The mattress is soft under me. The pillow I have under my cheek, I know, once cushioned his head. My eyes are closed. He thinks I am still asleep.

But I hear him, across the room. He is not sleeping. I can smell his cigarette and feel the slight breeze that flows into this bedroom from the window he has cracked open. Sounds of the desert at night, I realize just then, will be filed in my memory as the sounds of loneliness.

When I shift on the bed, turning over, I can open my eyes and look at him standing there.

"Still holding out hope for me?" he asks. His voice fills the lonely space around me.

"Suppose so," I reply.

"Why would you think I deserve that?"

"Because you can make me forget you kill people. Because the first time you made love to me, you could have taken advantage of me ... Because instead, you were so generous with me and so overwhelming ... because I think that's a real and significant part of you, no matter what you'd try to get me to believe."

"My own ranch. Someday. In another desert with mountains."

"Oh."

"What about you?"

"I don't know anymore."

In the silence that follows, I am moved to a place I didn't know exists within me.

The day had been tense ever since he revealed to me that information about tomorrow being the day they go on the run and the day I am set free.

He took an easy pace riding home from the hot spring. He claimed it was to take it easy on me. I suspected it was because whatever it was that was really making him so angry was something he didn't want to let his men see. Maybe they would have figured it out. But I couldn't, though I guessed it was something to do with whoever had given him his marching orders that day. And that maybe I was the only one he could show that side of his reaction to since I was not part of it.

So maybe he just took his time going back because it would mean less time for his men to pick up on his mood. Is it wrong that I also harbored a partially-acknowledged but ultimately meaningless hope inside me that he did it to linger in the physical contact with me?

They were already fixing dinner in the bunkhouse, we found out when we came into the barn. Two of the men loped over. They took charge of the horse. Ben said to set it out in the open fields after they finished brushing him down, watering and feeding him ... I pictured the horse, rejoining his mates out where he'd been free before we'd arrived there.

I followed in Ben's wake to the house. Inside, Bert and another of the men were lounging on one of the couches. Ben sent them off, to the bunkhouse, to get their dinner. Bert asked, did Ben want him to bring something back for us?

No, Ben said, curt and tight. Just come back soon as you're finished to watch over Grace for the evening.

He took my hand and walked away, tugging me along with him, toward the bedroom. At the door, he hesitated. Get cleaned up, he said, prodding me inside.

The door closed behind me.

That should have been my best signal. That the tension was not so much about the men, but was more about me. Or, rather, the impending exchange of me for the ransom.

It should not have hurt my feelings. I should have accepted that this was a good thing, all around.

Dinner was just the two of us, sitting stiffly at the kitchen table. He'd fixed it for us, rustling around in the kitchen while I sat on a stool as instructed and tried not to even make noise breathing. For the first time in a long time, I remembered to the bottom of my soul what a dangerous man this really was with me.

He was all neat and combed, freshly scrubbed, his hair damp ... he'd taken his own shower after mine. After Bert came back and I was sent to sit with him in the main room. And when Ben had returned, he'd ordered Bert to stay around the main room, to wait until we'd finished, to be around to watch over me later.

In silence, I watched Ben cook, scrambling eggs he'd apparently brought back from his errands of the morning. He even had fresh milk. And tortillas. So I knew he'd gone into a town. And I figured whatever was prompting the move in the morning came after he'd made contact with the other part of his organization.

He barely spoke. So unlike him. He'd stopped looking at my face.

It ratcheted up the tension.

I fixated on his words to Bert ... and realized that Ben was separating himself from me this night. He wanted distance. This worried me. But it also hurt. And I struggled with the inappropriate reaction I was having. I tried to tell myself it was just that I really was afraid to go home ... but I knew I couldn't stay here and didn't really want to.

After dinner, we each picked up dishes to clear the table. I was ready to wash them but then we met there, each about to place our dishes in the same sink. He glanced at me, a glare in his eyes.

I stared back, refusing to show intimidation.

