seemed to look at Lisa for the first time. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re out of luck. You’ll have to come with us - “
“Jesus, we don’t want herV
“Shut up!” The gun shook for a moment in the girl’s hand; Lisa flinched, waiting for an involuntary squeezing of the trigger. “I know we don’t want her. But we’re stuck with her. What the hell else do we do with her?”
“Jesus, I don’t know-” Despite the dark mask of the glasses, worry and indecision showed in the thin face of the young man.
Then there was the sound of a car coming down the ramp. The young man swung round, looking on the verge of panic. “I put the chain across the top of the down ramp! The bastard’s coming down the other side!”
The girl jerked the gun at Lisa and the red-haired woman. “Into the truck - quick!”
So far the red-haired woman had not moved. Now she looked at Lisa and, her voice only faintly showing signs of strain, said, “I’m sorry. I think we had better do what they say.”
Lisa could not believe what she was involved in, yet there was no mistaking the blunt truth of the gun in the girl’s hand. She had been engaged to a policeman for six months and married to him for eight weeks: she knew that crime was more than just an abstract headline in one’s daily newspaper. But hearing Scobie talk of it, seeing the occasional mental scar that came to the surface in him, was far different from this. “I’m staying here! I don’t want any part of it - !”
The young man cursed savagely, stepped into the elevator, grabbed her and shoved her out towards the truck. She struggled violently, but he was too strong for her; she felt a
blow across the back of her neck, everything was suddenly blurred and next moment she was flung headlong into the back of the truck. When she rolled over on her back, her gaze clearing, she saw the red-haired woman being pushed into the truck and the girl scrambling in after her. The doors were slammed shut and a moment later she heard the young man jump up into the front of the truck. She heard the other car come down the ramp into the garage, then its horn was tooted twice. The engine of the truck was already running; then the truck jumped forward, the sound of the suddenly revved-up engine roaring in the low-roofed confines of the garage. She tried to sit up, but the girl, sitting on the floor of the truck beside the red-haired woman, leaned across and poked the gun into Lisa’s bosom.
“Lie still! If you move, I’ll shoot you!”
Lisa lay back, sliding to one side on the slippery metal floor as the truck, engine roaring, swung round the newly-arrived car parked outside the attendant’s office and went up the ramp out of the garage. She could see the red-haired woman flattened against the other side of the truck, her face suddenly wide open in her first expression of fear. The girl waved the gun at both women, her mouth snarling wordlessly, then she crawled forward to the partition that separated the back of the truck from the driver’s seat. She hammered on the partition with her hand.
“Abel - slow down! We don’t want to be pulled in for speeding!”
Up front Abel Simmons eased up off the gas pedal, feeling the effort in his calf muscle as if he were trying to lift a weight with his foot. He opened his hands, letting the strain run out of them; his fingers felt as if he had been hanging by them from a cliff-edge. His head was aching, as it always did when he was worried. His face was streaming with sweat and his dark glasses were beginning to fog up. But he couldn’t take them off yet, not till he was out of 69th and had turned up Third Avenue. They had worked out the route a dozen times, taking the longer way, always putting a corner behind
them and moving with the traffic instead of going right across town. All he had to do was not panic.
Everything had been going so well until the blonde bitch had unexpectedly appeared in the picture. There had been