cut.”
Ben heard a scrape and clatter and rustle that might have been Anson
Sharp bolting off the top of the embankment and down into the forest.
Suspecting that it was too good to be true, he rose warily.
Amazingly, Sharp was gone.
With the state route to himself, Ben hurried along the line of parked
cars, trying doors. He found an unlocked -four-year-old Chevette. It
was a hideous bile-yellow heap with clashing green upholstery, but he
was in no position to worry about style.
He got in, eased the door shut. He took the .357 Combat Magnum out of
his waistband and put it on the seat, where he could reach it in a
hurry. Using the stock of the shotgun, he hammered the ignition switch
until he broke the key plate off the steering column.
He wondered if the noise carried beyond the car and down through the
woods to Sharp and Peake.
Putting the Remington aside, he hastily pulled the ignition wires into
view, crossed the two bare ends, and tramped on the accelerator. The
engine sputtered, caught, raced.
Although Sharp probably had not heard the hammering, he surely heard the
car starting, knew what it meant, and was without a doubt frantically
climbing the embankment that he had just descended.
Ben disengaged the handbrake. He threw the Chevette in gear and pulled
onto the road. He headed south because that was the way the car was
facing, and he had no time to turn it around.
The hard, flat crack of a pistol sounded behind him.
He winced, pulled his head down on his shoulders, glanced in the
rearview mirror, and saw Sharp lurching between the sedan and the Dodge
station wagon out into the middle of the road, where he could line up a
shot better.
“Too late, sucker,” Ben said, ramming the accelerator all the way to the
floor.
The Chevette coughed as if it were a tubercular, spavined old dray horse
being asked to run the Kentucky Derby.
A bullet clipped the rear bumper or maybe a fender, and the high-pitched
skeeeeeeen sounded like the Chevette’s startled bleat of pain.
The car stopped coughing and shuddering, surged forward at last, spewing
a cloud of blue smoke in its wake.
In the rearview mirror, Anson Sharp dwindled beyond the smoke as if he
were a demon tumbling back into Hades. He might have flred again, but
Ben did not hear the shot over the scream of the Chevette’s straining
engine.
The road topped a hill and sloped down, turned to the right, sloped some
more, and Ben slowed a bit. He remembered the sheriff’s deputy at the
sporting-goods store. The lawman might still be in the area. Ben
figured he had used up so much good luck in his escape from Sharp that
he would be tempting fate if he exceeded the speed limit in his eagrness
to get away from Arrowhead.
After all, he was in filthy clothes, driving a stolen car, carrying a
shotgun and a Combat Magnum, so if he was stopped for speeding, he could
hardly expect to be let off with just a fine.
He was on the road again. That was the most important thing now-staying
on the road until he had caught up with Rachael either out on 1-15 or in
Vegas.
Rachael was going to be all right.
He was sure that she would be all right.
White clouds had moved in low under the blue summer sky. They were
growing thicker. The edges of some of them were gunmetal-gray.
On both sides of the road, the forest settled deeper into darkness.
DESERT HEAT Rachael reached Barstow at 3,40 Tuesday afternoon.
She thought about pulling off 1-15 to grab a sandwich, she had eaten
only an Egg McMuffin this morning and two small candy bars purchased at
the Arco service station before she’d gotten on the interstate.
Besides, the morning’s coffee and the recent can of Coke were working
through her, she began to feel a vague need to use a rest room, but she
decided to keep moving.
Barstow was large enough to have a police department plus a California
Highway Patrol substation. Though there was little chance that she