"I've changed my mind," he said to me. "It's not a good idea to leave you with one of them tonight. Not smart for me to take the chance you'll slip up and tell them about tomorrow."

"I'm not going to say anything."

He rolled his eyes. Then took the dishes from my hands. "Leave these here. One of the boys can get them in the morning."

"Ben, I am not going to say a thing. I do know how to keep a secret."

"Women say they can ... in my experience, they can't."

"Don't give me that. Besides, I wouldn't cross you that way when I'm this close to getting out of this alive."

"No sense taking the chance, is there?"

He took my elbow, walked out. In the main room, he told Bert to go out and set up the watches for the night. Dismissing him even as he walked with me out onto the porch.

I pulled my elbow from his grip and walked over to the edge. We seemed to both be waiting on Bert to walk away, out of sight, out of ear shot. I looked up at the sky ... at familiar constellations that glowed with unfamiliar contrast and clarity.

Ben's boots made the boards of the porch creek as he paced. Eventually, I heard him take a seat in the wooden swing that hung from the eaves. The chains gave that distinctive metal on metal clink.

My last night, I thought to myself.

"Guess that's all you'll remember," he said. "The sky. Isn't that what you said?"

"No. And don't twist my words."

"Come sit by me, Grace. Or you remembering you're too good for me?"

I looked at him over my shoulder. "Why can't we just go easy on each other now that this is all over?"

"Is it over, Gracie? Will this ever be over between us?"

"You said ..."

"Yeah, well, I know my good girl better than that," he murmured, his eyebrows rising. "You'll be trying so hard to prove you were good ... you'll be telling them everything you figure they'll need to know about us to find us. You'll consider that your duty. Right?"

I swallowed. Hard. Because it was true. And because when I heard him say it, I was suddenly feeling guilty about it. "I'm going to worry about you, Ben. Maybe forever. And maybe I want you to never be caught."

He didn't expect that. And I know it now. I didn't expect to feel it. But I did.

"You're not going to feel that way once you're back there."

"I think I will."

He rose then, coming to me. Not to touch me, but to be close, to begin exerting himself over my space. When he spoke, his tone was lethal.

"Don't waste that on me. You're one of those women. Loyal. True. A woman like you ... you're the kind a man knows, if she throws her lot in with him, she will stand with him, through the good and the bad times. And if that man gets in a bad place, you'll say you don't want him to be a hero because you just want him to come home to you. But the truth is, that's the kind of woman makes a man know he has to do the right thing ... makes a man think about the man he wants to be in her eyes."

I felt a shadow cross my soul. My mother told me once about that feeling, just before she left us, about me being loyal and true. "Where did that come from?" I whispered to him.

"The thing about a woman like you, Gracie, is that you don't want to see that no one is honest. No one. Everyone's playing a game. Everyone's crooked ... just in different ways."

"I'm a realist, Ben. I just think ..."

"Everyone's on the take in some way. And each man has to know inside himself what he considers the right thing to be, Grace. That's how he stays true to who he is, to the thing that makes him honest in his own way. He has to do the right thing that he knows inside himself is right."

"Where's this leading?"

"Nowhere, Grace. It never was."

I could not understand what was happening with him. He felt dangerous, on edge ... as if he was lashing out at me, to get out some pent up something he held against me.

"You make it so hard for me to say ... things to you."

"The big kiss off, Gracie? Leaving me with some promise of eternal love, are you? You feeling sorry for me, my good girl?" he said, low and dangerous, near enough that I dipped my eyes and tried to move away. His hand on my upper arm kept me where I was, and I could feel the weight of his breath on my cheek and the way his chest brushed against my shoulder.

"I know I'm supposed to hate you. Because of what you've done ... and who you are. What you are. But ... I feel things ... for you. ... that I know I'm not supposed to ... but I do feel them."

"That was hard on you to say to me, wasn't it, Gracie? To admit that? Knowing I'll take advantage if I can?"

I looked up just then, and found his eyes. We examined each other for long moments.

