?”
    “Shows what you know. I shot my own cousin. He owed a guy money.”
    “You killed your own cousin? You couldn’t lend him a couple of bucks?”
    Timmy’s neck flared red, matching his cheeks. “I shot him in the calf. Right here.” He grabbed the back of his leg. “In the meaty part. Bled like a stuck pig.”
    “Can you believe this guy? A hit man with no bullets.” Avery backed the car up and turned it