Comeback

1

Parker looked past the notices taped to the gas station window and watched Liss come this way across the blacktop, that handgun sliding out of the holster. Parker's hands splayed on the metal tabletop in front of him, and he looked down, remembering the shotguns, seeing only the wrench they'd taken away from the kid. He reached for it, even though it was useless, even though he knew Liss was smart enough to shoot him through the window, not bother to come inside. Why should he?

Parker picked up the wrench, and heard a shot. He stared out at Liss, almost a silhouette against the flat gray morning light out there, and the silhouette was arched backward, the arm with the pistol aimed upward. Liss had fired at what? Something on the roof?

Parker heaved the wrench through the plate glass and launched himself out of the chair toward the open doorway to the service area. Would the racket wake Brenda? Would she know to get that station wagon moving?

The answer was yes, but she was even faster than Parker hoped. As he dove through the doorway, meaning to roll, to come up beside the wagon and yank open its rear door, the engine was already kicking over. Before he was on his feet, it was moving, and he came up to see the garage door splinter as the station wagon roared through it. Brenda hunched and grim over the wheel, Mackey just opening his eyes, his mouth a big astonished O, the car screamed through the wreckage it made of the door, spinning and sliding rightward over smashed plywood, bent metal, crushed glass.

Parker dropped to the concrete floor as the station wagon's rear wheels rifled broken pieces back into the garage, peppering the walls and tools with chunks of wood, metal and glass. He lay there, listening, hands and feet poised under him, trying to figure what was the best route now. What's the way out of this now?

A burglar alarm high on the front of the building began to scream, and Parker wriggled hurriedly backward, toward the office. If Liss came in here . . .

The doorway. He climbed it, trying to be invisible on both sides, and when he leaned leftward for a quick look out the office's smashed window he saw Liss running for the police car, the pistol waving in his hand.

Sure. Whether or not he knew Parker was still in here, and still alive, it was the money Liss wanted, the money he couldn't lose sight of.

Parker watched, because whichever way Liss went, that's where the money had gone. Liss jumped into the police car, kicked the engine on, spun the wheel, made a sharp U-turn around the pumps, and headed away to the left. Away from that interstate over there. Toward town.

Some ricocheted something had sliced Parker's left arm, not deep, but enough to sting. Rubbing it, he went out of the building through the opening where the garage door used to be, and above the insistent wail of the burglar alarm he heard a voice, some voice yelling. He looked around and saw nothing, but then remembered that Liss had fired upward, so he stepped farther from the building to look up, and the kid was up there, sitting on the roof. The kid they'd locked away in the storeroom was up on the roof, sitting there, both hands pressed to his left leg because that's where Liss had shot him.

He saw Parker down below, and yelled some more: "Help! Help!"

"Everybody needs help," Parker said, and turned away, and went loping toward town.