This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2006 by Richard Stark
All rights reserved.
Mysterious Press
Hachette Book Group USA
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at www.mysteriouspress.com.
First eBook Edition: June 2008
ISBN: 978-0-7595-6964-5
Contents
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
PART TWO
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
PART THREE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
PART FOUR
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
BY RICHARD STARK
The Hunter
The Man with the Getaway Face
The Outfit
The Mourner
The Score
The Jugger
The Seventh
The Handle
The Damsel
The Rare Coin Score
The Green Eagle Score
The Dame
The Black Ice Score
The Sour Lemon Score
Deadly Edge
The Blackbird
Slayground
Lemons Never Lie
Plunder Squad
Butcher’s Moon
Comeback
Backflash
Flashfire
Firebreak
Breakout
Nobody Runs Forever
ONE
1
When the helicopter swept northward and lifted out of sight over the top of the hill, Parker stepped away from the tree he’d waited beside and continued his climb. Whatever was on the other side of this hill had to be better than the dogs baying down there at the foot of the slope behind him, running around, straining at their leashes, finding his scent, starting up. He couldn’t see the bottom of the hill any more, the police cars congregated around his former Dodge rental in the diner parking lot, but he didn’t need to. The excited yelp of the dogs was enough.
How tall was this hill? Parker wasn’t dressed for uphill hiking, out in the midday October air; his street shoes skidded on leaves, his jacket bunched when he pulled himself up from tree trunk to tree trunk. But he still had to keep ahead of the dogs and hope to find something or somewhere useful when he finally started down the other side.
How much farther to the top? He paused, holding the rough bark of a tree, and looked up, and fifteen feet above him through the scattered thin trunks of this second-growth woods there stood a man. The afternoon sun was to Parker’s left, the sky beyond the man a pale October ash, the man himself only a silhouette. With a rifle.
Not a cop. Not with a group. A man standing, looking down toward Parker, hearing the same hounds Parker heard, holding the rifle easy at a slant across his front, pointed up and to the side. Parker looked down again, chose the next tree trunk, pulled himself up.
It was another three or four minutes before he drew level with the man, who stepped back a pace and said, “That’s good. Right there’s good.”
“I have to keep moving,” Parker said, but he stopped, wishing these shoes gave better traction on dead leaves.
The man said, “You one of those robbers I’ve been hearing about on the TV? Took all a bank’s money, over in Massachusetts?”
Parker said nothing. If the rifle moved, he would have to meet it.
The man watched him, and for a few seconds they only considered one another. The man was about fifty, in a red leather hunting jacket with many pockets, faded blue jeans, and black boots. His eyes were shielded by a billed red and black flannel cap. Beside him on the ground was a gray canvas sack, partly full, with brown leather handles.
Seen up close, there was a tension in the man that seemed to be a part of him, not something caused by running into a fugitive in the woods. His hands were clenched on the rifle, and his eyes were bitter, as though something had harmed him at some point and he was determined not to let it happen again.
Then he shook his head and made a downturned mouth, impatient with the silence. “The reason I ask,” he said, “when I saw you coming up, and heard the dogs, I thought if you are one of the robbers, I want to talk to you.” He shrugged, a pessimist to his boots, and said, “If you’re not, you can stay here and pat the dogs.”
“I don’t have it on me,” Parker said.
Surprised, the man said, “Well, no, you couldn’t. It was about a truckload of cash, wasn’t it?”
“Something like that.”
The man looked downhill. The dogs couldn’t be seen yet, but they could be heard, increasingly frantic and increasingly excited, held back by their handlers’ lesser agility on the hill. “This could be your lucky day,” he said, “and mine, too.” Another sour face. “I could use one.” Stooping to pick up his canvas sack, he said, “I’m hunting for the pot, that’s what I’m doing. I have a car back here.”
Parker followed him the short climb to the crest, where the trees were thinner but within a cluster of them a black Ford SUV was parked on a barely visible dirt road. “Old logging road,” the man said, and opened the back cargo door of the SUV to put the rifle and sack inside. “I’d like it if you’d sit up front.”
“Sure.”
Parker got into the front passenger seat as the man came around the other side to get behind the wheel. The key was already in the ignition. He started the car and drove them at an angle down the wooded north slope, the road usually visible only because it was free of trees.