Beatrix wrapped the fingers of her right hand around his wrists and tried to keep the gun pointed away, but Duffy was heavier, stronger, and he had leverage on her. The taped hands were to his advantage now. He could use both arms.

He pushed the gun down on her until the muzzle was jammed up against her throat. Blood ran from his nose onto his beard and dripped onto Beatrix’s face.

He leered down at her. His eyes bulged with hatred.

Beatrix’s left hand broke away and swept across the desert floor.

“Want to know something?” Duffy said, grunting with the effort of holding her down.

Her questing fingers felt something, fastened around it.

“We all knew what we were doing that day. We were in on it. You had it coming to you, you sanctimonious . . .”

Beatrix crashed the rock in her left hand up against the right side of Duffy’s head.

A moment of stunned surprise replaced the loathing, and then that, too, winked out. His features slackened, and his eyes rolled up into his head.

He dropped onto her.

Beatrix shoved him aside and scrambled clear.

She hurried to Faulkner. He was unmoving. She took his chin in her hand and turned his head so that she could look into his face. It was a bloody mess, his eyes puffed over and glassy.

She searched for a pulse.

Pointless.

There was a groan and then the sound of scrabbling away to her right.

“You . . . fucking . . . bitch.”

Duffy was on one knee, forcing himself upright, the pistol aimed at her.

He fired twice, both rounds missing by a solid yard.

Rose pulled out a throwing knife and, in the same motion, sent it spinning towards him.

The blade thudded into his right eye, and he jack-knifed from the waist, bent backwards with his arms splayed out as if he were embracing the moon.

He spasmed and then was still.

Beatrix fell to her knees. The enervating wave of lethargy rose up again, subsuming her, and she had to brace herself with both hands.

She coughed hard, a hacking rattle, and when she spat the phlegm out, it stained the sand with ribbons of blood.

She pressed down and got to her feet. She put one foot in front of the other, her boots disappearing into the loose sand, and slowly and methodically made her way back to the road.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Three