Never Too Rich (35 page)

He glanced back over his shoulder. Sure nuff, he had
their full attention. Right
on.

He downshifted to first and resumed his slow cruise.
Then, moments before the car pulled back alongside him, he opened
the throttle all the way and did a wheelie.

The result was awesome. The front wheel of the
Harley rose impressively off the asphalt and hovered in the air at
an impossible angle. He kept it up for an entire half block,
crossing University Place before he let it land, smooth as a
kiss.

No mean feat, that.

The driver of the car, miffed at being outdone,
squealed his tires angrily and abruptly turned left down Fifth
Avenue. The vehicle disappeared.

Snake roared laughter into the wind and moved his
legs forward, resting his scuffed engineer boots on the
custom-installed highway pegs.

Coming up on Sixth Avenue, he had to slow down.
Ahead, the yellow light was just turning red, and a string of cars
was slowing to a halt.

Suddenly his hard tawny eyes crinkled with
pleasure.

Way at the front, right behind the crosswalk, he
spied a bright red Ferrari shining like a newly polished apple.

He could feel the excitement stirring in his
groin.

“
Well, what do you know?” he said
to himself. “Somebody sure thinks he’s hot shit!”

Snake’s lips widened crookedly at the prospect of a
challenge. It had been too long since he’d enjoyed a good drag
race.

And from experience, he knew that where there was a
pricey sports car, he would find a foxy chick wedged in the
passenger seat.

Might as well show her what a
real
man
drove.

Billie Dawn froze the moment the shattering roar of
what could only be an approaching Harley-Davidson rent the air. She
grasped Duncan’s arm with such force that he could feel her
fingernails digging through his sleeve. Then a single bright
headlight beam stabbed through the rear window and flooded the
car’s interior like a searchlight, before veering off sideways.

The roar decreased to a low menacing growl as the
motorcycle pulled up alongside the passenger door.

Duncan sensed the potent fear coming off her.

“
Billie, it’s all right.” But she
knew better. Even with her head averted from the window, she knew
whose bike this particular one was. From her years spent riding
pillion as Snake’s ole lady, she knew every last squeak of his
scoot as intimately as years-long residents get to know every creak
and whisper of their settling old house.

“
Doc,” she moaned, “Doc, it’s
him!
I know it is. Oh, for God’s sake, Doc—”

“
Darling,” he began, “it’s only a
bike—”

“
It’s
his
bike!” She jerked
as the snarl of the Harley’s engine suddenly crescendoed to
ear-splitting volume and receded, crescendoed and receded. The
motorcyclist was gunning his accelerator. It was show-off
time—challenge to a drag race.

Duncan had to raise his voice to make himself heard
above the din. “Darling, maybe if you just—”

The roar died to an idle, and knuckles suddenly
rapped on her window.

She let out a cry.

The rapping continued. As if by its own volition,
her head turned slowly to look out.

Her mouth gaped open in shock.

How well she had known that huge caveman with that
long dirty black hair, that great unkempt greasy beard, those lips
curved into a perpetually mirthless grin. How well, too, she had
known that familiar glint of gold that flashed from his earlobe and
nostril, and the nickel sheen of all those loathsome skull pins and
iron crosses and swastikas and white-power fists that cluttered his
denim overlay.

For a moment they just stared at each other through
the delicate barrier of glass—Billie Dawn with terror, Snake with
openmouthed surprise.

Shirl?
She watched his lips mouthing her
former name, and then she saw his squinty, mean yellow eyes
hardening into sharp pinpoints. Remembering her escape from the
clubhouse, no doubt; remembering Olympia’s fearless rescue of her.
Remembering, above all, how a woman had broken up the hellish gang
rape, making fools of them all before running off with the
booty.

Terror writhed poisonously inside her gut. If there
was one thing a Satan’s Warrior wouldn’t stand for, it was somebody
getting the better of him. That a woman had done so was doubly
unforgivable. Triply intolerable. Punishable by . . . what?

She didn’t want to know.

Snake’s initial surprise boiled into raging fury. He
reached out for the door handle—the door was locked. Thank God.

