The
TWA Dome, St. Louis, 1:03
Hicks
passed a man in off-white coveralls. Idly, he thought that a facility like the Dome should have consistent worker uniforms
for security reasons. Then he thought that they probably did, perhaps color coded like blue for custodial, white for
skilled maintenance like electricians, plumbers, and heating and cooling. It would have been nice to know that before
we came in.
He had reached the end of the corridor so he keyed the walkie-talkie, "Hicks, Chief. Nothing unusual
on the east side."
"Good. The roof's
been secured, so our perps are inside if they're here.
"How
about the ductwork? Could they have gotten in there?"
"Don't
know, but that would be a suicide job, which doesn't seem likely. Besides, there's probably no way to check on that
in time. Our best bet is to just keep looking inside the building."
"How
about just evacuate?"
"What happens if we
clog up the corridors and then they release it? Our one advantage is that they don't know we're here. Besides
we need to keep the building relatively free of hall traffic so we can all get around when we spot them. Remember, they
have to have something fairly large with them so we can pretty well ignore anyone carrying something small."
"Right," said Hicks as he folded the communication device and stuck it back in his pocket.
He tried not to dwell on the consequences not finding the terrorists. He reversed direction, walking a little
too rapidly to appear nonchalant. Popping some gum into his mouth to work off a little of his edginess, he veered toward
a heavy faux-stone trash receptacle to dispose of the wrapper through the flapper lid. He tipped the heavy-looking container
experimentally, surprised at it's lightness. Looking inside he saw only a plastic liner holding a few scraps of paper.
Intrigued, he went to the next one and examined it, finding that it too was nearly empty.
Of course they're all empty. That's what the janitor was doing earlier, he thought.
1:15
Shane maneuvered the canisters over cables and through scaffolding beneath the dais until only a curtain separated
him from the first row of floor seating some ten yards away. Above him, the preacher began his opening remarks almost
conversationally.
256.
He looked at his watch.
You'll crank up the volume in a few minutes, he thought, anticipating an imminent singsong tirade punctuated with
shouted questions to stir up the crowd. Instead the preacher continued in the same comfortable tone, his deep voice
both mellow compelling. He waited impatiently for the fake song and dance, but what he really wanted was some derogatory
reference to Father Joshua or the Wilderness Church, something that would justify what he was about to do.
"As I look at all of you out there," said the preacher. "I see expectant faces, not
black faces or white faces or any other hue. Oh, they're out there. But what I see are the faces of the children
of God, and the faces of people want to be children of God. Now you might think it strange for me to say that
I don't see the color of your skin. Some would think it preposterous for me to say that. Our enemy wants us to
see and emphasize the differences between us. He wants us to make distinctions. He wants us to forget
that we are all the sons of Adam, all the sons of Noah. He wants us to make divisions and then to judge those divisions
so that we see "them" and "us." He wants us to judge so that we will think that "we" are
better than "them." The fact is that it is not true and wouldn't matter if it were true. None of us
is good enough. But never mind all that. God is no respecter of persons. He sees only our hearts and our
actions, and friends, none of us measure up or can measure up without His help."
Shane was annoyed. He wanted the man to say or do something that he could seize upon---something outlandish
or mean-spirited, something to rouse his anger.
Busy with his own thoughts,
Shane lost track of what the preacher above him had said, but the auditorium had fallen unnaturally silent. The irrational
thought struck that the preacher knew where he was hiding, that the sermon was, in fact, directed at him.
Just imagination, he tried to assure himself. It's silly.
"Friend, you stand before God alone. Being part of a family, a nation, a race---these things
mean nothing. You are alone with Creator. He gave you a free will to choose between right and wrong. It
may be unfashionable to say nowadays, but all---and that means you and me---all have come short of the glory of God.
To will to do well is in us, but we are incapable of doing it because of Adam's sin. Ask yourself how long it has been
since you did something wrong, had an evil thought, were angry without cause, wished ill of someone, were jealous, envious,
or lustful."
"It hasn't been very long, has it?"
It
all sounded so familiar, so consistent with what he had heard all his life It shouldn't be that way.
"Friend, whenever we are tempted to evil it is because we are led by our own lusts---our evil lusts."
257.
What I'm doing is not evil, Shane insisted, trying to shut out what he was hearing. Father
Joshua says the Devil works with words. He seduces our imaginations. Don't listen to that man.
