The boy in the chair was wide-eyed now, humming shrilly behind the tape and tugging his bound wrists against the chair legs.
Crane couldn't shoot Snayheever now, not with the gun pointed at Scat; the shock of a bullet's impact would probably make Snayheever pull the trigger.
The blood was singing in Crane's ears as he opened his mouth and spoke. "Look what I brought," he said softly.
Snayheever swung the gun toward him, and Crane reached up and yanked the .357 out of his belt.
The little automatic went off, and as Crane fired his own gun he felt that hot punch in his side, above the point of his hip-bone; cocking the revolver for another shot, he jumped sideways and knocked the chair over and went to his knees beside it, blocking Scat from any more shots.
His ears were ringing from the blast of the .357, and he'd nearly been blinded by the muzzle flash, but he could see Snayheever groping for the automatic, which was spinning now on a moonlit patch of the floor.
Crane swung the revolver back over his shoulder and then slammed it down, hard, onto the back of Snayheever's head.
The revolver nearly sprained Crane's unbraced wrist when it fired again, and as he tumbled forward across Snayheever's body, he was showered with gleaming shards of broken glass.
Crane sat up, grabbed Snayheever's gun with his left hand, and flung it up through the shot-out skylight. Then he climbed to his feet, bracing himself on the altar box.
Snayheever was apparently unconscious. Crane tucked the hot revolver back into his belt and, shivering violently, dug his hand into his pocket to get out his jackknife.
The Suburban was already parked right behind the Mustang when Crane and the boy crested the top of the hill, and Mavranos was halfway up from the highway side, running in a low crouch with his .38 glinting in his hand. Ozzie was hugging Diana, perhaps holding her back, beside the Mustang.
"It's okay!" Crane yelled hoarsely. He swayed, his right hand pressed against his side. "It's me, with the kid!"
Then Mavranos had sprinted the rest of the way up the hill and was beside him, panting.
"Damn, Pogo," Mavranos gasped, "are you shot?"
"Yes," said Crane through clenched teeth. "Let's get out of here before we deal with it. The nut's back there in a shed, knocked out. I don't think we have to go back and kill him, do you?"
"Nah, nah, let's just get out of here like you say. Diana and her kids can be in Provo or somewhere by dawn. You okay, kid?"
Scat just nodded.
"Your mom's down there, go say hi."
The boy peered down the hill, then saw Diana's Mustang and took off at a run.
"Carefully, kid!" Mavranos yelled after him. He bent and pulled Crane's blood-sopping shirt away from his side. "Aw, this ain't so bad, man. Just grooved you, didn't even touch the muscle layer, and the bleeding's no more than what you'd get from a good cut, no arterial spurting. I can bandage this; it's nothing compared to what you did to your leg."
Crane let his shoulders slump. "Good. You do that, when we get away from here." During the hasty, agonizing walk from the box to the hill crest he had been imagining passing out from loss of blood, and then at best waking up in a hospital bed, his body picadored with drains and IV tubes and a colostomy bag.
"Arky," he said weakly, "when we get down there, I'm going to drink one of your beers, very fast, and then another one very slow."
Mavranos laughed. "I'll join you. And if old Ozzie objects, I'll sit on him."
Mavranos had his arm under Crane's shoulders and was taking his weight as they shuffled down the dirt road. Crane could see Diana break away from Ozzie and come running across the gas station lot, past the wrecked cinder-block wall.
"Here comes Diana," Crane said, for the moment too happy to take a deep breath. "I saved her son."
"And got a battle wound," agreed Mavranos. "Maybe I should let her patch you up."
Headlights were approaching on the highway from the south, and they slowed as they approached the two vehicles parked on the west shoulder. Crane made his eye focus on it; he hoped it wasn't police.
No, it was just a white sports car, a Porsche.
A white Porsche.
No, he thought even as his heart began pounding, no, you see white Porsches everywhere—hell, there was one parked in the slot next to ours at the motel.
There was one parked in the slot next to ours at the motel.
"Get down!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, ignoring the pain in his side. "Everybody get down on the ground! Oz! Get 'em down!"
He shook off Mavranos's arm and drew the .357 and tried to aim it at the white car, which had stopped on the far shoulder.
Mavranos had pulled his own revolver out of his belt. "What?" he asked sharply. "That white car?"
"Yes!"
Can't shoot, Crane thought. What if it's just some Good Samaritan? And at this range with this two-inch barrel you'd be as likely to hit Ozzie or Diana.
"Everybody get down!" he screamed again.
Nobody was obeying him. Scat was still running down the sloping dirt road, and Diana was still running up to meet him, and Ozzie was hunching along at what must have been his top speed, far behind her. The fat kid had got out of the Suburban and was standing beside it.
A hollow pop rang across the highway in the same instant that the Porsche's driver's side window flared with a wink of yellow light.
Halfway down the hill road, Scat dived forward into the dirt and slid for a yard, face down. Then he didn't move.
Diana's scream filled the desert, and almost seemed to drown the roars of Crane's .357 and Mavranos's .38 as they emptied their guns at the receding white car, which didn't even wobble as it gathered speed.
CHAPTER 22: Alligator Blood
Diana was the first to reach Scat—but when she got to where her son lay she paused, then just knelt beside him with her hands half raised.
As Crane hopped and scrambled and sweated down the hill, Mavranos ran on ahead, and Crane saw him look down at the boy and reel back.
When Crane finally made his way down to where the boy lay, he saw why.
Scat's head seemed to have been shot straight through. His right temple was toward the night sky, and it was an exploded bloody ruin—the right eye was far too exposed, and the ear seemed half torn off. The boy was breathing in gasps that sprayed blood out across the moonlit dirt.
Diana looked up at Crane. "Hospital, quick—in the back of the truck. How are we going to carry him?"
Crane's heart was thumping hugely in his chest. "Arky, get a blanket—we can carry him in a blanket."
Mavranos's face was stiff as he stared down at the boy, and Crane remembered that the man had children of his own.
"Arky!" Crane said sharply. "A blanket!"
Mavranos blinked and nodded, and then sprinted down the road toward his truck.
Diana was panting and blinking around. "Who shot him?"
Crane was dreading this. "A guy across the road, in a white Porsche. I think he—"
"Jesus Christ, he was talking to me!" Diana was sobbing now, nearly hysterical. "The guy in the white car, when I was waiting down there! I told him to fuck off, and he came back and shot at me!"
"Diana, he—"
"He was aiming at me, this is my fault!" Her trembling hand hovered over the boy's blood-glittering head, and then tentatively stroked his shoulder, "I did this."
The boy's right arm began jerking, and Crane thought the harsh, wet breathing must be just about to stop forever.