But would that deter? Or would it provoke?

Without warning, he began pounding the window with
his fist. The window quivered under the onslaught, but held.

He hit it again, harder, this time with the four
huge skull rings sprouting from his fingerless gloves—rings that
did double duty as brass knuckles.

With a dry-sounding crunch, the polymer-filled
safety glass fractured into a sheet of opaque crushed ice.

“
Doc!” she screamed, covering her
head with her hands. “Doc,
do
something!
Step on
it!”

The pitch of her assertive demand threw some vital
switch within Duncan Cooper. Gone was the mild-mannered surgeon
with the soothing bedside manner; this Duncan Cooper was Mario
Andretti and Evel Knievel rolled into one. Heedless of the uptown
traffic speeding through the intersection from the left, he shifted
into first gear and jammed the accelerator down to the floor. The
wide, thick-tread tires bit the avenue’s asphalt, the rear of the
Ferrari fishtailed once, and with a squeal of rubber they were off.
Cramping the steering wheel violently first to the left and then to
the right, he swung into the school of approaching cars, found an
opening, and tadpoled through.

Horns blared, braked squealed in their wake, and a
loud report like a shotgun blast reverberated as two vehicles
slammed into one another.

Duncan wasn’t about to stop for the accident he had
caused, not with a crazed outlaw biker ready to leap into the car
and drag Billie off to some festering urban cave. He pulled a hard
right, heading up Sixth Avenue, and speed-shifted from first into
fourth.

Vroom!
The tiger under the hood roared and
they were off. Burning the red lights and careening around
cross-town traffic, they sped uptown like a bullet shot from
hell.

Snake will always be after me! Billie thought as she
stared ahead in a trance of bewildered fright. I’ll never be safe!
Not as long as he’s alive.

Beside her, Duncan glanced into the rearview mirror
and caught a glimpse of a single high-beam headlight fast catching
up. He drew his lips grimly across his teeth.
Damn.
All the
fancy wheelwork had been for nothing. Snake was right on their
tail.

The chase was on.

Chapter 37

Duncan drove with one eye on the rearview
mirror.

He couldn’t have missed the single wobbly headlight
gaining in size and glare if he’d tried. Even reduced in the
mirror, it hurtled at them like a blinding sun—and he was doing
eighty-five in a Ferrari, for Chrissakes!

“
Damn!” he growled. How fast could
a Harley go, anyway?

Ahead was Twenty-eighth Street. The flower-district
wholesalers were shuttered; the riotous jungle of palms and ficus
trees was indoors under lock and key. During daytime, these
sidewalks were a veritable tropical rain forest, and the commercial
side streets one huge traffic jam; now they were empty and
desolate. Grimy and spooky and dark.

Duncan was relying on gut instinct, not conscious
thought. And instinct made him turn now. “Hold on,” he told Billie
grimly, simultaneously twisting the wheel, and downshifting so
madly the Ferrari went into a broadside skid that brought it, tires
screeching, two entire lanes over. When the car came to a stop, it
was angled across Sixth Avenue, its rakish hood pointing westward
into Twenty-ninth Street.

Duncan didn’t waste a second. Speed-shifting as fast
as his hand allowed, he stomped on the accelerator. With another
squeal of its tires, the Ferrari left Sixth Avenue behind in a
cloud of exhaust and burnt rubber and shot crosstown on
Twenty-ninth as though powered by rocket fuel.

Billie felt herself pushed back in her seat by the
force of the takeoff. After a moment, she twisted around and looked
back through the rear window.

A cry caught in her throat. Snake’s big Harley was
just banking around the corner.

He was practically on them! They didn’t stand a
chance in hell of losing him, not in city traffic where, for all
the Ferrari’s speed, maneuverability stood in the biker’s
favor.

“
Doc . . .” she warned
haltingly.

“
I see him,” Duncan said tightly.
“Just sit back and hold on.”

She grabbed hold of the dashboard with both hands,
but even so, she wasn’t prepared for the way he threw the car into
a sharp left at the intersection at Seventh Avenue. It was more
like flying than driving.