"Are you angry with me for accusing you of these things?"
Yes, thought Shane.
"Well,
I'm neither condemning you nor accusing you. Your own thoughts have done so."
Shane sat alone in his darkness and placed his hands on both valves. "I'm not evil, you deceiver,"
he said under his breath. "Pretty soon everyone is going to see you for what you are."
"Now Brother Jones hasn't called you a sinner. He hasn't. Well, Brother Jones knows one
great sinner in this auditorium, all right: himself. Like you, I stand here alone before my God, without excuse.
How He could love a man like me, is beyond my understabding, but He does. And He loves you too."
"Now I wish I could tell you, friend, just exactly what you need to do in order to repent of your
sins and believe to the saving of your soul. But I can't, because, you see, that is between you and your Creator.
But I do know that race won't save you. Nationality won't do it. Your family can't help. And neither can
belonging to this church or that church. And having faith in what I tell you can't help either. You stand alone
before your God---absolutely alone."
Don't
listen to him, Shane told himself. He's trying to confuse you.
It wouldn't wash.
If I release the gas he'll have to drop all the make believe and tell them what he really thinks.
The valves felt cold in his hands. He tested the knobs, tensing as he prepared to do it.
It's time to put an end to this---past time.
The Bus Boneyard, 1:15
Paget drove past the bus where he had hidden the Stick Man and the other idiots. He should just kill the
girl, jam her in with them, and just leave. The county road just ahead led to 63. Once he got to Rolla he'd hit
Interstate 44, and get lost in the traffic. But she was almost perfect and there was no reason to even waste time hiding
her when he was through. In fact it would be better to display her for them.
258.
The last thing they'll expect is for me to stick around. They think I'm running scared. They'll never
look for me here. They'll be afraid that I've already slipped through their fingers again. I can stay until dark,
and tip toe through the back roads or even hijack a house somewhere. Morning might be soon enough to move.
The logical part of his mind still argued that he should wrap it up, but Bobby Lee Paget was driven by something
far more powerful than mere logic. A psychiatrist would perhaps term it "anti-social personality disorder coupled
with sexual sadism." Father Joshua would say he had a devil. He himself had heard such things, but they were
only words to him, words devoid of any real meaning or significance.
He
looked across at her, and it was too much. He had to have her. Shoving aside thoughts of the risk, he turned around
and drove back. His compulsion would not let him leave without doing it. Now fully committed to it, he trembled
in anticipation. Yet his unease would not lie quietly.
You
don't have time for this, it warned. Just finish her and get out before it's too late. But she's perfect, said
a hungry something inside him. She's untouched.
Joshua's house, Canaan Camp
Only a mile and a half away, Hawthorn County deputies stood under a tree below Joshua's house as the ambulance
carrying the old man pulled onto the highway. They were getting assignments for a search of the camp. If nothing
turned up they would begin searching of the back roads. The Highway Patrol was already stopping traffic and on the highways
as the search for Paget was in full swing. A description of the missing vehicle, including license number, had been
sent to surrounding jurisdictions, including the Arkansas Patrol.
"I'm
going to take another look around down at the sawmill?" said Richard.
"I
thought you said that the road dead ended down there," said the sheriff.
"It
does, but I'm almost positive that he didn't leave the camp through the front gate while I was up at the house. The
boy down there said he didn't."
"He could be
lying."
259.
"He could, but Boss, I need to go
and check it out. Maybe I missed something down there."
"Go
ahead, but keep in touch this time. If you find anything, call it in immediately."
"I will," said Richard, mildly annoyed since he had never failed to stay in contact.
As he headed back down
the dirt road toward the sawmill, he glanced up at the rear view mirror. Through the haze of the dust cloud he was throwing
up, even at low speed, he could see cruisers pulling out of the yard and heading for out on their search assignments.
What he didn't notice was the absence of his whip antenna.
TWA Dome, St Louis, 1:20
Shane felt empty, lost. Perhaps it was the situation, or the fact that he had listened to the preacher
above him from the darkness of his hiding place, but suddenly all that Joshua had ever said seemed hollow and somehow cheap.
There was a knot in his throat that wouldn't go away. He had lost his faith.
If I don't have Father Joshua and the Church, what do I have? He closed his eyes.
