Touching Evil Read Online Free PDF Page A

realized it was wet, too.  His stomach lurched in disgust.  Lowering the gun, he yanked the goggles back in place as he turned to run from the room, from the house, forgetting the need for caution.  
    “DCI!  Put your weapon down!”
     A figure was standing behind the couch in the next room, gun drawn.  Flinging himself sideways, Sonny fired twice, hitting the floor as the man returned fire.  He scrabbled along the carpet on his knees and elbows.  The stranger had taken shelter behind the couch.  Sonny didn’t wait for him to raise his head to fire again.  Instead he sent three shots through the back of the couch in the area where he’d last seen the man and raced toward the door he’d entered through.  Caution was no longer an issue.  Speed was.  He burst through the back door, ran across the patio and was stung by a volley of what appeared to be a swarm of bees, stinging his ankles and legs.
    “DCI!  Lay down your weapon!”
    The goggles painted the man standing before him in a ghostly green glow.  But the weapon he had pointed directly at Sonny’s chest looked all too real.  “Don’t shoot.”  Slowly he bent to let his gun clatter to the patio.  “I’m unarmed.”
    “Hands behind your head.  Kick the weapon to the side.  Now!”  
    “I heard you shooting at Dr. Channing, Mister,” a small voice said almost simultaneously.  “So I’m gonna shoot you!”  Another volley of bees.  Which weren’t bees at all, Sonny realized then, but BBs.  
    “Go back in the house, son.  Now!  Now!”
    Sonny dove toward the small shadow crouched on the next patio even as a bullet sang by.  He tackled a miniature body—a kid—rolling, and came to his feet with the writhing boy held tightly before him.  
    “You don’t want to do that,” the DCI agent warned, but Sonny couldn’t hear him.  It was Mommy’s voice that screamed through his mind, echoes of fear and anger clawing through him.  
    “Drop your gun or I break his neck.”  Sonny knocked the puny BB gun out of the kid’s hand as he tried to aim it over his shoulder.  He hefted him up, caught the boy’s neck in the crook of his elbow.  For a kid he was heavy, one leg hanging uselessly down in front of him.  “Don’t think I won’t.”
    The agent made no attempt to comply. “You’re just digging a deeper hole for yourself,” he warned.  “Maybe you were justified for what you did inside.  We can talk about that.  But there’s no going back from this.”
    Sonny bent awkwardly to pick up the gun he’d dropped, making sure the kid’s head was shielding his own.  The boy was heavy .  In a flash of comprehension he realized the weight came from a cast on his leg.  “Put your gun down.  Do it!” he demanded fiercely when the agent didn’t comply.  “Do you want me to kill this kid?”
    “There’s no need to bring the boy into it.  Let’s settle this ourselves, man to man.”  The agent began to inch to the side.  Sonny knew he was looking for an opening.  In a flash of brilliance, he hoisted the kid up and over one shoulder in a fireman’s carry, one arm clamped across his cast and free hand.  The kid made a perfect human shield.  And then Sonny turned and ran like a deer.
    Not in the direction he’d come, but in the most direct route that would take him to his vehicle.   He ran as fast as he could, but the boy was making it difficult.  No longer rigid with fear, the kid was pounding his free fist into Sonny’s back.  Kneeing him in the side.
    He yanked sharply on the kid’s injured leg, smiled when he heard his high-pitched screech.  The little bastard would behave or he wouldn’t live through this.  It made no difference to Sonny either way.  
    He swung around to fire several shots before running again.  The cop didn’t return fire.  He wouldn’t dare risk hitting the kid in the dark.  But he was still chasing them.  Sonny shot again, causing the man to duck for cover.
    Lights were