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  Sonny crawled out of the pickup’s cab and rose, one hand pressed to his shoulder.

  “What have you done to Greer?” Wyatt said.

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t come any closer.”

  “I’ll come as close as I like,” Sonny said. He reached into his pocket and took out the. 22, held it by his side. “She shouldn’t have slapped me is all. It was just a proposal-a simple ‘no’ would have done.”

  Wyatt didn’t stop to think, just charged. The gun came up, but Wyatt crashed into Sonny before he could fire. They wrestled in the muddy field, first, for a brief moment, Wyatt on top, then Sonny. His strength was tremendous, even with one arm practically useless. It was over very fast, no contest at all. Sonny straddled Wyatt’s chest and raked the barrel of the gun across Wyatt’s face. The sirens grew louder.

  “Stupid fucking kid,” Sonny said. He raised the gun to do it again. “I’m taking your car.”

  Wyatt gazed into Sonny’s eyes and felt nothing, no kinship at all. Fear, which had been threatening to take over completely, now shrank inside him; still there, but not in power. “Then you’ll need the keys,” Wyatt said. “They’re in my pocket.”

  Sonny smiled that messed-up smile. “That’s better,” he said, getting off Wyatt.

  Wyatt rose, reached into his pocket. Then, in one quick motion, he took out the keys and threw them across the field with all his strength.

  “God damn you.” The murderous look was back on Sonny’s face. He raised the gun. But at that moment, a cruiser skidded to a stop behind the Mustang and two cops with rifles jumped out. A searchlight shone down, capturing Wyatt and Sonny in its blinding beam: frozen in place, Sonny pointing the. 22 at Wyatt’s head.

  “Drop it,” one of the cops shouted.

  Sonny didn’t drop it. Instead he grabbed Wyatt, spun him around, and darted behind him, the. 22 still pointed at Wyatt’s head, his arm around Wyatt’s chest.

  But: the wounded arm, the one with no strength in it. “Shoot!” Wyatt called out, and he bolted free.

  Actually not free-a slight separation was all he managed: somehow Sonny held on. But the cops fired anyway, one bullet making an insect sound close to Wyatt’s ear, the other making a red hole in Sonny’s forehead. His eyes went dead as he fell.

  More cruisers arrived. An amplified voice spoke from one of them, but the sound seemed to come from way above. “Hands up high.”

  Wyatt raised his hands.

  Doc’s body was found in the tiny bathroom at the back of the silver trailer. And then came something too awful to think about, although for a long time after, Wyatt could think of nothing else: Greer’s body was in Bert Torrance’s secret bedroom closet hidey-hole in the foreclosed house in Silver City. Wyatt came away with only one sure thing, a sure thing that didn’t help, actually hollowed him out all the more: He’d been right to love her.

  Wyatt faced a number of felony charges, including aiding and abetting the escape of an inmate from a state prison and harboring a fugitive, but after a month’s deliberation and consultation with a prominent attorney hired by the Mannions, the DA decided not to bring the case. They made a deal that Wyatt would join the Army as soon as he turned seventeen. He probably would have done that anyway: he had no other ideas; and inside he felt he deserved much worse.

  One funny thing-this was in the period before Wyatt went away to boot camp-he now got a lot more respect from Rusty. Rusty took him fishing on the river whenever he was home. Wyatt had never been particularly interested in fishing, but Rusty really knew what he was doing and Wyatt began to enjoy it. Sometimes they all went, Linda and Cammy, too. Cammy liked fishing, as long as the fish got thrown back. Linda just liked sitting beside Wyatt, not talking much, but making sure of things, like he wasn’t hungry or thirsty, and was wearing sunblock.

  “This family excels at fishing,” Cammy said.

  “Excels?” said Wyatt. How would she ever have friends, talking like that?

  “It means doing real, real good,” Cammy said.

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