I Shall Not Want

insanity.

'Shut up,' the man said. He ran his tongue beneath his lip, frowning in thought. The studs rose and fell like buoys. He gestured with the.357. 'Back to the barn.' Clare linked arms with Isabel and strolled toward the angular structure. She could feel the gun behind her as if it were still pressed into her skin. If she could just put a little more space between them and the gunman, she could let Isabel know that the police were on their way. That all they had to do was survive for the next half hour.

The man said something in Spanish to his two buddies. One of them asked a question. Their captor answered. The he grabbed Isabel's thin arm, jerking her away from Clare. The girl stumbled and went down. Clare tensed. The Taurus swung back to her.

'You and me will go get this book. She stays here. If I don't come back in an hour, they'll kill her and her brothers. Got that?'

Clare nodded.

'Let's go.'

She twisted her head around as she walked back to the entrance to the road. 'Be brave, Isabel,' she shouted. 'Remember Revelation! God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.'

Mr. Personality shoved her. She stumbled, trotted forward, righted herself. 'Are you a druglord?' She tried to sound like a teenybopper meeting a member of the latest boy band.

'What the hell is wrong with you, lady?'

They passed out of the sunlight into the shade of the forest.

'Do I get to keep the ten thousand dollars? You know, as a reward?'

'What? What ten thousand dollars?'

'The money that was with the notebook and the Ta-the gun. It was a big gun, like yours. I wouldn't know what to do with the gun, but I could sure use the money.' She kept her voice loud and singsongy, copying a very sweet, very bipolar woman she had met during her clinicals in Washington.

'You got all that? Rosario's stuff?'

'Yep.' She needed some way to remove him from the scene. A rock? A tree branch? She stepped over a fragrant pile. Sheep dung? The road was too wide and too clear for her to vanish into the underbrush, too twisting and uneven for her to lead him on a chase. Pick your ground real carefully, Hardball Wright said. It might be the only advantage you've got.

The car, then.

They rounded a bend and there it was, nose first in a stand of ferns, its rear quarter hanging into the lane, like a cow content to block the road while she grazed. The man circled around the back of the Subaru, pointing the gun toward her as he approached the passenger door. 'Get in,' he said.

She braced her hands on her hips. 'What about my reward money?'

He laughed, a sound like a heat gun stripping paint. 'I dunno. That was the rednecks' payment for taking out the garbage. You think you could be a garbageman for us? Take out our trash?'

Oh, God. The bodies in the shallow graves. She ducked her head, fiddled with the handle on the door. She couldn't think about that, couldn't think about Octavio, because if she did, she was going to lose it, and then she'd be just another terrified victim at the wrong end of his gun. She opened the door. Slid into the driver's seat. Keeping her face averted, she busied herself with the seat belt.

He knew fear. He expected it. Her only chance of doing this was keeping him off balance- by giving him something he didn't expect. She clicked the belt into place. He bounced into the seat next to her, sidesaddle, the better to keep the.357 aimed at her midsection.

She thumbed the audio controls from her steering wheel at the same time she fired up the car. Loud music bounced through the interior, cheerful and springy. She threw the transmission into reverse.

'Turn that off!'

'I can't!' she yelled.

He stabbed at the controls. The stereo fell silent. She shifted into PARK and turned the car off. 'You crazy bitch.' He jabbed the gun into her ribs again. 'Go.'

'I can't drive without music. Sorry. It's this thing I have.'

'What the hell are you talking about?'

'Well, it all started when I went to summer camp in third grade. The bathrooms had these really thin plywood barriers, you know the kind, and you could hear everything that went on there, everybody doing her business, and I found out the first time I tried to go that I just couldn't, not when anyone could hear me, and-'

'Shut up! Shut up!' He punched the power button. 'Just drive,' he said, almost drowned out by Dar Williams singing.

She started the Subaru up again. Reversed, went forward, reversed, went forward, scribing that perfect sixteen-point turn. Maybe I can just do this until the MKPD gets here. But even a narrow road will be navigated. She found herself nose down, rolling through the woods, past the stone walls, past the echoes of the old farm, thinking, When? Where's my ground? How do I fight?

He wasn't wearing a seat belt. A stomp on the gas, steer into one of the great old oaks or maples-but could she get enough acceleration before he stopped her? Bashing into a tree at fifteen miles an hour wasn't going to cut it. Beyond the forest, the pasture, descending in a wide bowl to the farm. Then the drive, then the road, then-what? He wouldn't blink if she whizzed down Seven Mile Road at fifty miles an hour, but her goal was to disable him, not kill them both.

Branches tapped the windshield. Dar sang, I stole a Chevy and I wrapped it round a tree. She couldn't let him get as far as the town. Collateral damage wasn't in this guy's vocabulary. The thought of what he could do with innocent bystanders around made her stomach churn.

She bumped, slowed down, bumped again. Ahead, the forest opened onto the field. Sheep grazed over the grass. She felt like one of them: woolly-headed. She knew there was an answer. There was always an answer.

The Subaru picked up speed as the roadbed evened up. She was driving, out of time, out of her chance.

The answer fell into her lap. Fly or die. They burst out of the woods into a wash of sunlight. The pasture spread out below her. She rammed her foot to the floor, jerking the wheel hard to the left, felt the sick skid, the strap biting into her, the loft as she broke gravity, and over the gangbanger's howl and Dar singing Alleluia! the tires left the earth and with a spine- shattering crunch they rolled, and rolled, and rolled, and rolled.

XXVIII

Every muscle in his body tensed as Amado watched one of the men force Isobel around the corner of the barn. He couldn't see what was happening there, and he was too far away to stop it even if he could. He inhaled. The lady priest was right, he needed to be smart. The gunman was going to imprison her in the barn.

Unless he was going to rape her. Or kill her.

He waited for a scream. A shot. He didn't realize he was holding his breath until the gunman reappeared, taking up his guard position. He exhaled. She was in the barn, then.

'Hey!' The man yelled in Spanish. 'Victor!'

'Yeah?' Victor was the downslope guard.

'You ready?'

'Hell, no. How are we going to do it, anyway? It's a stupid idea. We should just wait until Alejandro gets back.'