What will Raven do
if she finds out that I don't believe in the church anymore?
She
once told him that the Church was the only real family she ever had, that it had been the only place she has ever belonged.
Yet, she had objected to the mission from the beginning, and had even expressed doubts about Joshua. It came to him
that she had suffered her own loss of faith on the night of the expulsions. Despite the emptiness within him, Shane
wanted to protect her, to make things better for her, to somehow make up for the terrible things that had happened to her.
If he could he would perform some kind of surgery to cut out the thing that tormented her so.
He laughed bitterly at the thought. Physician, heal thyself, he told himself. But it was just words.
He wanted to pray, but he didn't know how to put what he felt into words. So he did the only thing that he knew for
certain was right. He covered up valves and wheeled the dolly our from under the dais. Ignoring the surprised
stares from some in the congregation he started up the ramp to the corridor intending to take the canisters back in the van.
He no longer cared about disappointing Joshua, and he no longer believed in the Church, but he wanted to get
the laughing gas out of the building before he caused any real harm. The people at Canaan Camp were good people, and
he didn't want them hurt anymore than he wanted to harm the black preacher and the people who had come to hear him.
Mostly he had to get back to Raven. They had to talk and he had to think.
260.
Hicks saw the young janitor approaching him again, wheeling a plastic trash barrel on a hand truck, evidently
taking the filled liner to a disposal area. As they passed the bulge of his gas mask pouch brushed the loose lid, knocking
it to the floor. Hick's heart fluttered like a bird trying to break through his ribcage. Inside the container
sat squat canisters exactly like the pictures hey had been shown. The only difference was that "CO2" had been
stenciled on the collars.
Somehow he managed to keep walking
as if nothing had happened. As the young man bent hurriedly to retrieve the top from the floor, Hicks turned to conceal
what he was doing as he pulled his sidearm. There was no time to report. He had to get close enough that it would
be impossible to miss. He would only get one shot. Concealing it behind him he quickly closed the distance, his
heart racing.
At least an upper body shot if he so much as flinches, he told himself. No hesitation.
"Hold it right there!" he croaked.
Shane
turned at the sound. A man in a shooter's stance leveled a snub nosed pistol from barely an arm's length away.
Just what I need, he thought, suddenly deflated. I'm going to jail. He dropped
his hands to his sides and shook his head. I wonder what the crime is? Unlawful entry? Malicious mischief?
"If you so much as flinch, I'll shoot you," said the man in a quavering voice. "Where
are the others?"
"Others? There
aren't any others."
"You're lying!
Tell me where they are or I'll shoot you."
"You're
kidding," said Shane uneasily.
"We don't have
time for this," warned Hicks. "Now tell me where they are."
Something
was wrong. Shane could see that the man might actually do it. "Hey. Don't point that gun at me,"
he said. "It was just a silly prank. All I was going to do was . . . here let me show you." Shane
reached toward the tanks.
It happened so fast that Hicks froze in disbelief.
261.
Canaan Camp, 1:22
Richard
stood atop the ravaged hillock above the sawmill looking vainly for avenues through the standing trees and stumps. Paget
couldn't have driven through the woods, not even with a high clearance RV. He half-walked, half-slid back down the precipitous
slope to his cruiser, deflated by his discovery, but at last satisfied with the elimination of one possibility. On the
way back to the house, he looked up the hill to his left where the old barn stood. The wide central bay, open at both
ends, and was big enough to admit a loaded hay wagon. He slowed as he passed until he could see daylight coming through
the far door. He backed up and drove up the hill though he was sure the barn had been searched.
On either side of the open bay, the barn was filled from floor to rafters. The sheet metal roof absorbed
the sun, literally baking the upper bales and filling the tightly stacked barn with the smell of curing fescue. It was
immediately obvious that nothing of any size could be hidden inside.
Richard
walked out the far side onto a gently sloping and recently bushhogged lot. Some seventy-five yards to the north and
down the hill, he saw an opening in the trees. Glancing over the contours of the lot, he thought he saw a slight depression
leading off in that direction. Upon closer inspection, he realized that it was an old road, no longer in use.
The drought had baked the soil rock hard and withered the grass stubble. It looked as if a vehicle had recently pressed
down the dead grass. It had probably been the tractor and hay wagon, but it warranted a closer inspection. He
went back for his car to follow the trail into the woods.
