Free The Tin Man by Nina Mason Page A

I’m begging you. I have a family. A wife and kids.”
    “Bully for you .”
    The bullet struck Davidson in the chest, knocking him back. He fell hard on the wet concrete, numb with shock, limbs twitching. The wound seared like a red-hot poker. A crimson circle spread like an inkblot on the front of his starched white shirt.
    Wint knelt beside him. Something glinted in his hand. A box cutter. It hurt like hell when it pierced the flesh of Davidson’s forehead, but he was too far gone to protest. As Wint sliced, blood streamed into the publisher’s eyes. He closed them, flashing on his family. They’d be trick-or-treating without him from now on.
    “Why?” he rasped through encroaching darkness.
    Rather than answer, Wint reached inside Davidson’s camelhair coat, removed his cell phone, and placed a call.
     

Chapter 7
     
    “Are we almost there?” Buchanan flicked a glance toward Thea, still gazing out the window in stony silence. “I’m so knackered I can barely see straight.”
    It had been more than an hour since they argued and the tension between them was still as thick as Scots oats.
    “Do you want me to drive?” she asked. The words were friendly enough, but her tone sure wasn’t.
    “That depends ,” he said. “How much farther do we have to go?”
    “ We should be getting close.”
    He glanced at the rear-view mirror, expecting at any moment to see the killers. The road ahead was an endless stretch of asphalt—one long drag strip with nowhere to hide. He looked at the gas gauge. It was almost full. He hoped to hell, when the time came, the Land Rover could outrun whatever vehicle might be in hot pursuit.
    “You should get off the main highway,” she told him, “and go in the back way.”
    Buchanan , scoffing, made a quick survey of the surrounding scenery. It was pitch black out and there was nothing as far as the eye could see but trees, their leaves trembling in the wind.
    “Are you telling me this isn’t a back road?”
    “It m ight look remote,” she said, still facing the window, “but trust me, this is the interstate.”
    “ There’s a road atlas in the pocket behind your seat,” he informed her. “Have a look and tell me where to go.”
    “I don’t need a map to do that,” she remarked, smirking as she twisted around to retrieve the map book.
    He flipped on the reading light as she set it on her lap and began thumbing through. A tractor-trailer thundered past on the other side of the metal guardrail. A big green sign sprang up on the right. Its iridescent white letters read:
     
    Coatesville
    1 mile
     
    “There’s an off-ramp coming up, should I take it?”
    S he studied the map, finger tracing the line of the roadway. “That should take us toward Wagontown, so, yeah, go ahead and get off.”
    He put on the turn si gnal and moved over, taking the off-ramp, which dropped them onto a two-lane highway. Houses with sprawling, manicured lawns and split-rail fences sprang up on either side of the road. Wee farms with rambling pastures and pristine houses zoomed by on both sides.
    As he sailed past a speed-limit sign, he checked the speedometer. The maximum speed was forty-five and he was doing sixty. Reflexively, he eased his foot off the gas and tapped the brake, slowing to fifty. A few minutes later, he came up behind a car pulling a horse trailer. When he crossed the double-yellow line to pass it, Thea shot him a dirty look.
    “That’s illegal.”
    Her tone was superior. Buchanan rolled his eyes, but bit back the insult burning on his tongue.
    They passed a school, a church, more farms, towering grain silos, rows of mailboxes posted by the side of the road, awaiting word from the outside world. The trees vanished. A low bank of dark hills appeared on the horizon. He glanced again in the rearview mirror, jolting when he saw a car coming up fast behind them with the headlamps off.
    “Shit.”
    “What?”
    “There’s someone back there.”
    Out of the edge of his eye, he