Shooting Starr Read Free Page A

shoot—I meant in some nonlethal place, of course. A leg or a foot, maybe. Anyway, I promise you won’t like it. Plus, although I’m a fairly good shot, there’s always a chance you’ll move and make me nick something important, like an artery, or…you know. So I suggest you don’t start weighing your chances.” She paused, then added, “And I can really do without the sarcasm. I don’t do this sort of thing every day, you know.”
    â€œCoulda fooled me,” C.J. muttered. “You’re pretty damn good at it.” His heart was pounding and he felt sweat beginning to trickle between his shoulder blades.
    â€œLook—I said I’m sorry. I just don’t have time to stand here and argue with you. Or justify myself.” She turned her head enough so she could call over her shoulder withouttaking her eyes off him, “Mary Kelly, it’s okay, I’ve got us a ride.”
    After a moment, C.J. saw the big-haired woman edge out from behind the ladies’ room entry screen farther down the back side of the building. The little girl was still snugged up against her side, and he knew now what she reminded him of. It was those pictures he’d seen on the news of refugee kids in Bosnia or Afghanistan—big-eyed and scared, but stoic.
    â€œTurn around, please, and start walking toward your truck.” The low, almost whispered command jerked his attention back to the woman with the gun, and he saw that it and her hands had disappeared back inside the pocket of her sweatshirt. “I don’t want to upset Emma,” she explained, speaking rapidly now. “I hope I won’t have to. Trust me—the gun’s still right here, pointed at your belt buckle. Now, go on— move. ”
    What could he do? What did he do? Something brave and heroic? Hell, no, he did what anybody with a lick of sense would have done—he turned around and started walking. His spine was stiff as a poker and his back felt exposed, as if his clothes had been split open down the back and an icy cold wind was blowing in the gap. He had the good sense to be a little bit scared and wobble-legged, too, but mostly what he was, was madder’n hell. Madder than he could remember being in his life.
    Behind him he could hear the scuffle of footsteps on pavement…a murmur of conversation between the two women. He didn’t turn to look, but he kept seeing the little girl hugging her momma’s legs, and her big scared refugee eyes. That was what made him the maddest. At least he thought it was. The truth was, C.J.’s feelings were pretty complicated right then.
    When he was even with the back end of his trailer, he stuck a hand in his pocket and hauled out his keys, making a big deal out of holding them out to show his hijackerwhat he was doing. He unlocked the passenger-side door and held it wide open, and in a PO’d, sarcastically polite way waved his “passengers” in.
    He felt mean and childish when the big-haired woman looked at him as she was lifting her little girl into the cab and murmured a breathless and sincere, “We really do appreciate this, mister—thank you.” Her accent was thick Southern—not Georgia, someplace farther west. Arkansas, maybe, or Oklahoma.
    â€œGet back in the sleeper and shut the curtain,” the hijacker ordered the woman, just as if it had been her truck. When C.J. waved her in ahead of him she gave him a tight little smile and murmured, “After you. ”
    So he had no choice but to get in on the passenger side of his own rig and climb across the seat and the center console, dumping his law books on the floor in the process. By this time his anger was a buzzing inside his head, incessant as a horsefly trapped against a windowpane, and if there were any calm and reasoning voices left in there, he couldn’t hear them.
    A gun. She’d pulled a gun on him!
    What he wanted was to lash out