TWA Dome, St. Louis
The hiss broke his paralysis. Hicks pulled the trigger, and then rushed forward to club the perp's head
with his revolver as he simultaneously lunged for the valve. After he fumbled it closed he snatched one of the auto-injectors
and slammed it into his thigh. Head spinning and nausea rising, he plunged a second syrette into the unconscious terrorist's
thigh. Then he pulled the gas mask from its pouch and struggled to get it on. Finally, feeling as if he would
pass out at any moment, he called in.
"This is Hicks,"
he shouted, his voice muffled by the gas mask. "I've got one of them in custody. There was a small release---I
don't know how much. Seal off this corridor and don't come in without your masks."
He felt ready to collapse, and didn't know if that were the effect of the gas, the atropine, or a combination
of the two. Fearing he would lose consciousness, he knelt and handcuffed himself to the man lying on the floor.
262.
The bus boneyard,
1:30
"Get out of
there," said Paget harshly as he roughly dragged Raven from the car and slung her forward.
She fell, turning to take the impact with her shoulder. He twisted his fingers into her long black hair
and hauled her to her feet, propelling her before him.
"I'm
going to do you good," he exulted, drunk with the feeling of power.
He
left her wrists taped together at the small of her back, but ripped the tape from her mouth. He needed to hear her.
Raven knew she could do nothing to stop him.
He
smiled, anticipating the hysterical pleading to begin. But she remained silent, and wouldn't so much as look at him.
He decided to wait her out, but soon lost patience as she continued to stray from the script. She should be kneeling
before him, begging, pleading, promising, asking "Why?" Her dark eyes should be pooled with tears. She
should be whimpering, and shuddering as he forced her to his will.
The
slut's taunting me, he thought. She thinks she can control me.
Trembling with rage, he slapped her to her knees, gripped her head in both hands and pulled her up, forcing
her to look at him. Something was wrong with her. Her eyes weren't wide like they were supposed to be. They
were dull---like she was already dead. He could make her grunt with pain, but she refused to say anything. He
wasn't going to stand for it! He seized her by the throat and squeezed until her face began to darken and her mouth
gaped open. As she approached unconsciousness he suddenly realized what she was trying to do. She's trying
to cheat me!
"No! You're not going to get away that easy," he said angrily as he released her throat.
He spun her around, grasped her hair again, and pushed her ahead of him.
"You'll
die when I'm good and ready. I'm not through with you, Miss Dusky---not by a long shot."
Raven didn't want to die, but she knew that she was going to. Just as it had her whole life, fate had
taken her for its own purposes. He was going to hurt her, kill her, and then throw her away. The thought left
her numb. She had fled to her familiar hiding place, but it wouldn't save her this time. The numbness wouldn't
last.
263.
I'm not brave, she thought. I'll scream and plead when he hurts me. I'll promise and
I'll do everything he wants. And it won't make any difference.
She thought of Shane would react when he found out how she had been killed. Then she realized how much
she wanted the impossible future with him that he had proposed.
It's
not fair! she thought. Not now!
The
path led to a graveled road. Uncut hay nearby showed signs of a vehicle recently turning out onto the road, going to
the left. He drove for half a mile came to a fork, choosing to go left because he thought it led toward the highway.
Two miles further he found that the gravel road did intersect with a black top. However, four large boulders had been
placed across its end, denying highway access. He turned around.
The
other fork wound around thickets of brush and weeds competing for space on the rocky soil. Rounding a tight turn and
bumping over wallowed out ruts and uneven protrusions of bedrock, he came to two dark railroad ties set into the ground off
to the right. The end of a loose cable lay in front of him like a huge sunning snake. A bloom of nervous tension
began to ball in the pit of his stomach, the old familiar aura he first felt in Somalia.
He came this way.
He coasted to a stop, hoping the
sound of his tires hadn't betrayed his arrival. Keying the microphone, he announced his location, using the barn and
the fork in the road as reference points. "A cable blocking entrance to a lane or driveway has been recently broken.
I'm sure it's Paget. I need backup, but don't have time to wait for it. I'm preceding on foot."
He waited for acknowledgment but got only static. He tried again with the same results. Assuming
he had reached a place with a lot of radio interference, or one of the dead spots one occasionally found, he put the mike
back and got out. He eased the door closed and looked overhead to see if there were power lines that could be causing
the disruption. Then he noticed his missing antenna.
