She’d shot it full of holes, but there was no blood at all. That was the funniest thing. No blood, only straw and cloth and rust. Rust around the slashing hole that formed the laughing leer, and flaking orange teeth that had powdered to nothing when her bullets ripped through the bucket.
But still the scarecrow smiled, despite its wounds.
Claire smiled too. The scarecrow would grin long after she was gone. Under the hot summer sun and the freezing winter moon, the gentle rains of April and the angry sleet of October. The scarecrow would grin through all of it, and it wouldn’t bleed a drop. It would just hang on its cross laughing at the funniest joke of all, laughing until its brittle leer rusted clean away.
Nothing could hurt it.
It couldn’t bleed.
It couldn’t die.
But it couldn’t live, either.
Claire didn’t know if she could live anymore. She didn’t know if she could die, either. But she knew that she could bleed. And as long as she could do that — alive or dead or consigned to some hell in between — why then, that was something, anyway.
Even with all the blood, that was something.
Claire jammed the last of her bullets into the .45 clip. Arson was out there somewhere. All she wanted was to find him.
She’d do it.
Even if it took her last drop of blood.
A scarlet woman hurried through the corn.
Tate glimpsed her between the rows. There and gone, cutting her own path, never pausing. Tate tracked her from the road, sometimes ahead and sometimes behind.
He couldn’t see her face at all, only a mask of red, but he knew he was shadowing Miss Claire Ives, a cold- blooded killer wanted by every lawman from J. Edgar Hoover on down.
Covered in blood, she sure as hell looked the part to Tate. Like some kind of nightmare. But Tate was bleeding, too. God knew he was leaking bad enough to start seeing things. Angels or devils, as the case might be. But somehow he knew that this vision was real, just as he knew that he had to confront it before he could worry about his own wounds.
He was hurt, sure. Tore up in the shoulder, missing most of one ear, blood from some other wound making a sticky mess of his left boot. But the woman was bleeding too, and the blood didn’t seem to slow her down none.
It was crazy, that’s what it was. Crazy for the both of them. Why, if they had any sense they’d both sit down and hope to hell that a certain young lady in a black slip was on her way back from Fiddler with an ambulance.
Hell, two ambulances.
But neither one of them sat down at all. Claire Ives rushed on, and Tate Winters followed.
The Ives woman neared the road where the stolen Ford was parked. Tate glanced ahead, at the spot where the field ended and the two roads met.
That was where he’d make his stand.
At the crossroads.
The gunfire had stopped.
Arson heard movement in the field.
Pale cornstalks parted like a wound.
Claire came to him.
Christ, she was all torn up. But Arson didn’t care. He swept her into his arms. He couldn’t get the words out fast enough.
“It’ll be okay, baby,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”
“Always?” she asked, looking at him hard.
“Yeah. Until they put one of us in the — ”
She pressed her fingers to his lips and stopped his words. “No,” she said. “Always.”
Arson nodded, and Claire smiled under all that blood. He helped her into the Ford and climbed behind the wheel. It was still dead quiet — no sound but the wind combing through the corn.
Dead quiet. Yeah. That’s what it was.
Hank’s screams echoed in Arson’s memory. Pearl’s, too. But they were only echoes. Arson knew that his brother and sister-in-law were dead.
He wasn’t, and he was damn glad of it.
And he had his Claire.
That was all that mattered.
That, and getting the hell out of here before the law finished them, too.
Claire reached out and took his right hand. Their fingers knotted around her blood. He raised her hand and kissed it, her fingers still locked in his.
“Always,” he said.
His lips shone like rubies.
Wet with her blood.
The engine roared to life, and the Ford started coming.
Tate stood at the crossroads and raised his pistol. Straight on, the Ford came at him. Faster now. Black as a hearse, it came, its engine geared high, bearing killers who paid their way in blood.
Their own, and the blood of many others.
Tate aimed his gun and waited. He was bleeding bad. The car was thirty feet away, and in a couple of seconds it would be on him.
It wasn’t going to slow down. It wasn’t going to stop.
Neither was he. Blood leaked from his head and shoulder. Blood filled his boot. But he could bleed for at least another thirty seconds or so.
He could stand his ground.
He could pay his way in blood, the same way these two had. Hell, he had already done that.
He’d already paid the price.
And now he’d pull the trigger.
Claire opened fire.
The lawman stood his ground and did the same. His bullets tore through the windshield like angry hornets, and Claire closed her eyes in spite of herself, but it didn’t do any good because windshield shards sliced through her eyelids and stung her eyes. Still, she fired blindly as the car raced forward, fired until her gun was empty, and then another staccato blast exploded from the cop’s pistol and Arson grunted hard.
The Ford bucked and rolled on one side. Arson lurched against her and her door came open as the car kept rolling. The gun flew from her grasp and then she felt it, hot on her face, a spray as warm as summer sunshine and she knew it was her lover’s blood and Arson’s scarred fingers brushed her breast so lightly so tenderly as they tumbled from the car.
Together they hit the hard dirt road.
