CHAPTER 1The phone on the night table started to ring shrilly, discordantly. Johnny Liddell groaned, cursed softly, dug his head into the pillow, but the noise refused to go away. He opened one eye experimentally, peered at the half lowered shade and noted that it was still dark.
He tried to wipe the sleep from his eyes, but it wouldn’t wipe away. The phone kept ringing. Finally, he reached out and lifted the receiver off its hook.
“Yeah?” he growled sleepily.
“This is Laury Lane. Come out here right away. That man of yours is going crazy and—” The voice was drowned out by the flat, ugly bark of a shot. The line went dead.
Liddell was suddenly wide awake. And ice cold. He started to jiggle the cross bar on the phone. “Hello. Hello.” The only answer was the soft click of a phone being h