"Is that what this is about?" I whispered ... and hearing how husky my own voice was made it seem so much like someone else was saying these words. "You're struggling with finding the right thing to do about me?"

He blinked. And seemed ... for the first time ... unsure. And I knew he didn't realize I'd read him that well. And that the internal struggle for him just then was: did he like that I'd cared enough to really look when he'd opened himself up to me well enough for me to read or did he resent me for showing him that he had let me see something he didn't want me to?

"And if I do the right thing, Gracie? And it's not up to your standards ... will you still consider me a man you can hold out hope for?"

"Do you care what I think of you, Ben?"

"Yes." His voice was hushed, heated.

And now, I blinked. And knew I had. And knew he saw it.

"Did you mean to tell me that?" I asked him, my hand touching at his chest as I turned toward him.

He shook his head. But I thought he was lying to me.

So when he reached for me, yanking me up to his chest, his mouth coming to mine, his tongue brusquely moving along and then past my lips ... I responded by softening in his arms.

And I did shake but it wasn't as he pushed me up against the post, his hands seeking and finding bare skin beneath my jeans and under my shirt. And it was not even when he groaned hoarsely, biting into my throat, when I reached for his buckle. It was only after he lifted me off my feet, shoving me away from him, toward the door of the house. And I stood there, shaking, while he watched me hold my hand out to him.

My thighs slide across each other. I feel him, mostly dry but still just this side of sticky, between my legs. I see him, across the room, looking at me. 

Something is different inside him.

Something is different inside me.

Nothing we have done can ever be explained away but we both understand it. We did the right thing tonight.

The way he looks at me ... right now ... I have a hunger inside me that that look feeds. I want a man to look at me that way. I want to be wanted by a man capable of that look.

Just not this man.

He tosses his cigarette out the open window and then closes the latch. He is nude. His body ... I cannot deny how gut-wrenching it is to see evidence of its stirring arousal. It has been hours, I can tell by the light in the sky that is rising instead of waning.

He prowls toward me, watching me as he approaches ... now crawling toward me from the foot of the bed, where he paused with one knee on the mattress to touch himself and lower his eyes toward the part of me he will claim yet again.

I wait on him.

"Never told anyone that before," he says to me, looking down on me. "You think you can keep that secret for me, Grace?"

"Yes. It's safe with me."

"What will you tell them?"

"I don't know yet."

"Yes, you do."

"What should I do? I don't want to hurt you ..."

"Oh, Gracie. Don't let me down ... hold fast to those convictions of yours. Don't let any man take them away."

"You told me that early on."

"And I meant it."

"What about trusting you?"

"I'd like to think that a woman like you, Grace, knows how far she can trust me. And when."

This is when he pulls me up and we face each other, kneeling atop crumpled sheets already bearing evidence of what we have done together long hours ago. I stroke over his skin. Over the evidence of his desire for me. Over a face that I will never forget. Over a mouth I have kissed.

Over a heart I think I've touched.

The bright light of late morning finds me curled on my side and him curled around me. I do not move when I wake. I watch the clock beside me. He has a hand between my thighs and a leg over my knees. He has another arm, under me, wrapped around; the hand holding one of my breasts.

Eventually, I feel his lips on the side of my neck. They are soft and sleepy.

Without a word, I slip from his hold and go in to shower. He does not stop me. He is sitting up in the bed when I emerge. He watches me, his eyes hooded, his look impossible to read.

"When will you tell them?" I ask him as I come to the side of bed where he lolls.

"Let me smell you," he responds, his voice sex-sated. He pulls me into his embrace and buries his nose into my damp cleavage. "After breakfast."

"When will we leave?"

"Evening."

I don't mean to tremble. He probably doesn't mean to comfort my reaction. Maybe we are both embarrassed. 

They come together just after breakfast. They have all stayed away from the house, I realize, unless invited. Ham and Dibbs are there, standing stiffly near the door, not looking at me. Both sport ugly, healing bruises on their faces. I am parked in a chair by the kitchen door. Bert stands on the other side of the door frame from me.

