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But Tom and the game warden, Alan, were moving together toward the door.

Alan glanced back. “We don’t know he won’t just drive away without paying. Stop your fretting. This is going to be fun. I haven’t had to tackle nobody since senior year.”

Lou Carmody swallowed thickly and said, “I’ll back your play,” and started after the two men.

The pretty blonde, Cady, caught his arm before he could make three steps. She probably saved Louis Carmody’s life.

“You’ve done enough. I want you to stay right here. You might have to get on the phone in a minute and tell your side of the story to the police,” she told him, in a voice that brooked no argument.

Lou sighed, in a shaky sort of way, and his shoulders went slack. He looked relieved, looked like he wanted to lie down. Vic thought she understood—heroism was exhausting business.

“Ladies,” Alan Warner said, nodding to Cady and Vic as he went by.

Tom Priest led the other man out the door and pulled it shut behind them, the little brass bell tinkling. Vic watched the whole thing from the front windows. They all did.

She saw Priest and Warner cross the asphalt, the soldier in the lead, carrying the .45 down by his right leg. The Rolls was on the far side of the pumps, and the driver had his back to the two men. He didn’t look around as they approached, continued filling the tank.

Tom Priest didn’t wait or attempt to explain himself. He put his hand in the center of Manx’s back and shoved him into the side of the car. He planted the barrel of the .45 against his back. Alan stood a safe distance away, behind Tom, between the two pumps, letting the soldier do the talking.

Charlie Manx tried to straighten up, but Priest shoved him into the car again, slamming him into the Wraith. The Rolls, built in Bristol in 1938 by a company that would soon be engineering tanks for the Royal Marines, did not so much as rock on its springs. Tom Priest’s sunburned face was a rigid, unfriendly mask. There was no hint of the child’s smile now; he looked like a vicious son of a bitch in jackboots and dog tags. He gave an order in a low voice, and slowly, slowly, Manx lifted his hands and set them on the roof of the Rolls-Royce.

Tom dipped his free left hand into the pocket of Manx’s black coat and removed some coins, a brass lighter, and a silver wallet. He set them on the roof of the car.

At that point there was a bang, or a thump, at the back end of the Rolls. It was forceful enough to shake the whole vehicle on its frame. Tom Priest glanced at Alan Warner.

“Alan,” Tom said—his voice was loud enough now that they could hear him inside. “Go around and get the keys out of the ignition. Let’s see what’s in the trunk.”

Alan nodded and started around the front of the car, pulling his hankie out to squeeze his nose. He made it to the driver’s-side door, where the window was open about eight inches, and reached in for the keys, and that was when things began to go wrong.

The window went up. No one was sitting in the car; there was no one to turn the crank. But the glass rose smoothly, all at once, slicing into Alan Warner’s arm, trapping it in place. Alan screamed, throwing his head back and shutting his eyes, rising up on his toes in pain.

Tom Priest glanced away from Charlie Manx for a moment—only one—and the passenger door flew open. It caught the soldier in the right side, knocked him into the pump, and turned him halfway around. The gun clattered across the blacktop. The car door seemed to have opened itself. From where Vic stood, it appeared no one had laid a hand on it. She thought, automatically, of Knight Rider, a show she had not watched in ten years, and the way Michael Knight’s slick Trans Am could drive itself, think for itself, eject people it didn’t like, open its doors for people it did.

Manx dropped his left hand and came up holding the gas hose. He cracked the metal nozzle into Tom’s head, banging him across the bridge of the nose and squeezing the trigger at the same time, so gasoline gushed into the soldier’s face, down the front of his fatigues.

Tom Priest issued a strangled cry and put his hands over his eyes. Manx hit him again, slamming the nozzle of the hose into the center of his head, as if trying to trepan him with it. Bright, clear gasoline flew, bubbled over Priest’s head.

Alan screamed and screamed again. The car began to creep forward, dragging him by the arm.

Priest tried to throw himself at Manx, but the tall man was already stepping back and out of the way, and Tom fell to all fours on the blacktop. Manx poured gasoline all down his back, soaking him as a man might water his lawn with a garden hose.

The objects on top of the car—the coins, the lighter—slid off as the car continued to roll gently forward. Manx reached and caught the bright brass lighter as effortlessly as a first baseman reaching for a lazy infield fly.

Someone shoved Vic from the left—Lou Carmody—and she staggered into the blonde named Cady. Cady was screaming her husband’s name, bent over almost double from the force of her own yells. The toddler in her arms was yelling too: Waddy, Waddy! The door flew open. Men spilled onto the porch. Vic’s view was momentarily obscured by people rushing past her.

When she could see the blacktop again, Manx had stepped back and flicked his lighter. He dropped it onto the soldier’s back, and Tom Priest ignited in a great blast of blue fire, which threw a burst of heat with enough force to rattle the windows of the store.

The Wraith was rolling steadily now, dragging the game warden named Alan Warner helplessly along with it. The fat man bellowed, punching his free hand against the door, as if he could pound it into letting him go. Some gasoline had splashed up the side of the car. The rear passenger-side tire was a churning hoop of flame.