They burst downtown for three short blocks, then
made an even sharper left onto Twenty-sixth Street.

A serious mistake.

“
Damn!” Duncan growled as he was
forced to slow down. Up ahead, a car and a van were waiting at a
red light. There was no way he could tadpole the Ferrari past.
“We’re stuck.”

As if to prove that point, Snake at that very moment
pulled past the driver’s side of the car, his left hand holding the
bike steady. Raising his right hand high, he swung a length of
heavy chain.

Billie threw her arms protectively up over her face,
but Duncan was too busy doing fancy hand- and footwork to think of
self-protection. Clenching his teeth, he slammed the car in
reverse.

The Ferrari virtually flew backward. The heavy chain
links, intended for the windshield, missed and glanced off the hood
instead. Metal crashed against metal and a shower of sparks burst
up into the night air. Then Snake was past, his engine roar
diminishing, his taillight brightening as he applied the
brakes.

After the initial shock of the attack, Billie
lowered her arms from her face. “Your poor car,” she said, leaning
forward to survey the damage in the sickly glow of the
streetlights. Her hair fell forward, hiding her profile from him.
“It’s all my fault,” she murmured, turning a white, scared face
toward him. “I’m sorry, Doc.”

“
Keep quiet and keep down,” Duncan
advised her grimly, already in the process of backing the car to
Seventh Avenue as fast as it would go. He was hoping to make a
getaway in reverse, but as though conspiring with Snake, two cabs
turned into the street, hemming him in from behind.

Duncan couldn’t back up any further. Cursing, he
applied the brakes.

Now he was in trouble. Big trouble. He ground his
teeth savagely. He and Billie were trapped. Between the vehicles up
ahead and those behind, he had maybe a hundred feet of
maneuverability, max. And those hundred feet were all in front of
him. Desperately he shifted back into first gear. But that was as
far as he got. He had to shield his eyes with his hand.

The Harley’s blinding high beam was racing right at
them—on a collision course!

“
Doc!” Billie’s hand dug into his
arm like a steel claw.

“
He wouldn’t,” Duncan said with
more certainty than he felt.

Then, just as they braced themselves against the
inevitable crash, Snake swerved neatly sideways and roared past the
passenger side with bare inches to spare. His chain struck Billie
Dawn’s damaged side window, sending a shower of glass erupting into
the car’s interior.

Billie let out a scream, not so much of fear as of
fury.

“
Are you hurt?” were the first
words out of Duncan’s mouth.

“
I . . . I don’t think so,” she
said, furiously shaking glass out of her hair. She shook her head
and added, “The chain missed me.”

“
Thank God!” he said fervently.
Hearing brakes squealing, they both twisted around in their seats
and glanced back. Already, Snake had braked and was turning the
bike around to make another run at them.

“
Je-
sus
!” Duncan said
incredulously. “Doesn’t he ever give up?”

With another roar, Snake came at them from behind,
the chain ready to swing again. This time it crashed down on the
Ferrari’s roof.

The whole car shook under the impact. It sounded
like a giant with cleated boots had stomped on it.

“
That ape’s going to kill us!”
Billie whispered.

Duncan’s features hardened. “Oh no, he won’t,” he
declared from between clenched teeth as, just ahead, Snake was once
again turning the bike for another charge.

But Duncan Cooper was fighting mad now. He wasn’t
going to wait for the light to change like a cornered duck; above
all, he wasn’t going to allow that fiend to beat the shit out of
Billie or himself—or his prized car any longer.

Abruptly stepping on the gas and twisting the wheel,
Duncan threw the Ferrari into a sharp left and, leaning on the
horn, jumped it up over the curb and onto the sidewalk. A few yards
further on, the right fender plowed into a trashcan and sent debris
flying. Just yards ahead, some New York pedestrians, that hardiest
and most self-protective of species, were clustered around a
sidewalk jobber hawking yo-yos that glowed poisonously green in the
dark. The moment they were bathed in the Ferrari’s headlights, the
crowd virtually flew aside. All but the vendor. He was standing
behind his folding table and simply flattened himself against the
building’s grimy brick wall.