He placed handcuffs on me earlier, at Ben's instructions, before loping over to the bunkhouse to round the men up.

Ben was in another room in the house at that time. He was talking with three of the men about where they'd rendezvous in Mexico. The door was closed. I will not lie and say I did not creep down the hallway to listen.

From where I am now with everyone gathered together in one place, I can watch the backs of most of the men's heads. And I can see Ben where he stands before the fireplace. What he tells the group is only enough to let them know there is a plan. He will not say much about the details with me in the room. All he says is that they will be split into three cadres, each led by one of the three men he has already fully briefed on where they will go and where they will rendezvous across the border.

It never was a secret they would run for the border. So it's okay that I know this, by Ben's estimation.

"What about her, Boss?" someone asks him.

He doesn't look at me. Several others do. "We got one last thing to do about her. I'm taking her to where I let her go."

"Ransom's paid?"

He gives an irritated look at the questioner. "Anyone got anything else they want to ask?"

"You need someone with you, Boss? To watch your back?"

"I think I can deal with setting one little girl loose outside of town, don't you?" he asks softly, not acknowledging that the question denoted loyalty toward him, their leader. "I'll meet up with you boys once it's over. And then we get a look at our balances, eh?"

There are smiles, murmurs, rubbing of hands ... they anticipate a good payday from the last robbery and from the ransom. I look at Bert, see that grin over far-off dreams about to come true. Everything money can buy.

He looks so young.

I close my eyes.

The light from the evening sky is almost magenta. The car slides through the growing dusk. I sit in the passenger seat, cuffed hands in my lap. I watch the sky through my window.

I don't know the name of the town for which he's aiming. He would tell me if I asked. I know he would. And I would believe him.

"I'm pulling over here ... just to get those off you," he says gruffly.

"Do you ever get tired of these sunsets?"

"Not anymore."

He wheels us into a shuttered gas station that has long since closed its doors along this lonely highway that slopes down from the mountains on its way to the flatness of the wide valley. He pulls behind the station so the errant traveler would not see us and make note of it.

When the engine stops, neither of us moves. We watch the sunset together. I already know he won't drop me off anywhere in the daylight, even when it's dying. He needs to do it under cover of dark so that he can melt away into the night without anyone following him as he runs for the border.

"Will you make me wait before I find someone to help me?" I ask him.

"No. But you'll be walking a ways before you make civilization."

"That's fair."

"Glad you approve."

I glance at him. He grins at me, slowly shaking his head. The fading sun saturates his face in orange. His grin was fake and he knows I know that.

"Give me your hands," he says as he leans in to undo the cuffs.

"Is this it? Where you leave me?"

"No, Gracie. Not yet. Just thought maybe I should be nice to you."

"For no reason?"

His mouth finds mine. "No reason," he says against my lips as I open them to him.

When he stops and pulls away just far enough to let his fingertips linger on my neck, I look off into the now-dim landscape. And when he starts the engine, I fix my bra and button my shirt. I run my hands through my hair.

As he drives, I mourn the edges of the headlights, wondering who might be out there like me, confused in the desert. 

We are on the road again just over an hour when the headlights pick up a green and white road sign that says, "Double Adobe 9 miles." 

I don't know why it is that I am not surprised when, maybe two miles after we pass through the comfortable town with its main street of tidy shops and a tiny police station, he pulls over at a desolate crossroad. He turns and drives only long enough to find a place where he can turn around to head back toward the highway.

"This is it?" I ask as he parks at the side of the road maybe 20 yards from the intersection with the highway.

"You follow the highway back to Double Adobe. Do not veer off the highway at any of the roads you'll pass. The town's the closest place for you to get help. Go to the police ... and ..."

"Ben ... this is really happening?"

"Shit."

I look up and see the approach of headlights, turning down toward us from the highway. And above the headlights are suddenly the strobing blue lights of a cop's car.

