Pursuit Read Online Free Page B

avidly as a contingent of marines herded them back to the narrow blacktop road, where a barricade manned by the Virginia State Police had been set up to contain them. At least half a dozen TV vans were on the scene, unmistakable because of their logos and antennas, and another one, rooftop antenna rotating wildly, arrived even as he watched. A growing throng of reporters crowded the barricade, jockeying for position and attention as they shouted questions down at rescuers.
    “Was the First Lady killed instantly?” “Who else was in the car?” “Where was Annette going?” “Where’s David?” “Any idea what caused the accident?” “Who was driving?” “Is the President okay?”
    Luckily, the questions weren’t directed at him. Mark shut the reporters’ voices out as he focused on more important matters. Debris was strewn along the path the tumbling car had taken, scattered among the mutilated greenery as if it had been shaken out of a giant salt shaker. A hubcap, bits of taillight, a shoe . . .
    His eye was caught by something that glittered silver in the bright beam of the camera crew’s retreating light.
    “Somebody’s going down big-time for this.” Smolski cut his eyes toward Mark. “I’m glad I’m not you guys.”
    Mark’s gut tightened.
    On my watch.
    “I thought you quit smoking.” He turned away, the better to pinpoint the location of the silver thing as he spoke. It was lodged in a bush, an uncrushed bush three-quarters of the way up the slope that was about twenty feet to the right of the car’s path.
    “I started up again.”
    Mark grimaced. “After this, I might, too.”
    Walking away from the perimeter that was now almost fully established around the smoking hulk of the car, Mark picked his way up the slope toward the flash of silver. More helicopters circled overhead now, search beams playing down over the wreckage like dueling Jedi light-sabers. Air swirled like a mini-tornado around him as a particularly aggressive chopper swooped in low. Glancing up, Mark saw the familiar NBC peacock logo on its door.
    Goddamn vultures.
    Without the TV crew’s light, the silver thing became almost impossible to see. Mark kept his eyes trained on the bush, which, he saw as he grew closer, was some sort of scrubby evergreen. There was a whole thicket of them, about waist high, with branches like hairy tentacles that swayed in the wind kicked up by the choppers. Up here, courtesy of the snapped-off trees, the scent of pine was strong, reminding him of the Christmas tree-shaped air freshener his now fifteen-year-old daughter Taylor had hung from the rearview mirror of his car when he’d still been a pack-a-day smoker.
    When had those become the good old days?
    He couldn’t see the silver thing anymore: It was too dark. But he remembered where it was. Reaching in among the prickly branches, he touched it almost at once, felt the cold bumpiness of the surface, and instantly suspected what it had to be: the First Lady’s elegant evening bag. He had last seen the sparkling bauble clutched in her right hand as the elevator doors had closed on her. Leaving her, as he’d thought, safe and sound for the night.
    Wrong again.
    Pulling it out, looking down at it, experiencing the weight of it in his hand, he suddenly felt the urge to puke. It drove home with brutal finality the hard truth that the impossible had happened: Annette Cooper was dead.
    He glanced back down at the accident scene. Pictures were now being taken of the blackened car from every angle and what looked like survey equipment was being set up to, if his memory of accident investigation techniques served him correctly, measure the distance the car had traveled from the road above before coming to rest on its roof. Several members of the forensic unit were down on all fours to, presumably, take a look at the inside of the car. He opened his mouth to yell at investigators, announcing his find.
    Then he looked down at the small, crystal-studded