Beware

nose and cheek mashed crooked against the window screen. She screamed. The hideous face lurched back, its features returning to normal, and she recognized Sammy. “You creep!” she shrieked as he dashed away. “You goddamn creep!”Her father phoned Sammy’s parents, that night.They were furious, said they would make Sammy wish he’d never been born. They must have carried out their threat, too; the next morning, Sammy showed up in class with a black eye and welts on his arms.That was the day he attacked Miss Jones. Lacey never heard for sure, but rumor claimed that he raped the young teacher. Afterward, Lacey felt sick when she thought about it. Had she been to blame, somehow? It only made her feel worse to realize how glad she was that Sammy had chosen the teacher to rape, not her.Well, he’d got her at last. Over and over again. She pressed her thighs tightly together, as if to prevent him from getting between them once more.Looking out the windshield, she saw that they had left the city behind. The desert road was dark except for a half-moon and the bright tunnel of the headlights. Off to the sides, the terrain looked bleak and rugged. Saguaro cacti stood in the distance like lonely, disfigured men watching them pass. Occasionally, she saw a house. They were few and dark.She wished she were home and safe, and Sammy Hoffman far away, locked up where he could never get at her again. Locked up or dead.“Make a left here,” Dukane said.Slowing the car, Scott turned onto a narrow, two-lane road.“We’ll find a place to hole up, get your friend’s story.”“Gonna write me up?” Hoffman asked.“Lacey and I,” Scott said, “want to write a book about you. We want to get your whole story on tape.”“Don’t waste your time. Laveda, she’ll see you never live to do it.”“Laveda?” Dukane asked, sounding shocked. “She’s mixed up in this?”“Mixed up? Hell, she’s it. She’s behind the whole fuckin’ thing. And you’re all on her list, now. They know you’ve been with me. They’ve gotta shut you up. Too bad, huh Lacey? I hate to see good quiff get wasted.”Lacey heard Hoffman grunt.“Just pointing out the facts of life.”Scott glanced at Lacey. “You’ll be okay. We’ll take care of you.”“Is he right, though? Will they try to kill us?”“They won’t get us,” Dukane said.“What’s to stop them?”“Me and Scott.”“I’m glad you’re so confident,” Lacey said.“If necessary, we’ll set ourselves up with new identities.”“I don’t think I’d like that,” she said, and stared out the window. A new identity. No more Lacey Allen, no more Oasis. Life in a strange town, always afraid the truth will be uncovered and the hunters will come. On the other hand, she no longer had strong ties to Oasis. After her parents were killed in a car crash, she’d simply stayed on because the town was familiar and comfortable. Most of her childhood friends had moved on. The job at the Tribune was pleasant and secure, but she’d often felt restless, had thought of heading out for a more challenging job in LA, or San Francisco. Only inertia held her back. Why abandon the safe, routine life of Oasis for the unknown? Someday, maybe. Someday she would just up and leave. Alone, if she had to. But she always imagined a man would come along, one day, and take her hand, and lead her into a new life.The man, apparently, was Sammy Hoffman. But he didn’t lead her into a new life, he dragged her screaming.She wished for the old security, the peace she’d known before he came along. But it was gone forever. She’d been terrorized, beaten and raped, she’d seen people butchered, she’d killed a man herself, and now she was faced with a life of hiding.She suddenly realized, with a mixture of regret and excitement, that she had already lost Lacey Allen. Lacey had died, had been reborn into a new and horrible world. No longer the same person, she deserved a new name.A natural step, when the rest of your identity has changed so completely. Maybe the new Lacey, whatever her name might be, would make a better life for herself. The old one hadn’t done so well, not really. This was a chance to abandon her old ways, to seek out what she had missed.“Might not be so bad,” she said.“What?” Scott asked.“Starting over.”“Better than the alternative,” said Dukane.“Don’t worry about it, Lacey.”“She better worry about it,” Hoffman said. “You all better. Only way I stayed alive, this long, is’cause I’m invisible.”“There is another solution,” Dukane said.“Yeah? I’d like to hear it.”“Kill Laveda.”Hoffman made a single, husky laugh. “Sure thing. You saw how easy it is to kill me? All those fuckin’ bullets and here I am, like nothing happened? Well, Laveda made me that way. And next to her, I’m nothing. I bet I don’t have a tenth of her powers. You’re crazy if you think you can kill…”“Damn,” Dukane muttered. “There’s a car behind us. No headlights. About half a mile back.”“How long’s it been there?”“I just spotted it. The moon caught its windshield, I think. Could’ve been on our tail since Tucson.”“I thought you said we were clear.”