We sit and watch as it drives past, slowly, inching along. A searchlight from inside the car is turned toward us through the open driver's window. The car uses the same turnaround Ben used and then comes to park behind us. The headlights are still on. I would bet the blue lights still circling atop the car cut a deep blue glow through this flat desert that could be seen for miles if anyone was looking.

Ben sits with his hands on the wheel and his eyes on his rear view mirror. His jaw is tight, clamped. He is sweating, beads on his neck.

"Just let him write you a ticket," I say to him, my hand on his thigh.

"What?" he asks, surprised, looking at me.

"I won't say a thing, Ben. Just let him give you a ticket ... and then you can go when he drives off. You can let me off somewhere else."

"Why would you think he's ..."

"He must have clocked you back there ... speeding. Or he'll say he did. You know how these small town cops are. This was just a fluke.  Just take the ticket. I will just sit here. I won't turn you in."

"Why not?"

"Because ... I don't want ... because you're letting me go, like you said. And I trust you. So I don't need to get help from this cop."

He frowns at me. "You trying to bargain for his life? That what this is, Grace?"

"No. I'm trying to save yours. One good turn deserves another, isn't that what you like to say?"

Just then we hear a voice over a loudspeaker, coming from the car behind us, telling the driver to exit slowly, hands up, and walk to the back of the car. I tell Ben I'll wait here until this is over.

This is not a sacrifice. This is wanting this to end with him able to do the right thing by me ... to be able to release me like he has promised. It's come this far and I may be wrong, but it feels like the right thing to do. It sits with my convictions and I do not know if that means my convictions have shifted.

I turn to watch as he walks toward the officer whose form I see backlit in the headlights behind us. I put a hand up to shield my eyes from the glare. They talk for a moment. I hear voices rise. Ben's is angry. He turns to come back to the car. But the other man suddenly charges him and hits Ben on the top of the head with something that drops him to his knees.

Before I am out of the car, Ben is on his back, stunned by the look of his eyes in the harsh headlights. The cop is putting handcuffs on his wrists. And Ben is muttering something I do not understand.

When he is done, the cop reaches to his side and then I feel the glare of a flashlight in my eyes. I put my hand over them.

"You must be Grace," he says. "I'd recognize your face anywhere. Been plastered in enough stations for the last week."

"Grace ..." Ben moans, now rolling to his side and struggling to his knees. He shakes his head as I reach him.

I think he's shaking away the cobwebs.

But he's not.

He was trying to tell me something and I didn't get it in time.

"So that's how it is, Ben?" the cop says. "That's what's going on?"

It dawns on me when our eyes meet as the cop says his name.

I rise from my knees at Ben's side and look at the cop as he circles us. He is not just a cop, though. He wears the wrong color uniform. I read the patch on his shoulder. He is with the Cochise County Sheriff's Department. I flash on the business card I found in Ben's kit bag.

When the man comes within arm's reach, I read his nametag. It is Sheriff Weathers. And it is the same name that was on the business card. I cannot look at Ben. I need to concentrate.

"You know who I am then?" Weathers asks me, seeing how I've reacted to his nametag.

"She doesn't know anything," Ben says.

"She does now, Ben."

My day pack, I think, picturing it on the floor of the back seat of the SUV. I am not leaving without it. I don't know how ... I was never expecting this. I am not prepared and I thought I had figured it all out. But I am on my own now against these two and I still intend to survive this.

"She has to die now, Ben. Now more than ever," he says.

"No witnesses," I say, choking the words out.

"She was smart," Ben says. "Never could really fool Gracie for long."

"The ransom?" I ask.

"Your company has this funny policy," Weathers tells me, stepping toward me as I back up closer to the SUV, toward the side where I can reach in, grab my day pack ... and then run if the chance comes.

"I know," I say softly.

"You knew?" Ben asks me.

I look at him kneeling there, the red taillights reflecting in his eyes. 

"I always figured there'd be no payoff," I say to him. "You never asked me if they'd pay the ransom."

His head drops. He sits back on his haunches.

