In Shadows Read Online Free

tires dug into the sand. Maybe the assholes would get stuck.
    But the headlights bounced and whipped from side to side as the big sedan roared ahead, and Jake turned to stumble headlong into the pounding surf. The piss-warm water slowed his advance, and chest-high breakers lifted his feet off the sand and drove him back. He glanced over his shoulder. The car was close now.
    He dove.
    The current was strong but not overpowering, and he swam beneath the waves for all he was worth. He broke the surface on his back, gasping—the pistol cradled on his stomach—praying the car had driven on past. But it had pulled right up to the waterline. He felt a splash beside him even as he heard the dull pounding of a shotgun. He aimed for the lighted interior of the car—he could barely make outanything else through the deluge—and pulled the trigger again and again. He didn’t expect to hit anything, but at least the fucking goons would have to keep their heads down.
    As he fired he continued back-kicking into the surf, and every time he disappeared over another breaker he paddled to one side or the other so that when the next wave took him he didn’t pop up like the same old target in a shooting gallery. If he could make it to deeper water, he’d be safe until the cops arrived. But where were the sirens?
    As he squinted through the darkness, rain, and waves, still kicking and paddling wildly, a shadow moved across the beach, as though a cloud even darker than the solid overcast above had swept between the shore and the sun. Another wave caught him, and a stinging sensation lightninged up the right side of his chest, paralyzing him for an instant. The pistol dropped away into the water, and Jake heard the delayed crack of the shot that had hit him. Horror-stricken, he felt himself rising upward, spread-eagled, flopping like a landed fish. Blood spread across his sodden jacket. Twisting to face the beach, he could only watch as gun barrels flashed repeatedly, and he held his breath, waiting for the shot that would kill him.
    But through the haze of the saltwater and rain it appeared as though the guns were firing
up and down
the beach. Had the cops finally arrived? Had he missed the sirens? Surely they wouldn’t have come without them.
    Then, abruptly, the firing ceased. Jake counted off one minute. Two. He was hesitant to swim back toward shore, but with only one good arm he was afraid of being dragged out by the tide. Finally he heard the wail of sirens, but it seemed like hours before he spotted a cruiser’s high beams barreling down the beach with lights flashing overhead.
    When he reached water shallow enough to stand in, he staggered through the waves toward the cops who wereapproaching the sedan with drawn pistols. One of the patrolmen saw him and blinded Jake with his flashlight.
    “Detective Crowley!” shouted Jake, fumbling for his shield.
    The cop signaled Jake in with the flashlight. But it wasn’t until he got a closer look at Jake’s badge that the officer relaxed. In the glow of the headlights the cop’s red hair shone like neon. But then all of Jake’s senses seemed heightened. By that time a second cruiser had pulled up alongside the sedan, and all the cops were flashing their lights up and down the beach. A flurry of footprints muddled the sand. Jake peered at the tide pools around the car and noticed that they were more blood than saltwater.
    “Where are they?” he asked a burly officer with a black mustache and a beet-red complexion.
    The man shrugged. “Two down in front of the car. One more down the beach. All shot to hell.” He glanced at Jake’s shoulder. “You hit?”
    Jake gingerly pulled aside his jacket. From the hole in his shirt it looked like he should have a bullet in his right lung. But he felt okay except for the damned stinging. Feeling was working its way back into his arm and fingers at least. The cop eased Jake back against the sedan and ripped open his shirt.
    “Lucky