Cold Fire by Dean Koontz Page A

realized that a third man might have stayed inside with the woman and girl. He couldn’t risk going in there until he had dealt with the two outside, for he might be trapped between gunmen.
    He moved to the front of the Roadking, and just as he reached the corner, he heard voices approaching. He froze, waiting for the guy with the weird haircut to come around the front bumper. But they stopped on the other side.
    “—who gives a shit—”
    “—but he mighta seen our license number—”
    “—chances are, he’s bad hurt—”
    “—wasn’t no blood in the car—”
    Jim sank to one knee by the tire, looked under the vehicle. They were standing on the other side, near the driver’s door.
    “—we just take the next southbound—”
    “—with cops on our tail—”
    “—by the time he gets to any cops, we’ll be in Arizona—”
    “—you hope—”
    “—I know— ”
    Rising, moving cautiously, Jim slipped around the front corner of the Roadking. He eased past the first pair of headlights and the engine hatch.
    “—cut across Arizona into New Mexico—”
    “—they got cops, too—”
    “—into Texas, put a few states between us, drive all night if we have to—”
    Jim was grateful that the shoulder of the highway was dirt rather than loose gravel. He crept silently across it to the driver’s-side headlights, staying low.
    “—you know what piss-poor cooperation they got across state lines—”
    “—he’s out there somewhere, damn it—”
    “—so’re a million scorpions and rattlesnakes—”
    Jim stepped around to their side of the motor home, covering them with the shotgun. “Don’t move!”
    For an instant they gaped at him the way he might have stared at a three-eyed Martian with a mouth in its forehead. They were only about eight feet away, close enough to spit on, which they looked like they deserved. At a distance they had appeared as dangerous as snakes with legs, and they still looked deadlier than anything that slithered in the desert.
    They were holding their handguns, pointed at the ground. Jim thrust the shotgun at them and shouted, “Drop ’em, damn it!”
    Either they were the hardest of hard cases or they were nuts—probably both—because they didn’t freeze at the sight of the shotgun. The guy with the redoubled ponytail flung himself to the ground and rolled. Simultaneously, the refugee from Road Warrior brought up his pistol, and Jim pumped a round into the guy’s chest at point-blank range, blowing him backward and down and all the way to hell.
    The survivor’s feet vanished as he wriggled under the Roadking.
    To avoid being shot in the foot and ankle, Jim grabbed the open door and jumped onto the step beside the driver’s seat. Even as his feet left the ground, two shots boomed from under the motor home, and one of them punctured the tire beside which he’d been standing.
    Instead of retreating into the Roadking, he dropped back to the ground, fell flat, and shoved the shotgun under the vehicle, figuring to take his adversary by surprise. But the guy was already out from under on the other side. Jim could see only the black cowboy boots hurrying toward the rear of the motor home. The guy turned the corner—and vanished.
    The ladder. At the right rear corner. Next to the racked motorcycle.
    The bastard was going onto the roof.
    Jim hustled all the way under the Roadking before the killer could look over the edge of the roof, spot him, and fire down. It was no cooler beneath the vehicle, because the sun-scorched earthen shoulder radiated the heat it had been storing up since dawn.
    Two cars roared by on the highway, one close after the other. He hadn’t heard them coming, maybe because his heart was beating so hard that he felt as if he were inside a kettle drum. He cursed the motorists under his breath, then realized they couldn’t be expected to stop when they saw a guy like Dork Knob prowling the top of the motor home with a handgun.
    He had a better