In this makeshift learning room, Mitch thought about that walk between the library and the car pavilion: the moon like a lily pad floating in the pool, the muzzle of the pistol pressed into his side, the songs of the toads, the lacy branches of the silver sheens, the pistol pressed into his side….
A car of this vintage would not feature a fire wall or a crash panel between the trunk and the passenger compartment. The back of the rear seat might have been finished with a quarter-inch fiberboard panel or even just with cloth.
The backrest might contain six inches of padding. A bullet would meet some resistance.
The barrier wasn't bulletproof. No one armored with a mere sofa cushion would expect to walk unscathed through a barrage often high-velocity rounds.
Currently Mitch half lay and half sat on his left side, facing the night through the open trunk lid.
He would need to roll onto his right side in order to bring the pistol to bear on the back wall of the trunk.
He weighed a hundred and seventy pounds. No degree in physics was required to figure out that the car would respond to that much weight shifting position.
Turn fast, open fire — and maybe he would discover that he was wrong about the partition between trunk and passenger compartment. If there was indeed a metal panel, he might not only be nailed by a ricochet but also fail to hit his target.
Then he would be wounded and out of ammunition, and the gunman would know where to find him.
A bead of sweat slipped along the side of his nose to the corner of his mouth.
The night was mild, not hot.
An urge to act pulled his nerves as taut as bowstrings.
Chapter 33
As Mitch lay in indecision, he heard in memory Holly's. scream, and the sharp slap of her being hit.
A real sound refocused his attention on the present: his enemy, in the passenger compartment, stifling a series of coughs.
The noise had been so effectively muffled that it wouldn't have been heard beyond the car. As before, the coughing lasted only a few seconds.
Maybe the gunman's cough related to a wound. Or he was allergic to desert pollen.
When the guy coughed again, Mitch would seize the opportunity to change positions.
Beyond the open trunk, the desert seemed to darkle, brighten, darkle rhythmically, but in fact the acuity of his vision sharpened briefly with each systolic thrust of his pounding heart.
A sudden illusion of snow, however, had a basis in reality. Moonlight frosted the phosphorescent wings of swarming moths that whirled like flakes of winter across the road.
Mitch's cuffed hands gripped the pistol so fiercely that his knuckles began to ache. His right forefinger hooked the trigger guard, rather than the trigger itself, because he feared that a nervous twitch would cause him to fire before he intended.
His teeth were clenched. He heard himself inhale, exhale. He opened his mouth to breathe more quietly.
Even though his heart raced, time ceased to be a river running and became a creeping flow of mud.
Instinct had served Mitch well in recent hours. Likewise, a sixth sense might at any moment alert the gunman that he was not alone.
A sludge of seconds filled an empty minute, filled another, and another — and then the man's third bout of stifled coughing gave Mitch cover to roll from his left side to his right. The maneuver complete, he lay with his back to the open end of the trunk, very still.
The gunman's silence seemed to have a quality of heightened vigilance, of suspicion. The world now came to Mitch's five senses through a distorting lens of extreme anxiety.
What angle of fire? What pattern?
Think.
The man with the smooth face would not be sitting upright. He would slump to take full advantage of the darkness in the backseat.
In other circumstances, the assassin might have preferred a corner, where he could further ensure his invisibility. But because the raised lid of the trunk obstructed an easy view of him through the rear window of the car, he could safely sit in the center, the better to cover both front doors.
Keeping the cuff chain taut, Mitch quietly put down the pistol. He dared not risk knocking the weapon against something during the exploration he needed to perform.
Blindly reaching forward with both hands, he found the back wall of the trunk. Although firm under his fingertips, the surface had a cloth covering.
The Chrysler might not have been restored with a hundred percent fidelity. Campbell might have chosen some custom upgrades, including more refined materials in the trunk.
A pair of synchronized spiders, his hands crept left to right across the surface, testing. He pressed gently, and then a little harder.
Beneath his questing fingertips, the surface flexed slightly. Quarter-inch fiberboard, covered in cloth, might flex that way. It did not have the feel of metal.
The panel accepted his pressure in silence, but when he relaxed his hands, it returned to form with a subtle buckling noise.
From the passenger compartment came the protest of stressed upholstery, a short twist of sound and nothing more. The gunman had most likely adjusted his position for comfort — though he might have turned to listen more intently.
Mitch felt the floor, seeking the pistol, and rested his hands on it.
Lying on his side, knees drawn up, with no room to extend his arms, he was not in a good shooting position.
If he tried to move toward the open end of the trunk before firing, he would give himself away. A mere second or two of warning might be enough for the experienced gunman to roll off the backseat, onto the floor.
Mitch went through it in his mind one more time, to be sure that he had not overlooked anything. The smallest miscalculation could be the death of him.
He raised the pistol. He would shoot left to right, then right to left, a double spray, five rounds in each arc.
When he squeezed the trigger, nothing happened. Just a faint but crisp metallic snick.
His heart was both hammer and anvil, and he had to hear through that roar, but he was pretty sure the gunman had not moved again, had not detected the small sound of the stubborn pistol.
Earlier he had explored the weapon and hadn't found a safety click.
He eased off the trigger, hesitated, squeezed again.
Snick.
Before panic could seize him, serendipity fluttered against his cheek and into his open mouth: a moth, not as cold as they had looked when whirling like snowflakes.
Reflexively, he sputtered, spat out the insect, gagging, and pulled the trigger again. A stop was incorporated into the trigger — maybe that was the safety — through which you had to pull to fire, a double action, and because he pulled harder than before, the pistol boomed.
The recoil, exacerbated by his position, rocked him, and the crash couldn't have been louder if it had been the door to Hell slamming behind him, and he was surprised by a blow-back of debris, bits of singed cloth and flecks of fiberboard spraying his face, but he squinched his eyes shut and kept firing, left to right, the gun trying to pull up, pull wild, then right to left, controlling the weapon, not just shooting it, and though he had thought he would be able to count the rounds as he fired them, he lost track after two, and then the magazine was depleted.
Chapter 34
If the gunman wasn't dead, even if wounded, he could return fire through the backrest. The car trunk was still a potential deathtrap.
Abandoning the useless pistol, Mitch scrambled out, knocking a knee against the sill, an elbow against the bumper, dropped to his hands and knees in the road, then thrust to his feet. He ran in a crouch for ten yards, fifteen, before stopping and looking back.