"I thought maybe you were letting me go anyway. That maybe there really was a humanity inside you, Ben," I say to him as he refuses to look at me and the Sheriff chuckles. "That maybe I meant something to you after all."

"Did she mean something to you, Ben? That why you told me to leave and let you handle this? Oh, Ben. Did she sucker you?"

"She meant nothing," Ben says now, speaking to the dusty sand he kneels in. "Nothing."

"So all along, you planned to betray me yet again," I say to Ben now. I feel him touching me. Me touching him. I shiver and lean against the side of the SUV. "God. I let you make love to me last night and you were planning this."

"Ah, Ben, I like your style, you son of a bitch," Weathers says and I hear the soft crunch of his shoes as he nears me.

I slide further along the side of the SUV. "How does it feel to fuck a woman you know you're going to send to her death the next day?" I ask, loudly, wanting Ben to hear this. "You told me not to trust you ..."

Just then, Weathers reaches me. His hand goes to my throat and he shoves me back against the SUV's high side. My hands try to pry him off but he knocks my head back against the car and I am dazed as well as winded.

His face is next to ear to say, "You cost me, missy. And you brought down enough heat ..."

"You're his contact," I pant out. I want inside the SUV. Inside the door right next to me, to where I could struggle but it would do no good against a man so much bigger than me. "You're the real boss ..."

"Mmm. She is a smart one, Ben ... think I'll take a page from your book and have me something for my troubles ... And you, missy, you just lay there and think about how your people fucked us over that ransom that was never coming ... and how we'll show the next bastard that we're not a group you fuck with that way."

"They will find you!" I scream out, when he releases my throat, opens the back door and throws me inside.

"Not before you die out here," he says as he climbs atop my struggling body and shoves a knee straight up between my thighs.

My groan is heartfelt. The tears in my eyes are real. But I feign that I am dazed and lie still as he fumbles to undo his pants. My hand lolls over the seat. As he starts wrestling with my jeans, my fingers have found my day pack's zipper. Eventually, he presses in over me. His mouth is trying to find mine but I gag so he latches on to my neck as he hitches up to begin finding his way inside ... I can feel his penis against my thigh, not yet fully hard. As he tries to shove it in anyway, struggling to do this to me, my hand is now gripping the steak knife that has stayed in my day pack since I stole it from the wretched hut where Dibbs and Ham held me days ago.

The sheriff weighs enough that all I have to do is what Jeannette has said before ... find leverage ... my elbow braces on the seat and I shove the knife up into his tender gut. But just as he goes rigid with shock and pain, before he can even finish the howl he starts as I cut him, he is ripped off me. And I feel the knife continue to slice into him until he is at last yanked off of it.

I do not understand at first ... it is absolute confusion.

Ben's form is outlined in the doorway.

He is looking down, at his feet, outside the SUV.

There is warm blood, a rivulet of it, on my hand. The knife is red, sticky with blood.

The Sheriff is nowhere to be seen until I bounce up in the seat, adrenalin coursing in and out of my heart. I can see him then ... writhing slowly on the ground at Ben's feet, holding his hands to the side of his belly where the blood runs wetly around his hands as hard as he tries to hold it in. The headlight's glare makes the wetness twinkle as it races over his hands.

I hold the knife before me, toward where Ben is, as he glances in at me with an expression so closed down I barely recognize him. I fumble with my jeans, yanking them back up and zipping. I am darting glances toward Ben, keeping him in sight ... so I see when he reaches down, grabs onto the Sheriff ... I think he is going to help him but then Ben rises and he has a gun in his hand. The Sheriff's gun. My heart resounds with that explosive thudding that Jeannette told me she only noticed once in her life.

Ben looks down toward the Sheriff, points the gun and fires. Twice.

I do not jump either time for I am already scrambling out the other side of the car. He yells my name and I am running toward the car behind us. But he is around the rear bumper before I can reach it.

"Grace! Stop ... You'll never make it that way," he says to me, stepping in between me and the Sheriff's car.

I hold the knife out, menacing him. 

