Thomas Perry - Dead Aim

Praise for
DEAD AIM

Perry, veteran that he is writes crisply, plainly and tightly, leaving the story plenty of room to run. And run it does; the reader is propelled through the plot like a bullet. The tension never ebbs. And just when a reader might think he has figured out what is going on, Perry pulls the rug out.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Totally engrossing The reader remains gripped in unending suspense and a shocking denouement.

Library Journal

[Perry] has won a reputation as one of the sharpest thriller writers in the business. Dead Aim shows why. Its smart, funny, and nasty; it will grab you and not let go. Perry is a complete professional.

The Washington Post

Thomas Perry is a master at hide-and-hunt thrillers and Dead Aim is the latest in an impressive line of winners. Classic kill-or-be-killed suspense.

Orlando Sentinel

Foolproof superior action-film fare with a body count to match Nobody who starts this tale will put it down half-finished.

Kirkus Reviews

Perrys 13th novel again proves a showcase for his considerable talentstaut prose, finely crafted scenes, solid research.

Publishers Weekly

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

2006 Random House Trade Paperback Edition

Copyright 2002 by Thomas Perry

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

R ANDOM H OUSE T RADE P APERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2002.

Perry, Thomas
Dead aim : a novel / Thomas Perry.

p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-58836-308-4
1. Santa Barbara (Calif.)Fiction. I. Title.
PS3566.E718 D425 2002 813.54dc21 2002068100

www.atrandom.com

v3.1

T he shot was an explosion that spewed a shower of bright sparks from the pistols muzzle into the darkness and kicked the barrel upward, but the arm of the shooter quickly straightened to level it again. The shooter fired the second and third shots into the lighted interior of the car, and the late-night silence returned. After a few seconds, crickets began to chirp tentatively again from nearby yards.

There were three holes punched through the rear window of the car, and even from his vantage across the alley behind the shooter, Parish could see that Mark Romanos head had been pounded forward, and the windshield had been sprayed nearly opaque with his bright red blood.

Parish watched as one of the women gently but firmly placed her arm around the shooters left shoulder and took the gun from the right hand. The waiting escape car rolled up and within a few heartbeats the shooter had been hustled into the back seat. Parish leaned in to speak softly to the driver. Go ahead. Well finish up here.

The car moved off down the alley with its lights still out. Parish walked into the garage, stopped by the side of Romanos car, and bent to stare into the still-lighted interior at the bloody face to be sure there was no possibility of life. He reached across the body to the dashboard and took the remote control unit. He closed the car door, stepped out of the garage, and pushed the remote control button to bring the door down to cover the scene.

As he turned, Spangler emerged from the darkness at his side and pointed at the back of a house down the alley. There was a face in that window for a second.

Better take care of it before we go, whispered Parish. They havent had enough time to get the shooter out of the area.

The two men walked quickly and silently up the alley. They were both tall, but they moved toward the house with a surprising ability to blend into their surroundings, passing through each shadowy space beside the garages, moving along rows of garbage cans to make their shapes get lost to the eye among the many others in the dark alley.

The house was two lots down from Mark Romanosthey had waited for a night when the nearest neighbors were awayso the face could not have seen much from that window, beyond the six-foot cinder-block wall that separated the alley from the yard. Parish and Spangler moved to the wall, barely glancing at each other, as though they had done this so many times that each knew the steps, neither needing to check where the other was.

In seconds Parish was up and over the wall into the yard behind the house, and Spangler had made his way along the fence beside it. As Spangler went over the fence and dashed up the low steps toward the kitchen door, he could hear Parish breaking the glass in the window at the back of the house, and he hit the door with his shoulder before the musical sound of glass hitting the floor inside the house had stopped.

The door flew inward, cracked into the wall, bounced, and swung back, but Spangler was already across the small kitchen, his gun drawn, slipping up the hallway toward the back bedroom at a run. He went low, held his pistol ahead of him, and stepped into the doorway.

He saw a man in boxer shorts standing inside the room leaning against the wall, both hands on an aluminum baseball bat, waiting for Parish to try to climb in through the broken window beside him. Spangler fired once into the mans chest as Parish fired twice through the window into the room.

Spanglers head spun so he could see what Parish had shot. It seemed at first that it was just a lump in the blanket, but then Spangler saw the telephone cord leading from the nightstand under the covers. He tore the blanket and sheet aside to reveal the body of the woman, the telephone receiver still clutched in her hand.

He moved to the window, pulled the sash up, and stepped back to let Parish climb in. Parish glanced at the man on the floor as he hurried to the bed where the woman lay. He snatched the telephone from her fingers, put it to his ear, and smiled as he set it in its cradle. Dial tone. She hadnt gotten the call off yet.

Close, though, said Spangler. He turned to go.

Not yet. He nodded at the dead man below the window. That bat isnt the right size for him, is it?

Spangler whispered, Kids?

Better check.

Spangler followed Parish into the hallway, mirroring his rapid, efficient movements. Parish stopped at each doorway on the left, put his head inside, turned to look both ways, then moved on. Spangler took the doorways on the right. Parish stopped at the end of the hall, where the door was closed. He tried the handle, found that it would not turn, and nodded to Spangler. Then he stepped back and kicked.

As the door flew open, Spangler stepped in after it. He decided that the boy crouching on the floor at the far end of the bunk bed must be nine or ten, and the little sister he had pushed behind him would be around five. Parish and Spangler seemed to have the same thought, which was that they must make use of the childrens shock and immobility before they tried to run or crawl under something, as children often did. Both men centered their shots in the childrens foreheads.