The Last King of Texas (Tres Navarre #3)(95)

I could hear him reloading. I staggered forward, around another washout, then another few yards before daring to scramble up the side of the bank and look back. I clung to live-oak roots and lifted my head just over the ridge. In his red-and-white Hawaiian shirt, Ozzie Gerson was easy enough to spot. He was thirty yards away, sideways to me, feeding another round into his rifle. I wondered if the women who gave out leis at the Honolulu airport had nightmares that looked like Ozzie Gerson.

"All I want is what's mine, Tres. You think anybody mourned the Brandons? Or a scumbag like Mara? Your lady friend Sandra, she should be thanking me. I just made her life a whole lot simpler."

Ozzie had the look of a man who was butchering a large animal — cultivating the inner deadness that was necessary to convince himself there was nothing repulsive about the hollowed-out intestinal cavity, the sinews, the exposed ribs. I couldn't double back. Not enough room between us.

The nearest neighbor, Dr. Farn, was a half mile away over an open spread of wheat fields.

I clambered down the ridge, continuing along the creek bank, making enough noise for Ozzie to swing toward me and fire another shot over my head. I could hear him above me now, swishing through the whitebrush. Rocks skittered down the bank. Ozzie cursed as he lost his footing. Then he was up and following again. I'd gained a few feet.

The creekbed continued its labyrinthine turns. The dips and rises and heavy underbrush made visibility low. I crashed over a mound of deadwood and stumbled within feet of a rattler sunning itself on a rock. It didn't even have time to rattle before I was gone.

Twenty yards ahead, I saw the white shell of the old water tower. The tower was a leftover from one of my father's many failed ranch development schemes — a cone of pure lead as tall as I was, lying on its side and rusting in the sun. Just below the cone, in the creekbed, stood another stand of deadwood even larger than the rattler's. I ran to it, shed my shirt and snagged it against the top branch, then scrambled up the ledge to the water tank shell, flattening myself on the ground behind it.

Cicadas buzzed in the heat. A gnat did a kamikaze dive into my nostril. Then I heard Ozzie's steps, very near. Grass scritched. Heavy breathing. I'd hoped for some luck, but he was on my side of the ridge, not more than fifteen feet away, the water tank shell between us. There was no way he couldn't see me.

I heard him lock the rifle bolt into place. Silence.

I waited to be shot.

Instead, I heard more skittering rocks, snapping twigs. Ozzie was slide-climbing down the ridge, toward the shirt on the deadwood.

His voice was aimed away from me when he called, "Come on, Tres. Let's talk."

I scrambled to my feet and pushed. All my strength wasn't much, but the water tank cooperated. It ripped free of its muddy moorings on the edge of the cliff and barreled down the ridge, bouncing once before Ozzie turned and yelled and the cylinder crashed into him with a very satisfying bong. I wanted to believe that Ozzie had been flattened into a redneck tortilla, but his loud curses of pain told me otherwise. I started running, on high ground now.

I could see barbed wire just ahead to the right and past that two hundred acres of Dr. Farn's land, planted with Navarre wheat. Past that, Dr. Farn's farmhouse in an island of pecan trees, and fifty yards farther, the tiny shapes of cars and trucks gliding down the highway. The wheat fields between me and the road would be a killing zone hundreds of yards long with no cover.

As much fun as that sounded, I turned my back on the promise and veered left instead. I ripped through white-brush and cactus, heading back toward the farmhouse.

I bolted forward, tripped over a rusted coil of barbed wire and lost precious time getting my legs untangled. If I lived, I'd need a tetanus shot. When I fell out of the underbrush I found myself once again in the clearing — Harold Diliberto lying collapsed, facedown and unmoving in the weeds, the door-table tilted against one sawhorse like a lean-to. Blood soaked the grass.

The .357 was two feet away.

I'd just grabbed it when the rifle boomed and my left shoulder went cold. My legs gave out from under me. I fell forward, into Harold, twisting around with my face to the sky.

It was hard to breathe. Harder still to move my arms. The .357 was in my hands and my fingers kept trying to tighten around the trigger, trying to reload the magazine correctly. The cold was spreading from my shoulder into my chest. Ozzie appeared from behind a tree, back by the ridge, just far enough away that I couldn't quite make out the color of his eyes.

His left shoulder, the one Zeta Sanchez had shot, was now bent at an odd angle. The shirt around it glistened with blood from the ripped-open wound. With his good hand, Ozzie still held the rifle.

He moved forward, talking in a monotone. "Could've been pretty simple. Sorry, Tres. You think I want to kill you?"

I aimed the .357 at him.

Ozzie managed a dazed smile. "Even if it wasn't jammed, kid — even then you couldn't."

He looked around, then took a step toward a small live-oak sapling. He raised the rifle barrel and set it with great care into the crook of two branches. He swung the muzzle toward me.

His eyes were drooping, heavy with pain and blood loss. But not heavy enough to prevent him from finishing. He sighted the gun.

When the shot came the volume was hideous. I convulsed and so did Ozzie Gerson. He raised his rifle barrel in slow motion while the rest of him lowered into a kneeling position. He looked down in disbelief at the hole I'd just shot in his hip, the bloody change that was dribbling out the front pocket of his jeans. The terror of it sent me into a fit of giggling. I felt exhilarated. I loved the sound of the next .357 round that sawed off the live-oak sapling inches to the right of Ozzie's ear.