Chapter

87

He fired just as I hit the brakes.

Double-aught buckshot shattered the right side of the windshield. I hit the gas again when I saw the shooter awkwardly trying to work the pump action. He wasn’t a lefty.

I swung into the other lane where he couldn’t get an easy shot at me, then caught up and cut the wheel to ram the Impala a second time. My bumper hit the car at a quartering angle. The rear end of the Impala swung hard right. The guy with the shotgun was hurled from the car; he sailed through the air and disappeared into the night.

Finn Davis was in my headlights again, clawing at the wheel.

I didn’t give him a second chance, just sped up and rammed the Impala a third time, hitting it almost broadside. My car threatened to spin, and I had to slam the brakes. But Finn’s car reached a tipping point on the road shoulder.

It flipped off the embankment.

I skidded to a halt, heard sirens coming, dug out my pistol and flashlight, and ran back up the road. The Impala had turned over at least two times and was wedged at an angle against the trunk of an old pine. One of the headlights was still on, cutting deeper into the forest.

I shone my flashlight down into the gully, tried to find the driver-side door and Davis. He wasn’t there.

I flicked the light up to the car’s roofline and found him. He was bleeding, leaning out the passenger-side window, and leveling a scoped hunting rifle at me.

We fired at virtually the same time, me from the hip at fifty feet and Davis at that same distance from a dead rest. His scope had to have been off because, as it had with Pedelini, the bullet went left of me by no more than an inch or two.

I clicked off the light, threw myself flat on the shoulder, and listened for the sound of a rifle’s action over the hissing of the Impala’s radiator and the sirens coming up the mountain. I counted to twenty, stayed belly down, extended my hand to the edge of the gully, and rapidly clicked the light on and off.

Nothing.

I flicked it on again, slid to the side, and looked down into the gully. Finn Davis was rocked back against the tree trunk, blank eyes open and already dulling. A gout of blood showed in the wound at the center of his throat.