Blood risk

long legs and working a cramp out of his thick, muscular thighs. When the vigil first began, he occupied himself by pulling burrs out of his clothes, his heavily callused fingers uninjured by the sharp points. Now, though his calluses remained inviolate, he was too nervous to fool with such minutiae, and he longed to be on the move.
        On the right-hand side of the roadway, across from Harris, the gravel berm dropped abruptly into a rock-strewn ravine that bottomed out more than three hundred feet below. The only safe place on that side was the fifty-yard-long lay-by where the Dodge and Chevrolet, both stolen, were now parked facing slightly downhill. Tucker and Bachman waited there, the older man behind the wheel of the Chevy, Tucker shielded from the lane by the bulk of the Dodge.
        Bachman carried a.32-caliber pistol in a chamois shoulder holster, as did Tucker. Unlike Tucker, however, he kept touching it, like a savage with his talisman. With damp fingertips he traced the Crosshatch pattern on the solid butt, lifting the whole weapon slightly out of the holster, testing the way it fit, looking for potential snags- though he had worn this same piece for years and knew that it wouldn't snag, ever.
        Though Bachman had only the one gun, Tucker held an additional shotgun with only seven inches of barrel; both chambers were loaded, and six spare cartridges were distributed in his jacket pockets. If Bachman had been carrying the shotgun, he would have been constantly patting his pockets to be sure the cartridges were there. Tucker, however, stood quietly, moving as little as he had to, waiting.
        "They should be here by now," Bachman called through the open window of the Chevy. He wiped a slender hand across his face, more than covering his small, compressed features, pulled off something invisible-maybe his own impatience-and shook that off his fingertips. Right now he was jumpy, and he was talking too much, but when the time came for the job he would be all grease and oil, as Tucker had discovered on the other three jobs they'd worked on together.
        Tucker said, "Patience, Merle." He was known for his serenity, for maintaining a cool facade that never cracked under pressure. Inside, though, he was all knotted up and bleeding. His stomach twisted this way and that, as if it were an animal trapped inside of him; perspiration gathered over his whole body, a symbolic film of his repressed terror.
        He had not been born and raised to make his living this way, had never understood the criminal social stratum. That he was now a success at what he did was a testament to an almost fanatical determination to achieve what he set out to achieve, and he was usually the undisputed leader of any group simply because others saw and admired his single-mindedness.
        At the top of the slope, Jimmy Shirillo dropped the field glasses and rolled onto his back, cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, "Here they come!" His voice cracked on the last word, but everyone understood what he had said.
        "Go!" Tucker shouted, slamming a flat palm down on the hood of the stolen Dodge.
        Bachman stopped fiddling with the pistol cradled under his armpit and switched on the Chevrolet's engine, revved it a few times and drove forward, blocking the road diagonally. Without wasting a second, smooth and fluid, he put the car in park, pulled on the handbrake, opened his door and jumped out. He took cover at the very end of the rear fender, where, if he saw there was going to be a collision, he could leap to safety easily enough. As an afterthought he grasped the grotesque Halloween mask that dangled from an elastic band around his neck and slipped it over his head.
        Halloween in June, he thought. It was the wrong time to wear a rubber mask, in this heat and humidity.
        On the hilltop Jimmy had crept to the edge of the limestone outcropping, ready to jump into the lane behind the Cadillac the moment the big car had gone by. He fumbled with his goblin's face a moment, felt the dew on it and thought-inexplicably-that the water was blood. Fear. Green fear, pure and simple. Angry with himself, he got the mask in place.
        Down at the lay-by, behind the Dodge, Tucker became a scarred old witch with one quick movement of his hand, grimaced at the odor of latex that he now drew with every breath, then looked across the road at the brush above the stone wall. Where was Harris?