UR

124, before cutting across to Route 80. A little further down 80, she would make her final stop. A fiery one.
    .
     
    Once Robbie put the thought in his head, Wesley kept expecting his always-trustworthy Chevrolet to die and coast to a stop at the side of the two-lane blacktop, a victim of either a bad battery or the Paradox Laws. Candy Rymer’s taillights would disappear from view and they would spend the following hours making frantic but useless calls (always assuming their phones would even work out here in the williwags) and cursing themselves for not disabling her vehicle back in Eddyville, while they still had a chance.
    But the Malibu cruised as effortlessly as always, without a single gurgle or glitch. He stayed about half a mile behind Candy’s Explorer.
    “Man, she’s all over the road,” Robbie said. “Maybe she’ll ditch the damn thing before she gets to the next bar. Save us the trouble of slashing her tires.”
    “According to the Echo , that doesn’t happen.”
    “Yeah, but we know the future’s not cast in stone, don’t we? Maybe this is another Ur, or something.”
    Wesley didn’t think it worked that way with UR LOCAL, but he kept his mouth shut. Either way, it was too late now.
    Candy Rymer made it to Banty’s without going in the ditch or hitting any oncoming traffic, although she could have done either; God knew she had enough close calls. When one of the cars that swerved out of her way passed Wesley’s Malibu, Robbie said: “That’s a family. Mom, Pop, three little kids goofin’ around in the back.”
    That was when Wesley stopped feeling sorry for Rymer and started feeling angry at her. It was a clean, hot emotion that made his pique at Ellen feel paltry by comparison.
    “That bitch,” he said. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “That drunken who-gives-a-shit bitch . I’ll kill her if that’s the only way I can stop her.”
    “I’ll help,” Robbie said, then clamped his mouth so tightly shut his lips nearly disappeared.
    .
     
    They didn’t have to kill her, and the Paradox Laws stopped them no more than the laws against drinking and driving had stopped Candy Rymer on her tour of southern Kentucky’s more desperate watering holes.
    The parking lot of Banty’s Bar was paved, but the buckling concrete looked like something left over from an Israeli bombing raid in Gaza. Overhead, a fizzing neon rooster flashed on and off. Hooked in one set of its talons was a moonshine jug with XXX printed on the side.
    The Rymer woman’s Explorer was parked almost directly beneath this fabulous bird, and by its stuttering orange-red glow, Wesley slashed open the elderly SUV’s front tires with the butcher knife they had brought for that express purpose. As the whoosh of escaping air hit him, he was struck by a wave of relief so great that at first he couldn’t get up but only hunker on his knees like a man praying.
     “My turn,” Robbie said, and a moment later the Explorer settled further as the kid punctured the rear tires. Then came another hiss. He had put a hole in the spare for good measure. By then Wesley had gotten to his feet.
    “Let’s park around to the side,” Robbie said. “I think we better keep an eye on her.”
    “I’m going to do a lot more than that,” Wesley said.
    “Easy, big fella. What are you planning on?”
    “I’m not planning. I’m beyond that.” But the rage shaking through his body suggested something different.
    .
     
    According to the Echo , she had called Banty’s a dive in her parting shot, but apparently that had been cleaned up for family consumption. What she actually threw back over her shoulder was, “I’m done doing business with this shitpit!” Only by this point she was so drunk the vulgarity came out in a slippery slur: shippih .
    Robbie, fascinated at seeing the news story played out before his eyes right down to the upraised middle finger (which the Echo had primly referred to as “an obscene gesture”), made no effort to grab Wesley as he strode toward her. He did call “Wait!” but Wesley didn’t. He seized the woman and commenced shaking her.
    Candy Rymer’s mouth dropped open; the keys she’d been holding in the hand not occupied with bird-flipping dropped to the cracked concrete tarmac.
    “Leggo me, you bassard!”
    Wesley didn’t. He slapped her face hard enough to split her lower lip, then went back on her the other way. “ Sober up! ” he screamed into her frightened face. “ Sober up,