“Mind if I give you a small piece of information?”
“I’m listening.”
“I seriously advise you to reconsider. I’ll forgive a single mistake. I’ll make you pay for it, of course. Pay the sort of prices you like, Jeff.”
He closed his eyes, fighting against the insidious voice.
“Not this time. I’ve liked what you made me… But I’m real keen on living, Nanci. Can’t wait around.”
“Why not kill me?”
“No need. Desert’ll get you, or the hunters. You said yourself you can’t move.”
She laughed quietly. “Big mistake, Jefferson. Big mistake.”
That was the last thing he heard her say as he climbed into the Mercedes. He gunned the motor and slewed sideways, spraying Nanci with dirt, leaving her, with her finger and thumb pressed against the severed artery, alone in the desert.
Jeff headed south, toward Las Vegas.
Chapter Fourteen
The brakes came on, locking up the rear wheels of the pickup truck and sending it sliding toward the side of the road.
Sly rolled over like a sack of potatoes, his face a mask of comical dismay, squeaking in alarm as he bumped into Heather Hilton.
Jim’s reflexes were honed enough for him to brace himself against the juddering skid, but he still nearly fell against his daughter.
The first thought was that they’d blown a tire. The second was that a coyote had darted across the highway in front of them.
“Stay with the vehicle and keep your hands away from any weapons!”
The harsh voice, its order amplified through a bullhorn, gave him the right answer at the third attempt.
“Shit,” he said.
There was a long earthmover, painted sunburst yellow, with two bulldozers, one at either end, sealing off most of the road. The gap at the end, just wide enough to admit a single vehicle, was blocked off by a red-and-white pole balanced on top of a couple of rusting oil drams.
Looking over the roof of the cab, Jim was able to see five armed men. No, there was a sixth one, manning an LMG, mounted on a makeshift platform of bricks and planks.
They all wore dark pants, mostly with quilted camouflage jackets. All of them had a badge on the lapels.
Jim couldn’t quite make it out, but from the distance it looked like a yellow dagger through a silver disk of some sort.
“They friends, Jim?” Sly’s gentle, round face was worried, and he was reaching out to hold Heather’s hand.
“Maybe.”
For no reason at all, Jim Hilton half remembered a line from some old poem he’d done at high school: “Nothing they know of friendship, who only friendship know.”
Something like that.
The voice barked again. “Don’t like saying it twice. Engine off and hands where we can see them.”
“He never said that once.”
Jim heard Steve Romero’s muttered comment. He reached down and touched the cushioned grips of the Ruger, reluctantly leaving it be. The men at the roadblock all carried rifles and looked as though they knew how to use them. They were trapped in the pickup, where any effort to fight would inevitably lead to plain bloody butchery.
He ran his fingers through his thinning blond hair, now well down to his shoulders.
The movement attracted the attention of the man with the bullhorn. “Tall guy on the back of the truck. Stop moving around. Let’s see everyone’s hands up there, trying to catch a slice of sky.”
Heather lifted her hands, dragging one of Sly’s arms up with her. “Come on,” she whispered.
“Fat kid only got one hand? If not, he better get it up there.”
Steve leaned out of the window. “Leave the boy alone!” To his son he said, “Sly, do like they say. See how high you can stretch up. And don’t put your hands down until I tell you.”
Two men, carrying M-16D4s, eyes bright like hunting polecats, fanned out to cover the vehicle, moving light-footed.
“One at a time. Tall guy on the back. Step over slow and easy. Then the girl and the fat kid. After that you two in the cab. Driver first, last the skinny black in the passenger seat.”
Jim felt a flicker of hope. Somehow they hadn’t seen Carrie Princip. She must be lying flat between Kyle and Steve, out of sight.