BooksBarbecue
Back Look Both Ways
Chapters (57)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Foreword
  4. Prologue
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-One
  26. Twenty-Two
  27. Twenty-Three
  28. Twenty-Four
  29. Twenty-Five
  30. Twenty-Six
  31. Twenty-Seven
  32. Twenty-Eight
  33. Twenty-Nine
  34. Thirty
  35. Thirty-One
  36. Thirty-Two
  37. Thirty-Three
  38. Thirty-Four
  39. Thirty-Five
  40. Thirty-Six
  41. Thirty-Seven
  42. Thirty-Eight
  43. Thirty-Nine
  44. Forty
  45. Forty-One
  46. Forty-Two
  47. Forty-Three
  48. Forty-Four
  49. Forty-Five
  50. Forty-Six
  51. Forty-Seven
  52. Forty-Eight
  53. Forty-Nine
  54. Fifty
  55. Praise for Linwood Barclay
  56. Also by Linwood Barclay
  57. About the Publisher

The woman nodded. “On the ferry coming over, and just a little while ago I saw him running down toward the road, like he was headed into town. Pretty dumb thing to do if you ask me. So long as those things can’t drive through cinder-block walls, we should be okay in here.”

Sandra said, “Shit.”

That struck her as suspicious behavior. Geary was right. This was a safer place to ride things out. If Stapleton, whoever he really was, had anything to do with this, it made sense that he would try to get away. If she couldn’t find him, she needed someone else with some computer smarts. Ruskin didn’t strike her as up to the challenge.

Then it hit her.

“Joe,” she said.

“What?” Ruskin said.

“Joe Bridgeman,” she said. “The chief of police.”

“Him?” Ruskin said. “The Inspector Clouseau of Garrett Island? I wasn’t exactly impressed. I say we wait for the Joint Base team.”

The Clouseau comment didn’t sit well with Sandra, but she let it go. Hadn’t Joe told her he’d turned his back on high-tech when he decided it would be more fun to wear a badge and catch bad guys?

“Where’s Lisa Carver’s computer?” she asked Ruskin.

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Is it here?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

Sandra said. “Let’s see if we can get into that sucker.”

Twenty-Seven

Nick’s situation was, not to put too fine a point on it, perilous.

He continued to scramble in place on the downward-moving escalator, keeping his head low as Arrivals straddled the moving stairway, inches over his head, on their way to the lower level of Garrett Mall. He couldn’t let himself ride to the bottom, and then make a break for it, because there were too many of those nutcase cars down there already, waiting to pick him off.

The one Arrival that turned itself into a ramp to facilitate the other cars determined to reach the lower level was severely crushed, but continued to serve its purpose. Nick had lost count how many cars had driven right over him, but it had to be at least a dozen, and they just kept coming. He was tempted to poke his head up above the parapet, as it were, and see if maybe the parade overhead was about to end, but didn’t dare take the chance.

If he’d ever been hoping that someone might help him, he was over it. Shoppers who’d fled to the lower level, thinking they were safe, had scattered once the Arrivals got down there. Nick wished he could get to the emergency button that would shut the escalator down, but figured it was either at the top, where it wasn’t safe, or the bottom, where it was even less safe. So he kept crawling in place.