Shrugging
his acceptance of the situation, he drew his pistol and walked through the gate. Every few meters he stopped, carefully
scanning the area ahead and listening. He was walking his own point. Some thirty yards up the lane he found a
tire tool. The paint was chipped off one end exposing the bright, rust free metal, meaning that the tool had just been
discarded. With reinforced caution, he rounded an untidy hedge of multiflora roses and emerged onto a movie set vision
of the post-apocalyptic world. Hundreds of dust-covered buses were parked end-to-end in neat rows, forming a huge maze.
264.
Now that he had her isolated and under control he peeled the duct tape from her wrists. Raven's hands
had fallen asleep.
"Keep your hands at your side," he ordered when she flexed her fingers.
His eyes shone brightly as a crooked smile stretched his lips. Then his nostrils flared like
a raptor sensing prey. Intense concentration erased the smile as he stared into her eyes. He backed her into one
of the buses, and then, without taking his eyes from hers, he began to work slowly at the buttons of her blouse.
"What have you got hidden in there?" he mocked, intending to savor the changes in her face as
he forced her compliance.
Raven looked at his face, seeing
only the first of Starry Dawn's "boyfriends" to hurt her. Jimmy never takes long, she told herself.
It'll be over soon.
Her passiveness puzzled
him. Maybe she's lost it---gone crazy with fear, he thought. But that wasn't it. She looked perfect
except for the eyes. He didn't like the deadness there. She was resigned and surrendering, but it was wrong!
Infuriated, he backhanded her, snapping her head around. When she looked back at him, blood trickled from
the corner of her mouth. She didn't cry out, only looked down and away. It wouldn't do! He pulled her forward
by the front of her blouse, grasped her chin, forcing her head up. "Look at me!" he screamed.
Raven returned him the same blank stare. He gripped her neck with both hands and tightened until she started
to struggle for breath. Then he relaxed his grip, allowing her one quick breath. Pinning her against the bus with
one large hand, he leaned in, inches from her face. "Do you know what I'm going to do to you?" he snarled.
She nodded almost imperceptibly. "Kill me," she said
weakly.
"Not for a while," he crooned, caressing her cheek lightly. "I like doing this.
I like it a lot. And I'm going to take you with me . . . if you're a good girl."
Be a good girl like your momma said. It was Jimmy's voice, but she knew it wasn't Jimmy who was doing this
to her. My life is over. Soon all the pain will end. There's nothing to gain by living any longer.
"I don't believe you," she said, focusing her eyes on his face as she tried to provoke him.
He almost snapped her neck. But then he realized what she was trying to do. He trembled, barely
able to keep himself from killing her only by remembering that she was trying to cheat him. She was ruining it.
Worse. She was trying to control him!
265.
"What
makes you think I care what you believe?" he shouted. "Here's what you better believe. I can
make it quick." He squeezed her throat for emphasis. "Or I can make it last and last and hurt like hell!"
She spit in his face.
He clubbed her with his
open hand again, catching her as she started to fall and forcing her back against the bus. As hit her again and again
she fled to the hiding place she had discovered as a child.
He
saw the dullness come to her eyes. I didn't hit her that hard, he thought. Momentarily he suspected she
had taken something. She looked like heroin addict succumbing to a hit. Maybe that's what she did, he
thought momentarily. No. She couldn't have. She never . . . unless she had it hidden on her somewhere.
Paget began again, trying to recapture the feeling he had when he put her into the trunk. It wouldn't
come. It wasn't supposed to be like this. It's her eyes! he thought.
"Turn around!" he yanked her shoulder around and shoved against the bus again. "You
fall down and I'll stomp you to death," he growled.
His
frustration built to an eruption. No matter what he did, no matter how he had threatened and her, the she deviated further
and further from his fantasy. He had been unable to fool her into thinking he would let her go afterwards, and instead
of trembling in fear or scrambling to accommodate him, she was doing this numb thing. He wound his hand into her hair
and pulled, arching her back.
"Do you have
any idea of the things I'm going to do to you?" he asked in the crooning voice that terrified them.
The words came through to her, pulling her back to the present. "Nothing that hasn't been done before,"
slipped out before she could think.
That explains it,
he thought. Someone beat me to her.
