When I was as close as I dared drive, I took my foot off the gas pedal and let the sedan coast to a stop. I turned the engine off and put her car keys in my pocket, again reaching up to disable the dome light before I opened the car door. I took out Dolan's Smith & Wesson. I moved off the road, circling out and to my left so that I was approaching the complex at an angle across raw land. Cover was better out here. The huddled shadows tended to form and reform, shifting, as the wind pushed the tumbleweeds across the uneven ground. I spotted the truck, which Cornell had parked between the two half-finished buildings, looming silent and dark. In the second building, upstairs, I saw a glimmer of light. I moved forward with caution, hoping Cornell had left his keys behind as she had. H I could steal their only means of transportation, it would force them to walk the mile and a half to the main highway. By the time they reached the road, I could be speeding back to Creosote and return with help. Let them explain to Todd Chilton what they'd been doing out there. There was no motion in the patch of darkness immediately surrounding the truck.

I circled the vehicle, noting that the window was rolled down on the driver's side. I peered in, catching the glint of his keys right where I'd hoped they'd be. In my mind's eye, I was already opening the truck door, sliding under the wheel. I'd turned the key in the ignition, slammed the gear lever into drive, and sped off, leaving the two of them behind. As it turned out, I celebrated my achievement prematurely. I heard a scuffling behind me and a little voice inside piped up, saying "Uh-oh," but by then it was too late. I turned, expecting to see Cornell, but it was Justine sailing toward me. With her pale flyaway hair and her icy pale green eyes, she looked like a banshee sweeping out of the dark. Cornell must have left her to stand watch, acting as a sentinel in case a horny pack of teenyboppers showed up at the Tuley-Belle for a midweek Screwfest. Maybe I hadn't been as quiet as I'd thought. Perhaps, given the peculiarities of desert acoustics, she'd heard my every step and simply waited for me.

She had the shovel in her hands. I saw her lifting her arms, raising the shovel overhead like an axe. I had to admire her strength. What she was doing wasn't easy. The shovel looked heavy and I hadn't thought she'd developed that much upper-body strength. Still, from her perspective, this was an emergency, so she might have been calling on reserves she didn't know she had.