The bullet didn't even knock him back all that much. His head snapped back, but the bullet went through him so quickly the rest of his body barely had a chance to react. His face had no time to register surprise. He dropped to the floor, his face landing on the tile, dark blood starting to pool almost instantly.

Gary took the cigarette from his mouth, blew out more smoke. Fuck. There I go making an even bigger mess for myself. That is so me.

Some droplets of blood, warm and wet, had splattered back onto my cheek.

I wasn't the only one startled. Carter and Owen had jumped back when Gary pulled the trigger.

Carter said, Jesus. Owen was staring wide-eyed. The shot was still ringing in my ears, and must have been for them, too.

So, Carter said, what now?

What do you mean, what now? Gary snapped.

Tell me we don't have to drag him down to a Dumpster in Bridgeport, too. If we get pulled over along the way, we're fucked.

Gary was agitated. He had been fairly composed up to now, but having lost his cool with Andy seemed to have thrown him off his game.

Let me think, let me think, he said.

I won't say a word, I said to him. Just leave Sydney alone. Let her come home alive. She'll never tell anyone what you've been doing at the hotel. It's like you said. She's killed someone. She's not going to want to talk to the police.

Oh please, he said. He pointed his gun down at Andy's body and said to me, You know, that's your fucking fault. If you hadn't sent him looking for me, he wouldn't have ended up like that.

There was some truth in that.

Put this asshole somewhere while I think! he shouted to Owen, who shoved me through the front door of the minivan and slammed the door so hard I was lucky to get my foot out of the way.

Carter said, If that's really what you want to do, we can take both of them, dump them in the garbage. We just drive slow so nobody pulls us over.

Ashes dropped from Gary's cigarette as he shook his head. No, no, wait a second. We just fuckin' leave both of them here. We don't have to dump them anywhere. Let the cops come here and think what they want. The TV cameras are off. No one has to know we was even here.

I'd been tossed so hard into the car I was hanging over the open area between the driver's and passenger's seats. Slowly, and awkwardly, with my wrists tied together, I tried to right myself behind the steering wheel. Once in a sitting position, I looked through the windshield. The van was surrounded by other vehicles: a Pilot directly ahead, a Civic to the rear, an Accord off to the right, a boxy Element to the left. Gary and Carter and Owen were in front of the van, off the right fender, debating how to handle this new predicament.

Andy's body lay just ahead of the Element.

He was just a boy.

Duct tape had been wound around the outside of my wrists, but not looped around the insides. Below the steering wheel, I started twisting my arms back and forth, trying to create some play in the tape. I'd have had a go at the edge of it with my teeth, but one of the three might notice.

I wasn't quite sure what I hoped to accomplish even if I got my hands free. There were three of them, two with guns. I could try to make a run for it, but I didn't like my chances. The showroom doors that led outside couldn't be opened without a key. I'd have to stay ahead of them all the way through the service department to get to a door I could push open.

I think we just need to get out of here, Carter said. Kill Blake and we go.

Yeah, said Owen. I don't want to hang around here.

Gary was nodding. Okay, okay.

I kept twisting at the tape. Even with my wrists bound, maybe, when one of the three approached the door, I could kick it open, knock him back, jump out, run like hell.

I wouldn't stand a chance.

I could lean on the horn. But how much attention was that likely to attract, really? And how long did I think I'd be able to lean on it before they dealt with me? A quick bullet through the windshield would put an end to it.

Horn aside, how long did I have, anyway?

I looked down, checked what progress I was making with the tape. Another minute and I thought I'd have it. The tape pulled at the hairs on my arm, but the pain didn't mean much in the overall scheme of things.

Something about the center console caught my eye.

It was open just a crack. Just wide enough to see something shiny inside.

I felt my heart start to pound. I swung my two hands over to the right and tipped the compartment door back another inch.

A set of keys.

I leaned over slightly, caught the keys between the thumb and index finger of my right hand, and carefully removed them from the compartment without jiggling them. Awkwardly, I maneuvered my wrists so that I could slide the proper key into the ignition.

I was going to need my hands separated to pull this off. Because the moment I turned the ignition with one hand, I was going to have to lock the doors and power up the windows with the other.

I hoped, first of all, that I'd be around so Laura Cantrell could give me shit for what I was about to try, and second, that there was some gas in this goddamn van.