"That's
what you think?" he asked pulling her hair painfully. "I can kill you. I can make you want
me to kill you. I can make you beg for it."
"Do
it then," she said softly.
She felt impelled to fight
back. Perhaps it was the instinctive last attack of a cornered prey animal, or perhaps it was anger that she had lost
the slight glimmer of hope Shane had given her. There was no escape. And yet an irrational hope insisted on still
being.
266.
Delay him, she thought. Someone will come to save you.
Immediately another thought came. There's no one to help you, Raven. There never has been.
Richard couldn't tell if the heat of the hood came from the engine or the mid-afternoon sun, but it didn't matter.
This was the car, so Paget and the girl had to be near. He held his breath and listened. Off to his left a blue
jay crabbed raucously. As a hunter, he had learned to loathe the birds because their calls alerted every creature in
the forest that an intruder was in their midst. When a second bird took up the call, Richard nodded in acknowledgment.
Only a hawk or human elicit such excitement. Keeping a wary eye, he went toward the sound, moving quietly from line
to line of derelict buses.
At the end of the last line, he
got to his belly and inched forward to peer around the tire of the lead bus. Anyone staring in his direction would be
less likely to think it was a man should he notice a movement that low. To his consternation, there was one more line
of vehicles, this one shorter to conform to the irregular configuration of the field. He saw nothing. Then he
heard an indistinct voice---a man's voice.
Paget slammed
her into the bus in frustration. On the verge of unconsciousness, Raven sought the darkness. She wanted it to
take her away, to be out of his reach, and never awake. But even now, she wondered if it were a sin.
Paget drove a fist into her abdomen and held her upright as her knees gave way. He breathed heavily.
The violence helped. He would skip the preliminaries and go straight to the pay off, straight to the kill---but not
yet. She had to recover her senses first and she had to be exposed. When she finally drew in a gasping breath,
he smiled and then hooked his hand into the front of her blouse, preparing to rip it open.
Something moved! He jerked his head around.
"You!"
he gasped, staring at the man holding the pistol.
Reflexively,
he swung the girl around as a shield, took the knife from his pocket, flicked it open expertly, and brought the point up just
below her chin.
"Stay back or I'll slit her throat!" he growled.
267.
Richard had to get closer or nothing he did would matter. He hesitated for only a moment before continuing
his advance.
"I'm warning you!" shouted Paget
"When
I see blood you're a dead man," said Richard evenly.
"No.
You don't want to make me cut this pretty little thing. Stay back or I'll do it! I'm warning you!"
"Her being alive is the only thing that's keeping you alive," said Richard, inching closer.
"But I think your luck has run out, Paget."
"Wrong!
I got me one sweet little lucky charm here. I rip her open ear to ear and she bleeds out no matter what you do."
Richard knew that the standoff couldn't last. Paget wasn't about to give up the only thing he had left,
but if he let him leave with her, then she was dead. Still he couldn't risk a shot at this range. He wasn't good
enough. He'd be much more likely to hit her than Paget.
"You
know," he said. "I'm running for sheriff."
"What?"
"After I take you down there won't be anybody who can beat me."
Anyone else would have seen the inanity of the remark, but it resonated with Paget's view of his own importance.
"They don't elect guys who get pretty little things like this cut up."
For emphasis Paget pushed the point of the knife into the soft skin under Raven's jaw, not yet exerting enough
pressure to draw blood.
Richard shrugged. "This
is not about her. It's about you. As long as I get a picture of me standing over your body . . . well, then it's
all over but the shoutin'."
He shuddered at the thought
about what he was doing to the girl. If it all went wrong and she died thinking that her death meant nothing to him.
He'd never be able to live with that. Yet the desperate bluff was all he had. Paget had only to believe him long
enough for him to get off one good shot. But it would have to be the shot of his life.
268.
"But you know," he said, pausing half a dozen steps away. "If I could get you and
have her come out of this alive, that would really set me up."
"Ain't happening," shouted Paget, tightening his hold on the girl. "Here's what you're
going to do. You're gonna throw that gun away and let me leave. I'll let her go as soon as I get to the car.
Then you can run on the brag that you saved her from me."
Richard
shook his head. "Your word isn't worth a damn, Paget. But mine is, so I'll make you one last offer.
Let her go, and I won't blow your damned head off."
Paget
gaped at him.
