She manages to laugh. “Got a headache?”
“Might be the only part of me that doesn’t ache right now,” I say.
“I might be able to help out with that,” she says, her voice suddenly husky.
I give her another chaste kiss on the cheek. “Somehow, Abby Wells, I doubt that very much.”
She reaches up and puts a hand to my cheek. “You’re still as good a kisser as you ever were.”
“Gotta be good at something more than hitting a softball.”
“Call me,” she says.
“I will.”
“Liar,” she says.
I wait until she’s pulled out of the lot and her taillights have disappeared before I get into the truck.
Nobody shoots at me tonight.
It’s because they’re waiting for me back at the farm.
THIRTY-FIVE
THE TEMPERATURE HAS dropped, the way it sometimes does, suddenly and unexpectedly in this part of the state in the summer months, and fog has rolled in over the river.
In the low visibility, I slow my speed to practically nothing. Good thing, too, because if I’d been going any faster down our long driveway than I was when I saw the lights from the house last time, I would have hit Bumper.
Again.
I see her at the very last second and hit the brakes hard, grateful that I am going as slowly as I am. I don’t know how she’s gotten out of the house, but she has.
Again.
“Damn you, Bumper!” I’m yelling as I get out from behind the wheel. “I love you to death, but you really can be dumber than one of your biscuits sometimes.”
That’s when they’re on me.
They’re on me right there in front of the truck, the low headlights still on, coming at me from both sides of the driveway, out of the fog almost like ghosts.
I don’t have much time to do anything except see the ski masks being worn by the three guys directly in front of me. The one in the middle is carrying what looks to be the same kind of .45 Long Colt that my father had owned.
One is carrying a wooden baseball bat.
The third is swinging a chain.
I think:If they were going to shoot me, it would be over already, before it started.
But before they can get any closer to me and before I can charge them, Bumper somewhere off to the side barking her head off, somebody hits me behind my knees with some other kind of club.
Maybe whoever did it thinks it’s enough to put me down.
It’s not.
It has always been hard to put me on the ground, and it still is right here and right now, even ganged upon like this, ambushed in the night from in front and from behind.
The three in front bull-rush me now, the one with the gun raising it up but not to shoot me with it, just swing it at the side of my head, catching me over the ear and ringing my bell good when he connects.
