Chapter 31
Chief Smith would be loading up his horses and heading toward the park in the next half hour—if it came to that.
Ricky Pink and his buddy, Duvall, were on the run, but greed had made them stick around to find the missing diamonds.
It was astounding how an outlaw could feel such ownership over something they’d stolen from somebody else.
Cutter doubted either of them had the patience to deal with horses under these circumstances.
No, they’d stash their vehicle in the trees and hoof it to the shack.
If Cutter’s hunch was correct, they’d want to lay low after murdering poor Trina Foster. He’d either find the outlaws’ vehicle hidden at the other end of the lake or he’d get there ahead of them—and wait.
He scanned the road ahead.
Three women in swimsuits fanned themselves in folding lawn chairs while a mob of children squealed and splashed with cheap plastic air mattresses in the shallow water of the boat ramp to his left.
A couple of teenage boys practiced diving off the rickety wooden dock a hundred yards down.
At the west end of the lake, he passed the road that climbed a squat hill to the pavilion and picnic tables that overlooked the west end of the lake.
A gnarled thicket of Osage orange and cottonwood trees blocked his view of the small dead end parking lot.
Pink would have been foolish to get himself trapped in there.
Pavement turned to gravel a hundred yards later and then petered out completely well before the creek bottom, giving way to an open field of sunburned native grasses mowed short by crews from the city parks.
Telltale tire tracks ran over dirt and stubble toward tall stands of Johnson grass and oak scrub closer to the creek.
Cutter slowed to a crawl as he left the road to bounce across the uneven field.
He rolled down his window, intending to make a wide arc, checking for vehicles in the thickets.
Grasshoppers ticked away like rattle cans in all directions in front of his oncoming patrol car.
He caught the outline of a vehicle grill to his left and turned in for a closer look.
It turned out to be an ancient Plymouth Valiant, windows shattered, body riddled with bullet holes where kids had used it for target practice.
He’d just driven past when Lafayette Johnson’s frantic voice poured out of the radio.
“Parker County 68! Roll units toward Sunshine Lake! I got a black Chevy dually turning in off Peaster Highway. Two white males. Possible armored car robbery suspect Richard Lee Pink. They’re—”
The radio fell silent.
Cutter cut his wheel hard and stomped the throttle, swinging around the back end of his Caprice on the scabby field. He held his breath, willing Johnson to say more.
The radio crackled again.
“I’m behind the black dually!” Johnson said.
He gave the license plate number, then, “We’re coming into the park now.
Coming at you, Cutter—” The radio fell silent for a long moment.
Then, “Driver did a one-eighty. Heading right for me … Well, shit, this is gonna—” Cutter poured on the gas, resisting the urge to jump on the radio. Johnson might need it.
Ricky Lee checked his seat belt as Duvall brought the big pickup around in a skittering 180-degree turn. He braced his hands on the door and dash.
“What the hell?”
Duvall scrunched down in his seat, both hands on the wheel. He was closing fast on the oncoming patrol car.
“You’re gonna kill us both!” Pink yelled.
“Relax!” Duvall said, though he sounded far from relaxed himself.
Thankfully, the deputy sheriff swerved right at the last moment.
The much heavier one-ton truck clipped the patrol car’s rear wheel, spinning it like a top.
Unfortunately, Duvall momentarily lost control of the pickup and they careened into the ditch, bouncing wildly across the gravel parking lot that served as a trailhead for the dam.
Pink glanced in his side mirror to see steam pouring from the cop car’s hood. The engine whined. Metal squealed as the warped rear tire chewed the crumpled fender. Going nowhere, the deputy flung open his door and jumped out, revolver in hand.
A cloud of dust settled around Duvall’s pickup.
“Run him down!” Pink said.
Far from staggered by the impact of the accident, the deputy put a round through the passenger window. The bullet shattered the glass and passed inches in front of Duvall’s face before thwacking into the opposite door post.
Duvall cut the steering wheel hard left and stepped on the gas.
“What?” Pink snapped. “I thought you were—”
“He’s behind a tree, dumbass,” Duvall said. “I can’t run him down. Besides, the bastard appears to be a good shot. He’s liable to hit what he’s aiming at if we get any closer.”
Pink pulled the pistol from his waistband and pointed it out the shattered window. He didn’t expect to hit anything, but this cop had pissed him off. He had to do something. Even with the window broken, the gunshot inside the confined space of the pickup’s cab felt like an axe blow to the head.
“Knock that shit off!” Duvall barked over the ringing in Pink’s ears.
“Oh, I’m the dumbass,” Pink said. He pointed to the end of the lake with the barrel of his gun. “Why’d you go this way? There’s no way out.”
“You’re welcome,” Duvall said. “That cop would have killed one of us for sure. We’ll drop the truck and go get the Ford stashed at the cabin. Slip away and lay low for a while, figure out the diamonds later—”
Twisted in his seat to keep an eye on the deputy, Pink heard Duvall curse under his breath and turned, slamming his fist against the dashboard.
Dead ahead, a sedan came straight for them. Some two hundred yards away and closing, it was impossible to tell much about it, except for the flashing red and blue lights.
Pink pounded on the dash again. “Cut to the left!”
“There’s nothing up there but damned picnic tables! We can make it to the trees!”
Ahead, smoke poured from the oncoming patrol car’s tires.
Smoke?
Pink braced for impact. It took him a moment to realize what was happening.
Cutter stood on the brakes. He wasn’t about to let these outlaws get away, but a head-on collision was tantamount to certain death—or worse, a broken neck.
He was far too occupied to do the math in his head, but he’d practiced tactical driving ad nauseum in Special Forces.
The oncoming truck was traveling around fifty miles an hour, though it likely seemed faster to its occupants on the narrow lake road with their windows shot out.
Cutter had hit sixty when he saw the black pickup ahead but bled the speed to thirty miles an hour by the time they were roughly two hundred yards apart.
At those speeds, they would have collided in a hair over five seconds.
Cutter was able to skid his patrol car to a stop in a little over three, giving him two precious seconds to throw it into reverse and back out of the way as the black pickup flew past. He executed a textbook J-turn, bringing the Caprice’s front end around in a quick one-eighty, then threw the transmission into Drive.
He accelerated smoothly to fall in behind the black dually.
He clenched his jaw, chuckling. There was nowhere for them to go—
A baby-faced giant leaned out the dually’s passenger window.
Ricky Pink.
A half a breath later, a bullet slapped the Caprice’s hood, gouging a long gash before it careened away. Firing from a moving vehicle at another moving vehicle was a crapshoot—but Cutter didn’t like even long odds when it came to taking a bullet.
He needed to end this.
Blossoms of fire flashed from Pink’s gun as Cutter closed the distance.
None of the shots connected. Yet. Cutter caught the pickup fifty yards before the pavement gave way to grassy field.
Still gaining, he nudged the steering wheel to the left, bringing the Caprice up on the side of the fleeing pickup.
There was no need to think about what he did next. Cutter knew exactly what would happen.
This wasn’t the first time he’d been here.