Neon Prey (Lucas Davenport #29)(27)

And then the shit hit the fan.

Like a fuckin’ machine gun, which is what Cox screamed it was.

When it had ripped open the dawn, she’d sat up in bed, her mouth dropped open, she’d shrieked, “Fuckin’ machine gun,” she’d grabbed a terry-cloth robe, and run after Beauchamps, pulling the robe on as she ran.

Deese bolted out of the home office, and Deese and Cox followed Beauchamps to a tinted-glass window in the family room that looked across the backyard to the house behind them. Men in dark uniforms were running through their yard and setting up behind palm trees, the deeply shaded lawns sparkling with muzzle flashes of dozens, and maybe hundreds, of fired cartridges, going both in and out of the house.

Beauchamps said, “Cops,” and then Cole ran in, fully dressed and carrying a book, and Beauchamps said, “They’re all over Nast’s place. They’ll get here, sooner or later. We gotta get outta here. Grab what you can, meet in the garage. One fuckin’ minute.” And they all ran back to their respective rooms.

The battle continued outside, the volume of gunfire like something from a war video. In what was a little more than one fuckin’ minute, they were all more or less dressed. Cox, still naked under the robe, had jammed an armful of pants, blouses, underwear, and seven pairs of shoes into two fake Louis Vuitton tote bags and had run toward the garage, where she bumped into Cole, who’d just thrown a bag in the back of Deese’s pickup. Her robe had parted as she ran, and Cole said, “Whoa!” as he took a look, and Cox said, “Hey, there,” but not as a firm objection, and she didn’t bother to close it as she threw her clothes in the Cadillac and headed back into the house, her long pale legs flashing in and out of the flapping robe.

Beauchamps ran into the garage with an armload of stuff, threw it in his Cadillac, and Cole said, “Don’t touch the lights, don’t open the doors, and when we do open them don’t talk loud.” As Beauchamps ran back out, Cole picked up a broom and used the handle to smash the overhead door’s lights.

Deese ran in carrying a dog shit brown Filson duffel bag, which he threw in the back of his pickup. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt but was barefoot. Cole said, quietly, “I broke the lights, watch the glass.” And there was more shooting from the back and also men shouting. Beauchamps ran in and said, “I don’t see anybody out front,” and, “Everybody got their money?”

And Cox cried, “Oh, shit,” and dashed back into the house and was back fifteen seconds later with a Christmas cookie tin. “We almost forgot the coke,” she said. And Beauchamps said, “Clay, you take Cole and I’ll take Geenie. Let’s go! Push the button.”

Cole pushed the button and ran around the front of Deese’s truck and got in and pulled the door closed with a quiet click and five minutes after the shooting started they followed Beauchamps’s two-year-old Cadillac SUV out of the dark garage and down the driveway. There were lighted windows everywhere, and a few people already out on lawns. The shooting behind the house continued.

Eight blocks out, Beauchamps pulled over to the curb. Deese rolled up behind him. Beauchamps stepped back to his half brother’s truck and said through the lowered driver’s-side window, “We’re busted. They’ll figure out the house, they’ll print the place, and we’re all over it. That’ll take a while. I’m thinking Vegas. At least until things calm down.”

“Maybe they got Vegas, too,” Cole said, leaning forward to talk past Deese.

“I don’t think so,” Beauchamps said. “Somebody spotted us. I’m thinking they spotted Nast because he’s so damn visible and he’s been hitting the clubs. They didn’t even know about the back house.”

“If they got Nast and Randy and they talk . . .”

“Nast and Randy are dead,” Beauchamps said. “You heard what was happening. Nast hated cops, he was hosing them down with that fuckin’ M16. No way they let him walk away from that. They’re deader’n shit, both of them.”

Deese said, “Vegas is okay. But we gotta go. We’re still too close.”

“Right out the 210 to the 15, stay in touch on the phones and not too far apart in case there’s a problem.”

“Go!” Deese said.


COX STARTED ragging on Beauchamps before they got past the racetrack at Santa Anita.

“I knew this was gonna happen,” she said. “I told you we were pushing our luck. We shoulda been outta there a year ago. And now Nast and Randy are dead, not that it’s a huge loss. Especially Nast. What an asshole he was. Or maybe still is—”

“Was,” Beauchamps said. And, “Be quiet, for Christ’s sakes, I’m trying to think.”

“Maybe you shoulda tried thinking before you threw me in a car half naked and we . . . What are we gonna do? I’m not gonna live in that fuckin’ trailer, not in May in Vegas . . . I’ve never been arrested for anything and my fingerprints are all over that house. And now the cops will be looking for me. And if Nast killed some cops, then it might be murder . . . Oh, Jesus Christ. I didn’t even think of that until now. Murder!”

“I’ll tell them you were a hooker we brought in, you didn’t know anything about it. Now, shut up.”

“Like that’s gonna work. You know any hooker’s never been arrested? Me, neither,” she said. “We gotta go a lot farther away than Vegas. And I’m not staying in that fuckin’ trailer, I did that once and once was enough. You got fake IDs. We oughta check into the Mandalay, or something. Or the Wynn . . .”