Lethal (Lee Coburn)

He gave a short laugh. “Don’t you get it? Haven’t you been listening? If Doral Hawkins or The Bookkeeper think you know something that could help convict them, your life’s not worth spit.”

“I do understand. Stan will protect us until—”

“Stan, the man in the one-for-all-and-all-for-one photo with your late husband and the Hawkins twins? That Stan?”

“Surely, you don’t think—”

“Why not?”

“Stan’s a former Marine.”

“So am I. Look how I turned out.”

He’d made his point. She hesitated, then said staunchly, “My father-in-law would protect Emily and me with his dying breath.”

“Maybe. I don’t know yet. Until I do

, you stay with me and contact nobody.”

Before she could say more, they heard the wail of sirens. Within seconds, two police cars appeared where the road met the horizon. They were approaching and closing quickly.

“Doral must have found his brother’s corpse.”

Though his muscles contracted with tension and he gripped the steering wheel of the stolen car tighter, Coburn maintained his speed and kept his eyes straight ahead. The squad cars screamed past at a high rate of speed.

“Police car,” the kid chirped. “Mommy, police car.”

“I see it, sweetheart.” Honor threw a smile back at her, then came around to him again. “Emily will need food. A place to sleep. We can’t just keep driving around in a stolen car, dodging the police. What are you going to do with us?”

“I’m about to find out.”

He checked the clock in the car’s dashboard and saw that it would be past nine on the East Coast. He took the next turn off the main road. The blacktop soon gave way to gravel and gravel to rutted dirt, and the road finally came to a dead end at a stagnant creek covered with duckweed.

He had three phones. Fred’s. Beyond that one last call to his brother, the call log had been empty. But since Fred used that phone for illegal purposes, Coburn hadn’t expected to find The Bookkeeper’s number highlighted. All the same, he would keep the phone. For safe measure, he removed the battery.

They couldn’t use Honor’s cell because the authorities could locate it using triangulation. He took the battery from it too.

Which left Coburn’s burner, the disposable he’d bought months earlier but had never used until yesterday. He turned it on, saw that he was getting a cell signal, and punched in a number with the hope that today his call would be answered.

“Who are you calling?” Honor asked.

“You jump out of your skin every time I move.”

“Can you blame me?”

“Not really.”

He looked at her elbows and upper arms, which bore bruises. The backs of her hands were also bruised from her banging them against the headboard when he’d tied her to it. He regretted that he’d had to get physical, but he wouldn’t apologize for it. She would have been hurt much worse if he hadn’t.

“You don’t have to worry about me grabbing you anymore,” he told her. “Or waving a pistol at you. No more jitters, okay?”

“If I’m jittery it could be because I saw a man shot dead in my home this morning.”

He’d already said what he had to say about that, and he wasn’t going to justify it again. If you got a chance to take out a violent criminal like Fred Hawkins, you didn’t stop to reason why. You pulled the goddamn trigger. Otherwise, you’d be the one no longer breathing.

How many men had he seen die? How many had he seen die violently? Too many to count or even to remember. But he supposed that for a second-grade schoolteacher’s clear green eyes, it was a shocking thing to witness, which she would always associate with him. No help for that. However, this call would put an end to her flinching every time he moved.

He was about to disconnect and try again when a woman answered. “Deputy Director Hamilton’s office. How can I direct your call?”