But by the time I reach my feet, the minivan is just twenty yards from the end of the block, Serenity trailing far behind it. If they make that turn, Annie will disappear off the face of the earth. As my eyes follow the van, an image beyond my capacity for understanding appears. At the end of the block, a man wearing a white cowboy hat has stepped from behind the Episcopal Church and dropped to one knee. The mysterious cowboy raises a pistol with one hand and takes careful aim at the windshield of the van.

Don’t! I think. Don’t risk it!

But something about the stance of the man in the white hat resonates within me. That’s Walt Garrity. The old Texas Ranger has been with us all along, and now the future has coalesced into a single moment . . .

One shot—

Walt’s muzzle flash reaches me before the sound of the blast, and I know instantly that Walt missed, because the van doesn’t even falter.

Walt fires again.

This time the van bucks like a tripping horse. Then its motor revs wildly, and the vehicle careens over the curb and up onto the sidewalk, plowing over Walt before he can roll away. The grille crashes through a crape myrtle trunk, rams the great concrete steps of the Episcopal Church, and stops dead, steam pouring from its radiator.

Far ahead of me, Serenity swiftly closes the distance to the van and wrenches open the door without hesitation. As she leaps inside, I finally regain enough muscular control to draw my pistol and start staggering toward the church.

There’s a struggle going on in the van, but I can’t tell who’s winning. As I close the distance, I hear screaming that sounds like Annie, which is good, because you have to be alive to scream. Then a door opens on the far side and a man in black leather bolts from the vehicle and sprints down South Commerce, toward Homochitto Street. Though it kills me to do it, in my desperation to reach Annie, I run past Walt’s bloody body to the open door of the van.

The first thing I see is the driver, his skull blown apart by a hollow-point slug. There’s blood on every surface, including the people, but what confuses me is what the people are doing. Serenity is naked above the waist, and she’s frantically rubbing her left breast and arm while Annie and Mia watch with wide eyes.

“What happened?” I shout.

“He threw acid on Tee!” Annie cries. “She was fighting him. And she was winning! He decided to run, but as he got out, he grabbed a plastic thing and hit Tee with it. It was acid!”

“I had the tube Drew gave me in my pocket,” Mia says. “The gluconate stuff. She’s rubbing it on now.”