“You have a choice here, Reyland. You lie the hell on the ground, you get to live. You don’t, I’m going to blow that big ugly Charlie Brown head of yours clean off your neck. Tell El Mighty Mouse same goes for him. Tell Short Shit to lay down his rifle or I will grease his spunky little ass.”

There was a scuffling sound, and when Ruby looked up, Ruiz was running full sprint along the rim of the depression.

The rifle crack that came from the trees behind them a moment later seemed inconsequential, a car door closing. Ruiz screamed out mournfully as he went sprawling across the rough limestone face-first.

When he slowly regained his feet, he was clutching at his lower back with one hand like an old man in an aspirin commercial. Using his rifle like a kind of crutch, he began moving again much slower now, his feet shuffling, kicking up rocky dirt along the blue hole’s rim.

The next shots from the trees came in a louder cluster. A kla kla kla–ing burst of fire that made Ruiz’s baggy yellow guayabera shirt billow outward as he stopped dead in his tracks.

When he turned slowly, you could see the dark blood splatter like huge ink stains all down the front of the shirt. He was attempting to lift his rifle to his shoulder when there was another shot that took him through the hollow of his throat just above the breastbone.

Then Ruiz teetered over headfirst into the depression and fell from sight.

His heavy little body had just hit the water with a cannonball-like splash when Ruby was suddenly yanked to her feet.

Gripping at her bound hands and the back of her hair, Reyland ducked in behind her. He swung her hard between him and where Gannon’s fire was coming from.

“You keep backing away with me,” Reyland said in her ear as he began to pull her backward past the campfire, “or, by God, I will snap your neck clean in two.”

“Let her go, you son of a bitch,” Gannon called from the radio as Reyland shoved her to the right beside some palm trees where the other 4x4 quad was parked.

As she tried to pull away, Reyland swung her hard by her arms off her feet. The air was knocked out of her as she landed stomach first into the metal side of the quad.

She was still gasping to catch her breath, still in a daze, when Reyland kicked her away from the vehicle and leaped on top of it.

Reyland got the four-wheeler started. As he revved the throttle, the palm tree trunk just beside the left side of his face exploded.

But Gannon’s shot had just missed him, and Ruby screamed as Reyland crouched his pale bald head down between the handlebars and tore off into the woods, the engine wailing.

86

Shirtless and soaking wet, Gannon ran top speed out of the shadows into the firelight beside the blue hole, carrying the M4 carbine he’d taken off Emerson.