Norman Partridge - Saguaro Riptide

“Now, just you listen-”

Wyetta glanced at Rorie. “Help this nigger.”

“Wyetta, I don’t think-”

“Don’t you dare argue with me, cowgirl. Strap that goddamn belt around his waist.”

Rorie moved forward.

“Fuck you, bitch,” the black guy said, and he snatched up the gun belt and cinched it tight.

“That’s real good,” Wyetta said. “You’ve got a waist just like my woman’s. Nice and thin. Just the right size for a lady’s gun belt-no wonder you sell ’em.”

“I should warn you,” Woody said. “I do this for a living. I’ve killed twenty-three men.”

“There’s one way out of this,” the sheriff said. “Tell me what you know about Komoko and the money.”

“I don’t know shit about any Komoko.”

“Then we’re done talking,” Wyetta said. “Skin it, Woody.”

A cold grin rippled across the black man’s lips.

He squinted.

Because a wave of bright light crested behind Wyetta and Rorie, washing the desert floor, splashing three huge shadows against the cinder-block wall of the Saguaro Riptide.

The black man stared into the light.

“Allah be praised,” he said.

He yanked the deputy’s pistol and opened fire.

Jack was halfway up the rear staircase when he heard the crackle of gunfire from the far side of the motel.

Then he heard a scream.

Jesus. It was all happening way too fast.

And it wasn’t supposed to be happening this way. Nothing was supposed to happen yet. He wasn’t even in position.

He glanced at his battered Timex. Jesus, what the hell was going on? Where was Benteen? What had happened to all that shit about a flanking maneuver, about drawing Wyetta and her deputy out into the open? Shit, the two of them were already out in the open. And they were shooting. It had to be them-

And Benteen had to be crazy, jumping the gun. Either that, or she’d fallen into a trap-

If they’d killed her. If she was already dead-

Fuck that. Jack pulled the Heckler from his belt and charged down the landing. The last door was open-the door to the hit man’s room-and a slab of light spilled across the concrete walkway, but Jack didn’t even pause to investigate because he could see three people in the parking lot below.

Two of them were staring at the lights.

One was down on the ground, coughing up blood.

The lights scorched the desert, a dozen angry globes bearing down on the gravel parking lot below.

Jack grabbed the railing with one hand as he came to the end of the landing. Still, his momentum nearly tumbled him over the side.

Jack steadied himself, then racked the slide and chambered a round in the handgun

He was really going to do this.

He had to do this.

He took aim.

But the sheriff was already aiming at him.

She’d heard him chamber that round.

Wyetta’s pistol bucked in her hand.

A bullet trenched the meat of Jack’s left forearm just below the elbow.

The Heckler tumbled through the night.

***

The gun landed in front of the black guy, sending up a splash of gravel. He didn’t even grab for it. He was too busy hacking up a dark stream of blood. Down on his knees, one hand under his coat, where a bullet from Wyetta’s.44 American had excavated one hell of a burrow.

A bloody rattle raked his throat, and his eyelids fluttered heavily as his muddy brown eyes tracked that tight bank of lights which skimmed the desert floor.

The lights were coming, and coming fast. Had to be a truck with high beams and fog lights and even a rack up on top.

Just like the rust-bucket Dodge Dakota that Kate Benteen drove.

That bitch. She was too damn smart for her own good. Sending Baddalach through the back door while she raced hellbent for leather through the front.

“It’s a goddamned diversion.” Wyetta squinted, moving back. “They’re trying to sucker us.” She pointed at the second story landing. “Baddalach’s up there. Gotta be he’s trying to grab the money while Benteen plays off-road games. I’m going after him.”

Rorie said, “What do you want me to do?”

“Kill the little bitch,” Wyetta said, and then she snatched up Baddalach’s pistol and tossed it to the deputy.

Jack couldn’t quite figure out how he had ended up on his knees. He didn’t remember making the trip at all.

Light spilled across the landing from the open doorway. He got up, looked at his arm. A chunk of it seemed to be missing. There was a whole lot of blood.

A bullet cracked the cinder-block wall just above his head.

“Don’t move, cowboy.”

Wyetta Earp started up the staircase.

Jack dove through the open doorway and slammed the door closed with his feet.

He was up in a second. He locked the door and rammed the deadbolt home. Then he scanned the room, searching for a knife, a club, anything-

The only thing he found was Sandy Kapalua-Dayton.

She lay on the bed. Her wrists were handcuffed, and her legs were bound with an electrical cord tom from a lamp.

A hand towel was jammed in her mouth, held in place by a bandana.

Sandy’s eyes bulged. Her face was a startling shade of purple.

And then a wild spasm wracked her body, and she tumbled off the bed and thrashed about on the carpet, her head banging the floor like a runaway jackhammer.

Rorie stepped past the dying black guy and aimed the boxer’s pistol at the headlights.

The truck kept coming. Three hundred feet away. . two fifty. . The driver had to see her by now. Two hundred. . one fifty. . But the driver didn’t slow down, didn’t so much as swerve-

Rorie pulled the trigger. The first bullet smacked the left headlight and she corrected her aim. . one twenty-five. . the pistol rocking in her grip, two shots through the radiator and. . one hundred . . steam spit through the grille and the next two shots spiderwebbed the windshield dead center and. . eighty-five. . seventy. . Rorie adjusted one more time, fired. . fifty feet. . and the bullet-pitted glass and the battered Dodge Dakota swerved wildly, kicking up sand and rocks and brush like a wild bronco.

The truck crashed through the chain-link fence that penned the junkyard, slammed into a rusted-out Chevy and did not move another inch

Rorie waited. In the junkyard, a dog ran at the truck, barking like it was the end of the world.

But the truck didn’t move. It just sat there, all those headlights glowing like a portable football stadium.

Rorie checked the boxer’s pistol. It was an excellent weapon. A Heckler amp; Koch USP.45.

The only problem was that Rorie had emptied it.

She couldn’t finish Kate Benteen with an empty pistol.

Damn. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.

She turned around, searching the parking lot for her own pistol. The black guy had dropped it when Wyetta plugged him. Had to be that it was around here somewhere-

The black guy said, “Surprise.”

Woodrow rose with some effort, staring at the lights.

He was still in the parking lot, but it was no longer morning.

He tried to remember. He had checked into the motel, and he had parked the Saturn in the lot by the junkyard, and he had taken his prayer rug from the trunk, turning toward Mecca to pray. .

And he had suffered another blackout.

A long one, because now it was night.

Woodrow could not imagine what had transpired in the interim. He only knew what had happened since he emerged from the blackout-he’d seen the lights in the desert, and he’d been shot by a female law-enforcement official who had departed the immediate scene, and he’d managed to shoot the woman’s partner. .

He stumbled forward, toward the lights. They had never been this close before. And being this close, he could tell for certain that they were not an illusion, no figment of a wounded brain.