Prologue

How to spend the Labor Day weekend? Sam could come up with a hundred ways. Covering the Miss America Pageant wasn’t one of them.

A tall, pretty woman with short, curly dark hair, Samantha Adams had just turned forty. And with that anniversary she had begun to believe that a wolf whistle now and then wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to a thinking woman. But Miss America? Bubble-headed young flesh bouncing down a runway? Surely, Hoke had to be joking.

She stood in the office of the managing editor of the Atlanta Constitution with her hands on her hips. “I know you call the shots here, Hoke, but in case you’ve forgotten, lifestyle, entertainment, and froufrou aren’t my regular beat. Remember me? The reporter who specializes in blood, gore, bad guys shooting up the little girl behind the counter in the fried chicken joint because she ran out of dark and crispy, didn’t get their change back fast enough?”

Hoke wasn’t listening. “It’ll be a nice break for you. Get you to the beach, out of this heat, away from ringing phones. You can kick back for a week, do your race-walking on the Boardwalk.”

“A week! The thing’s one Saturday night! Besides, I’m taking a couple of extra days. Harry and I’ve rented a place on Martha’s Vineyard.”

“Sorry about that, Sammy. And, FYI, the pageant spans two weeks, actually, start to finish. The girls are taking a train, just like the old days, the Miss America Special, Philadelphia to Atlantic City. There’s a week of rehearsals before they begin interviews on Sunday before Labor Day—”

“My God,” Sam interrupted. “They let you judge that, what was it, Miss Liberty Bell down in Valdosta last spring, and now you’ve become a beauty pageant junkie. Oh, Hoke. What does Lois think about this?” Hoke’s wife already spent half her time shooing off the never-ending parade of pretty young secretaries the guys in the city room called Hoke’s Cuties.

Hoke shot her an indignant look, but the pose didn’t fly with the lollipop poking out of the corner of his mouth. His internist had said, Give up smoking or living, take your pick.

“How many contests have you judged?”

Hoke leaned back, scanned the ceiling. “Four,” he finally admitted. Then he lurched forward. “Now, this Miss Dogwood Festival, Rae Ann Bridges, is the loveliest girl you’ve ever seen—”

“Yes, Hoke. She won Miss Georgia.”

Hoke leaned across his desk. The overhead fluorescent light bounced off his skull beneath his crew cut, accentuating the hound-dog bags beneath his eyes. “She’s going to take the Big One. The title. Rae Ann’s a shoo-in for Miss America, no doubt about it. You’ll want to interview her before you go.”

“I’m ecstatic for you and Rae Ann, Hoke. And I think you ought to fly to Atlantic City and cover the story yourself. Shoot a little craps. Have a little fun. I’d leave Lois behind, though. Tell her you’ve checked into a mental institution for a couple of weeks to have a few shock treatments. Recover your equilibrium.”

“Very funny, Sammy. There’s nothing more I’d love to do than go up there, but—” He extended a hand, the responsibility for the whole shooting match, morning and evening papers both, lay heavy upon it. “I can’t tear away from here. And Burton”—Burton Edwards, the features editor, would be the logical choice, if there were any logic to the Constitution’s sending someone to Atlantic City—“Burton is the most cynical so-and-so south of New York City. He’d savage the pageant.”

“So will I! Count on it! You think I won’t, when you’re stealing my weekend? Sending me to watch bimbos twitching their butts down runways? Mink eyelashes and falsies—”

“They don’t wear falsies.”

“Oh, Hoke. Honey. What you don’t know—”

“Well, Rae Ann doesn’t.”

“You don’t want me to do this. Really. Sentence me to real estate, obit, anything—after I’m back from the Vineyard.”

“Once you get there, Sammy, and you see how smart these girls are, how sincere, how wonderful the pageant system is, teaching them poise, giving them all that scholarship money—”

“Hoke, no. Pretty please. I’m begging you.”

“Just sleep on it, Sammy. Besides”—he took his scarlet sucker out of his mouth and inspected it carefully—“you’re already scheduled to go.”

*

Sam slammed in a tape and belted out “Sweet Dreams” along with poor old dead Patsy Cline. Patsy always made her feel better. She was driving too fast down Peachtree toward her weekly lunch with Charlie, plainclothes, Atlanta PD. They always met at Mary Mac’s, an Atlanta institution, for chicken and dumplings, three vegetables, gossip, and iced tea. Miss America, indeed! Boy, Charlie was going to love that one. He’d never stop teasing her. And Hoke would run it on page one, no doubt, along with the football scores.