“Thought we were.”Looking over her shoulder, Lacey glanced at the grotesque, eyeless face of Hoffman and felt the back of her neck prickle. She quickly turned her attention to the rear window. She saw the red glow of their own taillights, the pale moonlit strip of road, but no other car. “I don’t see it,” she said.“It’s there.”“Police?” Scott asked.“Cops wouldn’t run blind.”“You guys gotta do something,” Hoffman said. He sounded scared. “They got us spotted, they’ll start coming out of the fuckin’ woodwork.”“Not much woodwork around here,” Dukane said.“You got no idea, man. No idea. You think we’ve got guys in the cops, we’ve got’em everywhere. Every fuckin’ corner of the country. Man, I’m top priority. There ain’t nothing they won’t do to nail my ass. They’ll swarm us. We’ll be dead meat in an hour.”“Calm down.”“You gotta get this paint off me!”“Shut up. Scott, cut the lights as we round this bend, then swing off the road. See if we can’t lose’em.”As the headlights died, Lacey faced front and grabbed her door handle. The car swerved to the left and sped off the road, lurching over the rough ground, slamming down a cactus that stood in the way like a man with upraised arms, bounding over hillocks and landing hard, finally careening down the steep side of a gully. Lacey threw a hand against the dash as the car slid to a stop.“Watch Hoffman,” Dukane said, and leapt from the car.“I ain’t going nowhere.”Lacey saw Dukane scramble to the top of the gully and sprawl flat. She opened the glove compartment. With trembling hands, she took out a cigarette and lit it. She inhaled deeply, held the smoke inside, and slowly blew it out.Hoffman coughed. “Bad for your health,” he said. Then he laughed softly. “Not that it matters. None of us gonna live long enough for cancer.”“Shut up,” Scott said.She was nearly down to the filter by the time Dukane returned.“It went by,” he said through the window.“It’ll be back,” said Hoffman. “The fuckers are psychic.”Ignoring him, Dukane stepped to the front of the car and crouched down. “Oh shit,” he muttered. “I thought so. Broken axle.”“What’ll we do?” Scott asked.“Walk.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

They traveled parallel to the road, well away from it so they wouldn’t be spotted if a car should pass. They only saw the road, themselves, when they sometimes reached higher ground.Scott carried both attache cases. Dukane, pistol in hand, walked behind Hoffman. Lacey stayed close to Scott, her eyes on the rough ground.A long time had passed since Lacey’s last hike in the desert. She remembered that time clearly. She was with Brian. They left his car by the road, and walked for nearly an hour in the fresh warmth of early morning. He took photos with his Polaroid: of cacti, of wildflowers, of lizards, of Lacey. They drank wine and ate cheese. The heat and alcohol made her tipsy. When she got tipsy, she got horny. They stripped and took pictures of each other, and that turned her on even more, and finally they spread their clothes on the burning ground and made love.She looked at Scott, walking slightly ahead and to her right. His shirt clung to his back with sweat. His wallet made a bulge over his left buttock. She remembered the feel of him during those seconds when they embraced in the hotel room. If only they hadn’t been interrupted…Three years, now, since she’d taken a man in her arms, into her body.Except for Hoffman.He doesn’t count.She felt his hardness plundering her, and her excitement turned into an icy knot of revulsion. She watched him walking beside Dukane, the back of his head silver in the moonlight, his hands cuffed behind him. He looked undamaged. Why hadn’t the bullets killed him, damn it? She should’ve grabbed Scott’s gun, when they had him down, and pumped a few rounds into his head.Maybe she still could.But that would end Scott’s dream of a best seller.Besides, she didn’t know if she could kill another person—even Hoffman. The look on that man’s face when her bullet hit him…A dead saguaro lay at her feet like a rotting corpse. She stepped over it.“Ah ha!” Dukane said, and pointed.On a distant rise of land stood a small house. Its windows were dark, its stone walls pale. A pickup truck stood in front of it.“The gods are smiling on us,” Scott said.Lacey guessed the house was half a mile away, and set far back from the road—far enough, she hoped, so that it hadn’t been noticed by those in the other car. Of course, they must’ve seen its entry drive. Maybe they’d already checked the place and moved on.The house vanished as she made her way down the side of a gully.Hoffman grunted. He stumbled, fell headlong, and tumbled to the bottom. “Shit!” he snapped, rolling onto his back. “Fuckin’ handcuffs!”Dukane pulled him to his feet.“Get these things off me,’fore I kill myself.”“That’s hardly likely.”“Damn it, take’em off! What do you think I’ll do, run for it? Where’ll I go? I’m with you guys, now. You’re my only chance. I wouldn’t break for it if I could, not with The Group on our fuckin’ tails. I’m yours. Get me someplace safe. Man, those bastards are gonna roast me. Just let me have my hands so I don’t bust my damn neck. That asking too much? I ain’t gonna be any good to you guys with a