John Lutz - Scorcher

He stoked his rage with the relentless sun pounding through the windshield. He was still determined to make Paul Kave’s hell permanent.

Carver had parked the Olds in front of his cottage and was climbing out when the bullet thunked into the left front fender.

It took him a second to recognize the sound. But there was no mistaking the gouged round hole, silver-rimmed with raw steel, plowed into the fender. Air was still hissing from the punctured front left tire as Carver dropped to his stomach and rolled beneath the car. Pebbles dug into his back and bare arms. Fear pressed in on him.

He waited for a follow-up shot, but none came. Dust gritted between his teeth. He swiveled his head and spat. Stretching his right arm, he reached his cane. Then he used his good leg and arms to scoot backward, hooked the crook of the cane over the opposite side of the car, and push-pulled his way on his back beneath the wide vehicle. The car’s undercarriage smelled like fresh earth and old grease, and the exhaust system still breathed hot. It was like freeing himself from a stifling cave when at last he emerged on the other side.

He struggled up on one knee, his stiff leg extended with his foot braced against the Olds’s rear tire. Oil from the underside of the car streaked his arms and shirtfront. Something sharp had left a long, curved scrape on his wrist; the salt of his perspiration made it sting.

He peered along the shore to the south; the beach was deserted. The strip of pale sand was isolated and rocky and wouldn’t be occupied until the searing heat of afternoon drove people to the sea.

The shot had come from the slope north of the cottage, where there was high brush and a few wind-bent palm trees. Carver reached for the Colt automatic tucked in his belt but it was gone. It had fallen out as he’d wriggled beneath the car.

He bowed his head as low as possible, feeling tight strain in his back and neck, and saw the gun on the ground directly beneath the center of the Olds’s undercarriage. It was about three feet from where he crouched. It looked like ten feet.

He carefully poked his cane beneath the car and moved it in short, sweeping motions. It bumped the gun a few times. Finally it snagged the Colt near the trigger guard, and he pulled it to him. The cane was coming in handy for more than walking.

If he kept the protective bulk of the car between him and where the shot must have come from, he could reach shelter behind the cottage.

If he moved fast enough.

If the gunman hadn’t changed position for a better angle.

Carver swallowed the old-metal taste of fear, gripped the cane halfway up the shaft, and made himself move.

Muscles knotted in his back as he tensed for the rip of a bullet. Fear had settled icy and hard in his bowels, trying to make him weak. Careful to stay in line with the car, leaning hard on the cane, he half crawled, half duckwalked toward the corner of the cottage. His feet and the tip of the cane dug into the soft ground and shot dust and sand behind him as he scrambled for cover. He was sure he looked ridiculous. He’d think about that later. He hoped.

Then he was around the corner.

Safe.

He leaned back against the sun-warmed clapboard wall and took deep breaths. Anger grew alongside his fear, then gained dominance. It was time to go on the offensive.

Staying low, calculating angles so he wouldn’t be seen, he made his way toward the thick brush on the slope behind the cottage. He intended to reach the coast highway, stay in cover on this side of the shoulder, and try to work in behind his assailant. Whoever had taken the shot at Carver might be surprised by the fact that his target was armed and ready to return fire; a tiger that had turned around.

Carver backed away from the cottage and into the cover of the low brush. He fought his way up the slope toward the highway, using the cane almost in the way a gondolier powers a boat with a pole along a Venetian canal, setting its tip deep in the soil ahead of him, and pulling then pushing with both arms and his chest muscles as he dug the edge of his good right foot into the loose earth for leverage and propelled his body forward. He was working up a thick sweat, attracting mosquitoes and sand fleas. Something small flitted around one of his nostrils. He ignored it. The soft hushing sound of the surf cautioned him to be as quiet as possible; danger here. The knowing ocean.

As he neared the highway shoulder, he thought he heard a car spin its tires on the baked, dusty ground and drive away. But he wasn’t sure. By now it was probably unnerving to the gunman not to be certain of Carver’s location. If whoever had taken a shot at him hadn’t immediately fled.

Making better time now, getting the knack, he made his way along the road shoulder toward the point where he was reasonably sure the shot had been fired. As he got close, he drew the Colt from his belt and moved silently. On the hunt now. Better than being shot at.

After a moment he paused, forcing himself to breathe evenly.

From where he was crouched he could see the Olds several hundred feet away. In the bright morning light the silver-rimmed bullet hole near the flat left front tire was barely visible. From this distance, the gunman had probably used a rifle. Not with a telescopic sight, or the shot would have been more accurate.

Unless it had been fired by a scared young killer on the run. One used to another murder method. Paul Kave, trying to take out two generations of Carvers.

There was a slight sound, like a long sigh, directly in front of Carver, He aimed the gun in that direction and tried to crouch lower, feeling pain in his hip above the stiff knee. A lump formed in his throat; he swallowed it.

His flesh tingled and he waited.

Waited.

Foliage rattled, and a man with a revolver emerged from the brush and trudged toward the road.

He wasn’t Paul Kave. He was a big man in saggy Levi’s and a yellow T-shirt with an orange setting sun printed on it and stretched tight across his meaty chest and stomach. He was in his late thirties and had a dark beard and perpetually arched eyebrows, and a hooked nose that was much too large for his round face. Carver thought he looked like an Arab terrorist. The man moved as if tired, letting the revolver brush at his thigh as he swung his long arms. It was a bulky, large-caliber gun, maybe a.357 Magnum.

Carver let him take a few more steps toward the highway and then said, “I can pop three holes through you before you can turn around.”

The man stopped and his body stiffened. “Not ‘freeze’?” he said. He sounded scared, but not scared enough. Something didn’t fit here.

Carver leaned on the cane and stood up. His good leg was shaky, the knee rubbery. “Toss the gun away, then turn around and face me or I’ll show you what I meant about those three holes.”

“This thing’s expensive,” the man said. “I don’t wanna get sand in the action, you don’t mind.” He stooped slowly and placed the revolver lovingly on the ground, then straightened up and turned toward Carver in one gradual motion. He was smiling now, so cooperative. “Guy who shot at you got away,” he said. “Drove off a few minutes ago.”

“Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he’s right here lying his ass off.”

“That piece didn’t put the bullet in your car,” the man said, nodding toward the revolver at his feet. “Hasn’t been fired, in fact.” He moved two slow steps to the side. “Pick it up and give it a sniff.”

“Smell your own gun.” But Carver knew the man was probably telling the truth. It would be difficult with a high-powered handgun even to hit the car from this distance.

They stood there in the hot morning for a while, neither man moving. Gulls screeched about some difference of opinion on the beach. A jet plane tracked past out over the ocean, very high.