He has the gun. But then he stoops over, gently putting it on the sandy earth between us. Steps away from it after straightening up. Holds his cuffed hands out to me.

"Bring the knife here, Gracie," he says softly. "Come on, Gracie ... just trust me this once."

"You were planning this ... even last night?"

"Yes. Two birds, Gracie."

"What? What are you talking about?" I say, my voice sounding panicky. "What two birds?"

"His death. My freedom."

"What about me?"

"I promised you from the beginning ... Bring me the knife, Gracie ... come over here ..."

"No! Tell me ... what happened ... Something happened... yesterday ... I should have gone with my instincts, that something changed ... that your promise was no good anymore. God ... oh God ... that's when you found out there was no ransom coming?"

He tucks his chin and stares at me. Takes one step toward me and I wave the knife at him but I do not back away.

"You should have told me they wouldn't pay the ransom, Gracie. I wouldn't have waited so long to let you go."

"Shut up. Stay away."

"You said you wanted to know what happened yesterday."

"Are you lying to me?"

"No." He shakes his head, hard. And there is something in his eyes, something I think I've seen before. Something that makes me listen. "You already guessed this ... it's the Sheriff who's been calling the shots. His boys have done the surveillance, like you said someone had to be doing. And they were doing the ransom negotiations. One of the deputies went to the drop yesterday in Clovis ... he barely got away."

"It was a trap?"

"Yeah. It was."

"And then they realized ... there wasn't going to be a ransom ..."

"And he gave me the order ..."

"To kill me?"

"I told him no," he says and I let him step closer. "But I agreed to turn you over to him."

"Knowing he'd kill me? You arranged to meet him here, turn me over to him?"

"Yes," he whispers. "There was no way I couldn't."

I swallow and take a step back. I smell the ashes of my life. They are scattering in the desert. "You are really that kind of man? You could be in my arms one night and let me be murdered the next?"

"No. Two birds, Gracie, remember? I figured it out ... it came to me when you asked me if I was struggling to find the right thing to do by you. I realized ... I couldn't give in to what he wanted when I was smart enough and mean enough to find a way to do right by you. I gave you my word once ..."

"You said a man had to stand by his word," I mumble, trying to make sense of this.

"That's right," he says. "I wasn't going to let him kill you, Gracie. But I had to get him close enough to where he'd make a mistake."

"You're the one who made the mistake. He hit you ... cuffed you," I say, pointing the knife toward his wrists.

"But the cuffs are in front ... where I can still fight with my hands," he says. "Look, the Sheriff knows what I am. Unlike you, he never forgets I'm a killer. He's always on his guard with me. Always got a gun ready. I knew if I set this up right, he'd go for you and forget about me ... forget I am a dangerous man even in cuffs."

"You're just playing me again ... are you going to kill me now to cover your trail?"

"Gracie, don't let me down, girl. Look at me. And tell me you don't know to trust what I'm saying."

"How is this supposed to end?"

"Bring the knife to me ... Help me use it to unlock the cuffs."

"And then?"

"And then you walk away from here."

"You're going to let me go?" I look toward the SUV and then back at him. "God. I cut him bad. They will charge me as an accessory."

"No. I've already thought what to do about that, Grace. Bring me the knife."

I am numb, unable to think. I've killed someone as surely as if I pulled the trigger. Instinctively, I step toward Ben and listen to his instructions to probe into the keyhole with the tip of the knife until there is a click we can hear over the thrum of the patrol car's engine. As soon as his first wrist is free, he takes the knife from me and undoes the other cuff.

Unable to move, I watch as he opens the door of the patrol car and tosses the cuff and the gun inside. The radio is on, I realize, hearing the low chatter of distant voices. Even as Ben is walking toward the SUV, saying he has to tidy the scene up before we leave, I know that I could make a call for help on that radio before he's back.

But I do not. I am too busy staring at blood on my hand that I smear on the other one in my sudden attempt to wipe it away. I rub it on my shirt and notice the pool of it that had dropped there before Ben had pulled the Sheriff out of the SUV. It must have spurted out onto me in that first moment I thrust up and hit home.

