Michael Prescott: Stealing Faces

She registered the words. She knew all of it was true, and it would really happen to her. She would be hunted like an animal, and she would die in pain, and there was no hope for her.

“Why?” she asked.

On his face she saw a flicker of surprise, and she knew that none of the others had thought of asking that particular question.

He was silent for a moment. Perhaps he would not answer. Then she realized that he was gathering his thoughts, like a conscientious teacher composing the clearest possible reply.

“Because this is life,” he said simply. “Kill or be killed. Eat or be eaten. All our most powerful emotions are reducible to the instinctive responses of animals in the fight for life. Anger pumps us up for battle. Fear sharpens our reflexes and perceptions. Have you noticed how preternaturally alert you are right now? And love, the poets’ favorite, is only an expression of the need to find safety in communal ties. Burrowing animals — that’s all most of us are. And then there are a few who do not choose to burrow and hide. It’s one or the other, predator or prey.”

“There’s more to life than that.”

“Really? Has there been more to your life for these past twelve years? Haven’t you been running, hiding? Doesn’t your heart beat faster when a siren goes off or there’s a knock at your door? No wonder you like that silly book, Watership Down. What are you, if not a timid rabbit in her hutch?”

“Do you talk to all of them like this?”

“No. Never. You’re the first. I thought you might understand.”

“You were wrong.”

“Evidently.” Cray frowned, and though it was crazy, for a moment Elizabeth felt certain she had disappointed him somehow. “Well, let’s get started.”

He unlocked her door with the power button on his console, then left the car and walked around to the passenger side. She watched as he passed through the high beams, every detail of his features and form jumping into sudden clarity, then melting into a blur of shadow once more. He was careful to avert his face from the light, and she knew why, of course.

He was protecting his night vision. He would need it for the hunt.

She looked down at her purse, tantalizingly near. The clasp was still secure. Cray must not have looked inside.

He wouldn’t know about the gun. The gun that was so close…

Again she tugged at the sleeves, but her efforts only pulled the knot tighter.

Then her door swung open, and Cray leaned in, his face inches from her own.

Reflexively she drew back. She could see flecks of amber in his gray-green eyes, his nostrils flaring with an intake of breath. He was clean-shaven, but a ghost of beard stubble was materializing on his lean cheeks and narrow, angular chin.

The gun was in his hand again. She studied it — a large, black, dangerous thing, unpredictable as a snake. The gun he would hunt her with.

Shoot to wound, he had said, not kill.

She had never been wounded by a bullet. Distantly she wondered how it would feel.

“It’s a nine-millimeter Glock,” Cray said, “if that means anything to you.”

“Not a lot.”

“I’m going to hold this gun to your head, Elizabeth, or Kaylie, or whoever you think you are.”

The muzzle touched her forehead. She had expected it to be cold, but Cray must have worn it close to his body, and his own heat had warmed it.

“My finger is on the trigger. All I need to do is squeeze.”

She drew a tight breath. “So do it, then.”

“Oh, no. That’s not the game I play. I simply want you to understand that you have no options here. No freedom of choice. Not that you ever did. Free will is only another illusion.”

She wanted no more philosophy from him. She waited.

“In a moment I’ll release your hands. Then you’ll climb out.”

“All right.”

“Any deviation from my instructions, and — bang — you’re dead.”

“You’ll kill me anyway. This would be faster.”

“Indeed it would. Quick and perhaps painless. But you don’t want me to shoot you, and do you know why? Because while you live, you have a chance. A slender chance, a chance hardly worth considering, it’s true — but a chance. You might outrun me, evade me, survive this night. You won’t give that up. Will you?”

“No.”

“I thought not. You see? I do know you.”

With his left hand Cray reached for her sleeves. The knot he’d tied was clever, expertly made. With one pull it came apart, and she was free.

“Now get out,” Cray said.

This was the critical moment, her last opportunity. Once she left the vehicle, the purse would be beyond her reach forever.

Cray was leaning back, his big black gun floating a few inches from her face.

She unbuckled her lap belt. The retractable portion was a three-foot strap, the buckle’s steel prong lolling at one end.

As a weapon, it wasn’t much.

But it was all she had.

With a jerk of her arm she flung the strap at Cray, whipping the steel prong at his gun hand, then dived to the floor and seized the purse, popping it open—

And Cray laughed.

“It’s not there, bitch.”

He was right.

The Colt was gone.

She looked up at Cray and saw his bland, cool smile.

“Your purse was the first thing I looked at,” he said. “I found your stupid little toy. I took it with me when I returned the master keys to the storage room. On my way there, I tossed the gun into the desert brush, where no one is likely to find it for months or years. What did you think I was doing while you were out cold?”

She dropped the purse. There was a kind of numbness in her, an absence of any sensation.

“Now,” he added, his smile unchanged, “exit the goddamned vehicle, you little piece of shit.”

The black gun, the Clock or Crock or whatever it was called, drifted down to fix her in its sights.

“Okay,” Elizabeth whispered. “You win.”

She started to rise, and without conscious intention she slipped her hand into the satchel beside the purse, closing her fingers over the first item she touched, a steel canister with a spray nozzle.

There was a trigger, and she found it as she sprang at Cray.

From the nozzle — a jet of hissing gas.

She had time to think the canister was useless, only a can of compressed air for fixing flat tires, and then she felt the atmosphere around her turn suddenly cold with a mist of ice crystals, and Cray screamed.

He spun out of the doorway, and she pumped the trigger again.

His left arm came up to protect his face. Frost glittered on his sleeve.

Whatever was in the canister, it was cold, as cold as dry ice, and she could hurt him with it, and she wanted to.

She held down the nozzle, spraying him with arctic cold, and his knees gave out, dropping him to the dirt.

For a moment she knew a wild sense of power, of victory, and then his pistol swung at her.

He had a clear shot, and there was nowhere for her to hide.

But he didn’t fire.

It seemed as if his hand wouldn’t work, or maybe it was the gun itself that had jammed or locked or—

Frozen.

She could see the glaze of ice on the black barrel.

The gun had been disabled, and Cray was defenseless.

She could punish him.

Kill him.

“Son of a bitch!” she shrieked. “You son of a bitch!”

She depressed the trigger, aiming for his face, his eyes.

But this time there was only a feeble hiss, then silence.

The canister was empty.

Cray knew it. Already he was already struggling to rise.

She threw the canister at him. Missed.

There might be other weapons in the satchel, but she had no time to look.

Into the driver’s seat. Crank of the ignition key. The motor bursting to life as the high beams momentarily dimmed.