No wonder she was thinking of leaving the paper, though she’d been there (and back in Atlanta) only a couple of years after a 20-year sojourn in San Francisco. Despite a raft of good people still on staff, the Constitution wasn’t what it was when they’d enticed her away from the Chronicle. Its slant had suddenly shifted from a flirtation with serious journalism back to pop reporting with large pretty pictures done up in four color—rather like television.

The Big Two, work and love, were both problematic these days. Both brought her mixed joys. Were they mutually exclusive was the real question.

She’d met her sweetheart, the handsome (and much younger) Harry Zack, the previous spring in the Crescent City. Harry, a gray-eyed, broad-shouldered songwriting insurance investigator, had gotten in her way at first. Had gotten under her skin later. Had said a lot of things she’d prefer a man didn’t say.

He’d been talking a lot about love lately, had even used the M word.

Sam wasn’t sure she was ready for love again, much less marriage. All the men she’d ever truly loved seemed to have a way of disappearing, deserting, or dying.

Besides, she’d said to Harry last night on the phone, you’d better give some serious thought to hooking up with a woman ten years your elder, especially one who skipped the line where they were handing out the mommy genes.

He’d said it made him no nevermind. Harry, who’d grown up among the blue bloods of Uptown New Orleans, had a real Downtown way of talking.

Just you wait, she’d continued. You’ll be strolling by a playground one morning, little kiddies screeching Daddy, Daddy, you’ll change your mind. The old lady on your arm’ll already have gone through her change. I’m not gonna be studying babies, Harry.

You’re just saying that ’cause you think I want you to move over to New Orleans.

Don’t you?

Of course I do. Ain’t nothing to eat over there in Hotlanta except yuppie food and collard greens. No music to speak of. One of us has got to do it. The choice between Atlanta and New Orleans—no contest.

What’s wrong with the way we are? I hop on that plane almost every Friday evening at six o’clock, cross that time zone, and it’s still six when I get there. Even time to relax a little before we go out to dinner.

Talking trash, Sammy.

What are you talking, son? Relocation and upheaval.

Son’s talking commitment.

Oh, Jesus.

On the other hand, maybe she ought to give it some thought. Half a commitment’s worth, anyway. She’d tell Hoke to take his silly assignment and shove it. Miss America, indeed! Hand him the job while she was at it. It wasn’t like she needed the money, thank you kindly, Jesus. Independence was what her inheritance was for. Maybe she could take a little house near New Orleans over on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain, get away from urban rot altogether, in a place like Mandeville. No, Covington. She’d work on the true crime book she’d been wanting to do for a long time.

Covington. Yes, that’d do it. She’d settle into a nice old house with a center hall and a veranda and oaks draped with Spanish moss and write her book while the ghost of Walker Percy, who’d lived near the village until his death, prowled around the neighborhood. She’d have oyster po’boys for lunch with the St. Tammany Parish courthouse gang in that old café where Harry had once taken her—where time had stopped in about 1950, and they talked about the Longs, Huey and Uncle Earl, as if they’d dropped by yesterday. Now, that ought to furnish her with some material.

Harry could come visit on weekends.

But wasn’t that what he was complaining about now—weekends? And wait until she told him about Hoke putting the kibosh on their plans for Labor Day.

Well, she couldn’t think about that anymore right now. She had to concentrate on changing lanes if she was ever going to make the turn onto Ponce de Leon. She signaled, tried to pull out, got cut off, honked at, and flipped off. Hey, maybe it was time to move to a little town out in the middle of nowhere. The traffic in Atlanta was growing more snarly by the day, the influence, no doubt, of all those carpetbagging Yankees.

Now Miss Patsy had finished singing about her sweet dreams, and Sam, sitting at a red light one block away from Mary Mac’s, popped in one of Harry’s tapes. Strumming his guitar, he was singing the first song he’d written for her. I thought I knew how angels flew till you stepped off the plane.

Oh, Harry. The boy had a sweet baritone—and lots of other sweet things. What to do? What to do? Sam sighed and answered her car phone.

It was Charlie. Something had come up. Something he thought she ought to know about. Yeah. Uh-huh. Charlie always managed a doozie when he was late—which was almost every time they had a date. She listened to him with one ear.

