The Husband

probably better anyway.
    He didn't hear footsteps, just the gallop of his heart, but then he heard the key in the trunk lock.
    Through his mind's eye blinked an image of Jason Osteen being shot in the head, blinked and blinked, repeating like a film loop, Jason slammed by the bullet, skull exploding, slammed by the bullet, skull exploding....
    As the lid lifted, Mitch realized that the trunk did not have a convenience light, and he began to sit up, thrusting the revolver forward.
    The full-pitcher moon spilled its milk, backlighting the two gunmen.
    Mitch's eyes were adapted to absolute blackness, and theirs were not. He sat in darkness, and they stood in moonlight. They thought he was a meek and broken and helpless man, and he was not.
    He didn't consciously squeeze off the first shot, but felt the hard recoil and saw the muzzle flash and heard the crash, and then he was aware of squeezing the trigger the second time.
    Two point-blank rounds knocked one silhouette down out of the moon-soaked night.
    The second silhouette backed away from the car, and Mitch sat all the way up, squeezing off one, two, three more rounds.
    The hammer clicked, and there was just the quiet of the moon, and the hammer clicked, and he reminded himself Only five, only five!
    He had to get out of the trunk. With no ammunition, he was a fish in a barrel. Out. Out of the trunk.

Chapter 30

     
    Rising too fast, Mitch knocked his head against the lid, . almost fell back, but maintained forward momentum. He scrambled out of the trunk.
    His left foot came down on solid ground, but he planted his right on the twice-shot man. He staggered, stepped on the body again, and it shifted under him, and he fell.
    He rolled away from the gunman, to the verge of the road. He was stopped by a wild hedge of mesquite, which he identified by its oily smell.
    He had lost the revolver. It didn't matter. No ammunition.
    Around him lay a parched moon-silvered landscape: the narrow dirt road, desert scrub, barren soil, boulders.
    Sleek, its ample chrome features lustrous with lunar polish, the Chrysler Windsor seemed strangely futuristic in this primitive land, like a ship meant to sail the stars. The driver had switched off the headlights when he killed the engine.
    The gunman on whom Mitch had twice stepped, when exiting the trunk, had not cried out. He had not reared up or clutched at Mitch. He was probably dead.
    Maybe the second man had been killed, too. Coming out of the trunk, Mitch had lost track of him.
    If one of the last three rounds had found its target, the second man should have been a buffet for vultures on the dirt road behind the car.
    The sandy soil of the roadbed was rich in silica. Glass is made from silica, mirrors from glass. The single-lane track offered much higher reflectivity than any surface in the night.
    Lying facedown and flat, head cautiously raised, Mitch could see a significant distance along the pale ribbon as it dwindled through the gnarled and bristling scrub, in the direction from which they had come. No second body lay on the road.
    If the guy hadn't been at least winged, surely he would have charged, firing, as Mitch clambered out of the Chrysler.
    Hit, he might have hobbled or crawled into the scrub or behind a formation of stone. He could be anywhere out there, assessing his wound, reviewing his options.
    The gunman would be angry but not scared. He lived for action like this. He was a sociopath. He wouldn't scare easily.
    Definitely, unequivocally, Mitch was afraid of the man hiding in the night. He also feared the one who was lying on the road at the back of the Chrysler.
    The guy near the car might be dead, but even if he was crow-bait, Mitch was afraid of him anyway. He didn't want to go near him.
    He had to do what he didn't want to do, because whether the sonofabitch was a carcass or unconscious, he possessed a weapon. Mitch needed a weapon. And quick.
    He had discovered that he was capable of violence, at least in self-defense, but he hadn't been prepared for the rapidity with which events unfolded following the first shot, for the speed with which decisions must be made, for the suddenness with which new challenges could arise.
    On the farther side of the road, several blinds of scraggly vegetation offered concealment, as did low batters of weathered rock.
    If the light breeze that had been active toward the coast had made its way this far inland, the desert had swallowed it to the last draught. Any movement of the