Head Shot (A Thriller): A Crime and Suspense Thriller (15 page)

Forty-Eight

Mike rolled down Highway 2, going east.  He had passed by the turn-off that led into downtown Rodgers Bay as he would bring Laurie into town tomorrow to give her a little tour.

He raised up in his seat and used the rearview mirror to check on his sleeping passenger.

She had stirred a bit at the gas station, turning over in the process, but now he could hear her soft snores.  He always teased her about her snoring, exaggerating wildly on the volume she created, but the fact was he thought it was one of the sweetest sounds he'd ever heard.

Mike absently touched the jewelry box still snuggled in his front pocket.

Suddenly, the glare of headlights startled Mike and caused him to squint.

Jesus, he thought to himself, where did this guy come from?

He checked his speedometer.  He was doing sixty, five miles an hour over the speed limit, and he was on a straight stretch of road.  If this nut was in such a hurry, he reasoned, why didn't he just pass?

Mike considered speeding up, then did the opposite, taking his foot completely off the accelerator.  He could see the bumper and the grille of the vehicle behind him with frightening clarity.  It looked like a truck, or a blazer.

This guy was way too close. 

Suddenly, the Taurus lurched forward, bumped by the bigger vehicle from behind.

Laurie stirred and began to sit up.

"Jesus Fucking Christ!" Mike shouted.

The truck behind him slammed into the Taurus again, with horrific force.

Laurie, struggling to sit up, was thrown forward and her head whiplashed against the metal camera case lodged in the footspace behind the car's passenger seat.

Mike risked a glance at her and saw that she was slumped forward on the seat.

And then he was thrown forward again, the steering wheel hit him directly in the stomach and chest, briefly knocking the wind from him. 

Instinctively, he tromped the accelerator to the floor, and the Taurus shot ahead.  Mike's mind began racing, struggling to make sense of the situation.  Everything had been going fine, the town was deserted, he filled up the-

The gas station.

The big guy and the truck. 

Oh, no.

The trees off the side of the highway were now a blur.  Mike checked the speedometer and saw that he was creeping up toward a hundred.  He couldn't keep this speed, Highway 2 wound its way through the Chequamegon National Forest. 

Besides, the guy behind him was catching up.

It was all a mistake, Mike thought to himself.

The redneck must have me confused with someone else.

Mike grip the steering wheel, fighting panic.  His knuckles were turning white and his stomach churned.

Forty-Nine

Hank Campbell felt the blood lust in every fiber of his being.  This was like just before squeezing the trigger or letting an arrow fly toward a buck on the first day of deer season.

What a stroke of luck!  Hank grinned crookedly in the darkness of the Bronco's cab.  He was going to be a hero!  Maybe they'd even put him on television!

Hank's meaty paw snatched the mouthpiece from the small CB unit bolted to the underside of the Bronco's giant dashboard and turned the dial to the emergency channel.

He clicked the small transmitting button with his thumb.

"This is Hank Campbell, I'm in pur, pur..." his mind struggled for the right word, "...I'm chasing the guy on
Nation’s Most Wanted
!"

Hank's voice was booming in its excitement.

"He's trying to get away!  I'm gonna shoot his tires out!"

He considered what else to say.

"We're west of town, on Highway 2."

No one answered, so he asked a question more to himself than to anyone who might be listening.

"Should I try to kill him?"

Fifty

Mike Sharpe pounded the steering wheel.

The show, the re-enactment, the killer supposedly somewhere in the area!

Shit!

The thought had occurred to Mike, he'd even joked about it with Laurie, about the possibility that someone would confuse him with the real killer, since the reason he got he part was because of his close physical resemblance, but it had seemed so ridiculous!

Now it was really happening!

He took out his cell phone and dialed 9-1-1.

No service.

“Shit!” he yelled at no one in particular.

