White Hot Pistol. Eric Beetner

The trucker stepped down from his cab and spoke in a redneck drawl that made Nash’s skin slimy, as if a snake slid by him while he was swimming in the lake.

      “You just killed a cop,” the trucker said. Nash could understand how he might assume such a thing. He reasoned by the rifle barrel’s aim that he might not have time to explain himself. “I bring you in dead, and I still get my reward, motherfucker.”

      The driver stalked forward with at least as much authority as his semi truck. And he was armed. He loaded a shell into the chamber with a metallic clack. “What have we here? A pair of thrill killers. One of ’em jailbait too. Jesus H. Christ, I thought them kind of stories was made up.”

      The trucker kept on coming. He passed over the dead body in the road, kept his eyes and his aim on Nash and Jacy. He noticed the gun in Nash’s hand, the knife in the other. “Looks like I got me a clear case of self defense now.” He lifted the rifle to his shoulder, preparing to exercise his second amendment rights.

      Nash put his hands out to make a plea. “Now, wait–”

      The shot made Nash jump. Jacy gripped his shoulder tighter, but that was the only pain he felt. He watched as the trucker’s hat flew forward, a chunk of skull still inside it.

      As the trucker fell away, his body going limp in slow motion as the folds of his fat were slow to catch up with the gravity pulling him down, Nash saw the gunman on the ground with the cop’s gun hanging loosely in his hand. Whether he meant to shoot the trucker, or simply wanted to kill someone else before he died, Nash couldn’t be sure. It may have been an errant shot aiming for Nash’s own skull. And he may have one more in the chamber with the same goal in mind.

      To rectify his problem of not killing the man in the first place, Nash stepped forward and put two more bullets into him. He immediately grabbed his gut and felt like he might vomit.

      The air settled again to stillness. The low grumble of the truck’s engine and the Honda’s harmonized like giant metal insects in the night. Nash looked at the two bodies glowing in the headlamp beams.

      “Oh, holy shit,” he said.

      “He was gonna shoot us,” Jacy said. “You had to.”

      Nash’s nausea crested, but he held it down. Killing someone, even someone aiming a gun at you, was not easy. It brought him back to a night he wanted never to relive. He tamped down the thought like the bile in his throat and asked, “What now?”

      “Well, we can’t stay here. That cop called for backup.”

      “We can’t go back to Mom’s.”

      As if the thought had just occurred to her, Jacy said, “Fuck, Nash. When Brian hears about this –”

      “And he will. That cop radioed in our names.”

      “Three, no, four dead bodies?”

      “I know.”

      They stood, killing time, breathing diesel fumes. “We can keep going,” Nash said.

      “You don’t think they’ll be looking for us?”

      “Yes, I do think that. You got a better idea?”

      Jacy bit her lip, let it go. “I know someone we can stay with for a little while.”

      “Where?”

      “Back in Noirville.”

      “You really think that’s the best idea?”

      Jacy shrugged. “Like someone once said, you got a better idea?”

      Nash pocketed the gun, turned back to look at his car. “What about the money?”

      She kept her eyes on the bodies, a fine white mist rising off the trucker as the cool night stole his last remaining body heat. “We take that with us.”

      CHAPTER 4

      There are two things that you do not want to interrupt Sheriff Brian Thorpe in the act of doing – his drinking and his sleeping.

      When the phone rang, it was three forty-nine A.M. Brian started his day in the short distance between surly and grumpy on the best of days with ample sleep the night before. He palmed the phone receiver in his fist, which generously wrapped around the plastic casing. His knuckles were thick around it, like walnuts sprouting hair.