Chapter FORTY.

I'D LOOSENED THE TAPE ENOUGH that I was able to slide my right hand through the loop. I took my left hand, tape hanging loose about the wrist, and positioned it over the controls on the driver's door. I could have hit the power lock button now the key didn't have to be turned to make it work but Gary and Carter and Owen would have heard the thunk of all the locks engaging and wondered what I was up to. That would give them a one-second head start, maybe enough to get to one of the two open windows and make a grab for me through them. A lot of vans on the market didn't have power rear windows. This one did, but I'd caught a break there. They were already in the up position.

Of course, bulletproof glass was not currently an option. Even with the windows up, I was hardly going to be immune.

I got my other hand on the key.

The three of them were milling around the front of the van, looking down at Andy's body, then at me. Carter and Owen were looking at Gary. He gave them a subtle nod.

They turned and glared at me behind the windshield.

I twisted the key forward.

The engine turning over would have sounded loud anyway inside the showroom, where sounds bounce off the glass and the other cars. But under these circumstances, it was like a bomb going off.

The three men jumped as the engine roared only three feet away from them. It took them a good half second to realize what I'd actually done.

By that time, I had the two front windows halfway up.

Carter moved first. He ran for my door, reached for the handle with his left hand, couldn't open it, tried to hit me with his right, which was still holding the gun. He slipped his hand through as the window was about three quarters of the way up.

The window kept moving.

Owen had run after Carter, but there was nothing for him to do but watch what was happening. He slapped both hands on the front fender, as though he had superhuman strength and could hold the van there should it start to move.

Carter fired.

The gun went off about six inches from my left ear and sounded like a cannon blast, but with the way the window was traveling and forcing Carter's hand higher and higher, his shot went north and into the ceiling of the van.

Gary, still standing near the front of the van, screamed, What the fuck!

The driver's window went as high as it could, trapping Carter at the narrowest part of his wrist. He screamed.

I grabbed the shift lever mounted on the center on the dash, put the van into reverse, and floored it. I might normally have been inclined to watch where I was driving, but as the van began to move backward, I kept staring straight ahead at Gary, who had tossed his lit cigarette and was raising his gun, getting ready to fire.

The van took off with a squeal, the front tires spinning on the tile floor. To my left, Carter's face slammed against the window as he was dragged along. Owen leapt backward.

It was a short trip.

Ten feet into the journey, the van smashed broadside into the Civic. The crash momentarily drowned out Carter's screams. My head slammed back into the headrest.

Carter squeezed off another shot. I wasn't sure where it went, exactly, but I didn't feel a bullet tear through my brain, so I grabbed the shifter again and threw the automatic transmission down into first.

I tromped onto the accelerator, interrupting Carter as he banged on the driver's door window with his free hand, trying to shatter it so he could free himself. Maybe if he'd been hitting it with something harder than his fist, he could have broken it. Owen, unarmed, was shunting back and forth, like the target in a game of dodgeball, clueless about what to do.

I realized we now had a soundtrack. There was a cacophony of car alarms going off.

As the car jumped toward Gary, he got off a shot just before diving off to my left. The windshield instantly spiderwebbed, the bullet hitting in the windshield's upper right corner. Gary's foot slipped in the blood leaking from Andy Hertz's brain. He went sprawling onto the floor just beyond the van's path.

Still dragging a screaming Carter, I slammed broadside into the Pilot. I must have knocked the back end of it a good two feet across the floor. I knew the airbag in the steering wheel in front of me was bound to deploy at this point, but it was like when you know the flash is going to go off when your picture is being taken. You think you can keep from blinking, but you can't.

So it was still a shock when the white pillow exploded in front of me, a cloud moving at jet speed. It enveloped my face. Unable to see for the few seconds it took the bag to deflate, I blindly put the car into reverse, turned the wheel a bit to the right, and floored it again.

My head slammed into the headrest a second time. I'd hit the Civic once again, this time more to the front. The gun Carter had been holding slipped from his grasp, bumped my shoulder, and dropped down between the door and the seat.

I didn't really have a moment to look for it.

I patted down the airbag so I could see what was happening. Carter I didn't have to worry about, especially since he'd lost his gun. He was just coming along for the ride, wherever I decided to go, at least until his hand came off.

