Shoot / Don't Shoot

‘What the hell’s that all about?” he asked.

“Some kind of big deal down at the capitol,” Butch Dixon told him. “Something about this year’s domestic violence victims.”

“I wonder what those girls were doing there,” Dave Thompson muttered. “If my students have time enough to fool around with that shit, I must not be piling on enough homework. Give me another beer, would you, Butch? It’s mighty thirsty out tonight.”

Within minutes of hanging up the phone with Adam York, Joanna was lounging in the tub. By the time she crawled out and dried off, fatigue overwhelmed her. There was no point in even pretending to read the assignment in The Law Enforcement Handbook. Instead, she set the alarm for 5:00 A.M. and crawled into bed. The evening spent in Leann Jessup’s company and the chat with Adam York left Joanna feeling less lonely than she had in a long time. She was starting to forge some new friendships. She was learning how to go on with her life. Oddly comforted by that knowledge, she fell asleep within minutes.

The dream came later—an awful dream that invaded her slumber and shattered her hard-won sense of well-being. It began with Joanna driving  her old AMC Eagle down Highway 80 from Bisbee toward the Double Adobe Road turnoff. A woman—a complete stranger—was riding in car with her. For some reason Joanna didn’t quite understand, she was taking this woman she didn’t know home to High Lonesome Ranch.

Behind the Eagle, another vehicle appeared out of nowhere, looming up large and impatient in the rearview mirror. Bright headlights flashed on and off in Joanna’s eyes. She tried to move out of the way, but that wasn’t possible. She was driving in a no-passing zone through one of the tall, red-rocked cuts that line Highway 80 as it comes down out of the mountain pass into the flat of the Sulphur Springs valley. There was no shoulder on either side of the roadway, only a solid rock wall some thirty feet high.

Ignoring the double line in the middle of the roadway, the vehicle behind Joanna swung out into the left-hand lane. It inched along, slowly overtaking the Eagle, driving on the wrong side of the road, even though there was no way to see around the curve ahead or to check for oncoming traffic.

“My God!” Joanna’s unknown passenger yelled. “What’s the matter with that guy? Is he crazy or what? He’s going to get us killed.”

Joanna was too busy driving the car to answer, although she did glance to her left, trying to catch a glimpse of the driver of the other car. But none was visible. All the windows were blacked out. An oncoming pickup came careening around the curve in the other lane. With only inches to spare, the other car ducked back into the lane directly in front of Joanna.

As Joanna clung to the steering wheel and fought to keep her car on the road, an awful sense of foreboding swept over her. Even without glimpsing any of the other vehicle’s occupants, Joanna knew instinctively that they were dangerous. Reflexively, Joanna reached for the switch to turn on the flash­ing lights on the light bar and to activate the siren, but they weren’t there. Then she remembered. She wasn’t in her county-owned Blazer. This was her own car. Those switches didn’t exist in her basic, stripped-down AMC Eagle.

There was a gas pedal, though. As the other car sped up and threatened to outrun her, Joanna plunged the accelerator all the way to the floor. The

Eagle leaped forward. Then suddenly, in the peculiar way things happen in dreams, Joanna was no longer in the car. Instead, she was standing outside her own back gate with the idling Eagle parked behind her. While she stood there watching helplessly, a hulking, hooded figure leaped out of the other vehicle, which was now parked directly in front of her back gate. As the frightening spector started up the walk, Joanna yelled at the dogs. “Sadie. Tigger. Get him.”

But the dogs lay panting and unconcerned in the shade of the backyard apricot tree Eva Lou had planted years earlier. Neither dog moved. Meanwhile, the intruder was almost to the door, running full speed. Joanna struggled to loosen Colt from under her jacket. It seemed to take forever, but at last she was holding it in her hand

“Stop or I’ll shoot,” she shouted.

But the hooded figure didn’t stop, didn’t even slow down. Joanna pulled back on the trigger only to find that instead of holding the