Four Blind Mice

she’ll shuck the shoes?” asked Starkey. “Bets, gentlemen?”
    “Shuck ’em for sure,” said Griffin. “She’s dumb, but she’s not that stupid. I’ll take your bet. Fifty?”
    “She’ll be wearing the shoes,” pronounced Starkey. “Girl that pretty working the street, she’s dumb as a board. A hundred says so.”
    Just then they saw a pair of lights veering off the highway. Someone was driving toward where they’d parked. Now who the hell was this?
    “Trooper,” said Starkey. Then he raised his hand in a friendly wave at the slow-moving police car.
    “Problem here?” the statie said once he’d rolled up close to the big blue Suburban. He didn’t bother to get out of his car.
    “Just a little pit stop, Officer. We’re on our way to Fort Benning from Bragg,” Starkey said in the calmest voice. In truth, he wasn’t nervous about the trooper. Just curious about how this would turn out. “We’re in the Reserves. If the three of us were on the
first
team, I guess we’d all be in trouble.”
    “I saw your vehicle from the road. Thought I better check to make sure everybody was all right. Nothing but swamp back there.”
    “Well, we’re fine, Officer. Finish our smokes and hit the road again. Thanks for the concern.”
    The state trooper was just about to pull away when a woman’s scream came from the woods. There was no mistaking that it was a cry for help.
    “Now that’s a damn shame, Officer.” Starkey swung his pistol out from behind his back. He shot the trooper point-blank in the forehead. Didn’t even have to think about it. “No good deed goes unpunished.”
    He shook his head as he walked to the police car, shut off the headlights. He got into the front, pushing the dead trooper aside, and pulled the car out of sight from the main road.
    “Go find the girl,” he said to Harris and Griffin. “Pronto. She’s obviously not too far. And she’s still wearing her platforms, the twit. Go! Go!” he said to Harris and Griffin. “I’ll give you chumps a couple of minutes’ lead. I want to get this cruiser completely out of sight. Go. Warren is point. Brownie is flanker.”
    When Colonel Thomas Starkey finally made his move into the woods, there wasn’t a false step on his part. He went straight to where the girl had cried out for help and gotten the state trooper killed.
    From that point, it was mostly instinct for him. He saw mussed leaves and grass. A broken branch of a bush where she’d passed. He noted his own internal responses — rapid breathing, surging blood flow. He’d been here before.
    “Tao se tìm ra mày,” he whispered in Vietnamese. “Lúc dó mày se den toi.”
    I’m going to find you, honey. You’re almost dead.
    He was sorry that the chase after the girl had to be rushed, but the dead state trooper was an unexpected development. As he always did, Starkey had a calm, superaware focus. He was in the zone.
    Time slowed for him; every detail was precise and every movement was controlled. He was moving fast, comfortable and supremely confident in the dark woods. There was just enough moonlight for him to see.
    Then he heard laughter up ahead. Saw a light through the branches. Starkey stopped moving. “Son of a bitch!” he muttered. He moved forward cautiously, just in case.
    Harris and Griffin had caught the blond bitch. They had taken off her black hot pants, gagged her with her own scuzzy underwear, cuffed her hands behind her back.
    Griffin was ripping off her silver-sequined blouse. All she was wearing were the sparkly silver platforms.
    Vanessa didn’t wear a bra and her breasts were small. Pretty face, though. Reminded Starkey of his neighbor’s daughter. Starkey thought again that she was a fine little piece to be selling herself for cheap on the street.
Too bad, Vanessa.
    She struggled and Griffin let her break away, just for the fun of it. But when she tried to run, she tripped and went down hard in the dirt. She stared up at Starkey, who was now standing over her. He thought she was pathetic.
    She was whimpering. Then she said something through the gag as she tried to push herself up. It sounded like “Why are you doing this? I never hurt anybody.”
    “This is a game we learned a long time ago,” Starkey said in English. “It’s just a game, honey. Passes the time. Amuses us. Get the paint,” he said to Master Sergeant Griffin. “I think red for tonight. You look good in red, Vanessa? I think red is your color.”
    He looked her