parents. He believed me, too. Nice guy.”
Her voice was softer now, with a funny dreamlike quality that made it sound as though she was struggling to concentrate and stay connected.
“Sounds like she’s fading some,” Ernie whispered. “I think she really is hurt.”
340
“Are you all right, Stella?” Joanna asked. ‘Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine. Leave me alone.”
“We can’t leave you,” Joanna returned. “Throw down your weapon and come out. Let us help you.”
“No. If anyone comes near me, I’ll shoot.”
“Mom?”
The sound of Nathan Adams’s voice coming from twenty-five or thirty yards away sent a surge of fear coursing through Joanna’s body. Hair stood up on the back of her neck. Her hands tingled.
“Where’d he come from?” Joanna demanded. “What’s he doing here, and where the hell is he?”
“Off to our right,” Terry Gregovich returned, pointing. “I saw him a second ago.
Now he’s dropped behind some bushes. He must have followed the railroad bed out of town.”
Joanna couldn’t see Nathan Adams, but she could hear him as he dashed forward once more. He must have run the better part of the mile and a half to two miles from his house to the scene. As he drew closer, Joanna heard him panting with exertion.
“Nathan!” Joanna shouted. “Stop. Go back. It isn’t safe!”
But Nathan Adams paid no attention. “Mom,” he gasped. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”
Stella, who must not have heard him the first time he spoke, did this time. “Nathan!”
she exclaimed forcefully. “Get out of here! Go back to the house! This is none of your business.”
“But it is my business,” Nathan argued.
“Terry,” Joanna ordered. “Ernie will cover you while I try to keep her talking. You and Spike go get that kid and do whatever it takes to get him out of here!”
Crouching low to the ground, Terry set off with Spike at his heels.
341
“I’m sure you don’t want Nathan to get hurt,” Joanna said. “Throw down your weapon, Stella. Let’s finish this.”
“It is finished,” Stella returned. “It’s over. There isn’t anything more to do.”
“Mom, let me be with you,” Nathan pleaded. “Let me help. Please.”
In the pale moonlight Joanna caught a glimpse of Nathan Adams as he tripped over some obstacle and fell to the ground. He started to rise, then crumpled again as Terry Gregovich and Spike tackled the boy and sent him sprawling. After a fierce but brief scuffle, the clump of milling figures lay still.
“No,” Stella said, oblivious to the fact that her son had just been physically prevented from coming any nearer to her. “I don’t want you here, Nathan. Go away.”
“Mom, please.”
“You’re better off without me. Go!”
“Watch yourself,” Ernie muttered in Joanna’s ear. “Sounds like she’s maybe gonna take herself out.”
Joanna nodded. “I think so, too,” she agreed. “How many people will she try to take with her?”
Suddenly the night was blacker. It took a moment for Joanna to realize that the softball game was over. There was a flicker as if someone had thrown a switch. Then the moonlight gleamed that much brighter. Off to the right she spied movement. As her eyes adjusted to the changed light, she was able to make out three figures-two human and one canine-moving back toward town as Deputy Gregovich and Spike hustled Nathan Adams to safety.
They disappeared from view behind a small rise, leaving the desert in an eerie nighttime silence that was broken only by the muted chatter of distant police radios.
342
“Stella?” Joanna asked finally.
“What?”
“Are you okay? We know you’re hurt.”
“I’m all right.”
The woman’s voice was definitely changed now, as though the effort of dealing with her son’s unexpected appearance had weakened her somehow and left her exhausted.
“Four people are dead,” Joanna said quietly. “Isn’t that enough bloodshed?”
“No, it’s not enough-not nearly.”
Joanna Brady thought about the officers ranged around the buildings now, awaiting her order to move forward. They were young men and women-dedicated law enforcement officers-with wives and husbands and children at home. She was one of those, too, with a husband and a teenager at home and with an unborn child sheltered inside