Then she heard what he was saying. Skeeter Bosarge had escaped.

“What?”

“He’s been on the run about eight hours. Now, we don’t know where he’s headed. No reason to think it’s this way.”

“Great. No reason to think it’s not, either, is there?”

No, there wasn’t. And just in case, he didn’t want to frighten her, but maybe she ought to swing back and pick him up at headquarters. They could have a little chat about precautionary measures.

Indeed. He didn’t need to remind her that Skeeter was stark raving crazy. The rapist/murderer had killed three women in Atlanta before Sam’s series on him in the paper pushed enough victims who had lived, but hadn’t told the tale, to come forward. Like most madmen, Skeeter needed someone to blame. He’d picked Sam.

“I’ll get you, you bitch!” he’d screamed at her as they dragged him out of the courtroom after his sentencing.

“Melodramatic, don’t you think?” Sam had flapped her lips at Charlie, hoping her nonchalance would hide their trembling.

“Serious as death,” Charlie had said then. Now he asked, “You got your .38?”

Sam reached over and patted the glove compartment as if Charlie could see her.

He couldn’t.

But Skeeter Bosarge could. Rising from the back seat behind her, he could see her clear as day.

*

“Let’s go have us some fun, pretty lady,” Skeeter whispered as he slipped one big rough hand around her neck.

Sam froze. She’d never forget his filthy voice as long as she lived—however long that was.

She’d already hung up the phone. Charlie couldn’t help her now. No one could. Not even her trusty friends Smith & Wesson, so near—just about 12 inches from her fingertips if she could only reach out and touch them—yet so far away.

“It’s just you and me, baby.” Skeeter ran his other hand down her chest. She could see the blue letters HATE tattooed between his fingers and thumb by someone who didn’t have very good handwriting.

Her mind stepped off and looked back. Here she was thinking about some needle artist in stir who hadn’t learned the Palmer Method when she ought to be concentrating on getting loose from this maniac.

Well, it was easier than thinking about the realities. The possibilities. Skeeter Bosarge’s particular brand of savagery.

She didn’t want to die chopped into little pieces in puddles of blood. She was too young. Well, almost young. She’d been obsessing recently about the cellulite on her thighs, the little lines at the corners of her eyes. But 40 was looking perkier by the minute.

Now what she had to do was concentrate, stop her stomach from doing loop-de-loops, deter the blood from coagulating in her veins. Maybe she and Skeeter could talk about this.

She eased into it. “How you doing, Skeeter?”

His answering laugh was filled with slimy crawly things. It made her want to take a bath.

Then he pinched her breast between his right thumb and forefinger, his left hand still around her neck. She resisted the temptation to reach up and slap his face.

“You been dreaming about me?” he crooned.

Only in my nightmares, you ugly sucker. She didn’t say that. But he was ugly, with dank, greasy hair, a lowering forehead, too-long arms, dim, dumb eyes. He shuffled. Skeeter the Neanderthal.

Then his right hand moved. Up, back, and she felt the cool, smooth blade against her throat. Oh, God. Oh, Jesus. She was almost deafened by her heart’s pounding.

Skeeter growled, “Just in case you get any funny ideas about running a red light, blowing a stop sign, you try anything, you die.”

He was preaching to the choir. She was a believer. She’d seen his handiwork. Skeeter liked to cut and carve and maim. He’d started with an old girlfriend, raped her, then cut her heart out and ate it. He liked to tell reporters he’d developed a taste for blood right on the spot. Yeah, Skeeter was one hell of an interview.

“Now, what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna have a little drink, then you get over to Monroe Drive, take that down to I-20, head east.” His hairy fingers poked an open pint of bourbon against her lips.

Sam shied at the smell, then smiled her No, thanks, Skeeter, trotting out her most polite party manners as if he’d offered her petit fours on a silver tray at a debutante tea.

He smashed the bottle into her teeth. Her blood tasted of salt and rust. She ran her tongue gingerly across her front teeth.

“Drink!” he screamed.

She screamed back: “I don’t drink!”

She didn’t. Not for almost thirteen years. Before that, she’d drunk for a bad long time. Oh, she was a juicer, all right. The kind who threw her shoes out of the car while it was weaving from side to side on the freeway. Who thought she was having a high old time stripping down to her skivvies in the middle of dinner, dancing nude on the tabletops for dessert. Who was all too familiar with the snout of the pig who rooted her awake at four in the morning when her blood sugar dropped, the porker who wore a name tag that read Remorse, who dug out all her transgressions, every last disgusting one, and spread them before her like truffles to be gorged, regurgitated, and scarfed up again.

