Deserves to Be Dead Page 7
Blackness pulled at her vision.
Her finger curled over the trigger of her service weapon.
“For Christ’s sake.” Drake scrambled for his gun.
She shot him twice in the chest.
• • •
VIRGIL SHOUTED DOWN AT THE Feds, “He’s gone up the gravel road, away from the county road.”
The SWAT team, in the light of the fires, started jogging up the road toward Weeks’s cabin.
“He’s not there anymore,” Johnson muttered.
He and Johnson crashed through the brush on the bluff, waded the shallow river, and ran down the road to the dude ranch, where everybody staying at the ranch, Katy, her siblings, and her parents, were all standing on the edge of the golf course, looking at the fire in the sky.
Jim Waller called to them as they passed, “Is that the Drake place? What’s going on up there?”
They didn’t bother to answer, but piled into Johnson’s Cadillac and headed out to the highway.
“Gotta be a right turn,” Johnson said.
A mile up the road, they found Pescoli sitting next to the right front wheel of her Jeep. She was holding a tissue next to her eye, showing a little blood. Up the road, they could see Drake, spread-eagled in the headlights of his Jeep.
He and Johnson jumped out of the Cadillac and they hurried up to her. She was white faced, her eyes a little glassy, but she answered.
“I’m not bad. I shot him twice, maybe three times. He thought we had him. He had nothing to lose by trying to take me out.”
Her hand was shaking a little.
“He was right about that,” Virgil said and saw the smashed-up Jeep and the body lying in the grass near the shoulder. “You check him?”
“Enough to know we don’t need an ambulance,” she said, chalk white, her voice distant, almost disembodied. She cleared her throat and focused on Virgil, as if seeing him for the first time. “I wish we could have taken him alive. I wish we could have gotten him in court.”
“Probably better this way,” Johnson said, avoiding looking at the corpse. “What if he’d gotten off? If what everybody says is true, the cocksucker deserves to be dead.”
He and Regan both gave Johnson a look, and he muttered, “Okay. Sorry about that ‘cocksucker.’ ”
Virgil stood up from checking the body and looked at Regan and Johnson.
“But you’re right. He deserves to be dead. And now he is.”
More from this Series
Dig Here
Faking a Murderer
Footloose
Honor & . . .
Midnight Flame
Past Prologue
We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook.
Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.
Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
Copyright © 2017 by Lisa Jackson, LLC and John Sandford
Originally published in 2017 in MatchUp by Lee Child
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
First Simon & Schuster ebook edition July 2019
SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or business@simonandschuster.com
The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.
ISBN 978-1-9821-3964-3