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He got lucky on the second try. The key
was
in the ignition, and no one was around. It was an old Ford F-250. He put it in gear and drove onto the dirt road. Knew the neighbors would recognize the truck, but in this heat, everyone was probably indoors, sitting under the fans and hoping for a breath of air from their swamp box coolers.

As he reached the highway, he saw a sheriff’s vehicle pull off onto Sam P.’s road ahead of him. A male deputy, not the woman who had arrested him—the woman with the memory like a steel trap.

Max turned the other way.

T
HE SOUND OF
the bullet smashing bone ricocheted in the bomb shelter like an echo chamber.

Sam P. dropped like a sack of grain, his right eye gone and the other one staring up at them in glassy dismay.

But Shaun saw Luther behind him, flailing on the floor, shrieking like a banshee.

Half his jaw was blown off. The bullet must have gone through Sam P. and hit Luther as well.

Jimmy looked down in wonder at the .45. “Cool,” he said in awe.

Shaun saw Luther enmeshed in his own gore, trying to pick up the part of his jaw he’d lost, blood pouring out of him like a leaky spring.

Shaun took the .45 from Jimmy and put one through the center of Luther’s forehead.

Corey was half yelling, half screaming—a string of profanities came from his filthy mouth.

Shaun aimed and shot, but there was distance and the angle—he was below them—and she missed. She shot again, hit his good shoulder, and it spun him around.

She shot him three more times, center mass. He fell forward, dead.

The stink was terrible.

Jimmy looked at her. “I thought you said just one.”

She shrugged. “I changed my mind.”

M
AX DROVE OVER
a low hill and saw a crossroad ahead. A car was parked about twenty feet back from the stop sign. He saw a woman and a girl standing on the far side of the car—they must be having car trouble.

“Freeze!”

Max sat bolt upright, his muscles locking, foot mashing down on the accelerator. The truck he was driving shot through the intersection.

He hit the brakes. Skidded to a halt, tires smoking.

Shaking, Max looked at the crossroad, now in his rearview mirror.

There
was
no car.

He leaned his body over the steering wheel. His mouth was dry and sweat poured down his face.

Gordon.

Gordon had done this to him.

Why, though? Because he could? Max had always thought Gordon was a pompous ass. A sociopathic pompous ass.

Max tried to picture the car he’d thought he’d seen, but couldn’t.

He sat in the truck, letting his heart rate drop back to normal, and then he started up the truck and pressed on the accelerator.

But the truck didn’t respond right away. There was a catch in the engine. The farm truck coughed and slowed. Max pushed the pedal to the metal, but it sank uselessly to the floor.

Out of gas.

Now what?

He was out of gas and hallucinating: just another day in the life of Max Conroy.

He checked back in the rearview mirror—no car, just empty road.

He got out and started in the direction of town. He reckoned it would be three or four miles. He listened for the sound of a truck behind him—a new Chevy truck with a big engine. He didn’t know what he’d do if he heard it. There wasn’t much in the way of cover here. Just the empty road and some creosote bushes and a stunted mesquite or two. He scanned the roadside, back and forth, looking for cover, just in case. He’d have a little time. There were hills here, so he might not be in their line of sight.

He didn’t want to run into the woman and the boy.

After ten minutes of walking, he heard engines stressed to the breaking point.

Two sheriff’s cars shot over the rise, their wigwag lights blinking back and forth.

They blasted past him. He thought he saw the deputy, Tess, driving one of the cars, but wasn’t sure.

He watched them disappear over the rise. Two cars, added to the one that had driven by earlier. In a county this sparse, that could be the whole fleet. Where were they going in such a hurry?

But he knew. Something had happened back at the house. The deputy, the first one, must have encountered the woman and the boy. Maybe they’d shot him.

Whatever the cops found at the house, they would remember him walking along the shoulder of the road.
She
would remember him.

The deputy with the photographic memory would have him etched in her mind.

She would see the abandoned ranch truck too. She would wonder why the guys in the limo were after him. She would wonder what he was doing walking along the shoulder of the road in the middle of July with the sun beating down on his head, his shirt blotted with sweat and—yes—blood. She would wonder what was in the duffel he carried slung over his shoulder. The female deputy with the photographic memory would know the neighbor who owned the missing truck. The old brown Ford F-250. Of course she would.

