an accident.”
Jenny felt as if she’d been slapped. A dead child? But she didn’t have time to wonder about this. The medical student inside her had taken over. The man before her was still alive. He could still be saved. He was the priority. It was her duty to help him.
“Get Noah’s keys,” she said. “We’ll drive him to the hospital ourselves. We’ll tell them about this child, and Jeff, and— Jesus, just get the keys!”
Nodding, Steve stood and said, “Oh shit.”
“What?” But she saw what he did.
A car had turned off the highway and was bumping down the driveway toward them in one heck of a hurry.
Steve picked up the rifle and held it across his chest so it was clearly visible. Jenny was asking him what he was doing. He wasn’t listening. Every instinct in his body was telling him that this wasn’t right, that he was in danger. He couldn’t say why this might be the case, not right then, not keyed up on adrenaline and stressed out of his mind with horror and grief. But now was not the time to question his instincts.
The approaching vehicle sported the roofline of a sedan and the flatbed of a pickup. It skidded to a halt behind the Jeep and Buick. Both front doors opened and two men emerged. The driver was bookish and harmless looking, and Steve might have let down his guard had it not been for the other man. He was tall, maybe six feet. Beneath shoulder-length greasy black hair he had a hard, no-bullshit face, and beneath a protruding brow he had hard, no-bullshit eyes to match. The muttonchops and handlebar mustache shouted “redneck,” and he might have been a comical stereotype had he not been so…hard. That was the word that kept coming back to Steve. Hard.
Steve tightened his grip on the rifle.
“Jesus Mary!” the bookish man exclaimed. “Lonnie? That Lonnie? You shot Lonnie, you sumbitch!”
“Who are you?” Steve demanded.
“Who’m I? Who’m I? You shot Lonnie, you motherfucker!”
The hard man held up his hand, signaling the other to calm down. “We’re from next door,” he said. His manner wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t angry or disapproving either. It was like a cop’s: cool but alert, aloof but calculating. “We heard the gunshot, came to see what happened. He dead?”
“He’s alive,” Jenny said. “He needs to get to the hospital.”
“Right-o.” He took a step forward.
Steve pointed the rifle at him. “Stop.”
The man stopped.
“Steve!” Jenny said. “They can help!”
“Jenny, get inside.”
“Steve—”
“Get inside!”
“Whoa there,” the hard man said. “That’s no way to speak to a lady.”
“How many gunshots did you hear?”
The man didn’t smile, not quite, but his face twitched, as if he were smiling to himself, and Steve knew right then it didn’t matter the answer he gave, he was dangerous. The man’s eyes flicked from Noah to the man named Lonnie and he said, “Two.”
“Jenny, get inside,” Steve repeated.
This time she didn’t argue. She stood and backed up slowly. Steve backed up also.
“Now, say,” the hard man said. “What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know who you are or why you’re here,” Steve said, “but you come any closer, I’ll shoot you.” He pulled the stock tighter against his shoulder.
“Hey, okay, take it easy—”
Stumbling backward across the threshold into the house, Steve slammed the front door shut, flicked the thumblock, and shot the bolt.
CHAPTER 14
“Good Ash, bad Ash. I’m the guy with the gun.”
Army of Darkness (1992)
Beetle turned off the shower taps and dried himself with the towel he’d draped over the curtain rod. He wrapped the towel around his waist and stepped over the lip of the bathtub. Steam had turned the mirror above the sink opaque. He cleared a circle with his hand to view his reflection. He ran his fingers over a few of the shrapnel scars that tattooed his chest and right shoulder. He hated the sight of them, the feel of them. They reminded him that he should have died with the rest of his platoon on the beach in Grenada. He wished he had too. Sarah would have remembered him fondly, with love. She would not have grown to hate him. They would have avoided all the pain and suffering of the last two years.
It could have been different, of course—Grenada, his life with Sarah, everything. If the chopper hadn’t missed the designated beach drop-off in front of the university campus, if it hadn’t set down hundreds of yards away in the middle of enemy territory, the mission to rescue the