Caught by Surprise Read Online Free PDF

walk to the sedan, which appeared to be occupied by only one person, a man.
    A few minutes later when she returned to the patrol car holding the man’s license, she was frowning. “Jerk,” Millie muttered as she slid into the driver’s seat.
    Brig straightened. “Is he givin’ you trouble?”
    “He’s a wise-guy kid, nineteen years old, and
huge
. He looks like a bodybuilding fanatic. A Neanderthal. He not only eats Wheaties for breakfast, he eats the box.”
    “Want me to twist his nose a bit?”
    She grinned crookedly. “Get serious.”
    “Who’s kiddin’?”
    Shaking her head, she picked up a radio handset and called for a standard check of the sedan’s license tag. Several minutes later the report came back—the sedan was stolen.
    “This
is
gonna be fun,” Brig noted.
    Suddenly the teenager shoved his door open. He leaped out, raced across the road, vaulted over the white board fence into the horse pasture, and took off at a run for the forested hills on the pasture’s far side.
    “Let’s see,” Millie murmured calmly. “Charlie’s on dispatch today.
Charlie
,” she called into the radio handset. “I’m going to bird dog a six-oh-five on West Grove Road.”
    “A six-oh-five! Ohmigod!” the other deputy called back. “Ohmigod! Wait there! I’ll be there in a minute! No, go on, I’ll call Raybo! Wait! I gotta put the bullets in my gun!”
    “That bloke does a fair impression of Barney Fife,” Brig observed.
    Millie nodded. She quickly pushed her door open, reached under the driver’s seat, and retrieved a holstered pistol.
    “You plan to do a little elephant huntin’ with that monster, do you?” he asked. “It’s bigger than you are.”
    “Standard police pistol. I’m an expert with it.”
    “Puts respect for the law in me, love, you can count on it.”
    “Hah. Don’t kid me. You’re fearless.” She gave him a quick, comic salute. “I’m off,
mate
. Stay here and tell Charlie which way I went.”
    “Gotcha, sweetheart.”
    She left the car and trotted across the road, attaching the gun and holster to her belt as she went. Brig waited as she scaled the fence with graceful movements that would have done a gymnast proud. Once in the pasture, she ran like a gazelle. He decided then that the time was ripe to get out of the car and follow her, and he did.
    The teenager was muscled, but he wasn’t fast. As soon as Millie entered a dense pine tree grove, she spotted him a hundred yards ahead, dodging between tree trunks and slowing down.
    She chased him at a lope, keeping one hand on her holstered gun. Once in the navy she’d had to shoot a sailor in the leg. He was belligerent and drunk. He’d trashed a bar near the base. When she and her partner arrived, the sailor broke her partner’s arm and cameafter her with a switchblade. Wounding him was the best option; a completely acceptable one, regardless of her size and gender. Nevertheless, the more pigheaded among the men in the shore patrol had gossiped that only a woman would use a gun in such a situation.
    Now she wouldn’t pull her gun unless the offender pulled one first. The teenager didn’t have a gun, that was obvious.
    He was dressed in torn army fatigue pants and a dirty white T-shirt. Millie heard him gasping and cursing as low pine branches snared his face and arms. Moving swiftly and breathing hard, she closed in on him.
    “Halt! Sheriffs deputy!” she yelled.
    He stumbled to a stop, turned around, assessed her with a smirk, then yelled an obscenity.
    “Ouch. My tender ears,” Millie muttered under her breath. The teenager continued on his escape route, and she trotted after him. They crested a hill and the pine grove ended unexpectedly at the edge of a steep six-foot drop. His arms flailing, the teenager couldn’t stop in time. He flopped out of sight and Millie heard a loud splash.
    She slid to a stop at the edge of the drop and looked down on a watering pond. Flat pasture land met the pond on three sides; the