Intensity

something far different from what they had meant before, as did the handcuffs.
        She stopped.
        "Oh, Jesus."
        She knew .
        Chyna spun away from the black-and-white and sprinted back to the motor home. In the flashing blue and red light, weighed down by the fat moon, she felt as if she were running slow motion in a dream, through air as thick as custard.
        When she reached the open door she glanced toward the patrol car. The cop was getting out.
        Gasping, Chyna climbed up into the driver's seat, pulling the door shut behind her.
        The officer had gotten out of the cruiser. Edgler Vess.
        Chyna released the emergency brake.
        Vess opened fire.

11
        
        Sheriff Edgler Foreman Vess, youngest sheriff in the county's history, watches the side mirror as Chyna Shepherd hurries along the shoulder of the highway toward his patrol car, and he wonders if this woman is, after all, his blown tire, the destroyer of his bright future. When she abruptly stops, whips around, and races back through the flashing lights toward the motor home, Mr. Vess's alarm increases.
        At the same time, he is enormously taken with her and is not entirely sorry that they met. He says aloud, "What a clever bitch you are."
        Getting out of the black-and-white, he draws his revolver, intending to put a round in one of her legs. He still has some hope of salvaging the situation. If he can disable her and get her into the motor home before another motorist comes along, all will be well. What fun he will have when he wraps her in chains again. Ariel won't lift a hand to help this woman, and if she tries, he'll pistol-whip the little bitch into submission; that will spoil the plans he has for her, but he's been looking at her beautiful face for a year, wanting to smash it, and the smashing will be enormously satisfying even in these circumstances.
        Although Vess is quick getting out of the car, Chyna is faster. By the time he raises the revolver, she is behind the wheel of the motor home, drawing the door shut.
        He can't take any chances now, can't risk merely wounding her to have fun with her later. She has to be wasted. He pumps six rounds through the windshield.
        

    
        When Chyna saw the gun coming up, she shouted, "Get down!" She pushed Ariel's head below the windshield, throwing herself sideways, half out of her seat, across the open console. She covered the girl as best she could, squeezing her eyes tightly shut and shouting at the girl to close hers too.
        Gunshots cracked, one right after the other, as fast as Vess could squeeze them off, and the windshield imploded. Sheets of gummy safety glass crashed into the front seats, spilling over Chyna and the girl, and things split and shattered farther back in the motor home as the slugs found stopping points.
        She tried to count the shots. She thought she heard six. Maybe only five. She wasn't sure. Damn . Then she realized that it didn't matter how many rounds he'd fired, because she hadn't gotten a good look at the weapon. She didn't know for sure that it was a revolver. A pistol wouldn't have just six rounds; it could have ten or more, a lot more if it had an expanded magazine.
        Risking a bullet in the face, Chyna sat up, shaking off cascades of gummy-prickly glass, and looked out through the empty windshield frame. She saw Edgler Vess by the patrol car, thirty feet away. He was tipping the expended cartridges out of his piece, so it had to be a revolver.
        Already she had released the emergency brake. Now she shifted the motor home out of park.
        Standing tall, appearing cool and unhurried but nevertheless nimble-fingered, Vess plucked a speedloader from the dump pouch on his gun belt.
        Thanks to her mother's criminal friends, Chyna knew all about speedloaders. Before Vess could reload, she took her foot off the brake pedal and stomped the accelerator.
         Move, move, move.
        Slipping the speedloader into the revolver and twisting it, Vess looked up almost casually when he heard the roar of the motor-home engine.
        Chyna drove onto the pavement as though she intended to sweep past the patrol car and away, but she was going to run the freak into the ground.
        Vess dropped the speedloader, snapped the cylinder shut.
        Afraid that Ariel might look up, Chyna shouted, "Stay down, stay down!" She