Owen had run to the far corner of the showroom, on the other side of the Pilot, just beyond my desk. Gary, still down on the floor next to Andy's body, his shirt and pants smeared with blood, took another shot. He didn't have time to aim and it went wild. A bullet pinged someplace into the sheet metal.

I heard a kind of primal screaming, almost animalistic. It took a moment to realize it was coming from me.

Gary was slipping as he struggled to his feet, preparing to get off another shot. I threw the car back into drive, pulled the wheel, hit the gas, and went straight for him.

He fired and this time his aim was better, hitting the windshield midway, about a foot left of center. The glass shattered into a million tiny pieces. Gary dove to my right, in the direction of a bank of offices, including Laura's, and the van plowed into the back end of the Element, to the left of the Pilot I'd already pretty much destroyed. Glass shattered and the hood of the van buckled upward to the point where it was starting to obstruct my view.

Carter's wrist was bleeding. He was still banging on the glass, screaming at the top of his lungs.

I needed to get out of there.

I hit the brakes, put the van in reverse, took a millisecond to plot a way out. I needed to find a wide expanse of glass, an area without any partitions, if I wanted to drive out of here. I was thinking it would be almost better to smash my way out in reverse; otherwise the shards of glass coming through my front window which no longer had any glass in it could end up beheading me.

With enough speed, I might be able to blast a hole between the Civic and a metallic blue Accord that had, so far, escaped any damage.

Please! Carter screamed. Put the window down!

I glanced at him long enough to say, Fuck you.

I shoved my foot down on the accelerator. Carter, anticipating the move, tried running alongside, but I'd altered my course a little, heading for the back end of the Accord, squeezing in past the end of the Civic.

The front end of the Civic knocked Carter's legs out from under him. As I sped past the front of the car, Carter continued to be dragged over it by his wrist.

The Accord moved a few feet, but not enough to clear me a path.

Somewhere, I thought I smelled gasoline.

I looked ahead, and Gary was on the move, closing in at two o'clock. I moved the shift lever back into drive, steered right, and went for him. He dove farther right but I kept on going, smashing through the door and frosted window glass of Laura's office. Shards flew across the crumpled hood and slid over the dashboard.

Carter, no longer screaming, was hanging off my door like a rag doll.

The rear window on the passenger side suddenly exploded. It had been shot out. I didn't have time to see where Gary was. I backed out of Laura's office at high speed, went barreling halfway across the showroom, and smashed into the other end of the Element, threw the van back in drive and hurtled forward, this time taking out the office next to Laura's. The leasing manager's. He would not be pleased.

More shots rang out. Gary was running around to the far perimeter of the showroom, using the smashed cars as cover. I was leaning over as far as I could while driving, using the van's doors and the dashboard for my own cover.

Car alarms continued to whoop.

Again, I put the van into reverse and my foot to the floor. The only thing I didn't want to hit was Andy's body, and I was worried the van was heading in that direction, so I pulled left on the wheel, glanced back, broadsided the Element again, and before I'd even turned to look forward I'd put the car in drive and given it gas.

I swung my head around, looked ahead, and there was Gary.

He was between the van and the Accord. He was holding the gun in both hands, arms outstretched, taking a bead on me.

He shifted slightly to the left. I turned left and kept on going.

The gun fired, but it went off just as the van connected with Gary, so the bullet angled up toward the ceiling. There was, maybe, a hundredth of a second when all Gary was feeling was the front of the van barreling into him. By the time that hundredth of a second had passed, he was feeling the Accord at his back.

If he made a sound when the life was crushed out of him, it couldn't be heard for the tearing and wrenching of sheet metal. At the moment of impact, the gun flew out of his hand and sailed over the van, landing somewhere on the showroom floor behind me.

Gary's mouth was frozen into a grotesque grin, his face smeared with blood.

I sat there a moment, letting the engine idle. I looked out my window. Carter appeared to be as dead as Gary. It must have been when his lower body hit the Civic and was dragged across it. Maybe the impact severed his spine. I powered the window down an inch, freeing Carter's wrist and allowing him to slide to the floor.

The engine was still running, the alarms were still blaring, but a moment of calm washed over me.

Don't move, motherfucker!

I glanced up in my rearview mirror. It was Owen, holding the gun that had flown out of Gary's hands.

I don't know quite how to explain this. I'd been terrified through everything that had happened so far, but now' now I was just annoyed.