West was not as frightened by the rifle with thirty rounds as most people would have been, and her brain was powering up. It seemed this was the creep from The Firing Line who had gotten arrested for exposing himself in Latta Park. She had a pretty good idea why she had found Super Glue in her shrubs, and she wished like hell that Brazil hadn’t busted the guy’s nose. All the same, West was ready for violence. When anyone pointed a gun at her, there was a true cause and effect that rapidly clicked into gear. Unhooking the mike, she placed it next to her hip. She keyed it with her right hand, locking out all radio traffic in her response area. Dispatchers, cops, reporters, and criminals with scanners could hear nothing but her. She rolled down her window a few inches.

“Please don’t shoot,” she said loudly.

Bubba was surprised and pleased by her rapid submission. “Unlock the doors,” he ordered.

“Okay, okay,” West continued in the same loud, tense voice. “I’m going to unlock the doors real slowly. Please don’t shoot. Please. We can work this out, all right? And if you start shooting here, everyone at the Seventy-six truck stop will hear, so what good will it do?”

Bubba had already thought about this, and she was right. “The two of you are getting in my truck,” he said. “We’re taking a ride.”

“Why?” West kept on. “What do you want from us? We have no problem with you.”

“Oh yeah?” He gripped the carbine tighter, loving the way the bitch in uniform was groveling before him, the great Bubba. “How about at the range the other night when Queerbait there hit me?”

“You started it,” Brazil said to him and all listening to channel two.

“We can work this out,” West said again. “Look. Let’s just get right back on Sunset, maybe meet somewhere where we can talk about this? All these trucks coming in here, they’re looking. You don’t want witnesses, and this isn’t a good place to be settling a dispute.”

Bubba thought they had already gone over this point. What he planned to do was shoot them out near the lake, weigh their bodies down with cinder blocks, and dump them where no one would find them until mud turtles had eaten important features. He heard that happened. Crabs were bad on dead bodies, too, as were household pets, especially cats, if locked up with dead owners and not fed and eventually having no choice.

As Bubba deliberated, eight Charlotte patrol cars with flashing lights were speeding along I-77, now within minutes of the truck stop. Shotguns were out and ready. The police helicopter was lifting from the helipad on top of the LEC, sniper shooters poised. The SWAT team had been deployed. The FBI had been called and agents were on standby in the event hostage or terrorist negotiators or the Child Abduction Serial Killer Unit or the Hostage Rescue Team might be what it took to save the day.