His leg was practically no use now. He dragged it behind him like a sack of wet laundry. He followed Bethany, who went before him like a scout. She carried the rifle with her. She said she had three rounds left. The morning was just getting underway, and he was on the run with a woman with a rifle.
What’s next on the agenda?
“Here,” Bethany said.
She’d found a jut of gray rock. It provided a sort of prow over which they could see the highway below. It was a sharp drop of about twenty feet to the road.
Better, it gave them a view of where they’d come and a place to hide. Like some old cowboy movie.
Bethany went before him, up the rocks, and helped him. It was easier than he expected that way. He wouldn’t mind having Bethany around in any sort of a pinch. She was doing the job.
Once ensconced in the rocks, Steve allowed himself a moment of rest.
“Now?” Bethany said.
“We wait,” Steve said. “If something doesn’t happen in the next twenty minutes or so, we take a chance and flag a car.”
“I don’t think that would be good,” she said. “They will be looking.”
“I don’t see any other choice. Keep praying.”
She closed her eyes. It was so childlike. He hoped she really had some connection to the supernatural going on. Anything at this point.
A car approached. Steve looked over the rocks in time to see a red pickup zip by. Several more cars, in both directions, passed during the ensuing minutes.
None slowed. No one looked like Mal Meyer.
“I think we’re going to have to chance it,” Steve said. “Let’s try to catch one going toward Verner. If anyone from Beth-El was coming they’d be headed the other way.”
“We don’t look too good.”
“We’re going to look even worse if we don’t get somewhere safe. You up for this?”
“I’ll do what we have to do.”
“You could start by leaving the rifle. That may not invite too many stops.”
Bethany smiled. It seemed like a relief to her.
He heard the sound of a car horn. A laying-it-on-thick blast. Somebody angry. He looked over the rocks and saw a blue Mercedes burn past the curve, doing about fifty. Five seconds later a black Saturn came into view, going way too slow for the flow.
The driver’s side window was down and Steve saw the anxious face of Mal Meyer, scanning the hillside.
“Stand up and wave,” Steve said.