The Husband

other.
    They were almost as close to each other as they had been on the walk from the library to the car pavilion.
    Lying in the trunk, Mitch thought about that walk.
    The gunman made a low sound, either a stifled cough or a groan further muffled by the intervening wall of upholstery.
    Perhaps he had been wounded, after all. His condition wasn't sufficiently serious to persuade him to pack up and leave, although it might be painful enough to discourage a lot of roaming.
    Clearly, he settled in the car because he hoped that eventually, in desperation, his quarry would return to it. He figured Mitch would be circumspect in his approach, thoroughly scoping out the immediate surrounding territory, but would not expect death to be waiting for him in the shadows of the backseat.
    In this makeshift learning room, Mitch thought about that walk between the library and the car pavilion: the moon like a lily pad floating in the pool, the muzzle of the pistol pressed into his side, the songs of the toads, the lacy branches of the silver sheens, the pistol pressed into his side....
    A car of this vintage would not feature a fire wall or a crash panel between the trunk and the passenger compartment. The back of the rear seat might have been finished with a quarter-inch fiberboard panel or even just with cloth.
    The backrest might contain six inches of padding. A bullet would meet some resistance.
    The barrier wasn't bulletproof. No one armored with a mere sofa cushion would expect to walk unscathed through a barrage often high-velocity rounds.
    Currently Mitch half lay and half sat on his left side, facing the night through the open trunk lid.
    He would need to roll onto his right side in order to bring the pistol to bear on the back wall of the trunk.
    He weighed a hundred and seventy pounds. No degree in physics was required to figure out that the car would respond to that much weight shifting position.
    Turn fast, open fire—and maybe he would discover that he was wrong about the partition between trunk and passenger compartment. If there was indeed a metal panel, he might not only be nailed by a ricochet but also fail to hit his target.
    Then he would be wounded and out of ammunition, and the gunman would know where to find him.
    A bead of sweat slipped along the side of his nose to the corner of his mouth.
    The night was mild, not hot.
    An urge to act pulled his nerves as taut as bowstrings.

Chapter 33

     
    As Mitch lay in indecision, he heard in memory Holly's . scream, and the sharp slap of her being hit.
    A real sound refocused his attention on the present: his enemy, in the passenger compartment, stifling a series of coughs.
    The noise had been so effectively muffled that it wouldn't have been heard beyond the car. As before, the coughing lasted only a few seconds.
    Maybe the gunman's cough related to a wound. Or he was allergic to desert pollen.
    When the guy coughed again, Mitch would seize the opportunity to change positions.
    Beyond the open trunk, the desert seemed to darkle, brighten, darkle rhythmically, but in fact the acuity of his vision sharpened briefly with each systolic thrust of his pounding heart.
    A sudden illusion of snow, however, had a basis in reality. Moonlight frosted the phosphorescent wings of swarming moths that whirled like flakes of winter across the road.
    Mitch's cuffed hands gripped the pistol so fiercely that his knuckles began to ache. His right forefinger hooked the trigger guard, rather than the trigger itself, because he feared that a nervous twitch would cause him to fire before he intended.
    His teeth were clenched. He heard himself inhale, exhale. He opened his mouth to breathe more quietly.
    Even though his heart raced, time ceased to be a river running and became a creeping flow of mud.
    Instinct had served Mitch well in recent hours. Likewise, a sixth sense might at any moment alert the gunman that he was not alone.
    A sludge of seconds filled an empty minute, filled another, and another—and then the man's third bout of stifled coughing gave Mitch cover to roll from his left side to his right. The maneuver complete, he lay with his back to the open end of the trunk, very still.
    The gunman's silence seemed to have a quality of heightened vigilance, of suspicion. The world now came to Mitch's five senses through a distorting lens of extreme anxiety.
    What angle of fire? What pattern?
    Think.
    The man with the smooth face would not be sitting upright. He would slump to take