The killer was two-thirds of the way toward the front of the Road king,
the right side, looking down. He was moving along on hands and knees
which must have hurt; although the time-stained white paint reflected a
little of the sun, it had stored sufficient heat to sting even
well-callused hand and to penetrate blue denim. But if the guy was in
pain, he didn’t show it. He was evidently as suicidally macho as his
dead buddy had been.
Jim eased up another rung.
The killer actually lowered himself onto his belly, though the roof must
have scorched instantly through his thin T-shirt. He was trying to
maintain as low a profile as possible, waiting for Jim to appear below.
Jim eased up one more rung. The roof now met him at mid-torso. He
turned sideways on the ladder and jammed one knee behind the other
upright, wedging himself in place so he would have both hands for the
shotgun and so the recoil would not knock him backward to the ground If
the guy on the roof didn’t have a sixth sense, then he was just damned
lucky. Jim had not made a sound, but the creep suddenly glanced back
over his shoulder and spotted him.
Cursing, Jim swung the shotgun around.
The killer flung himself sideways, off the roof Without getting in a
shot, Jim pulled his knee from behind the upright and jumped from the
ladder. He hit the ground hard but kept his balance stepped around the
corner of the motor home, and squeezed off one round But the creep was
already bolting through the side door. At worst, he caught a few
pellets in one leg. Probably not even that.
He was going after the woman and child.
Hostages.
Or maybe he just wanted to slaughter them before he was cut down himself
The past couple of decades had seen the rise of the vagabond sociopath,
roaming the country, looking for easy prey, racking up long lists of
victims, attaining sexual release as much from brutal murder as from
rape.
In his mind, Jim heard the anguished voice of the dying man in the
station wagon: Lisa. . . Susie. . . My wife, daughter. . .
With no time for caution, his anger having grown greater than his fear,
he raced after the killer, through the door, into the Road king,
entering aft of the cockpit. His sun-dazzled eyes couldn’t handle the
comparative gloom of the motor home’s interior, but he was able to see
the psychotic sonofabitch heading toward the rear of the motor home,
past the lounge area and into the galley.
A shadowy figure now, with just a dark oval for a face, the killer
turned and fired. The slug tore a chunk out of a wall-hung storage
cabinet to the left of Jim, showering him with splinters of Formica and
smoking particle board.
He didn’t know where the woman and child were. He was afraid of hitting
them. A shotgun wasn’t a precise weapon.
The killer fired again. The second bullet passed so close to Jim’s face
that it left a wake of stinging-hot wind, like a kiss of fire burning
across his right cheek.
He pumped out one round, and the blast shook the tinny walls. The
killer screamed and was flung hard against the kitchen sink. Jim fired
again, reflexively, half deafened by the double explosion. The guy was
virtually lifted off his feet, hurled backward, slammed against the rear
wall, beside a closed door that separated the main living area from the
bedroom. Then he dropped.
Grabbing a couple of shells from his pants pocket, reloading the shotgun
magazine, Jim moved deeper into the Road king, past a tattered and
sagging sofa.
He knew the man had to be dead, but he could not see well enough to be
certain of anything. Though shafts of the Mojave sun shoved in like hot
branding irons through the windshield and the open doors, the heavily
draped side windows insured that the rear of the Road king was filled
with shadows, and there was a thin acrid haze of smoke from all the
gunfire.
When he reached the end of the narrow chamber and looked down, he