Panic!

There was no place to go, the rutted trail was useless, they were trapped; the avenue of escape had opened only briefly, to tempt them, and then it had closed and there was nowhere for them to go. It had all been for nothing, all the running and the hiding, and last night, too, the insight and moments of peace and ecstasy and salvation, the growing thing that might be love between them—all for nothing, all too late. Fate had played a monstrous joke on them, tantalizing them with a chance, a future, and then presenting them with nothing but a certain death ...

Seven

“You missed them!” Di Parma screamed. “Damn you, damn you, you missed them both!”

He ran past Vollyer, arms flung wide, spitting obscenities in a release of the pent-up frustration he had known the past two days. They’re not going to get away this time, they’re not going to get away, oh you prick, Harry, damn your bad eyes and your boss-man superior attitude, you missed them, they should be dead now but they’ll be dead pretty soon ...

Vollyer was up and stumbling after him, frantically trying to chamber one of the .221 cartridges into the Remington, but Di Parma paid no attention to him. He was watching Lennox and the girl, watching them reach the wheel ruts below and start across them, a hundred yards away, just a hundred yards. He lengthened his strides, summoning all the strength left in his body, gaining on them, opening up his lead on the struggling Vollyer, and he was twenty yards from the trail when he became aware of the rumbling whine of an automobile engine coming out of the west, increasing in magnitude as the machine drew closer.

Di Parma turned his body without slackening his pace, looking toward the line of rocks in that direction, and then the car was there, he saw the car, he saw its unmistakable black-and-white markings, the red-glassed dome light, heard the deafening roar of its engine as it hurtled forward. He tasted momentary panic and his thoughts were sharply confused. Cops, oh Jesus, cops, how did they find us, I knew this was all wrong, I knew it!—and the cruiser veered off the road, coming straight at him, the gleaming chrome of its grill like bared teeth in the expanding brightness. He reversed himself, scrambling backward, eyes searching wildly for cover, not finding any, and the cruiser came to a shuddering stop nose up to a boulder fifty feet from where he was.

He dropped to his knees in the rocky soil, holding the .38 steadied in both hands, and opened fire.

Eight

Brackeen was through the driver’s door, moving with amazing speed for his bulk, before the cruiser stopped rocking.

In the distance, he caught a glimpse of the two figures—a man and a woman, the drifter and Jana Hennessey—that he had seen running the moment he’d emerged from the rocks. He felt a grim, fleeting elation that he had been in time, that they were still alive.

He crouched along the front fender, the Magnum heavy in the wetness of his hand, and a bullet dug its way metallically into the far side of the car, another spiderwebbed the near corner of the windshield. He forgot the runners then, thinking: It’s happening, it’s happening, but that was all he thought. A curious sense of detachment spread over him, as if he were suddenly witnessing all of this from some distant place, as if he were not really part of it at ail.

Another bullet furrowed across the cruiser’s hood, making a sound like fingernails being drawn across a blackboard. Brackeen knelt by the near headlight, looking around it, and the one he had taken out after with the cruiser was kneeling there fifty or sixty yards away. He was doing all the shooting. The other one, further up the slope, was running at an angle toward a thick-bodied cactus; something long and misshapen glittered in his hand.

The kneeling one fired again, and the headlamp in front of Brackeen exploded, spraying glass that narrowly missed his eyes, forcing him back. When he got his head up again, the slugger was on his feet, trying to run up the slope, clawing at the jagged earth with his free hand. Brackeen moved out a little, not thinking, setting himself at the edge of the bumper, and the Magnum recoiled loudly. Dust kicked up at the slugger’s heels. He raised the muzzle and squeezed off again.

The shooter jerked, leaned forward, fell, and then slid backward on his belly with his arms spread-eagled.

One, that’s one.