Read Time to Live: Part Five for Free Online

westernmost side. If the perps hadn’t fled already, surrender was their only viable option.
    Since Brad Ward was probably shot—Scotty Boyd had been adamant that there was no way he could have missed—and the girl was reportedly so weak that she could hardly lift her head, Matt Hayes was ready to bet a month’s pay that they were still inside.
    * * *
    Jeremy Hines had disappeared again.
    For the first hundred yards, Carter had been able to keep up with Darla as they charged through the woods. Up ahead, he’d seen flashes of the boy darting in and out of their sight line. Soon, though, Carter’s years behind desks began to take their toll, and Darla pulled ahead of him. As the gap widened, he lost sight of Jeremy, and now found himself struggling just to keep an eye on the uniformed deputy.
    He tried to ignore the cramp under his ribs as he pressed on. If he lost sight of Darla, he could be lost out here forever.
    The muddy ground sucked at his loafers as he charged through the underbrush.
    Up ahead, he saw that Darla had stopped. He closed the distance in seconds.
    “Why are you waiting for me?” he gasped. “He’s getting away.”
    Darla held up her hand, gesturing for silence. “Be quiet,” she hissed, and Carter pulled up short. “I don’t think he’s running anymore,” she whispered. “I think he’s hiding.”
    Without thinking, Carter lowered himself into a crouch, and the deputy followed suit. How could he be so stupid to fall for the same trick twice? “How does he disappear like that?” he whispered.
    “He’s a hunter,” Darla replied. “Everybody around here is a hunter. You learn to blend in.”
    Carter craned his neck to take in all compass points.
    “Be still,” Darla hissed.
    “Well, what are we supposed to do? Just wait for him to shoot first?”
    “We wait for him to show himself,” Darla said. “Or we just wait for the backup units to arrive.”
    “He likes to shoot,” Carter said. He relayed the ambush the kid had set up when Carter had first started chasing him.
    “He’s a notoriously good shot,” Darla said. “You’re lucky you’re here to tell the story.”
    Lucky, indeed. Soaked to the skin in the middle of the woods, waiting for a lunatic high schooler to take a shot at him. By that standard, what was bad luck?
    If it weren’t for his pounding heart and churning stomach, Carter might almost have felt sorry for Jeremy Hines. Carter had seen it a thousand times: Some kids on a prank break into a house or steal a car, only to have things go wrong and suddenly there’s blood in the street. Nobody meant for it to happen, but intentions didn’t matter anymore. There were some steps forward from which there was no step back. Prisons across the world were filled with people who had learned that lesson the hard way.
    “Do you see anything?” Darla asked.
    Carter shook his head. “Not a thing. The rain’ll cover a lot of sounds.”
    “He’s here,” Darla said. “The woods become a big clearing and a construction site about fifty yards ahead. From there, it’s wide open spaces. He’s either got to stop here or double back.”
    Carter felt the skin on his chest and his neck prickle. This was crazy. His job was done; he had what he needed to keep Nicki free. If he had a brain in his head, he’d be on his way to the state police or the county prosecutor to get this all cleared up, not that it would help Nicki much. Her transplant clock had ticked to zero. Jesus, when would it end?
    The echoes of Jeremy’s last shots still had not left his head. With his father dead, the teenager had nothing to lose by killing two more. “How good a shot is this kid?” he whispered.
    Darla rose from her knees to a half-crouch, her pistol extended at arm’s length, searching for a target. Carter considered it foolishly brazen to grant a larger target like that. “Good enough to compete in the junior state semifinals last year. He can part the hair on a bumblebee.”
    “I wonder