“Just let her go, Dahmer.”
Dahmer sighed. “I want you to remember that this is on you, Kirby. I gave you a choice.”
He pushed the barrel of the gun into Lydia’s temple. She tried to scream but no sound came out. Ned’s scream was loud enough for them both. The shot echoed over the clearing and Dane could hear himself screaming, too, but it wasn’t just him and Ned. Lydia had found her voice and she screamed as she ran toward Ned, who grabbed her and sank to the ground. He ran his hands over the sides of her head and felt no wound. She was whole. He kissed her eyes, her nose, her whole face. When he looked up, Dahmer had taken to the woods holding his shoulder. Ned was crying and confused. He looked at Dane, who was sitting on the ground behind the truck staring past him back at the house. Ned turned to see Roselita Velasquez lying in front of the porch on her stomach. Her face was scratched up by the azalea bushes she’d had to fish her pistol out of. She dropped the gun she’d just shot Dahmer with in front of her and laid her face in the cool grass. She had no cover. She was best off hugging the ground. Ned pushed Lydia behind the truck and covered her the best he could. Another shot came from the woods and then another one pinged off the truck’s hood. Everyone was on the ground now, no one knowing who or where the shots were coming from.
* * *
“Dahmer’s still out there. Get in the truck. Now. Go.” Dane sheltered Lydia as he helped her into the truck. She joined William on the floorboards. Dane’s arms were made out of taffy and the pain in his head nearly caused him to black out. More shots hit the ground behind them and on the hood of the truck. Dane crouched down behind the driver’s-side door and pushed Ned down closer to the ground. Lydia covered William with her body, and her face with her hands. Dane fired two quick shots from the Redhawk over the hood of the truck. He didn’t even know which direction to fire in.
“Give me the boy, and you can go home, Agent Kirby.”
Dane tried to gauge where Dahmer’s voice was coming from and fired another two rounds in that direction. “I said go fuck yourself, Dahmer.”
Dahmer fired on the truck, busting out most of the glass. The shots were explosive, but they were coming from the wrong direction. He knew Dahmer was in the woods, but they were being fired on from the house. He couldn’t see a damn thing. William eased his way into the floorboards on the driver’s side. He reached out and tugged on Dane’s shirt. “Not now, William. Don’t worry. I’m not going to leave you.” Dane fired blind into the woods again. William pulled at Dane’s shirt again as Dahmer returned fire. The shots hit the dirt by Dane’s leg and kicked up pea gravel all over him. “Jesus Christ, Dane,” Ned yelled and covered his face. “Just shoot him already.”
Dane glared at Ned. “I’m trying, asshole.”
William pulled at Dane’s shirt again. Dane turned to face the boy, finally. “Look, we’re in trouble here, but I will not leave you, okay? I will not let this man take you from me. So just let me do this, okay?”
“Okay,” William said. “But that’s not what I wanted to say.”
“Well, what then?”
“I can see him. There in the mirror.”
Dane looked into the side mirror mounted on the door. He couldn’t see anything but blue sky. “Well, I can’t, and if I lift my head to look I’ll get it shot off.”
“He’s standing between the trees in the middle of the moon.”
“What?” Another shot took out the grille of the truck. Ned yelled again and Lydia screamed.
“I said he’s standing in the moon. Can you see it?”
“Kirby, I don’t want to kill you or your people but I’m starting to get pissed off. I just want the boy. We can work together on how to spin it. If I shoot Rose right now, then she can be our patsy.”
Dane rolled over and looked under the truck toward the woods. There was a crescent shape of sky between a cluster of sweet gums and a big yellow pine. He thought he could see the shadow of another tree between them, but the tree was moving.
Son of a bitch. The kid is right. He’s the man in the moon. Please keep talking, asshole. Please.
Dane got his wish.
“We can figure something out, Kirby, but you know as well as I do that doing it this way is going to kill everyone in that truck. You don’t want to be responsible for the death of another family, do you?”
The moon and the stars. Thank you, Gwen.
Dane rolled over on his belly and aimed the Redhawk at the shadow between the trees.
“This is the only feasible option, Kirby, and my last attempt to reason with you.”
Dane narrowed his eyes, let out a slow breath, and squeezed the trigger. He knew he’d hit his target even before he heard Dahmer yell out. Dane watched the shadow in the moon sway, become half as tall, and then finally fall. “How’s that, buddy? Is that feasible?” He waited for the lump of shadow to answer or to get up or move. It didn’t. Dane felt the urge to sit up, and he almost did, but another blast came from the other direction—from the house—and blew out the passenger-side window. Rough beads of broken glass showered the front seat, pelting Lydia as she tried to keep William covered.
“Goddamnit, Eddie. Stop,” Dane shouted. “It’s over. Velasquez’s partner is down and I’m calling it in. This place is going to be covered in cops any minute now.” Another shot ricocheted off the hood. “Jesus Christ, Eddie. Give it up before you shoot your own wife.” Dane thought that did it. He was listening. The farm went quiet. For a moment the whole world went quiet. No gunfire. No breaking glass. No shredding metal. No birds or leaves rustling in the breeze. Just the sweet silence of time frozen to a stop. Ned lifted himself out of the dirt and gravel and slid closer to the wheel well. He reached in through the bottom of the open door and grabbed blindly for Lydia. When he found her hand, he squeezed it tight three times. I-love-you. She did the same and added an extra one. I-love-you-too. They’d been doing that since high school. It kept them from having to say it out loud. Afterward, he didn’t let go. He couldn’t.
“I think he’s giving it up, man.”
“Eddie doesn’t give anything up, Dane.” Ned held tight to Lydia’s hand. “He’ll die first. You know that. He’s probably just reloading.”
“Then we need to get out of here before he does. Climb over me and get in the truck.” Ned started to move although his arm was bent awkwardly under the door. Lydia wasn’t letting go.
“The black man you call Eddie is dead,” a strange, high-pitched voice said.
Ned stopped moving. “Who the hell is that, now?”
“I don’t know,” Dane said. The strange new voice just added another layer of confusion to the chaos. The man spoke again. “All of his people are dead, too—the one-eyed man—the one they called Potato. They are all dead.”
Dane’s brain raced as he tried to understand what was happening—who was talking—who would kill Eddie if not Dahmer. He struggled to recognize the voice. It sounded foreign.
“I have need of the young one. The Blackwell boy.”
“Goddamnit,” Dane said as it clicked in his head. He slid up against the rim of the front tire.