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Charlie shut up. Protesting her innocence would not save her, she realized with despair. Indeed, it might even hasten her end. If they thought she was a cop, they might try to torture information out of her. Once they knew that there was no reason to keep her alive, however, she was pretty much toast.
    “Turn here,” Denton ordered.
    Trembling so hard that she had to grit her teeth to keep them from chattering, Charlie turned. Gravel crunched as they left the paved road. Denton’s gun brushed the back of her neck almost caressingly. Short of a miracle, there was no chance of any kind of encounter that might save them. They were as good as dead. Charlie realized that she was starting to hyperventilate, and deliberately slowed her breathing down. Breathe in, breathe out, in, out …
    Sadie was behind her legs now, rubbing against them, offering what comfort she could. If she didn’t think of something, fast, poor innocent Sadie would die along with poor innocent her and who-cared-if-he-was-innocent Jake. Charlie thought frantically, but could come up with nothing that might save their lives.Running the Jeep into a tree would not help. If she did that, and survived, she would almost certainly be shot for her pains.
    She was going to be shot anyway. Oh, God, would it hurt? Had it hurt Laura to be shot like that? With a sense of deepening horror, she realized that Jake did not even know that Laura was dead. He’d been out cold when it had happened. She glanced at him, burning with an urgent need to acquaint him with Laura’s fate. But she didn’t dare so much as open her mouth.
    Sadie rubbed against her leg again, twining around her left ankle almost like a cat. Poor, dear Sadie. Beloved Sadie.
    “Is Jerry Colina working with you? He is, isn’t he? I always hated the bastard.” There was a certain grim pleasure in Woz’s voice, Charlie realized, that told her that he was enjoying the situation. Out of the corner of her eye, Charlie saw him grind the mouth of the pistol into Jake’s neck. She could see the gleam of Jake’s teeth as he grimaced. She could see something else, too, she realized: the gleam of Sadie’s eyes.
    Sadie was huddled in the footwell on Jake’s side.
    Charlie froze. If Sadie was on Jake’s side, what was rubbing against her leg?
    She glanced down. Something black was twining around the paleness of her jean-clad calf. Something twisty and ropelike and alive. A triangular head was slithering up the pale blue column of her leg toward her knee.
    Charlie screamed. No, she shrieked. The sound was earsplitting, window-shattering, heart-attack inducing. No horror film in history had ever recorded a morebloodcurdling screech. Completely forgetting that she was at the wheel of a vehicle traveling at thirty miles an hour over a narrow bumpy track, completely forgetting that there was a gun pointed at her and two armed murderers in the back and a strange man cuffed to her wrist, she shot out of that seat like a ball out of a cannon, flinging herself over the console and onto Jake in an insane effort to dive through his closed window, screaming all the while.
    “What the hell!” Jake grabbed her.
    “Shut the bitch up! Shoot her!” Denton lunged between the seats. Without even meaning to do it, Charlie kicked him in the face. He fell back.
    “Snake! Snake, snake, snake, snake, snake!” The snake swarmed toward her crotch, then undulated past her pelvis, moving up her body like it had somewhere to go. Charlie screamed like a steam whistle, kicked like a demented mule, then grabbed the writhing, leathery thing and flung it as hard as she could. Two plus yards of twisting, ropelike reptile flew into the air, smacked against the roof, and disappeared into the backseat.
    “Snake!” Woz screamed as horribly as she had done seconds earlier, and kept on screaming to the sound of beating fists and stomping feet.
    “Shit! Snake!” Denton was screaming, too, as they both engaged in panic-stricken battle with