Mike put the brakes on the Taurus.  Why was he running away from this guy?  All he would have to do is tell this stupid motherfucker that he was the actor who portrayed the killer on the show, he wasn't the actual killer.

He had to get Laurie to a doctor, and fast.  As he slowed, he looked into the back seat and saw that the blood was slowing, but Laurie was still unconscious.

Jesus, this was a nightmare.

As he pulled the car over, his fear began turning to anger.  This stupid fucker almost killed the both of them!  All because he was too goddamned stupid to realize the difference between television and reality.

Gravel crunched under the Taurus' tires as Mike guided the car to a complete stop on the shoulder of the road.

The Bronco mirrored the car's movements, and stopped some twenty feet behind.

Mike flung the car door open and sprang out.  He had to clear this up and clear it up fast so he could get Laurie to a hospital, or at least get back in a service area for his cell.

He took a step toward the Bronco.

Fifty-One

Hank Campbell opened his door, placed his big left foot on the ground and brought the Ruger police carbine to his shoulder.  The barrel dropped slowly into the gap between the now open door and the frame of the Bronco's cab.

The Ruger was a light rifle, designed to replace the big, and frequently ineffective shotguns carried by most cops in their squad cars.  The Ruger was very quickly becoming the weapon of choice for cops to put in their cruisers.

Hank got a great deal on the carbine, it was actually a pre-production model that somehow ended up in the hands of his friend Ben Hines, owner of Hines Gun Shop.  When Hines told Hank that it was the gun more and more cops were using, the sale was already done.  Hank, after all, considered himself an unofficial member of the law enforcement community.

The gun featured a clip holding 15 rounds of 9mm ammunition, far more firepower than the standard shotguns holding four 12-gauge shells.

Hank had jerryrigged a clipping mechanism along the passenger door to hold the rifle and keep it in quick reach, as well as keeping the short barrel out of the sight of passing motorists.

Now, as he watched the killer come closer, Hank steadied himself and let out a small breath, then began to squeeze the trigger.  Just as he was about to send a round hurtling into the killer's chest, a small pebble shifted under the weight of the big man, and it was enough to force Hank's shot high.

Hank watched as the killer dove back into the car.

He swung the rifle and aimed it into the back window then stopped himself.

There was a woman back there.  He didn't want to shoot her.

The CB crackled on the dashboard. 

Without taking his eyes off the car in front of him, he reached for the handset.

Fifty-Two

Mike felt the blood trickle down his chest, and he thought fast.

I’ve been shot.

He resisted the urge to giggle at the ridiculousness of the situation.  Instead, he decided to yell at the top of his lungs.

"You've got the wrong guy!" he shouted, instantly realizing it was the wrong thing to say.

The sideview mirror exploded, sending a cloud of glass and chrome crashing to the pavement.

"I'm an actor, you idiot!" he yelled again.  This time, the back window crashed inward, showering Laurie in glass as the bullet made its way though the windshield.

Clearly, this fuckhead wasn't listening, or believing, a thing he said.  And he also wasn't apparently concerned with shooting an innocent bystander.

He had to get this guy away from Laurie.  The stupid bastard must have seen Laurie in the back seat at the gas station, so he had to figure that she was the killer's next victim. 

That was good.

Maybe he already thought she was dead.  In any event, Mike wasn't about to wait around for the guy to figure it all out.

If Mike could get away from the car, he reasoned, the guy would follow and leave Laurie alone, thinking she was a victim.  At least Mike wasn't totally helpless, he could protect her from a stray bullet, and clearly, this guy was crazy enough to keep shooting into the car.

Mike poked his head between the driver and passenger seat.  He saw the cut on Laurie's forehead covered with dark red blood.  Her nose and mouth had stopped bleeding, but he was worried about her head, she probably had a concussion.

He reached beneath him, the movement sending searing pain across the top of his shoulder, and got a wad of napkins left over from a stop at a fast food restaurant and pressed them against her forehead, then grabbed a baseball cap also from the front seat.

