You Never Know With Women

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We stared at each other for maybe ten seconds. It seemed like a hundred years to me. I could see his tail stiffening and his back legs tightening for his spring, then there was a sharp crack of an automatic. I heard the slug whine past my head. The dog rolled over on its side, snarling and biting, its teeth snapping horribly at empty air.

I didn’t wait to assess the damage. I ran toward the beam of the flashlight that flashed from the top of the wall. I got there, pulled myself up and fell with a thud on the far side.

Parker grabbed me around the waist, half dragged, half carried me to the car. I rolled in, slammed the door as he let in the clutch.

“Keep going!” I yelled at him. “They’re right behind. They’ve got a car and they’ll be after us.”

I wanted to get him rattled so he wouldn’t ask questions until we had gone too far to go back. I got him rattled.

He drove down the hills like he was crazy. That guy certainly could drive. Why we didn’t go over the mountain road beats me. We tore down the road, took hairpin bends at eighty, our wheels inches from the overhang.

At the end of the mountain road he suddenly slammed on his brakes, skidded across the road, straightened up and turned on me as if he were out of his mind.

“Did you get it?” he screamed at me, grabbing my coat lapels and shaking me. “Where is it, damn you! Did you get it?”

I put my hand in the middle of his chest and gave him a shove that nearly sent him out of the car.

“You and your damned bomb!” I yelled back at him. “You crazy dumb cluck! You nearly killed me!”

“Did you get it?” he bawled, beating on the steering wheel with his clenched fists.

“The bomb blew it to hell,” I told him. “That’s what your bomb did. It blew the whole safe and everything in it to hell,” and I hit him flush on the button as he came at me.

CHAPTER FIVE

I CAUGHT A GLIMPSE of myself in the mirror over the mantel as I came into the lounge. I was smothered in white plaster dust, my hair hung over my eyes, the sleeve of my coat was ripped, one knee showed through my trouser leg. If that wasn’t enough, blood ran down my face from a cut above my eye and the side of my neck where Ned had socked me was turning a nice shade of purple. With the elegant Parker draped over my shoulder, it wasn’t hard to see we had run into trouble, and plenty of it.