Skeeter laughed his nasty old laugh. “I know you don’t, baby. I learned a lot about you, what with all the spare time I had down in Reidsville. Talking to a couple other guys you helped put away. We used to make up stories about what we’d like to do if we got hold of you.” Three beats passed while she thought about that. “Now, ain’t life funny?” he crooned.

Sure, sure. She was about to counter with something chatty about what a small world it is, when he peeled away an inch-wide strip of the soft white flesh of her throat just like he was peeling an onion.

It burned like hell. But she didn’t scream. He was far too close to the jugular. She didn’t know how much time she had before the smell of her fear shoved him over the edge into something she didn’t even want to imagine.

“Now.” He tapped her mouth with the pint again. “You wanta drink?”

She drank. Again, he insisted. Again. Again. Again. Until the bottle was almost empty. Then he was pushing pills into her mouth. Chew, he screamed. The last of the bourbon seared her empty gut along with the ’ludes. Then they all joined hands and do-si-doed around her brain, where a drumbeat of secret longing for sweet release had been poised a dozen dry years.

Sock it to me, Devil Daddy. Give it to me, Mr. Booze. Ooooooh, Daddy. I been pining for you. Waiting to run to you. Hide with you. Shuck the straight life, give it up to you. I want to lap you up, suck you up, savor you.

The car lurched. Skeeter slapped her so hard her head snapped. “Open your eyes, you lush. You’re gonna kill us.”

So why didn’t he think of that before? But she wouldn’t do that, would she? Naaawh. It was too much fun drunk-driving this cute little car that handled just like a roller coaster.

They passed a few blocks east of Martin Luther King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, then close by Oakland Cemetery. Confederate General Hood had followed the Battle of Atlanta from the old graveyard’s promontory. Margaret Mitchell rested there, as did Bobby Jones, the golfer. Sam’s mother and father lay near them in a marble tomb. She would too, sooner or later.

Today it looked like sooner.

At that, her parents’ faces zoomed into close focus, pretty people dead all too young, falling out of the sky when their airplane did bad rollovers near Paris. Tears tracked down her cheeks, almost thirty years later.

The pills and the booze had pushed her over into easy sentimentality, teetering on the edge of maudlin. She hated that.

“You like cemeteries?” Skeeter asked as if he were talking about the weather. “I can’t stand ’em. Daddy made us go weed Mama’s grave every Sunday. It was creepy.”

Sam snuffled. Poor Skeeter. She knew just how he felt, losing his mama. She and Skeeter Bosarge, the rapist/murderer, had something in common. They could talk.

And, in fact, she knew just what to say to him. “Why don’t you let me go, Skeeter? I’ll make sure they cut you a deal.”

The choice of words was unfortunate.

“Cut me nothing!” the madman screamed. “Cut you, bitch!” The silvery knife skittered against her neck.

OK, it was time to get the hell out of there. Cars zipped by them on the interstate. What was with these people? Were they so snug in their air-cooled wraparound sound they couldn’t see a woman with a knife at her throat?

“Take the Panthersville Road exit and don’t try anything cute.”

They were there already? It hadn’t taken long, fifteen minutes from the time he’d grabbed her. Now everywhere she looked there were thick stands of trees, remnants of the forests that had once covered these rolling hills. Dark, deep woods, where nobody could find her.

Houses grew few and far between. They drove through stands of oak, pine, sweet gum, sprinkled with wild dogwood and azalea. Would they find her corpse just about the time they crowned the new Miss Dogwood next spring?

Left, Skeeter barked. Left, then left again. The blade snicked her throat with each word. How much blood had she lost? The street sign at the last turn read Hanging Tree Lane.

“’D’jew see that?” he giggled.

Cute. Skeeter was always cute. One of his trademarks had been the little poems he’d left at the crime scenes. They had always rhymed, and they were always obscene. Moon, June, bloody bazooms. Nice, twice, tit slice. Yep, Skeeter had a way with words all right.

“Out of the car,” he barked, loosening his hold.