She would see the bullet holes and Corey’s blood against the carport wall, the broken glass, all evidence of a gunfight.

Max had to get out of here.

He jogged along the road, looking for a house, someplace to hide, a car, anything.

The road spanned a narrow wash ahead. The wash was overgrown with chest-high grass, green like corn—the stuff that grew up after a rain. He could hide in there. He jumped down into the dry riverbed, and that was when he saw the culvert under the road.

He crawled inside, as far as he could get.

And waited.

S
HAUN FOLLOWED THE
road all the way to town. They had closed up the bomb shelter and locked the kitchen door behind them. The place was out in the sticks. There were a couple of ranchettes farther up the road, but the bamboo hid most of the front yard from view and the carport was in shadow. It might be days before anyone came by.

Shaun and her son had both washed up at the kitchen sink and rinsed their shirts to get rid of any stray blood spatter. They’d throw their clothing away in a Dumpster somewhere on the road. They dug through their suitcases from the truck and changed hurriedly. Shaun knew they needed to get on Max Conroy’s trail before it went cold.

They needed to split up. Although Max Conroy might still be nearby, Shaun thought he would head for town as soon as he escaped. She left Jimmy to scout the area while she reconnoitered ahead. He was to check the four or five houses and barns in the area and then call when he was done.

She had just made a pass through the main drag and was parking the truck so she could continue her search on foot when she heard a cop car coming, fast. No siren, but cops had a way of driving that made those big engines roar. She got back into the truck just as two sheriff’s cars rounded the corner, lights flashing. She saw them turn in the direction she’d come from, and knew instantly: someone had found the bodies in the bomb shelter.

Who?

Had a neighbor come by? Or did Max Conroy have a fit of conscience?

Jimmy was on his own—for now. He would be all right. He’d hear the cop cars coming and go to ground.

She continued to canvass the town. Didn’t talk to anybody, just played tourist. She knew she didn’t look like a tourist, but she also knew that if she looked at anyone who regarded her with curiosity, the person would likely look uncomfortably away. They said the best assassins were nondescript and blended into a crowd, and that was true. But she’d made a living being the other kind. She knew she could be mistaken for a man, depending on what she wore and how she carried herself. People would remember her. But they usually looked away, embarrassed and guilty because they didn’t want to gawk. They tried to forget her. They thought of her as a freak, not someone who might be dangerous.

She could change clothes, put on a wig, and be a different person. She’d made the transformation dozens of times.

She called Jimmy and he answered on the first ring. “Where are you?”

“I’m laying low,” he said.

“They at the house?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Can you get around them?”

“Sure. I’m up on the hill. They can’t see me, but I can see them.”

“You talk to anybody?”

“I saw one lady out with her horses. She looked smart, though, so I stayed away.”

“So what do you think?”

“I don’t think he’s here.”

“He’s probably headed for town. Meet me outside the Subway, OK? Don’t let anybody see you.”

“It might take a while.”

“That’s OK. I’ll keep looking for him, but now that they know what’s in the bomb shelter, we’ve got to get out of here. So try to get there in an hour, all right?”

“Roger,” Jimmy said.

M
AX KNEW AT
some point he had to leave the culvert. He could hear thunder, and if the rains came, the dry arroyo would fill up fast and funnel into the culvert—he could drown. But he was tired. After all he’d been through—the adrenaline rush—he could barely keep his eyes open. Being here, under the road, made him feel that he was not only safe, but invincible. He’d locked all three kidnappers into the prison of their own making. He’d survived a gunfight with a tough guy like Corey. He’d managed to give the woman and the boy the slip, as well as the sheriff. The only thing standing in his way now was a need for stealth and a need for transportation.

In fact, he felt better than he had in a long time.

For so long Max had been a victim of circumstances—a victim of his own making. He’d gone along to get along. He’d dutifully done what his press agent told him to do, what his manager told him what to do, what his business manager told him to do, what his CPA told him to do, what his financial advisor told him to do, what his wife told him to do. They all had their own agendas, and Max realized he’d just drifted, hating himself more and more, drinking and taking whatever prescription drug was available at the time. And, since he was a star, the drugs were always available, all the time.

Strangely, he didn’t feel a craving for the drugs. How could he have lost the dependency on prescription drugs so easily? He remembered Gordon telling him that sensory deprivation therapy was the most useful tool in combating addiction, that in many cases, people just…lost the urge.