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his ear, as faint as the grass creaking in the breeze.
    “I love you, too.”
    “ So many affairs, James . . .”
    The last rocks crunched as the vehicle came to a full stop in front of them, canted a little east, half-on Shady Slope Road, half-off. The side windows were opaque but the windshield revealed furious movement – the driver was shouting something now, and pointing.
    Again James’ stomach turned, this time a full somersault. “I think they’re fighting about us.”
    Elle said nothing.
    He took another dry breath and his mind fluttered. Maybe these people had killed Glen – shot him in the head – and left him for dead, only to return hours later to find the guy inexplicably up and walking. With a dumbass husband and wife who stopped to help. So now they had two extra witnesses to murder, and they were pissed off and bickering about it. He began to feel personally responsible for all this; he had dragged Elle into a situation he wasn’t equipped to handle. He heard his dad’s voice again: Be polite, be kind, but have a plan to kill everyone you—
    The driver door banged open. Thrash metal blared for a half second before the driver punched his CD player. He lurched out and stood, hands at his sides, stringy hair lifting and curling under a frayed LA Lakers cap. He was broad, barrel-chested, with the squinty gaze of a fighter and a black t-shirt that read I PISS EXCELLENCE.
    Silence.
    “Thanks for stopping.” James choked on basalt dust, figuring that if this excellence-pissing stranger were here to kill them he would have started killing them by now. “So we . . . we have a hurt guy here who needs—”
    “I didn’t stop for you,” the driver said.
    “What?”
    The passenger door screeched open, and a twenty-something girl with ponied hair the color of bottled honey pushed out and staggered to her feet. She slung on her shoulder a purse large enough to hold a car battery. She wasn’t wearing much.
    “Stay in the fuckin’ car,” the driver said.
    “I need to stretch my legs.”
    “I said stay in the car with your sister, Saray.” The driver wiped his nose and revealed a lion tattoo under his bicep. “We don’t know these people—”
    “Why’d you stop?” James asked.
    The driver reached inside his car and cranked the hood release—
    “ Hey . Why’d you stop?”
    “Right when I saw you three—” The driver licked his chapped lips and paced to the Acura’s front bumper. He had a way of talking, maybe a country accent – too fast and too slow, at once, like he was trying to channel Clint Eastwood. “Right when I came up the hill and got within a hundred feet of you, I lost steering and ran hot. Like a belt went out.” As if on cue, the Acura farted a cloud of white smoke.
    Elle looked at James, her eyes wide.
    What are the odds?
    James looked past her, over her shoulder at their own Rav4, at something he hadn’t noticed in the fuss before. Ten minutes ago when he was gawking at the dripping engine he had been standing with his shins to the bumper. Now with a few yards of distance, he could discern two off-color marks on the caged grill. Two dime-sized holes concealed under shadow. And a third skimming the bottom edge of the bumper, peeling the aluminum into cracked ridges. Like three little—
    Oh, no.
    “We’re being shot at,” James said. It came out deadpan, like a joke.
    The driver blinked.
    The girl, Saray, looked like she was about to say something. Then her cheeks chipmunked, and through her teeth she sprayed a mouthful of hot blood.
    * * *
    Tapp threw the bolt and ejected a golden casing. Up, back, forward, down, driving another bullet into the chamber and sealing the door behind it. It was a smooth action, made smoother by frictionless mechanical perfection and decades of muscle memory. Sometimes he cranked imaginary bolt-actions in his sleep.
    He ran his tongue over his molars and rationed himself another breath. Every lungful was catalogued somewhere in the back of