“I want to know,” Mark said. “Seriously. Let’s work it out. What is it, five days without water, and five weeks without food? Except he’s not feeling great to begin with.”
“I’ll go help him,” Patty said.
“Suppose you couldn’t. I guess he could try to crawl his way out, but he must be dehydrating fast and feeling weak by now. Crawling might increase the risk of infection. And it would certainly increase his exposure to predators. Some of those critters like to chew on an open wound.”
“Let me go help him.”
“No, I think he should be left on his own right now.”
“Why do you even care? You said you were only catering to other people’s grubby desires. The other people are out of the picture now. So you’re done. Take the key and move the truck and get out of here. Leave us alone.”
Mark shook his head.
“Shorty burned my motel,” he said. “That’s why I care. Forgive me for feeling a tiny bit vengeful.”
“You made us play the game. Starting a fire was a valid move.”
“And leaving him to die is a valid response.”
Patty looked away. At Karel, lifeless on the blacktop, caught by the spread of the headlight beams. All harsh white light and jagged black shadows.
She looked back.
She said, “What are you going to do with me?”
“Always the same question,” Mark said. “You sound like a broken record.”
“I have a right to know.”
“You’re a witness.”
“I said all along you wouldn’t let us win. The game was bullshit.”
“It served its purpose. You should see what’s in the back of my car.”
“Let me go see to Shorty. Come with me. Do it there. Both of us.”
“That’s romantic,” he said.
She didn’t answer.
“Where is he exactly?” Mark asked.
“A ways back.”
“Too far. I’m sorry. I really need to get going. Let’s do it here. Just you.”
He aimed the gun. She saw it clearly in the headlight spill. She recognized the brand from the TV shows she watched. A Glock, she was sure. Boxy, detailed, finely wrought. The tube on the front was satin finished. A precision component. It looked like it cost a thousand dollars. She breathed out. Patricia Marie Sundstrom, twenty-five, two years of college, a sawmill worker. Briefly happy with a potato farmer she met in a bar. Happier than she ever expected to be. Happier than she knew. She wanted to see him again. Just one more time.
Something moved behind Mark’s left shoulder.
She saw it in the corner of her eye. In the deep black shadows beyond the headlight beams. A flash of something white. Ten feet back. Suspended in the air. Eyes, she thought. Or teeth. Like a smile. She listened. She heard nothing. Just the rustle of the car’s idling engine, and the soft wet burble of its patient exhaust.
Then she sensed a shape. Behind Mark’s back. A dark void. Like a tree was moving.
Crazy.
She looked away.
Mark asked, “Ready?”
“I’m glad your motel burned down,” she said. “I just wish you had been in it.”
“That’s not nice,” he said.
She looked back at him.
There was a man right behind him.
A giant. He had stepped into the headlight wash. In his left hand was a single arrow. On his head he was wearing a night vision device with the tube flipped up. He was six inches taller than Mark and about twice as wide.
He was huge.
He was silent.
He stepped up right behind Mark’s back, not more than a foot away, like two men in a crowded queue, to get in the hockey game, or get on a plane. He reached around with his right hand and closed it over Mark’s wrist. He eased Mark’s arm sideways, keeping it straight, keeping it level, effortlessly, like slowly and steadily opening a door, through a perfect ninety-degree arc, until the Glock was aimed sideways at nothing. He reached around with his left hand and clamped a bent elbow over Mark’s upper body and crushed him to his chest. He touched the point of his arrow to the hollow of Mark’s throat. Neither man moved. They looked like they were clasped together, ready to dance the tango. Except Mark was the wrong way around.
The big man said, “Drop the weapon.”
A deep voice, but quiet. Almost intimate. As if intended for Mark’s ear alone, which was only inches away. In tone it sounded more like a suggestion than a command. But with a bleak implication behind it.
Mark didn’t drop it.
Patty saw muscles bunching in the giant’s right forearm. Their contours were exaggerated by