A commotion of motion. Her Big Chance. She lurched for the glove compartment and the .38, didn’t even get close. He smashed her seat forward, bashing her head—already pounding with the booze and the ‘ludes.’ Now he was out of the car, dragging her with him through gravel and grass. Skeeter was huge, and two years of weight lifting in Reidsville had made him even more formidable.

The woods were lovely, dark and deep on the way to Grandmother’s house, and the Big Bad Wolf had very big teeth. He bared them at her now, then slugged her with his fist. Stars twinkled, and her nose scrinched. She’d never known anything could hurt like this.

And she rather liked her delicate, arrow-straight nose. Vanity, vanity. Where does it get you?

To Grandmother’s house? Before them stood a little cabin in the woods. Was this a fairy tale? A figment of her drunken imagining?

If not, maybe Grandma was home. Maybe she had a telephone. Maybe she’d call for help.

No such luck. They danced around to the back of the tarpaper shanty, this peculiar couple. Her fanny to his crotch, his arm crooked in a chokehold, his legs kicking her along like a recalcitrant partner who just couldn’t keep the beat.

“Ain’t nobody here,” he grunted, shoving her toward a stand of pines that grew right up to the back door. “Belongs to my old man, still down at Reidsville. You know what an old man is, sweetheart?”

She did. His sugar daddy, his boyfriend—undoubtedly even bigger and meaner and uglier than Skeeter—who’d faced off other inmates, hit ’em with the dead eyes, said Back off! This ‘un’s mine.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve had a woman, Miss Adams.”

She’d seen the last woman he’d had. Or what was left of her. The little pieces. The broken places.

Now her nose was killing her. The whittled place on her neck burned. She felt weak in the knees. Saliva pooled in her mouth. It tasted bright yellow. She was going to throw up.

“Don’t you dare!” He shook her, and something in her nose crunched. She retched again.

Skeeter screamed, “I said no! You bitch! Don’t!” Then he got in close, his breath hot and nasty, and crooned, “I want your kisses sweet.”

Then he jerked her up, grabbed her by the scruff of her neck, and slammed her against a tree. A thick rough rope materialized from nowhere. A magician, that Skeeter Bosarge. And he could do rope tricks. Loop-de-loop-de-loop-de-loop. The rope twirled, and she was neatly trussed.

Her mind stepped off. This was not looking good. How was she going to manage this thing now? How had she, the control freak, let it get so far away from her?

Then hopelessness and helplessness stepped up and joined hands in her mind, ready to do a little minuet. She was reeling, so sick and dizzy she couldn’t even focus. Skeeter was fading in and out of her private picture show. Or was he just dancing forward and back, back and forward, practicing a little routine?

Nope. He was just trying to find the right distance for his real magic act.

You know the one, Sam. The one where the man throws knives at the pretty lady.

“They were having a sale at the store where I stopped in Macon.” Skeeter grinned and held up a whole brace of blades. Two dozen. Three, maybe. Enough to make plenty of holes in her. Blood would flow like booze spilled on a bar by a drunk couldn’t hold her liquor. Remember her?

“They’re gonna think you got drunk, fell down on a porky-pine, there’s enough of you left to ID.” Then he stepped back once more, took aim, and grinned.

God, Skeeter had bad teeth—and a weak chin. Probably the result of years of inbreeding. Here she was, a lifetime member of the Piedmont Driving Club (though she never attended, a point of pride—not to mention reverse snobbism) about to be skewered by South Georgia white trash. My Lord, the ignominy, as the Atlanta ladies would say.

The first knife flew and ka-chuncked into the pine a half inch from her waist. She could hear the blade quiver. She could smell the fresh resin filling the tree’s wound.

And then she shut down.

The world, very small and very contained, held only herself, Skeeter, and those knives. One, Sam. Two, Skeeter. Three, knives. Like fog through the Golden Gate, a calm drifted over her. She was soft green hills rolling beneath cool gray clouds.

“Whoops.” Skeeter pursed his mouth. “Damn! Well, practice makes perfect. We’ve got a lot of time for practice, don’t we, sugar? And after while, we’ll take us a little break. See how else you can pleasure old Skeeter.”

Somewhere deep inside the drunken maelstrom that, at present, passed for her brain, she knew she ought to be trembling. But there was a gift she had—which came in very handy if you hung around the likes of Skeeter Bosarge. When the going got very, very rough, Sam hung tough and absolutely calm. She was placid and still as a high mountain lake that had a steady date with the bluebird of happiness.

