Shadow Prey

himself up. As he crawled onto the ledge, Hood was suddenly there, his back to the outer wall. He was looking at Lucas over the shotgun.
    “Step in further,” he said. The muzzle of the shotgun followed Lucas’ head like a steel eye.
    “Come on, man,” Lucas said. There hadn’t been any shells in the closet with the shotgun. Since Hood was using it, he either had found the shells or was bluffing with an empty weapon. Why would he bluff? He’d used a pistol ofsome kind, anyone would be willing to believe that the pistol was loaded . . . . “This can’t do any good.”
    “Shut up,” Hood said. He was wound tight as a spring, frightened. “Get in here.”
    Lucas hopped down from the window ledge.
    “Did one of you wise-ass cops fuck up my rifle? You did, didn’t you?”
    “I don’t know about a rifle,” Lucas said. Hood’s face was bleeding from a long cut over one eye. On the floor near his foot was a .45, the slide locked open. Out of ammo, Lucas decided.
    “Pulled the trigger on that cocksucker rifle and almost blew my face off. There was a rag in it,” Hood said.
    “I don’t know anything about that,” Lucas said. He could feel the P7 pushing into his back.
    “Bullshit,” Hood snapped. “But I know you didn’t know about these . . . .”
    He kept the shotgun muzzle on Lucas’ head but opened the hand under the shotgun’s fore-end. He had two shells in his hand.
    “Buckshot, for deer,” Hood said. “I had them stuck in with the thirty-thirty shells. Somebody missed them, huh?”
    “Bill . . .” Lucas started. Inside, he was cursing himself for not taking the .30-.30 shells, or at least checking the box. “You won’t get out of here this way . . . .”
    “Buckshot’s no good when those fuckers out there got M-16s, but this buckshot is going to get me out of here, because I got you, white boy,” he said. He gestured with the muzzle. “Lay down. On the floor.”
    “Billy, I trusted you, man. This is no good.” Lucas felt the sweat start at his temples, felt the heat in his armpits.
    “So I lied, motherfucker,” Hood said. “Get the fuck down.” He dipped the barrel of the shotgun an inch, to indicate down.
    Lucas got down on his knees, thought about going for the P7, but the shotgun muzzle never wavered.
    “Keep your hands away from your body . . . .”
    From outside, the ERU team leader called on a loudspeaker. “You coming out? Everything okay?”
    “Everything fine,” Hood yelled back. “We’re talking. Let us talk.”
    “Nothing you can do is going to help . . .” Lucas started.
    “On your fuckin’ belly,” Hood snapped.
    Lucas let himself down on the floor. It smelled of city grime. Grit cut into his chin.
    “I’ll tell you what we’re doing, so you don’t fuck me up,” Hood said. Sweat was pouring down his face, and Lucas could smell the fear on him. “I’m going to march you out of here with this gun. We’re going to take a car and we’re going down the Mississippi to the res. Someplace along the way I’ll get out and get off in the woods. Once I’m in the woods, I’m gone, man.”
    “They’ll come through with dogs . . . .”
    “Let them. There’ll be Indians all over the place, running them fuckin’ dogs to death, man. They’ll never get me out of them swamps down there.” Lucas felt Hood easing up close to him; then the shotgun muzzle touched the back of his head. “Just to let you know I’m here. I want your face straight down, until I tell you different.”
    Lucas lay facedown, still thinking about the gun on his hip. Hood was doing something behind him, but he couldn’t see what it was. There was a ripping sound and he tried tipping his face, but Hood said, “Hey,” and Lucas tipped it back. “I gotta breathe,” Lucas said.
    “You can breathe, don’t bullshit me . . . . Now you’re going to feel the gun on your head. I ’spect you’ve got a gun and maybe you’re one of them karate experts, but if you so much as jiggle, I’m going to blow your fucking brains out . . . . I got my finger on the trigger and the safety is off, you got it?”
    “I got it,” Lucas said.
    He felt the cold touch of the muzzle on the skin behind his ear. “Now push your head back until you’re looking off the floor. Look out into the kitchen, but don’t move anything else but your head,” Hood said. Lucas lifted his head, and a second later Hood took a quick turn of tape around his forehead, then another.