his sport coat, Shacket draws the Heckler & Koch Compact .38, which is loaded with hollow-point rounds, and he strides toward the linebacker, putting four bullets in him.
Justine breaks her paralysis and screams. She’s the Jamie Lee Curtis of her time, scream queen of the Sierra Nevada. She turns and runs, scissoring her long, smooth legs.
Her strong man collapses, as dead as anyone ever gets, and he rolls down the embankment, limp as rags, all the muscle gone out of him, into the tall grass below.
This is what it’s all about, being in command, being empowered, without fear, untouchable. Shacket is a changed man, a changing man, fast becoming, becoming someone new, something else.
The woman is running down the middle of the highway, heading west, evidently hoping a car or truck will appear.
Instead of sneakers or anything practical, the bitch is wearing sandals with a medium heel. She stumbles once, and then again. One sandal flies loose. She hobbles forward.
Laughing at her frantic, feckless escape attempt, Shacket goes after her.
A black feather floats in front of Shacket, a raven’s shedding from on high. He snatches it out of the air, pockets it, a symbol of death bestowed on him as a sign of his new power, to assure him that he may decide who will live and who will die and with what degree of suffering the condemned will perish. Everything seems like an omen now, means something important.
He holsters the pistol, races after the woman, seizes her by her long hair. He yanks her off her feet. Justine tumbles to the pavement. Shacket punches her once, leaving her dazed and limp.
He feels as strong as her dead boyfriend had looked. He scoops her off the blacktop as if she is weightless and carries her to the shoulder of the highway and drops her, kicks her, sends her rolling to the bottom of the slope.
In a fever of desire and triumph, he descends to the woman where she struggles to get up from the tall grass. He falls upon her, pins her beneath him. Recovering from the punch, she struggles under him. But this contest is settled before it’s begun, for she is the gazelle and he the lion, she the fly and he the spider.
The sound of a truck engine arises, approaching on the highway above. No one can see them here in the grass, at least twenty feet below the roadbed. Although it’s unlikely that anyone in the truck could hear Justine if she screamed, Shacket slams the heel of one hand under her chin and shoves hard, pushing her mouth shut, forcing her head back, her elegant neck arching, trapping her cry in her throat.
Maybe the two cars, one behind the other on the shoulder of this lonely road, will seem curious to the driver of the truck. But with no one in either car, no one flagging passing traffic for help, there isn’t any reason to stop and investigate. In fact, in this often lawless and dangerous age, a wise man would keep moving and avoid the risk of involvement.
Judging by the sound of its engine, the truck seems to slow, and Justine apparently has a moment of renewed hope. She bucks and twists under Shacket, tries to force a scream through clenched teeth as he jams the heel of his right hand harder against the underside of her chin. Her taut and supple body squirming under him, her utter helplessness, his absolute power: Although neither of them is naked, this is the most erotic moment of Shacket’s life, and he is rampant.
Justine’s hope is a false hope. The truck accelerates, and the sound recedes. She stops struggling, stops trying to scream. The quiet of the wilderness descends, deeper than before, without insect buzz or birdsong, as if every creature that lives here is aware that among them has come one unique unto the world, one who is changed and changing still, one who lives by no rules either of man or nature, who fears nothing, and who should be feared.
He removes his hand from Justine’s chin, hoping that she will scream for him, for him alone, now that there’s no one else to hear. She looks up into his face, her blue eyes wide, her nostrils flared, breathing hard, and says only, “Please.”
Shacket likes the sound of that: the word, the pitiable note of entreaty, the recognition that he is her absolute master.
“Say it again.”
“Please. Please don’t hurt me.”
He intends to rape