The still place came from years of reciting the Serenity Prayer—a plea for the ability to accept the things she couldn’t change, the courage to change the things she could. And this, this right in front of her was one of the former. She wasn’t about to change Skeeter Bosarge. Not now. Not unless she turned into Superwoman, flung off these ropes, and whupped his ass. So she’d just have to turn it over. Put it on the shelf.

Whop! The second knife didn’t miss. And it hurt like hell, it really did, when a knife pierced her arm just below the elbow.

Somewhere, someone was screaming.

Zingggg! That one found the fleshy part of her right thigh. The screaming was growing louder, keener.

Ka-whap! Wailing, that baby was blowing. She sounded like Billie Holiday on speed.

Or Sam Adams on Old Crow and ’ludes, which is who it was.

Sam was screaming her head off. And pleading—or as close to pleading as she ever got. The kind of pleading Margaret Thatcher would do if you got her really pissed.

“Stop it, Skeeter! Stop it this very instant!”

“Who you think you are, my second-grade teacher?” He flung another knife and missed, which really burned him.

“Stop it, you bastard!”

He liked that. He grinned, then clucked. “Sunday School teacher talking like that? Oughta be ashamed of yourself.”

Then he grabbed up six knives at once. He drew back, one in his right hand, the other five sinisterly poised. He’d let fly a barrage like the mojo Watusis chucking their spears. He’d show the bitch who’d put him away. She’d snaked two of his most precious years—years he could have been doing good, sending sluts like her to burn in hell.

Suddenly another sound, a roaring of hallelujahs filled the sky. It sounded like glory.

And Skeeter was diving for cover, flying high and wide.

“That’s right!” shouted an old voice, rich and magnificent. It had to be the voice of God. Sam was sure of it. “Get away from her, you bastard!” Now she wasn’t quite so sure, but still, she liked it.

Then from behind a pine tree arose the face of her savior. He was robed in khaki—pants, shirt, a long-billed hat.

Malachy Champion, who was pushing eighty, had been a hunter all his life. Once he’d started collecting Social Security, he figured he could get by with pretending to forget the dates of hunting season—about which he’d always been pretty casual anyway. Malachy was out stalking his supper, mourning dove or bobtail quail, whichever flushed first. He liked little birds. You cooked ’em up, made yourself some pan gravy with the scrapings left in the bottom of the skillet, that and a mess of greens, some leftover corn bread in a glass of buttermilk. Hell, eating like that, a man could live to be a hundred—in the little house his children bought him right over there on the edge of South River.

Except for the bastards. There were all brands and sizes of bastards, and they did various and sundry things to drive men crazy. There were bastards in the government. Bastards on the TV. Bastards throwing garbage in the Chattahoochee. And then there was this kind of bastard crouching over there behind that rusting jalopy.

All the while, his shotgun at the ready, Malachy was steadily sliding forward. Suzie, the redbone hound bitch he’d bought in Louisiana where those old boys knew something about hunting, hung close by his left side.

“Stay, girl,” he commanded. He didn’t want her getting too close to danger, especially since he didn’t need her to flush this varmint.

Suzie whimpered. Whatever it was, she hadn’t come this far to be left out.

“Stay,” he repeated gruffly.

She stayed, and Malachy stepped closer to the old rusted-out Ford the bastard had jumped behind.

Then, zing, a knife flew past Malachy’s right ear.

He’s going to die, thought Sam. My hero’s going to die. And then I’m going to die. She kept waiting for the picture show of her life to start flashing, the way people said it did. Well, look on the bright side. She’d never know serious illness. And it would be nice to see her mama and daddy again.

Zing. A second knife darted and missed, and still the old man kept advancing. Then a third flew.

“Keep back!” Skeeter screamed. You could almost see the panic, electric in his voice.

“Why?” the old man asked evenly, as if that were the most natural question in the world. “I ain’t afraid of dying. I’m old. How ’bout you?”

A fourth knife soared past and thudded among pine needles. The old man stepped closer and closer, now turning his back toward Sam.

Then a fifth knife lifted off, and a sixth, and it was that last one that found a target in Suzie’s leg. She screamed, and Skeeter’s head popped up wearing a grin of triumph, and then flew off, or most of it did.

For a shotgun—which spreads its tiny BB-like shot and will pierce and kill but leave a little bird intact at 30 yards—will turn a man’s face to hamburger when fired at five. It might also tear his head off.

