Skink set the device down.
“Accept no imitations!” Snapper crowed again, waving the .357.
The governor’s gaze turned out the window, drifting again. Teasingly, Bonnie said: “I can’t believe you’ve never seen one of those.”
This time the smile was sad. “I lead a sheltered life.”
Edie Marsh wondered if Snapper could have picked a dumber location to shoot a cop-a county of slender, connected islands, with only one way out. She kept checking for blue police lights behind them.
Snapper told her to knock it off, she was making everyone a nervous wreck. “Another half hour we’re
home free,” he said, “back on the mainland. Then we find another car.”
“One with a CD player, I bet.”
“Damn right.”
The Seville got boxed in behind a slow beer truck. They wound up stopped at the traffic light in Key Largo. Again Edie snuck a peek behind them. Snapper heard a gasp.
“What!” He spun his head. “Is it cops?”
“No. The Jeep!”
“You’re crazy, that ain’t possible-”
“Right behind us,” Edie said.
Bonnie Lamb began to turn around, but Skink held her shoulder. The light turned green. Snapper floored the Seville, zipped smartly between the beer truck and a meandering Toyota. He said: “You crazy twat, there’s only about a million goddamn black Jeeps on the road.”
“Yeah?” Edie said. “With bullet holes in the roof?” She could see a bud of mushroomed steel above the passenger side.
“Jesus.” Snapper used the barrel of the .357 to adjust the rearview mirror. “Jesus, you sure?”
The Cherokee was still on their bumper. Bonnie noticed the governor wore a faint smile. Edie picked up on it, too. She said, “What’s going on? Who’s that behind us?”
Skink shrugged. Snapper said: “How ’bout this? I don’t care who’s back there, because he’s already one dead cocksucker. That’s ‘zackly how many shots I got left.”
In what seemed to Bonnie as a single fluid motion, the governor reached across the seat, wrenched the .357
from Snapper’s hand and fired it point-blank into the Cadillac’s dashboard.
Then he dropped it on Snapper’s lap and said: “Now you’ve got jackshit.”
Snapper labored not to pile the car into a utility pole. Edie Marsh’s ears rang from the gun blast, although she wasn’t surprised by what had happened. It had only been a matter of time. The smiler had been humoring them.
One thought reverberated in Bonnie Lamb’s head: What now? What in the world will he do next?
Snapper, straining not to appear frightened, hollering at Skink over his shoulder: “Try anything, anything, I fuckin’ swear we’re all going off a bridge. You unner-stand? We’ll all be dead.”
“Eyes on the road, chief.”
“Don’t touch me, goddammit!”
Skink placed his chin next to the headrest, inches from Snapper’s right ear. He said, “That cop you shot, he was a friend of mine.”
Edie Marsh’s chin dropped. “Tell me it wasn’t ‘Jim.'”
“It was.”
“Naturally.” She sighed disconsolately.
“So what?” Snapper said. His shoulders bunched. “Like I’m supposed to know. Fucking cop’s a cop.”
To Bonnie, the social dynamics inside the carjacked Seville were surreal. Logically the abduction should have ended once Snapper’s gun was out of bullets. Yet here they were, riding along as if nothing had changed. They might as well be on a double date. Stop for pizza and milk shakes.
She said: “Can I ask something: Where are we going? Is somebody in charge now?”
Snapper said, “7 am, goddammit. Long as I’m drivin’-”
He felt Edie jab him in the side. “The Jeep,” she said, pointing. “Check it out.”
The black truck was in the left lane, keeping speed with the Cadillac. Snapper pressed the accelerator, but the Jeep stayed even.
“Well, shit,” he grumbled. Edie was right. It was the same truck they’d abandoned ten minutes earlier. Snapper was totally baffled. Who could it be?
They watched the Cherokee’s front passenger window roll down. The ghost driver steered with his left hand. His eyes were locked on the highway. In the oncoming headlights Snapper caught sight of the man’s face, which he didn’t recognize. He did, however, note that the stranger definitely wasn’t wearing a Highway Patrol uniform. The observation gave Snapper an utterly misplaced sense of relief.