Thriller 2: Stories You Just Can't Put Down. Литагент HarperCollins USD

make the transaction, claiming the stuff was hidden by the river.

      “What’s your plan now?” she said.

      Tom opened the front passenger door of the car.

      A rank wave of hot air that smelled like blood and feces hit his face, making him gag for a moment.

      He took a deep breath and grabbed his briefcase, dislodging what looked like a one of Bijoux’s testicles. He plopped his carryall on the hood of the car, opened it and rummaged through the contents until he found the foil-wrapped nugget of methamphetamine. The pipe lay underneath some loan documents due at the title company a week ago, next to the Glock .40-caliber pistol he’d started carrying ever since he’d gotten tangled up with Bijoux Watson.

      His fingers fumbled as he jammed the drug into the bowl of the pipe. With the battered Zippo his father had carried in Vietnam, he ignited the crystalized narcotic. Two big lungfuls and all the confidence, power and cojones on the planet coursed through his veins, as thick and fast and strong as the muddy waters a few hundred feet away.

      Chrissie appeared at his side with a canvas bag she’d evidently found in the trunk. She opened it and pulled out a Ziploc sack full of dirty brown powder.

      “Bijoux always traveled with a stash.” She licked her lips and produced a needle and a blackened tablespoon from the bottom of the bag.

      Tom offered her the pipe.

      She grabbed it and inhaled deeply. Then, she set about cooking a dose of heroin.

      “Baby, don’t do that,” Tom said. “Shit’s bad for you, dirty needles and all that other stuff.”

      “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.” She lowered her voice. “It makes sex incredible.” She pointed the needle at him. “Gimme your arm.”

      Tom looked at the syringe and then at Chrissie’s face. Her eyes were wide with what he assumed to be anticipation. He wanted to say no, but because he had just ingested over a gram of primo Ice and had all the confidence, power and cojones in the world, he stuck his arm out.

      Chrissie smiled, found a suitable vein and slid the needle in, giving him half the load. She then injected the rest into a blood vessel in her thigh. Together they sat on the grimy asphalt and leaned against the side of Bijoux Watson’s bloody Jaguar. Tom felt like there was nothing he couldn’t do, no task or challenge he couldn’t accomplish. Except for the fact he had no energy, he thought at that moment he could climb Mount Everest.

      Chrissie fell against him and said that just as soon as they came down a little, she’d fuck him so hard his toenails would hurt.

      Later, it could have been thirty minutes or thirty seconds, Tom heard the crunch of tires.

      He opened his eyes as a county squad car pulled up and stopped a few feet from the Jag.

      A deputy got out.

      Tom recognized him and struggled to remember the man’s name. Dean something. Dean, Jr. had been in his wife’s Sunday-school class a couple of years ago.

      “Tom? Is that you?” Deputy Dean squinted in the afternoon sun and leaned down to get a closer look. “Whole town’s looking for you. You ain’t been to the bank in three days.” The deputy rubbed one hand over his mouth, and his eyes got wide as he looked from Chrissie back to Tom. “You okay? What’s wrong with your pupils?”

      Tom nodded and pushed himself off the ground, the uppers and downers in his system making everything deliciously hazy and warm and happy.

      “Dean, it’s damn good to see you.” He enunciated each syllable with extreme precision. “The bank. Um, yes, the bank. The bank. They need these very important documents. At the bank. Very soon, Dean. Can you help me with that?”

      Tom turned his back to the officer and reached inside the briefcase

      “Uh, yeah, sure,” the deputy said. “Anything you need.”

      Tom remembered the man’s last name. Chambers. Dean Roy Chambers, his wife and two children lived in a double-wide on nine acres just outside of town. Tom’s bank had made the loan.

      “Who is she?” the deputy said. “Are you all right, ma’am?”

      “She’s fine.” Tom turned and smiled.

      Then he shot Dean Chambers in the cheek, about a quarter inch to the left of his nose, with the .40-caliber Glock.

      The bullet was one of those fancy armor-piercing hollow-points the liberal gun-control freaks loved to whine about. It made a big hole exiting the back of the deputy’s head.

      Chrissie snapped awake as the blast roiled across the empty parking lot.

      “What the hell?”

      “Took care of the issue, baby.” Tom squared his shoulders and sucked his gut in. “Goddamn, that’s what I’m talking about.”

      “You fucking killed a cop.” Chrissie stood up, legs wobbly. “That ain’t taking care of no issues. That’s making new ones.”

      “He’d seen us together, baby.” Tom stuck the gun in his waistband. His heart thumped a disco beat in his rib cage, whump whump whump. “Couldn’t do anything else. Besides, got us a ride out of here.”

      “Ah, Tommy. You’re the greatest.” She staggered toward the cop car.

      Tom grabbed his briefcase and ran after her. “I—I love you, baby.”

      

      Why does any man begin an affair? Was it the impending fortieth birthday and the loss of vigor and sexual prowess traditionally associated with middle age?

      Or was it the utter banality of living with the same woman for the past fifteen years, through the ups and downs of raising three children and a succession of overly precocious golden retrievers. Tom thought it something more profound, the need deep inside every male to experience one thing to the fullest, to nurture a spark into a roaring fire. To throw away the rearview mirror of life and press the accelerator to the floor. To be a man, dammit.

      Chrissie sat in the passenger seat of the squad car, knees tucked under her chin, exposing the full length of her tanned legs.

      Tom tried to concentrate on the road and not her thighs.

      She said, “Where we going?”

      “We need to get some more Ice.” Tom lit a Marlboro Light with one shaking hand. “Then I figure we get the cash I’ve been giving Bijoux and head south somewhere. I hear you can live like a king in Costa Rica, with plenty of gringo dollars.”

      “Do you even know how to speak Mexican?” Chrissie scratched her left breast.

      “We’re not going to Mexico, baby.” Tom pulled around a slow-moving pickup loaded with hay. “We’re gonna be the king and queen of Costa Rica. I’ll buy us one of those learn-to-speak-Spanish tapes and we’ll be fluent in no time.”

      “Let’s just get the Ice and the money first, huh?” Chrissie drummed her fingers on the dash and looked out the rear window. “Then we’ll figure it out.”

      

      Chrissie had arrived in town one month before, on a one-way bus ticket from Shreveport, vague about her past except it involved a crazy ex with a mean right hook. She’d just gotten a job at the local vet’s clinic when Tom had brought the dog in for a bath.

      The attraction was instantaneous and electric, beginning with furtive glances and then an accidental brush of their hands when Tom handed over a check. A volley of double entendres ended up with Tom asking her to lunch. To his horror and amazement, she said yes.

      He’d persuaded the vet to keep the dog for the remainder of the weekend. He then called his wife and told her an old college friend had gotten thrown in jail in Waco and he was going to bail him out. He’d be home in time for dinner. Probably. It was early Saturday afternoon, and he