When Malachy fired, he was three yards from his target.

The old man turned to Sam, and said, “Don’t look.” But she already had. Her eyes rolled up, and she sagged against the rope.

Then Malachy Champion laid a so-sweet hand upon her cheek, took out his own knife to cut her bindings. “There now. Now, now.” He gentled her like a frightened filly. “That oughta fix his wagon. Can’t stand a man picks on a woman. ’Specially a pretty woman.”

Sam managed a weak smile before her lights went out. She tried but couldn’t manage the words, trying to say, “Thank you, sir, for the compliment.”

*

The way Malachy told it later, for the 200th time it seemed to him—to the police, the GBI, the TV people, then finally to Sam herself when she was sitting up again in bed in the house she shared with her Uncle George. He’d been tracking, see. About to flush some quail when he heard this woman screaming. Got her in his sights, thought, My God, look at that girl, pretty enough to be Miss America. What’s that crazy fool doing to her? It didn’t seem to him you had to think about that more than half a second, the time it took to swing the barrels of his shotgun over toward the perpetrator of the screaming.

“Miss America, huh?” laughed Uncle George, who was sitting right there with old Malachy in her boudoir, the three of them having tea like it was an ordinary occasion, like the man hadn’t saved her life. “Sam was going to cover the pageant for the paper this year. Of course, now—”

Sam pointed to her taped nose. “Guess this got me out of that. Now, listen, Mr. Champion—”

“You don’t say?” said Malachy. “Lord, Lord, I’ve watched that show since they started showing it on TV. 1955. That’s the year Lee Meriwether took it. Pretty girl. Brunette. Looks a lot like you, young’un.”

Your flattery, old man, won’t get me to Atlantic City, she thought, and then thanked him.

“You’re a fan of the pageant? I’ve always been, too,” said George.

Since when? Sam wondered. Since when had her elegant uncle been interested in beauty queens?

“Oh, yes,” Malachy continued. “One of my hobbies. Remember ’em all. All the way back to the beginning, 1921. Margaret Gorman. Girl had a thirty-one-inch chest. Pretty as a picture, though. Guess I’m glad times have changed.” He rolled his watery blue eyes down the front of Sam’s pj’s. “Myself, I like girls a little more developed in that category. If you know what I mean.”

Sam, who’d been fairly well developed in that category since she was twelve, did indeed. But what she wanted to know was—

“All-time favorite was Yolande Betbeze, from a good family down in Mobile, Miss Alabama, Miss America 1951. Gorgeous creature, told ’em all to go to hell later, they wanted to mess in her business. Worked with CORE when the integration started.” Malachy nodded. “She picketed, sat in at lunch counters at Woolworth’s. I always liked girls with some backbone, some spunk.”

“Me too,” said Hoke Tolliver. Sam’s editor poked his head around the edge of the door. “Knock, knock.” He was carrying a massive bouquet of calla lilies in one hand.

“I’m not dead,” said Sam, “if those are for me. Looks like you thought you were coming to my funeral.”

“See what I mean about spunk?” Hoke replied. “It’s that kind of attitude that goes right out there and gets the story.”

“Forget it,” said Sam, sliding back down under her white cotton sheets. “I’m disabled. I’m staying here for the duration of my recuperation. Eating gallons of chocolate ice cream.” And getting over her terrible guilt, even though she’d been forced to drug and drink.

“Now, that’s a shame, idn’t it,” said Malachy Champion. “To have to pass on an opportunity like that. My heart’s desire has always been to go to Atlantic City to the pageant. To be right there.”

“Hey, Hoke,” said Sam. “You hear that? Mr. Champion here’d love to cover the pageant for you.”

“And I’d love to send him.” He smiled. “But it might be a little tough to get him the credentials. You’re not a journalist, are you, Mr. Champion?”

“Don’t insult the man,” said Sam.

“Of course, if you went, you could take him along,” George said to Sam.

“Wait a minute! Whose side are you on anyway?”

“Oh, I couldn’t think of going,” said Malachy. “Old man like me, I don’t much take to traveling anymore. And what with Suzie still recovering.”

The man who saved my life is throwing in his injured dog who was an accessory to the saving, thought Sam. It’s getting pretty deep in here.

