The Shadow Hunter

hood.
    Travis saw the shotgun kiss the weakened glass, and he knew the next blast would open up the car to a direct assault. He seized Kris and shoved her to the floor as two explosions from the shotgun echoed inside the car.
    Exactly what happened next Travis didn’t know. Bending to cover Kris with his body, he was aware only of a succession of stops and starts, the car braking, then reversing, then flying forward and braking again, and then another shot, this one striking low, and more low hits as the Lincoln backed off and screamed in reverse toward the guardhouse four hundred yards away.
    The low hits scared Travis most of all. He was thinking of the unshielded underside of the car. He was thinking of the fuel tank.
    He held Kris tight and heard her whispering the same words over and over in a hushed, urgent monotone: “God help us…God help us…God help us…”
    Then there was fire.
    Travis heard the whoosh of igniting gasoline even before the sudden orange glare lit up the front windows. By luck or skill Hickle had punctured the gas tank, and sparks from successive shots had set the gas ablaze.
    The Lincoln would be enveloped in fire within seconds. The car might not blow up—gasoline was less combustible than Hollywood movies liked to pretend—but it would certainly burn to cinders, as would its occupants.
    He pulled Kris upright and yelled at Drury to evacuate the vehicle. The car stopped at a crazy angle halfway down Gateway Road, and Drury got out, or at least Travis thought he did. He couldn’t be sure, not when his full attention was focused on prying open the rear door and dragging Kris out of the car and away from the spreading flames.
    He pulled her into the bushes at the roadside, then drew his Walther and turned in a crouch, scanning the dark for Hickle, who had to be out there somewhere, because if anything was clear and obvious in the midst of this insanity, it was that Hickle would not give up until Kris was dead.
    The car was a flaming pile. It threw off a moist heat that slapped Hickle in the face as he sprinted closer, the shotgun gripped with both hands. He became aware that he was favoring his left leg. Must have turned his ankle when he rolled off the hood onto the pavement. It didn’t matter. He was still mobile, and the car had been abandoned. Kris was outside, unprotected. Only one shot was needed to finish things.
    Kris had been riding in the back of the Lincoln. The rear passenger door hung ajar. Hickle ran toward that side of the road and saw her on the roadside, a huddle of fear and shock. With her, a man Hickle didn’t recognize. Not her husband. A man with a gun.
    Hickle saw the gun come up fast and flung himself to the ground, taking cover behind the wreckage of the Lincoln, thensensed movement nearby and turned in time to see the driver taking aim with a pistol from behind the open front door. Hickle fired the shotgun, and the man went down. Hit? Hard to tell. Hickle darted around the door, preparing to fire again, but it wasn’t necessary. The driver was alive but out of commission, writhing on the pavement, his pistol dropped and forgotten. Hickle ignored him. He had no interest in delivering a coup de grace. The man meant nothing to him. It was Kris he wanted.
    He scrambled to the rear of the Lincoln, staying low. The air was brutally hot. Alongside the rear bumper he peered out and saw Kris and her defender retreating farther into the foliage. He jerked the Marlin’s trigger twice, blowing sprays of shot at them, and saw them go down, but he didn’t think they’d been hit. They had dived for cover.
    Muzzle flashes from the foliage. Kris’s bodyguard was shooting back. Hickle snapped off another shot, then retreated to the front of the Lincoln, moving fast. He had a plan now. They thought he was positioned at the rear of the car. They wouldn’t expect him to charge from the front.
    He sprang out from behind the car and instantly collided with something—somebody—who fell in a heap at his feet.
    Kris.
    She had panicked and run. Run right into him.
    She looked up and saw him, and the look on her face was the most priceless gift he had ever received. It was a look of stark fear, of total resignation and final submission. It told him that he had won and she had lost, that he was the master and she the victim.
    All of this lasted less than a second, no longer than it took for him to swing the shotgun toward her, the muzzle stamping its cold kiss on her brow. He