He turned the cap backwards, and fit it over Laurie's head, trapping the napkins tightly against her wound, hoping the direct pressure would stop the bleeding.

It wasn't great, but it would have to do.

He picked up the few napkins that were still left and he jammed them between his shirt and the jagged wound, the contact making his head spin with pain.

Mike slowly reached up and turned the dome light switch to off, so it wouldn't flash on when he opened the door, and then he reached across the car and unlocked the passenger door.

He would have to do this quickly and offer as little a target as possible to the idiot with the gun.

Mike turned back to Laurie who still hadn't moved.  He wanted to tell her that he loved her, that he wanted to marry her, that he didn't want to die, but there wasn't time and she wouldn't hear him anyway.

His fingers clasped the door lever and he gathered his legs beneath him, wedging his foot against the small rise between the driver's and passenger's footspaces.

Adrenaline shot into his bloodstream as he prepared to make his move.

Fifty-Three

"Bullshit!  He's right here!" Hank boomed into the handset.

The voice on the other end was Rodgers Bay Police Chief Don Lenzen.

"Jesus Christ, Hank, wait until I get there, Hank, don't shoot at him anymore, don't do anything else!" the Chief yelled back.

"Look, I seen the damn show and I'm telling you, this is the guy."

"But what if you're wrong, Hank?"

"I'm not."

"I'm rolling now, Hank, I'll be there in five minutes, just wait for me to get there and don't do a thing."

"I'll keep him pinned down for you, Chief."

"Are you listening, Hank, don't do anyth-"

Before the Chief could finish that thought, Hank Campbell's thumb slipped off the mouthpiece's switch as he saw the passenger door fly open and a blur of feet and shoulders as Mike Sharpe vaulted out of the car, hit the shoulder, and rolled into the forest on the edge of the road.

"Shit!  He's running!"  Hank yelled to no one in particular, dropping the handset to dangle by its cord from the CB's console, and he jogged up to the car.

Laurie Bradford rolled onto her back and looked at the enormous man peering down at her.  She had a concussion and could not focus her eyes on the surely distorted image in front of her.

"Don't worry ma'am, the cops are on their way."

He looked closely at the woman.  She was beautiful.  His anger rose inside him, replacing the adrenaline with a white-hot fury.

"You're gonna be all right," he said, making sure the safety of the Ruger was off.

"This fucker ain't gonna kill again" Hank said, and thundered off into the brush, the Ruger carbine in his hands.

Fifty-Four

Mike's plan was simple.  He wanted to get this guy away from Laurie, and take him as far away as possible.

With that thought in mind, he lowered his left shoulder, the other one was still burning with pain, and crashed ahead, his thighs pumping furiously, his body bouncing off thick tree branches as he slipped and clawed his way through the thick forest.

It was deathly quiet in here, and he knew he was making noise, which was exactly what he wanted to do.  He was playing a dangerous game and he knew it.  He had to let this bumfuck know where he was to get him to follow, but he couldn't let him catch up, or the next bullet might not miss.  He paused, his breath coming in ragged gasps, more from fear than exertion, and he heard something crashing through the brush toward him in answer.

Good, he was following.

Mike hoped all those hours on the treadmill would pay off.  But this was different, and he was still losing blood.  The ground was uneven, with rocks strewn everywhere.  If he wasn't careful, he could easily break an ankle.

He knew he could take solace in the fact that the guy following him was huge.  The bastard had to weigh at least three hundred pounds, and at least some of that was fat Mike remembered from the quick glance he'd given the man at the gas station.

Mike took a deep breath and raced forward.  Now that he knew the man was following him, the priority was to put as much distance as possible between himself and this nut.  Sweat poured down his face, and his heart was pounding.  A bluff immediately rose before him and he scurried up it quickly, the footholds rising to meet him, and his breath slowed down, his wind came back and he began covering ground fast.