Without thinking about what he was doing-or why-he scaled the Frisbee down the sidewalk toward the store, hoping to catch Hannibal’s eye and divert him from his current course. The ploy didn’t work. Hannibal ignored the Frisbee and kept on going, arrowing for the fallen copy of the Shopper, which he could just see in front of the idling red van.

3

Cynthia Smith also knew the sound of a shotgun when she heard one-her minister father had shot skeet every Saturday when she was a little girl, and had frequently taken her along on these expeditions.

This time, however, no one had yelled Pull.

She put down the paperback she had been reading, came around the counter, and hurried out on to the top step of the store. The glare hit her and she raised a hand to shade her eyes against it.

She saw the van idling in the middle of the street, saw the shotgun slide out of the back, saw it center on the Carver children. They looked puzzled but not, as yet, frightened.

My God, she thought. My God, he means to shoot the kids.

For a moment she was frozen in place. Her brain told her legs to move but nothing happened.

Go! Go! GO! she screamed at herself, and that broke the ice sheathing her nerves. She lurched forward on legs that felt like stilts, almost falling down the three cement steps, and grabbed at the kids. The twin bores of the shotgun looked huge, gaping, and she saw she was too late. That first frozen moment had been fatal. All she had managed to do was to make sure that when the guy in the back of the van pulled the shotgun’s triggers, he would kill one twenty-year-old roadbunny as well as two innocent little kids.

4

David Carver dropped his sponge into the bucket of soapy water beside the right front tire of his Caprice and strolled down his driveway toward the street to see what was happening.