She tried Sheri's number again. No answer.
In two minutes she was speeding through the forests on Los Banos.
It was then she saw the smoke, maybe a half mile ahead.
She gripped the phone and started to dial Madigan, jamming the accelerator down even harder as she took a curve. Nissan makes a great SUV but it doesn't corner like a sports car and she nearly went off the shoulder and into a ravine forty feet below.
You're a bad driver to start with, she told herself. Don't be stupid.
She brought the skid under control and slowed a bit. She called Madigan and left a message, telling him where she was and to get cars there immediately, fire trucks too. Soon she was speeding along a straightaway toward the smoke, which had gone from gray to black.
Burning tires? she wondered. Oil? A car wreck?
Dance skidded around this turn too and saw the horrific scene before her--the silver Mercedes had gone off the road and was in a ditch near the asphalt. The back end of the car was burning, though the front, not yet. The angle of the accident--with the car's hood in the air--meant the gasoline from the ruptured tank was flowing backward. Still, the flames were spreading toward the passenger compartment.
There seemed to be movement from inside the car. Dance couldn't see clearly but knew it would be Sheri, whose feet were kicking desperately against the windshield.
No, Dance thought. You'll never break through a windshield! The side windows!
Dance brought the Pathfinder to a skidding stop on the shoulder and leapt out, opening the back door and reaching behind the seat to snag the small fire extinguisher. She pulled it out and turned toward the Merc but dropped the heavy canister. She bent to pick it up.
Which is what saved her from a bullet.
No, as it turned out, two or three of them.
"Jesus," she gasped, dropping to the ground, earning a scraped elbow.
The bullets slammed, loud, into the sheet steel of the Pathfinder a foot or so from her head and shoulders. Where was the shooter?
She couldn't tell. He was somewhere in the pine forest.
In shadows, of course.
Reaching for her phone, which sat on the passenger seat, to call 911, she rose. The shooter fired again and a slug snapped over her head, then another. Dance flattened herself on the ground as another bullet loudly punctured the side of the driver's seat.
A cry echoed from the Mercedes.
Move, move, move!
Crawling fast, cradling the extinguisher, Dance made it to a fallen tree, about forty feet from the Mercedes.
She risked a look. The flames were rising faster now.
And from the gap in the dense pine forest she saw a ragged flash of gunshot. A bullet snapped over her head before she could duck.
The attacker would have gotten a look at her and if it was Edwin, he would recognize her as a CBI agent, which meant he might assume she was armed. If it wasn't Edwin, or if he decided she didn't have a weapon, the assailant could casually stroll a hundred feet in her direction and shoot her.
Dance then heard another wailing scream from the Mercedes.
A flash bloomed from the woods, and six inches from her face a bullet blew a handful of dry rotting wood into the air.
Chapter 35
"I SHOULD CHECK in with my people," P. K. Madigan said angrily, nodding toward his office. "We've got an operation going here. Possible homicide. It's urgent." The bewildered chief was feeling panic--which was not a sensation he was used to.
Two California Department of Justice officers stood in front of him in the lobby of the detective division, back a bit, out of deference. Maybe. One was redheaded and one had black hair. They otherwise looked similar, trim, in suits. Polite. Very polite. Madigan was so shaken he'd forgotten their names. The redhead said, "Yessir, I'm afraid calls'll have to wait. Same procedure you have in an arrest, I'm sure."
FMCSO sheriff Anita Gonzalez stood nearby, her face too a mask of dismay more than anger. "This is nonsense, gentlemen. Utter nonsense. I've got a call in to the Sacramento office."