Before Vargas could reply, Bert sagged in his grip, cried out in pain, clutched his chest. Vargas laughed, too clever to be taken in by an obvious ruse, but Bert kept thrashing, gave his head a hard shake, and the sudden movement tugged Vargas’s arm down and Bert struggled to twist away. As Vargas tried to contain him, his gun hand rose and the weapon was visible. Sleek, black automatic. Aimed at the sky. Behind him, Small was cursing, his attention directed at the struggle. Aimee stared, too, not resisting.

The moment Bert had shown distress, I’d pushed the chair faster, got within five feet of Vargas. Stopped. Vargas continued to grope for Bert. I gave a low grunt.

Bill groped under the folds of the top blanket and pulled out the shotgun.

Old but clean Mossberg Mariner Eight-Shot Mini Combo with pistol grip and speed-feed. Extreme saw-off, barely any barrel left. I’d found it under the bed, where he’d said it would be, stored in a black canvas case coated with dust bunnies. Lying next to two rifles in similar housing and half a dozen boxes of ammo.

“Use the big shells,” he said. I’d loaded the weapon.

Then handed it over to a stiff-fingered blind man.

Vargas got a firm grip on Bert, but Bert saw the shotgun, turned, and bit down on Vargas’s arm, and when Vargas bellowed and let go of him, he dropped to the ground and rolled away.

I muttered, “Now,” and Bill yanked the trigger.

The explosion boxed my ears, and the recoil shoved the wheelchair into my groin as Bill’s head snapped backward and connected with my midriff.

Nacho Vargas was blown away as if caught in a personalized tornado. The bottom half of his face turned to smoky, bloody dust, and a giant, ruby pink orchid blossomed where his gullet and chest had once been. As he fell, white-flecked, red broth shot out through his back, spattering Aimee and the small cowboy, who looked stunned. I threw myself at him, swung one fist upward, connected under his nose, got hold of his groin with my other hand and twisted hard.

The whole thing had taken five seconds.

The small man went down, landed on his back, cried out in pain. His black T-shirt was grimed with what looked like steak tartare and bone bits and gobbets of something gray-pink and spongy I knew to be lung tissue. His gun—shiny and silver—remained entwined in his fingers, and I stomped his hand and kicked the weapon loose. The gun rolled away and I dived for it, slid into gore and skidded and went facedown into the gravel, feeling the buzz of impact, then searing pain along one half of my face, both elbows and knees.

I’d fallen atop the weapon, felt it biting into my chest. Now the damned thing would go off and blow a hole through me, what a dignified demise.