Shane surveyed Garth. He appeared lost in the coveralls Carpenter had given him, the cuffs rolled up around his ankles, his bony arms sticking out. Reluctantly, Shane pulled out a paintball pistol and loaded it. “You’ve got ten rounds,” he told Garth as he handed it to him. “So don’t waste your shots. And use it only if someone’s threatening you. And don’t shoot unless I do.”

“I’ve shot a gun before,” Garth said indignantly as he brought the gun up and aimed into the swamp. “Pow, pow, pow.”

“Let’s go.” Shane moved forward toward the trail. He had the stock of the gun tight against his shoulder, scanning, the muzzle following his eyes, finger on the trigger.

“I’ve got to tell you something,” Garth said in a harsh whisper.

“What’s that?” Shane was sliding his left foot forward when he sensed something. He looked down and noted a thin piece of fishing wire across the trail. “There are booby traps,” Shane said without looking over his shoulder. “That what you wanted to tell me?”

“Yeah.”

“And you were waiting to tell me because?” Shane didn’t expect an answer. He knelt and traced the fishing line with his eyes. On the right side it disappeared into a bush at the base of a tree. “What’s it hooked to?”

“Branch with spikes, most likely.”

“No alarm? Can tied to a string, that sort of thing?” Shane looked up and saw that someone had pulled back a branch, tying it off with more line. Several sharp sticks were tied off to the branch. Cheap, rudimentary, but it would hurt like hell if it hit you.

“Nah. Grandpa don’t kill people, he just don’t want no strangers sneaking up on him without them getting hurt. He figures the screams when they get stuck’d be enough warning. Jimmie, he got stuck once, and boy did he scream. I told you this weren’t no good idea.”

“Step back.” Shane triggered the line with the tip of gun. The branch whooshed across the trail just in front of him and then came to a halt. “Any more traps you know about ahead?”

“My cousin Fred sets ‘em,” Garth said. “He ain’t much good for much else, but he’s a good trapper. Caught a gator once.”

“I take that as, you don’t know whether there are more and where they are.”

“That’s what I said. Fred knows. But Fred don’t like me none. Once he-”

“Silence.” Shane moved forward, eyes moving, body light as he walked on the balls of his feet. He was sliding his feet along, not lifting them, alert for the slightest abnormality.

He safely sprang two more traps in the next quarter mile as they went farther into what Shane wouldn’t exactly call the heart of darkness-more like the bowels.

“There’s Fred’s place,” Garth said after Shane had disarmed the third one.

A battered trailer sat forlornly underneath a large oak tree. There was no sign of life.

“Fred usually sleeps during the day,” Garth said. “The rest of the family is spread out from here to Grandpa’s place. There shouldn’t be no more traps.”

“All right,” Shane said. “You lead the way to your grandpa’s place.”

Garth held the paintball pistol out in front of him, dramatically sweeping it back and forth in front of him, half the time the gun pointing one way while his eyes were looking another. Too many cop movies, Shane thought. More broken and battered trailers appeared, spread out in the thick green vegetation like alien pods. A poor alien race that loved cheap beer and booze, based on the number of empty cans and bottles scattered about.

Shane caught movement out of the corner of his right eye and smoothly turned. A skinny young man with a shotgun in his hands was bringing the weapon up to his shoulder when Shane pulled the trigger, firing a burst of five, the projectiles hitting the guy in the chest and exploding in puffs of hot pepper.

The youngster cursed, dropping the shotgun as his hands went to his chest, where he’d have ugly welts developing soon. Of more immediate concern was the gas that clung to him. He doubled over and began hacking and coughing.

“Let’s go,” Shane ordered, shoving Garth forward.

“That’s Jimmie,” Garth said. “He ain’t gonna be happy.”

“I’m not happy,” Shane muttered. “Worry about me.”

Someone stepped out of a trailer to their right, and Shane fired another quick burst, hitting the man, causing him to disappear back inside as fast as he’d appeared.

A half-burned trailer was on their left, and Garth skidded to a halt as he saw a scrawny, middle-aged woman appear like a wraith in the burned-out portion. “Mary-Louise!” Garth hissed. “What’re you doing in my house?”

The woman blinked, rubbed bleary eyes, saw Garth and Shane, and then screamed at the top of her lungs. Shane cursed, then fired, hitting her in the stomach with three rounds. The screaming was abruptly cut off and she staggered backward into the darkness of the intact part of the trailer.