“But on the other hand, if you went, you could bring him back an autographed program, the autograph of Miss America, in fact—”

Sam didn’t let Hoke finish. “You’re so sure it’s gonna be Rae Ann, we could just call her up and get one from her right now. Surely she’s already signed something for you, Hoke? A T-shirt, your BVDs?”

“Sammy! What on earth do you mean?” Hoke’s eyebrows almost met his crew cut.

“Oh, I forgot that Rae Ann’s a certified member of the vestal virgin society.”

“Well,” Malachy Champion drawled, “I reckon that would be pretty nice, if you went. You could bring me back a souvenir, tell me all about it firsthand, if you got up real close to the girls, to that Phyllis George. Maybe even Mary Ann Mobley. I always was partial to those southern girls.”

“Okay,” said Sam. “Whose idea was this? Hoke just happens to drop by with posies. Joins the two of you in pressuring me like crazy.”

“We just thought it might help you to get up and about—and it would be nice to have those autographs—” said Malachy, trailing off.

George spread his hands wide. He didn’t say a word, but the message was clear. Was it too much to ask, to do a little favor for the man who’d rescued you from a hideous death?

“You’re a terrible old man, do you know that, George?” She wanted to get out of bed and punch him, but she was still too sore. “A manipulating, scheming, conniving, four-flushing, double-dealing cheat. A lawyer, through and through!”

“Retired lawyer,” he sniffed. “Who’s always been a fan of the pageant. Samantha, sometimes I think you’re positively un-American.”

“I’m not well.” Sam pouted. “The pageant’s in two weeks. I couldn’t possibly.”

“You’ll be fine,” said George. “Especially if you take Harry along with you.”

“Harry! What’s Harry got to do with Miss America?”

“Well, you know, it’s the damnedest thing,” said George. “I was with him on the phone yesterday. He flew over the minute he heard about the—incident,” George said by way of explanation to anyone who cared, “and had to get back to New Orleans pretty soon, but he calls at least three times a day to check on Samantha. Anyway, he said it was the funniest coincidence, but he’d just found out that the young woman who’s Miss Louisiana this year, from New Orleans, her name’s Lucinda Washington, and she’s—”

“Oh, my God.” Sam fell back onto her pillows. “Don’t tell me. Is she tall?”

“Real tall,” said Hoke, who made it a point to know everything about Rae Ann’s competition.

“Is she black?”

“She is,” said Hoke. “Isn’t that a miracle, her being from Louisiana? Wonder when Georgia’s gonna name a black—”

Sam cut him off. “And she’s related to Lavert Washington, isn’t she? Harry’s friend?”

“That’s what he said,” said George. “Lavert’s second cousin. Maybe second, once removed. But isn’t that wonderful? I remember you’re so fond of Lavert.”

“That’s right. I’ve always been crazy about chefs who also chauffeur for the mob.” But the truth was, she was crazy about Lavert Washington. “So I guess that means Lavert’s going to Atlantic City to cheer his cousin on, and Harry wanted to go, too? Thought it’d be one big party? That’s why he put you all up to this?” Sam had gotten up quite a head of steam for a knife-stabbed woman. But if there was anything in this world she hated, it was being manipulated.

The three southern gentlemen—Uncle George, Malachy, and Hoke—looked at her in astonishment.

“Put us up to what, Sammy?” Hoke said finally.

“Shut up, Hoke. I’m going to kill that boy. Kill Harry. Kill him! And you should be ashamed of yourself, Mr. Champion. Guilt-tripping me like this.”

“Doing what?” Malachy cupped his ear like he didn’t understand, but she could see the little grin slipping around the corner of his mouth.

“Forget it,” she said. “Okay. You win. I’ll do it. And then”—she hung on that last word for a long minute—“I’m quitting, Hoke. I swear to God. This is the last straw. I’ll do your damned pageant, not for you, but for Malachy, and get him his Miss America autographs, and then it’s over and out. Speaking of which, clear out of my bedroom, all of you.” She reached for the phone as if it were loaded with live lead. “I’ve got a few choice words to say to someone in New Orleans.”

But in the end, after she’d finished blowing off steam, she thought, What the heck? Atlantic City was on the water, right? And a long weekend with Harry was a long weekend with Harry.

“We’re gonna have such a good time, pretty lady,” he’d said in his sweet, husky voice when she stopped yelling at him.

Besides which, that day Skeeter Bosarge had risen up behind her like a bad dream, she’d thought she’d never live to see September. Every day after that one, even if she did something silly with it, was a gift.