The Straw Men 3-Book Thriller Collection: The Straw Men, The Lonely Dead, Blood of Angels. Michael Marshall

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      ‘Credit card.’

      ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Long way to come.’

      ‘You’re worth it.’

      He looks sceptically at a woman he had once thought striking, and now finds plain once more.

      ‘So what do you want? It’s cold. I’m getting hungry. I’d be surprised if we have anything to say to each other.’

      For just a moment she looks beautiful again, and hurt. Then, as if none of this meant anything to her, or ever had, ‘It’s happened again,’ she says. ‘Thought you’d want to know.’

      She turns on her heel and walks back up toward the car. The engine is running before she opens the door, and within two minutes the valley is empty and quiet again, leaving just a man on a bridge, his mouth slightly open, his face pale.

      He caught up with her twenty miles south, driving hard down narrow mountain roads and slinging the car around every bend. Southern Vermont isn’t designed for speed, and the car twice started to plane on ice patches. Zandt noticed neither this nor the handful of local drivers who had just time to register his approach before he was behind them, gaining speed, leaving their cars rocking in his wake. At Wilmington he hit a junction. The Lexus wasn’t visible in either direction. He reasoned that she’d be heading for the nearest place where she could get airlifted back to civilization, and took the left turn up Route 9 for Keene, just over the state line in New Hampshire.

      He made better time on the wider road, and soon began to see the Lexus’s distinctive tail lights in the distance ahead, flickering through trees on a kink in the road, or blinking off the other side of a dip. He eventually caught it on a straight patch just south of Hardsboro, where the road passed by a cold, flat lake that looked like a mirror reflecting a sky full of shadows.

      He flashed his headlights. There was no response. He pulled closer, flashed again. This time the Lexus picked up a little speed. Zandt accelerated, pressing hard, and saw Nina turn and clock his face through the back window. She spoke to the driver, who didn’t slow.

      Zandt floored the pedal and pulled out from behind, roared forward until he was just ahead, then angled in and braked the car hard. He was out of the door before the engine had died, and so was Fielding, hand already coming back out of his jacket.

      ‘Put it away,’ Zandt suggested.

      ‘Fuck you.’ The agent held the gun in both hands. Meanwhile Nina climbed out of the other side of the car, stepping carefully to avoid the mud. ‘I’m telling you,’ Fielding said evenly. ‘Back off.’

      ‘It’s okay,’ Nina said. ‘Shit. There go the shoes.’

      ‘Fuck it is. He tried to force us off the road.’

      ‘He probably just wanted to talk. It can get lonely out here.’

      ‘He can talk to my dick,’ Fielding said. ‘You – put your hands on the car.’

      Zandt remained where he was until Nina made it round the front of the Lexus and onto the road.

      ‘Are you sure it’s him?’ he said.

      ‘You think I’d come all this way otherwise?’

      ‘I never understood a single thing you did. At any stage. Just answer the question.’

      ‘Will you just get your hands the fuck on the hood of the car?’ Fielding shouted. There was the soft, mechanical sound of a safety being flicked off.

      Zandt and Nina turned to look at him. The agent was full-on furious. Nina glanced up the road, where a large white Ford that shrieked ‘rental’ was headed toward them, driving slowly so the inhabitants could get a good view of the lake in what remained of the light.

      ‘Easy,’ she suggested. ‘You want to explain a friendly-fire incident to your SAC?’

      Fielding glanced over his shoulder. Saw the car pull over into a vantage point, about a hundred yards away. He lowered the gun. ‘You going to tell me what the hell is going on?’

      Nina shook her head curtly, then turned back to Zandt. ‘I’m sure, John.’

      ‘So why are you here instead of there?’

      She shrugged, a habitual motion. ‘Actually, I don’t know. Shouldn’t be, and I most certainly shouldn’t be talking to you. You want to walk on me, or shall we go someplace and talk?’

      Zandt looked away, across at the flat surface of the lake. Parts of it were black, others a frozen grey. On the other side was a little clearing and a wooden holiday home, with plenty of cords of wood stacked up against the side. The structure didn’t look prepackaged or catalogue-bought: more like someone, or two someones, had sat for many evenings somewhere hectic and sketched it out on pads brought home from the office, desperate for some other story to be in. Not for the first time, Zandt wished he was someone else. Maybe the guy living in that house. Or one of the tourists up the way, who were now standing in a clump by the water and looking across at the trees, their brightly coloured anoraks making them look like a small herd of traffic lights.

      Eventually he nodded. Nina walked across to Fielding, and spoke to him for a while. Within a minute, the agent’s gun was back where it should be. By the time Zandt turned away from the lake Fielding was back in the car, face composed.

      Nina waited for Zandt at his car, a large file under her arm. ‘I told him I’d be going with you,’ she said.

      As Nina got in his car, Zandt stepped over to the Lexus. Fielding looked up at him through the window with an unreadable expression, and started the engine. Then he pressed a button and wound the window down.

      ‘Guess I’ll let it go, this time,’ he said.

      Zandt smiled. It was a thin smile, and bore little resemblance to anything caused by merriment. ‘There is only this time.’

      Fielding cocked his head. ‘And that’s supposed to mean what?’

      ‘That if we meet again and you pull a gun on me, some pretty lake is going to have little scraps of Fed floating in it. And I don’t give a shit if it fucks up the ecosystem.’

      Zandt turned away, leaving the agent open-mouthed.

      Then Fielding reversed rapidly, kicking a shower of grit into the air. He gunned the engine and sped past, pausing only to lean across to display the middle finger of his right hand.

      When Zandt got into his car he saw Nina was sitting watching, arms folded and one eyebrow raised.

      ‘Your people skills just keep on getting better,’ she said. ‘Maybe you should teach a course or something. Write a book. I’m serious. It’s a gift. Don’t fight it, share it. Be everything you can be.’

      ‘Nina, shut up.’

      He drove in silence back up to Pimonta. Nina sat with the file on her lap. By the time they got back to the village it was dark, and a few more residents’ cars had appeared. Lights were on in many of the windows. He parked up in front of the inn, turned off the engine. He made no move to open his door, so Nina stayed as she was.

      ‘Do СКАЧАТЬ