Page 99 of Ransom
I'm gonna kill every man in this yard,I thought,and then I'm gonna kiss you so hard you forget your name.
His eyes slid across the yard and found me where I stood at the gift shop corner.
I looked away because if I held it any longer I was going to put the first round through Rex's teeth and get Winston dropped through the trap before Coyote was in position.
I stepped out of the dark.
"Lanza!"
Rex's voice came over the speakers. I hated the sound of him.
"Well, I'll be. Look at this." He spread his arms. "Come on in, son. Come on. We've been waiting."
I walked across the dirt toward him, pistol ready.
Rex smiled at the gun in my hand.
"Rafe send you alone?" he said. "Hell of a thing. I'd have brought a band."
I came up to about fifteen feet from him and stopped. The gallows was past him, twenty feet behind his shoulder, Winston up on the platform looking down at us both.
"Lanza." Rex's voice softened to a stage croon. "I know we got off on the wrong foot."
"That's one way to put it."
"I'm a reasonable man. I am. Ask anybody. We can come to terms here tonight. The Ranger up there." He tipped his head back toward the gallows without turning. "He stuck his nose where it didn't belong, and that's a thing that has consequences in this country, but he's a fixable problem. Hospitals fix all kinds of things. Cassidy could call one right now. We sit down at one of these nice tables and we have a conversation and your man up there gets a doctor and a ride home."
The man on the platform behind Winston shifted his weight.
"Or," Rex said, and his smile widened, "we proceed. Your call, son. I'm offering."
I met Winston's eyes and held them.Trust me on this, Ranger. Just this once.
"Hang him, then."
Winston didn't flinch.Christ, I loved him.
Rex's smile flickered for the first time.
"Now, Lanza."
"You wanted me to watch. Get on with it."
Rex's eyes hardened. He kept the smile on his face for the speakers and the men around the chairs, but the eyes went cold.
"Boy," he said, "you don't mean that."
"Try me."
His hand drifted toward the pearl-handled pistol on his hip.
I raised my pistol at him.
That was when Nimue came down off the water tower.
She landed across his shoulders all at once, head out, tail still falling.
Rex screamed.
