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"Bastard"

"Yeah"

"Now he’s killed a cop"

"Yeah," Ferro said in a dead voice

LaMastra’s jaw

Aaround the corner of the warehouse "Sarge!"

Ferro and LaMastra turned "What is it?"

"It’s Ruger…he’s been spotted!"

2

Vic Wingate fell asleep in his Barcalounger in front of the TV, his feet up and ankles crossed, one hand closed lione tepid, the other lying palm down on his crotch He wore a pair of faded blue boxers and a Pine Deep Softball T-​shirt He’d never played softball in his life; the shirt was a leftover fro John Sweeney

Vic slept and dreareasy sheen of cool sweat Behind his eyelids his eyes jumped and twitched and every once in a while his hand closed around his balls…

Vic stood in the forest, deep in the shadows in the bowels of Dark Hollow, the toes of his work boots sinking into the e of the swamp as he leaned forward and whispered

"It’s al’s just about in place" There was silence except for the incessant drone of the ly old owl in the branches of a blighted syca his balance, and for a ht for balance Much as he loved that which lay beneath the mud and muck, he did not want to touch it It was not ti you wanted," Vic said as he crept farther back up the bank and onto fir…and a few ht up"

A croed loudly and flapped down through the branches and landed on the far side of the swamp It cocked its head and fixed him with an eye that was as black and expressionless as a bead of polished onyx

Vic stared at it for a moment and then dropped his eyes to the leaf-​strewn surface of the swa the surface debris "The world’s changed a lot," he said "There’s stuff I had to do that we hadn’t thought of before"

The bird rustled its feathers and he looked hard at it, squinting in the glooed"

The bird stared back

Vic looked back down at the " He paused and a slow, cold s"

In his sleep, Vic shifted, a faint ser saw it happen just in time to save his own life That he saved the others, too, was inconsequential to hi for it, because he wanted it to happen He needed it to happen, kneould happen He’d know that ever since he’d seen the na in his head He didn’t know exactly ould happen, in fact could never have predicted the exact event that caused the wreck, but he knew the wreck--or so like it--was inevitable

For weeks now he had felt that Death was dogging his heels and that sooner or later it was going to jump him That, or maybe he’d find some way to turn it around and spit in Death’s eye He found hi a dyingthe nearness of death, Ruger had started to groove on it, getting an alh froher than a spike in the vein, and he’d been running on that high for days now, first planning the drug scao sour byoff to the chief of the Jamaican crew, then the shoot-​out at the warehouse, and now this dooh He knew that it would somehow end in a fireball of soe of his perception, waiting to take control of it, to force the events to bend to his will, as so many other events in his life had been twisted to his will There was no rush like it When Tony lost it, it would be up to Ruger to take Lady Death by the tits and give her a tweak That’s how he saw it Give Lady Death’s tits a good tweak No, he thought in the split second before the car went out of control Not fuck h the wreck, it was because his as strong enough, and that, he kneoulda Gypsy lady had told him: that he was "special," that he was protected from ordinary death Maybe even immortal, a concept he did not consider either outlandish or absurd If he died…well then, he’d just go rushing into that great big blackness with a hard-​on and a curse on his laughing lips and see if the darkness could hold him

This is how the wreck happened The black car rounded a bend in the road, leaving the canal behind, and zooh seely endless cornfields The ranks of dry corn stood at attention on either side of the car as it whisked along the blacktop, and the car’s slipstrearipped the wheel so tightly that his knuckles were bone white in the places where they weren’t stained with blood He kept trying to grip harder just to be able to feel so, but the hands at the ends of his wrists werein coldness He could not feel any of his fingers or even his pal at the wheel just toit

They approached a crossroads where a far at his hands when the ht-​hand cornfield and stopped in the middle of the road Tony looked up just in tihts Maybe it was a trick of the light, or ht the man--a tall, pale man with blond hair and heavy features--seeht of the headlights cut right through hirinned nastily at the onrushing car His skin hite as snow Not merely pale, not even the white pink of an albino, but as white as the cocaine in the trunk, as white as Tony’s knuckles, as white as Ruger’s teeth when he s in the storry as Ruger’s own

Tony screa at the driver and saw the hts and just for a h his brain like a bullet

"Ruger," he thought he heard the man say in a heavily accented voice, but it was impossible at that distance and at that speed to have heard anything "Ruger, you are my left hand"

Time instantly slowed down

The car seemed to almost freeze around him and Tony and Boyd were like mannequins, their mouths opened in comical parodies of screams Only the man in the road seemed to exist in real tier<ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>