"See, that way you can't turn the wheel," Snapper was explaining, still enjoying the irony, "so nobody can drive off with your fancy new Cadillac Seville. 'Less they put a fuckin' gun in your ribs. Ha! Accept no imitations!"
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, "I 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.
Bonnie Lamb recognized the other driver immediately. She gave a clandestine wave. So did the governor.
"What's going on!" Edie Marsh was on her knees, pointing and shouting. "What's going on! Who is that sonofabitch!"
She was more dejected than startled when the Jeep's driver one-handedly raised a rifle. By the time Snapper saw it, he'd already heard the shot.
Pfffttt. Like a kid's airgun.
Then a painful sting under one ear; liquid heat flooding down through his arms, his chest, his legs. He went slack and listed starboard, mumbling, "What the full, what the fuh—"
Skink said it was a superb time for Edie to assist at the wheel. "Take it steady," he added. "We're coasting."
Reaching across Snapper's body, she anxiously guided the Seville to the gravel shoulder of the highway. The black Jeep smoothly swung in ahead of them.
Edie bit her lip. "I can't believe this. I just can't."
"Me, neither," said Bonnie Lamb. She was out the door, running toward Augustine, before the car stopped rolling.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Jim Tile once played tight end for the University of Florida. In his junior year, during the final home game of the season, a scrawny Alabama cornerback speared his crimson helmet full tilt into Jim Tile's sternum. Jim Tile held on to the football but completely forgot how to breathe.
That's how he felt now, lying in clammy rainwater, staring up at the worried face of a platinum-haired hooker. The impact of the shot had deflated Jim Tile's lungs, which were screaming silently for air. The emergency lights of the patrol car blinked blue-white-blue in the reflection in the prostitute's eyes.
Jim Tile understood that he couldn't be dying-it only felt that way. The asshole's bullet wasn't lodged in vital bronchial tissue; it was stuck in a layer of blessedly impenetrable Du Pont Kevlar. Like most police officers, Jim Tile detested the vest, particularly in the summer– it was hot, bulky, itchy. But he wore it because he'd promised his mother, his nieces, his uncle and of course Brenda, who wore one of her own. Working for the Highway Patrol was statistically the most dangerous job in law enforcement. Naturally it also paid the worst. Only after numerous officers had been gunned down were bulletproof vests requisitioned for the state patrol, whose budget was so threadbare that the purchase was made possible only by soliciting outside donations.