“Doesn’t look good,” he said.

“No, it doesn’t.”

Lucas handed the binoculars back to the cop, sat with his back to the car, and called Letty. “If I message Skye, will the phone make a sound?”

“I don’t know. I think so. But you could call her—the phone won’t ring, and she should see the screen light up.”

“Give me that number again,” Lucas said.

Lucas took the number, then crawled over to the car’s bumper, whistled at the highway patrolman, and waved him over. When he got there, Lucas said, “You’re running this scene—I’ve got no jurisdiction. I think I can call her without tipping the guy off. What do you think?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“The guy’s not just acting crazy—we’ve got good reason to think he is crazy. I think if we put the rifle on him, and if I call and he reacts, then if it looks like he’s going to use the gun, we take him.”

The cop bit his lip, thinking, then said, “We’ve got to do something. I’m not sure we can wait until the sheriff gets here.”

“The question is, can our shooter hit him through the window glass?”

“I asked him that, and he said he’s shooting solid core. He says he’s pretty square to the window glass, and if he shoots at the guy’s head, the bullet might deflect a bit, but he’ll still hit his head somewhere. A smaller target would be more of a question.”

Lucas nodded. “Okay. I’m gonna call her. You tell the rifle guy to be ready, but don’t shoot unless it looks like he’s about to pull the trigger on her.” To the cop with the glasses, he said, “Watch him. Tell me what he does.”

He called. When the phone stopped ringing, there was silence. He said quietly, “This is Lucas, Letty’s dad. If you push the round button at the bottom of the phone, the main screen will come up. Then push the green button on the screen, too. It’ll switch you to phone mode. Could you do that?”

The cop with the binoculars said, “He’s just sitting there. Looks like he’s talking to himself.”

Lucas said into the phone, “On the bottom line, there’s a square with a lot of dots in it—the keypad. Push that button. When the keypad comes up, push the bottom of the phone against your body—that’s where the keypad sound comes from. You need to muffle that. If you’ve done that, tap any button. Don’t hold it down, just tap it quick.”

A second later, he got a beep.

“Good. We’re talking. Are you hurt? If you’re hurt bad and need an ambulance right now, tap a button.”

Silence.

“Good. You’re not hurt. If you think this guy is going to shoot you, that he’s seriously going to do it, tap a button.”

Beep.

The patrolman said, “Damnit.”

Lucas said into the phone, “If you think there’s any chance that you can talk him down, give me a beep.”

Silence.

Then a man’s voice: “This is it, this is it. No way out. No way out now. They ain’t coming back for me, they ain’t comin’ back. Piece-of-shit car, piece of shit. You ain’t goin’ no place, don’t even think about it, bitch. I’ll blow your fuckin’ brains all over the car, that’s for sure.”

The guy with the binoculars said, “That’s him, I can read his lips when I hear the words, she’s holding the phone so we can hear him.”

A cop called, “The sheriff’s here.”

•   •   •

A MINUTE LATER, the sheriff scuttled up, half bent over, crouched next to the patrolman. He was a short, thick man with sandy hair, a brush mustache, and round, gold-rimmed glasses. “Are we talking to him?”

“We’re yelling at him, but we’re afraid to make a move any closer,” the patrolman said. “Says he’ll kill the girl if we do. We’re talking about having Phil take him out.”

The sheriff looked back three cars, where the shooter was sitting behind a patrol car, looking at the fugitive car through a scope. “If we have to.”

“I’d really like to talk to this guy—he could probably give us all the rest of them,” Lucas said.

The sheriff looked at him and asked, “Who are you?”

Lucas gave him the five-second version, and explained the phone connection with Skye, and the sheriff said, “Phil could probably actually shoot him in the shoulder of his gun arm. I mean, shooting normally, Phil could put three shots through a dime at that range. With the window, it’s more of a problem. But if he could take that shoulder out, we could rush him—”

The phone beeped, then beeped again and Lucas said, “If there’s a problem, beep me again.”

Beep.

Then the man’s voice again, “Say good-bye, bitch, ’cause you’re going first. They’re gonna shoot me, but I don’t give a shit no more, I don’t give a shit no more . . .”

The man sounded frantic, whipping himself up for it. The deputy with the binoculars said, his voice calm enough, “He’s turning around in the seat, he’s kneeling on the seat looking toward the back . . .” and the sheriff scrambled away, toward the car where the rifleman was set up.

From where Lucas was sitting with the phone, he couldn’t see the shooter, but the patrolman could, and Lucas called, “Is he—?”

BAM!

Lucas saw the sheriff bolt toward the target car, pistol in his hand, and Lucas followed, well back. The sheriff stumbled through the beans and almost went down, and Lucas worried that he’d shoot himself, or somebody else, but he didn’t, and a few seconds later, they were looking through the side window at a dead guy in the front seat of the car. The rifle round had struck him in the cheekbone and gone through his head, knocking him back into the front seat.

Lucas said, “The girl’s in the back,” and a deputy arriving at that moment yanked on the back hatch, but it was locked, and the sheriff pulled open the driver’s-side door and reached across the dead man’s legs to pull the keys out of the ignition, and they all went around to the back of the car and unlocked the hatch.

They could see the unmoving body in the back, covered with a green woolen blanket. Lucas pulled it off and Skye was looking up at him, eyes wide with fear.

Lucas said, “Skye: you’re okay.”

The sheriff said, “Don’t let her see that,” and tipped his head toward the front of the car. And, “Tom, get that tape off her.”

A deputy produced a switchblade and began cutting the tape off Skye’s legs and she said, “They were going to kill me. Last night Pilate told Bony to give me some water but he wouldn’t have to bother with feeding me, they were going to kill me today . . .”

“Gonna get you to the hospital, honey,” the sheriff said. “You gotta be pretty shook up.” To Lucas he said, “We called in an ambulance, they’re on the way, oughta be here . . .”

•   •   •

THE DEPUTY FINISHED taking the tape that bound her arms to her body, and Skye tried to get out of the car, but when she put her feet down, nearly collapsed. Lucas caught her under the arms and pushed her back until she was sitting on the edge of the trunk. He said, “Letty told me that you were a witness to a killing last night.”

“Who’s Letty?” the sheriff asked. Lucas gave him another five-second explanation, and then Skye said, “I heard it all, and saw the end of it. I was taped up in the back bedroom and the doors on that thing were about as thick as tinfoil. Pilate got connected to some dope dealer here and was going to buy some cocaine from him, but when the dope dealer got here, Pilate didn’t have the money. He was trying to buy on credit—”