“Leave for just a couple days and they grab your home,” Garth was saying. “No respect.”

Shane could see why Garth wanted to stay at Two Rivers. He had no time to reflect on this as he saw four people moving toward them among the foliage, weapons in hand. Shane fired, squeezing off three rounds bursts, ignoring a bullet from one of the shooters that cracked by. He hit all four, incapacitating them as Garth blindly blasted away with the pistol, one of the pepper balls exploding on a tree less than five feet in front of him.

Shane heard a car engine start to his right front. Ignoring Garth, who was still pulling the trigger of the empty paintball gun and coughing from the near round hit, Shane ran forward around a trailer and hurtled over one of the gasping shooters.

A battered replica of the General Lee was pulling away from a double-wide trailer. Shane was about to drop the paintball gun in exchange for his Glock when he caught movement to his left and the sound of a shot being fired in that direction. He turned, firing, and then released the trigger when his uncle Joey cursed as a pepper ball hit him in the chest and exploded.

“Damn it!” Joey swatted at the mess on his T-shirt and then began coughing.

The General Lee disappeared in a cloud of dust and dirt.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Shane demanded.

“Same thing you,” Joey coughed. “Trying to get Four Wheels. And you just fucked it all up.” He hacked and then spit. “Fucking Brenda told Xavier that Four Wheels and I whacked Frankie.”

Nothing has gone right since I hit Keyes, Shane thought. He amended that thought-there was Agnes. He shook his head. Mind on mission.

“Dumb shit is probably heading for Agnes now that we got him riled up,” Joey said.

Fuck. “Let’s go.” He grabbed Joey, who was reaching up to rub his eyes. “Don’t do that.” He looked around to see a blinded Garth walk into a tree and almost knock himself out.

“Great.” Shane grabbed Garth with the other hand. “My team.” A Spiritual Humanist cleaner, an old mobster, an addled swamp rat, and an angry food columnist.

“We’ll get ‘em next time,” Garth said between coughs.

“Wasn’t all your fault,” Joey said, trying to get his shirttail up to his eyes.

Go team, Shane thought, and pointed them in the direction of the Defender.


The tow truck had arrived and pulled the wrecked sand truck out of the crumpled bridge, and as a bonus had taken Brenda away, too; she’d hitched a ride to get her Caddy from town now that she’d moored the Brenda Belle at Two Rivers. Kristy had toured the grounds to “like, take some background shots and get the hang of the place,” and then she’d come back in time to help Agnes get LL’s bourbon-sedated body upstairs into bed to sleep it off, abetted by a curious Rhett, who had followed them up the stairs to see what they were going to do with her. He’s seen way too many bodies moved lately, Agnes thought, and then her cell phone rang and she answered it.

“Hey.” Joey said hoarsely. “Somebody might be coming to the house who might be dangerous.”

“Really?” Agnes said. “Because that almost never happens here. With advance notice. Should I get my frying pan?”

“No joking, Agnes, it’s Four Wheels.”

“This would be Grandpa, right? The guy who drove for your robbery and then went out to the swamp to breed the rest of the Wheels?”

“That’s him.”

“Great.” Agnes crossed the second-floor hall from Lisa Livia’s room into one of the front bedrooms, now full of Maria’s wedding gifts and the dress form with Maria’s newly arrived white wedding dress, and looked down the lane. Nothing. Rhett peered out the window, too, unperturbed. “It looks peaceful out there now. Should I call the police?”

“Shane says Carpenter can handle it, and we’re on our way.” A bolt of red came shooting down the lane in a cloud of dust, swerving to make the turn, and Rhett barked. “Whoops.”

“What?” Joey called out from the phone.

“Spoke too soon. I think Four Wheels is here,” Agnes said as the car spun out, a decrepit, rusted-out, engine-misfiring red rattletrap, the Stars and Bars painted on the hood.

“Stay inside and lock the doors,” Joey ordered. “Let Carpenter handle him.”

“Carpenter’s in the basement, and Doyle’s out there all alone.”

Doyle walked out onto the front lawn, holding his paint sprayer on his hip like a six-shooter.

The driver’s door flew open as the car rocked to a halt in front of the ruined bridge, and an old man spilled out onto the gravel, face-first, struggling to get to his feet, a bottle rolling away from him.

“This might not be the trouble you’re afraid it is,” Agnes said into the phone. “He’s drunk. Standing up seems to be beyond him at the moment.”