When I am aware again, I look around for Ben. I find him struggling backwards, dragging the Sheriff's body toward the patrol car. He shoves him inside the passenger door.

He walks toward me, yanking his shirt over his head and then tosses it inside the patrol car from this side.

"Did you get his blood on you, Grace?" he asks me brusquely. When I nod and show him my shirt, he grabs me, drags the shirt off over my head, wipes my palms and then throws the shirt in the patrol car, too. He takes my hand and leads me back to the SUV.

He retrieves my day pack, says something about me hiding that knife all that time and I say something about how I would have used it on him but I knew I'd never have made it away from his men. He grins at me. I have this insane feeling that he is rather proud of me. And that it matters to me. My teeth start chattering.

Inside my day pack is my shirt, the one I'd been wearing when he first captured Jeannette and me. He knew I wouldn't leave it behind, I figure. He hands it to me now so I'll have something to wear.

"When they find you, always remember that there will never be evidence you cut the Sheriff, okay?"

"They will see the gash ... find the knife ... my shirt with his blood on it ..."

"It will all be burned up, Gracie."

I look at the patrol car, at its headlights, at the blue spinning lights atop it.

"The only evidence that will remain are the bullet holes I put in his head. That's all that matters ... do not tell them you cut him."

"I have to tell them something ... I can't lie about something this big."

"Tell them we struggled ... that I shot him when I didn't believe him saying there was no ransom ... that you ran and that I fired after you but that you got away."

I stand there, with my own shirt on now and with my day pack in my hand. And I look at him. 

And I still am aware of who I am.

"Go back to your life, Gracie, and forget you ever met me," he says softly.

I put my arms around his neck. He puts his around my back.

"I don't want to go back," I say. "I don't know if I can."

"You can't come with me."

"You always thought I was telling you the truth ... about everything."

"I knew when to trust you, Gracie."

"Let me come with you."

He ducks out of my hold and pushes me in the direction of the highway. I stand there, stupidly. He pushes me around the front of his car. Opening his door, he reaches in and emerges with a handgun I have seen him with before.

"Run away, Gracie," he says. "Run fast ... And stay with the police in the town ... don't go with any of the Sheriff's men."

I shake my head. He groans, then turns and walks back toward the patrol car. I hear the gun go off twice and then he walks back toward me, pausing at the door of his SUV.

He looks at me, where I stand, watching him.

"Run, Gracie. I am going to shoot you if you don't run now."

I shake my head.

He aims the gun at my feet. I flinch when the first shot hits the ground in front of me.

"Run. Now!" he screams at me.

I back away, stumbling, as he aims again and another shot hits the ground next to me. But I don't turn to really run until I see him raise the gun and know he is aiming at me this time.

Now I run.

A gun shot sounds somewhere behind me. I duck my head but I keep running.

I hear him start his car engine and I run faster, afraid now ... that he is coming after me ... that he realizes something about me has changed to the point where he no longer can trust me to be that good girl he thought I was.

And then there is a large blast behind me. My breath is heavy, my chest heaving with fear. I feel the heat as I turn. And the Sheriff's car is ablaze. Ben's advancing car is an outline heading toward me. I know he shot the gas tank and that leaking gas must have been caught by the engine's heat. Or maybe the final shot I heard was what set the car ablaze.

I may never know.

All I know is Ben's car is slowly gaining on me and I am turning, running full out again, arms pumping, knowing that in his twisted code of honor, if I can reach the highway and turn as instructed toward the town of Double Adobe before he reaches me, then he will let me live.

When I reach the highway, I never hesitate. I fly to the left, my eyes peeled on the road in the night to keep on the right path toward safety.

I can hear his car behind me ... and then know it is not gaining on me anymore. It is receding, the sound of his car.

Stumbling to a stop, I turn.

And the last I see of him is in my imagination: his eyes on the rear view mirror watching me watch him drive south toward Mexico and the freedom he won for himself that night.