Marcelline froze behind the wheel to keep from drawing his notice. Then froze again from the inside out.

Some things were completely clear in her memory from that night. If she cast back for it, she could still feel the sickening hot tickle of blood sliding backward over her scalp, not like liquid but like a feverish finger tracing the base of her skull, a thin snake parting her hair like grass. She’d felt herself weakening. As if she’d been pinned to the earth. Heavy. Then heavier. Then pulled motionless against the ground, metal to magnet.

The one thing she remembered without a doubt was amazement—Jonathan, kneeling beside her, then looking over his shoulder, calling back to the shooter in an angry whisper:

For fuck’s sake, Roy! Get the hell out of here!

For all the worry that she would not recognize the man she’d seen in broad daylight, the man whom she’d vaulted her good reputation for, whom she’d slept with and stood next to at the most ill-advised betrayal of her common sense in her entire life, it was with all the wrenching brilliance of being struck by lightning that she instantly recognized the man who shot her.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Roy wanted a bottle of iced tea. But if he bought a scratch-off lottery ticket instead, and if it paid out even $5, he could get the tea and put a gallon of gas in the Explorer. He stood at the door to the refrigerator case, not letting his focus fall on any particular flavor in case it would tip the craving over into a decision before he was ready.

His pay had been docked for leaving equipment out. The stuff hadn’t been stolen, but it was a lesson. That’s what they’d said, a lesson because they’d told him before to make sure everything got put away. So the $40 John had given him instead of a beating hadn’t lasted. He hated to bother him again, and especially so soon. But John had missed the six o’clock check-in.

If Roy got the lottery ticket and it didn’t pay, he still had an empty tea bottle in the truck that he could fill with water from the tap in the bathroom. It wouldn’t be as good as tea, but it would be okay. And he probably had enough gas for tomorrow. Maybe.

He left the wall of cold drinks and walked over to the colorful spools of scratch games to see if it felt lucky. The woolly-bearded cashier scowled and tracked him across the room.