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Sudden Prey

Sudden Prey

Titel: Sudden Prey
Autoren: John Sandford
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the back.
    “Here she comes,” said Franklin, calling on the radio.
    “Check your piece,” Lucas said over the seat to Sherrill. He wasn’t quite sure of her, what she’d do. He wanted to see. He slipped his own .45 out of his coat pocket, punched out the magazine, racked the shell out of the chamber, then went through the ritual of reloading. In the front seat, Sherrill was spinning the wheel on her .357.
    As Sloan took the car through an easy U-turn and the three blocks toward the Midland Steel Federal Credit Union, Lucas looked out the window at the street, and felt the world begin to shift.
    The shift always happened before a fight, a suddenly needle-sharp appreciation of image and texture, of the smell of other bodies, of cigarette tar and Juicy Fruit, gun oil, wet leather. If your mind could always work like this, he thought, if it could always operate on this level of realization, you would be a genius. Or mad. Or both.
    Lucas remembered a stray thought from earlier in the day, picked up the handset and called dispatch.
    “We need two squads on University,” he said. “We’re tracking a stolen Chevy van and we want a uniform stop as soon as possible.”
    He recited the tag number and license and the dispatcher confirmed it. “We’ve got a car on Riverside,” the dispatcher said. “We’ll start them that way.”
     
     
     
    CANDY PULLED THE van to the curb outside Ham’s Pizza. Georgie and Duane were waiting, and she slid over to the passenger seat, and popped the back door for Georgie as Duane got in the driver’s seat.
    “Everything okay?” Duane asked.
    “Great, Duane,” Candy said. She gave him her cheerleader smile.
    Duane hungered for her, in his Duane-like way. They’d gone to school together, elementary through high school. They’d played on a jungle gym, smart Candy and not-so-smart Duane. She’d let him see her tits a couple of times—once down by Meyer’s Creek, skinny-dipping with Dick, when Dick hadn’t seen Duane coming, but Candy had. She was Dick’s woman, all right, but wasn’t above building extracurricular loyalty for a time when it might be needed.
    “Drive,” Georgie said from the back. And to Candy: “You set?”
    “I’m set.”
    “This should be a good one,” Georgie said.
    “Should be great,” Candy said. Ten o’clock on a payday morning. The paychecks were issued at eleven. The first employees would be sneaking out to cash their checks by eleven-oh-one. That’d be an hour too late.
    “There’s the nigger again,” Duane said, distractedly.
    A giant black man had come into Ham’s before Candy had gotten there, ordered a slice, asked if he could pay with food stamps. When told that he couldn’t, he’d reluctantly taken two crumpled dollar bills out of his pocket and pushed them across the counter.
    “Food stamps,” Georgia said in disgust. “He’s one of those screwballs. Look at him talk to himself.”
    Franklin, shambling along the street, said, “One block, fifteen seconds.”
     
     
     
    DUANE SAID, “ THERE it is,” and his voice may have trembled when he said it. Georgie and Candy turned away from the black man and looked down the street at the yellow brick building with the plastic sign, and the short stoop out front.
    “Remember what I said, Duane. We’ll be in there for one minute,” Georgie said. She leaned forward and spoke softly into his ear, and when Duane tried to turn his head away, she caught his earlobe and tugged it back, pinched it between her nails. Duane flinched, and she said, “If you drive away, one of us will hunt you down and kill you. If you drive, Duane, you’re dead. Isn’t that right, Candy?”
    “That’s right,” Candy said, looking at him. She let some ice show, then switched to her God-Duane-I’d-Love-to-Fuck-You-But-I-Gotta-Be-True-to-Dickie look. “But he won’t drive. Duane’s okay.” She patted his thigh.
    “Oh, I’ll do it,” Duane said. He looked like a trapped rat. “I mean, I’ll do it. I did it in Rice Lake, didn’t I?”
    He pulled the van to the curb and Georgie gave him a look, then the two women pulled nude nylon stockings over their faces and took the pistols out of their coat pockets.
    “Let’s go,” Georgie said. She climbed out, and Candy followed a step behind; it passed through Georgie’s mind that Candy looked radiant.
    “I feel like I might pop one,” Candy said to Georgie, as they climbed the four steps to the Credit Union door.
     
     
     
    FRANKLIN WAS
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