"You need to think about it?" asked Richard, taking a step closer. "You're smarter
than that."
"You're bluffing!" sneered Paget. "You want her alive or you would have shot already."
"Don't be an idiot. She gets killed by you, that's one thing. Having one of my bullets
in her is another." The purely selfish reasoning made sense to Paget. Richard could see it on his face.
"You're really lucky that it's me that found you, Bobby Lee." He laughed. "In fact you might be
the luckiest man alive. A federal court just overturned the Missouri death penalty yesterday. Now the most they
can give you now is life without parole."
It was
an outright lie, but it allowed him to take another step.
"Think
about it. Life behind bars is a hell of lot better than dead. You're a celebrity. All the shrinks and crime
writers will come down to see what makes the monster tick. That would be a real hoot wouldn't it? If there are
others you killed that they don't know about you could run them all over the country looking for bodies."
Richard had intentionally avoided looking at the girl's face lest something there would make him falter.
Now he did, and he noticed that her eyes were fixed on his. Unbelievably he saw the hint of a nod. As he struggled
to understand what it meant Paget spoke softly, "You're lying."
The
man's sudden calmness dismayed Richard.
Paget moved the thin blade
to the hinge of her jaw, its point angled upward toward her left ear.
269.
"Toss the gun or I'm slicing her open."
There was no first aid for a slashed throat. Only a headshot would do, and the odds weren't good at the
present distance. As if reading his mind, Paget readjusted his hold on the girl, attempting to keep her head between
Richard and his own. Already a thin trickle of blood ran down her neck.
Clammy
nausea flooded through Richard at the sight. I don't have time for this! he told himself.
Suddenly the girl slumped as if passing out. Reflexively, Paget spread his legs to keep his balance as
he struggled to pull her back upright.
Raven slammed her head
back into his face.
Cursing from the stinging pain
of his broken nose, and almost blinded by instant tears, Paget almost lost her as she tried to twist away. Richard saw
the lower half of Paget's body come uncovered, adjusted his aim, and fired.
Just
like Somalia. He had reacted rather than thought. Both Paget and the girl went down.
Not knowing if he hit one or both, Richard dove forward clubbing Paget with the magnum even as he stomped down on the hand
holding the knife. As the girl scrambled away he hit Paget again and again until he stopped moving.
He put one cuff on Paget's left wrist, ran them through his belt behind his back, and cuffed the other wrist.
Then he rolled him to his back. Finally he looked at the girl.
She sat on the ground, blood oozing through the fingers clutched at
the juncture of her neck and shoulder.
"Let me see,"
he said, gently taking away her hand and wiping his fingers quickly across the wound.
"No arterial spurt. It's not deep," he said calmly as he began unbuttoning his shirt.
After he removed it,
he pulled his T-shirt over his head, folded it twice, and placed it over her wound. "Hold that tight," he
said. "You're going to be all right."
She nodded.
"I'm sorry for scaring you, but I had to get close enough for a shot."
Raven noticed his trembling hand. "I knew what you were doing," she said.
"I didn't," he admitted. "Are you sure you're okay?"
270.
She nodded. "Put some handcuffs on him please."
"I already did," he said as he examined Paget's wound.
"Oh. Good," she said.
The
bullet had caught him square on the hip socket, and the bleeding was profuse. If he lived to face the death chamber,
Paget would probably limp his last mile. Richard removed the man's shirt for a compress.
"My radio's out," he said. "I'll have to go for help. Can you hold this in
place?"
Raven didn't answer.
"Did you hear
me, Miss?"
"No. I mean I don't care if he dies. I want him to," she said dreamily. "But
that's wrong, isn't it?"
Richard remembered an
"unwrong" thing he had done. It haunted his nights and some days.
"It's perfectly understandable," he said. "But you need to help him for your own
sake."
"For my sake?"
"He
can't hurt you anymore, but letting him die can. Trust me on that."
Whether
she believed him or not, the girl kept her would be killer alive until Richard came back. When the ambulance arrived,
she refused to ride in it with Paget inside. A female EMT dressed her wound and she walked back to the cruiser with
Richard.
"Is Shane in a lot of trouble?" she asked on the way back to town.
"Probably," he answered, having learned only that nothing "deadly" had occurred in
St. Louis, and the that the "terrorists have been apprehended."
