“Well, I’m going to shoot your good friend right through the seat if you don’t take me to the ferry.” Katie had shifted position, her back pressed up against the door. Kyle warned, “Don’t even think of opening that door. If you make a run for it, it’s him I’ll shoot.”

“Take the car,” Bruce said. “We’ll get out. You take the car. That way, no one gets hurt.” Katie gave him a look of mute protest, which Bruce acknowledged with a nod. “I know, we want to find your brother, and your mom. But that’ll be hard to do if we’re dead.”

But Kyle was not interested in the offer. “No. You drive. You’re an islander, right?”

Bruce said, slowly, “For about thirty years.”

“Then you know all the back roads. If we need to take them, to steer clear of those little four-wheeled bastards, you’re the guy I need.”

“Okay,” Bruce said, calmly. “I’ll drive you there. But you put the gun away. I know you’ve got it. I’m not gonna try anything funny. But guns can go off by accident. I hit some pothole, I don’t want to end up with a bullet in my back.”

Kyle pondered that for a moment before slipping the gun back into his jacket.

“And one other thing,” Bruce said. “Let Katie here go.”

Katie’s eyes widened. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“No, you listen to me,” Bruce said to her harshly. “Let me give our friend here a lift to the ferry and I’ll come back for you. Go into the woods there. You’ll be safe.”

“No,” Katie said, looking him in the eye.

Bruce held her gaze for five seconds before looking away. There was something in her tone that told him there was no sense arguing the point any further.

“Okay, then,” Bruce said. He straightened himself up behind the wheel, put the car into drive, and gave the beast some gas. “Roads a bit narrow to pull off a three-point turn in this sucker. I got to go up here and look for a place to turn around.”

He drove a quarter of a mile until he reached a gravel driveway that led, presumably, to a house deep in the woods. He nosed the car into it, cranked the wheel hard in the opposite direction, and backed out onto the road, facing the other way. Katie sat sideways on the seat the entire time, staring at Brandon Kyle.

“What’s wrong with your stomach?” she asked.

“What?”

“It’s all lumpy.”

Kyle looked down. Two of the bottom buttons of his shirt had come undone, exposing foam padding. “Oh,” he said. “I’ve been looking to lose a few pounds. This is probably as good a time as any.”