The bullet certainly hit something because there was a loud sound and Madelaine screamed. Liz went flying onto her back. Her body hit the ground with a thud and with my weight on top of her. She grunted. Then she gasped and swallowed, trying not to vomit. Fortunately, she succeeded, otherwise she would have spewed on me.

She was still holding on to the nifty little handgun with her outstretched right hand. She was trying to lift it up. I grabbed her wrist with my left hand. She swore. I shoved it down on the dirt. I think her arm hit a rock, because her “motherfucker” was punctuated with a yelp. I sat up as she tried to claw at my face with her left hand and twisted away from it, mostly because I wanted to get my right hand on her right arm. I seized her behind her elbow. I pulled up, while my left hand still held her wrist down. I was folding her arm backward toward the snapping point. She screeched. I felt her hand open, and the gun fell out.

I released her, rolled off, and snatched up the Glock.

CHAPTER SEVEN

LISTEN

“…the stick-up kids know how I roll,

I’ll shoot you if I like

I’m a gun slinging rambler and I live a rambler’s life.”

“GUNSLINGING RAMBLER,” GANGSTAGRASS

MADELAINE WAS ON HER KNEES, bent over, practically in a fetal position, sort of sobbing, sort of gasping.

Liz was on the ground, staring up at me, doing her best to give me a hard, mean look. She said, “You won’t get away with this,” dressing it up with standard swear words front and back.

In return, I just gave her a look that said, Don’t you get it?

She swore at me again. I raised her pink-and-black Glock 43 and pointed it at her. She stopped threatening and swearing. Her pocketbook was on the ground. I picked it up, opened it, and took her phone.

I walked over toward Madelaine. She backed away from me, still in her crouching huddle. Under normal circumstances I would have done my best to be reassuring, telling her she was safe, be calm, everything was going to be alright. But it didn’t seem appropriate. I went right up to her, reached down, felt around her jacket—it was really quite stylish and very well made—until I found the pocket with her phone. I reached in and took it.

Then I headed up the hill on foot. This is stony country. About five yards off the lawn and into the trees, there was a large outcropping of bluestone, higher than my waist as I climbed past it. The adrenaline pump had turned itself off. The vibrations of energy, rage, and the urge to action, were slowing, thoughts were returning and one of them was about the way our phones track us all.

Liz was calling to Maddie, “Are you alright? Are you alright?”