Free Desperate Measures by David R. Morrell Page A

of fear as he heard
     the sound of motors. The lights were too big to come from flashlights, and they were in pairs like headlights, but Pittman’s
     hunters couldn’t be using cars. Cars would be too heavy, losing traction, spinning their wheels until they got stuck in the
     soft wet grass. Besides, the motors sounded too small and whiny to belong to cars.
    Jesus, they’re using golf carts, Pittman realized, his chest tightening. Whoever owns the estate has private carts and access
     to the course from the back of the property. Golf carts don’t have headlights. Those are handheld spotlights.
    The carts spread out, the lights systematically covering various sections of the course. As men shouted, Pittman spun away
     from the lights, darted from the sand trap, and scurried into the rainy darkness.

26
    Before Jeremy’s cancer had been diagnosed, Pittman had been a determined jogger. He had run a minimum of an hour each day
     and several hours on the weekend, mostly using the jogging path along the Upper East Side, next to the river. He had lived
     on East Seventieth at that time, with Ellen and Jeremy, and his view of exercise had been much the same as his habit of saving
     5 percent of his paycheck and making sure that Jeremy took summer courses at his school, even though the boy’s grades were
     superior and extra work wasn’t necessary. Security. Planning for the future. That was the key. That was the secret. With his
     son cheering and his wife doing her best to look dutifully enthusiastic, Pittman had managed to be among the middle group
     that finished the New York Marathon one year.
    Then Jeremy had gotten sick.
    And Jeremy had died.
    And Pittman and Ellen had started arguing.
    And Ellen had left.
    And Ellen had remarried.
    And Pittman had started drinking heavily.
    And Pittman had suffered a nervous breakdown.
    He hadn’t run in over a year. For that matter, he hadn’t done any exercise at all, unless nervous pacing counted. But now
     adrenaline spurred him, and his body remembered. It didn’t have its once-excellent tone. It didn’t have the strength that
     he’d worked so hard to acquire. But it still retained his technique, the rhythm and length and heel-to-toe pattern of his
     stride. He was out of breath. His muscles protested. But he kept charging across the golf course, responding to a pounding
     in his veins and a fire in his guts, while behind him lights bobbed in the distance, motors whined, and men shouted.
    Pittman’s effort was so excruciating that he cursed himself for ever having allowed himself to get out of shape. Then he cursed
     himself for having been so foolhardy as to get into this situation.
    What the hell did you think you were doing, following the ambulance all the way out here? Burt wouldn’t have known if you
     hadn’t bothered.
    No. But
I’d
have known. I promised Burt I’d do my best.
    For eight more days.
    What about breaking into that house? Do you call that standard journalistic procedure? Burt would have a fit if he knew you
     did that.
    What was I supposed to do, let the old man die?
    As Pittman’s stiffening legs did their best to imitate the expert runner’s stride that had once been second nature to him,
     he risked losing time to glance back at his pursuers. Wiping moisture from his eyes, he saw the drizzle-haloed spotlights
     on the golf carts speeding toward him in the darkness.
    Or some of the carts. All told, there were five, but only two were directly behind him. The rest had split off, one to the
     right, the other to the left, evidently following the perimeter of the golf course. The third was speeding on a diagonal toward
     what Pittman assumed was the far extreme of the course.
    They want to encircle me, Pittman realized. But in the darkness, how can they be sure which way I’m going?
    Rain trickled down his neck beneath his collar. He felt the hairs on his scalp rise when he suddenly understood how his pursuers
     were able to follow him.
    His London