"Who's this?" he asked.

"Bud Stancell, owner of the local service station." Dr. Kent glanced up at him, countless questions in her eyes. "Why do you ask?"

"Just curious. You get a lot of beatings here in Santa Rosa?"

She hesitated, even though she clearly did not have to think about her answer. "No."

"You've got a busy morning on your hands. A gunshot wound, a beating and your phone goes dead."

It hit her then, and she stood up to face the Executioner directly. "You believe there's some connection?"

"I'd give odds."

"Why would — whoever — want to hurt Bud Stancell? He has no connection with your private war."

"He didn't, till this morning. At a guess I'd say you're looking at the end results of an interrogation. Someone has been making sure I didn't get my car repaired, or find another one to take me out of town."

"And these same people cut my phone lines?"

"Maybe. It's more likely that they took the main lines down, outside of town. If anybody's interested, I'll bet you couldn't place a call on any phone in Santa Rosa."

"That's preposterous."

"So, prove it. Step next door and use a neighbor's phone. I'll keep your patient company."

She hesitated, finally shook her head. "I don't have time."

"None of us do."

Rebecca Kent ignored him. Stepping to the drug chest and unlocking it, she filled a hypodermic, locked the cabinet again and slipped the needle into her patient with the expertise of someone who has done it a thousand times before. A moment passed before the man relaxed, and then his moans receded, fading, until they had ceased entirely.

"He'll rest easy on the ride to Tucson."

"If he gets there."

"What? Oh, it's an easy drive. We have an ambulance in town."

"I wasn't thinking of the transportation."

"Oh? What, then?"

"Whoever put him through the ringer may have backup waiting on the highway."

"Mr. Bolan, I believe you're paranoid."

He smiled slightly. "Well, just because you're paranoid, Doc, doesn't mean that no one's out to get you."

"Mmm. You'll pardon me if I don't check for gangsters underneath my bed tonight? I can't believe these nameless heavies have the town surrounded."

"They have names," the Executioner assured her. "For the moment, you can call them Trouble."

"You look chilly, Mr. Bolan."

"I'm afraid I didn't bring my wardrobe with me, Doctor."

"Try the pantry. You should find some things inside the closet there. They won't be your style, but they'll cover the subject."

He backtracked, found the closet and opened it to find a couple of men's denim shirts, two lab coats, blue jeans folded on a hanger and a pair of slacks. He opted for a denim shirt and the jeans, surprised to find they fit him fairly well.

"Your husband's?"

"No, my father's." There was something wistful in her voice. "It's been a while. I never had the heart to throw them out."

He finished zipping up and left the shirttails hanging out to minimize the pressure on his wounded side. When he rejoined the doctor, she was swabbing down her patient's face with hydrogen peroxide, cleaning off the crusty blood and dabbing at his wounds, a pinched expression on her face betraying sympathetic pain.

"You care about this town," he said.

"Is it that obvious?"

"I wouldn't want to see you hurt. I wouldn't want to see this town destroyed."

"We'll make it."

Bolan didn't share her confidence. He did not want to think about the other innocents, across the years, who had been slaughtered when their paths had crossed his own. How many deaths of good people on his soul thus far? Too many.

He should leave at once, retrieve his weapons or depart without them. Either way, the simple act of getting out might spare her something, draw the heat away from Dr. Kent, her battered patient, and the town that was her home. If necessary, he could let Rivera's gunners see him, lead them out into the desert, let them take him there if it came down to killing. And it would, he knew that much. It always did.

On second thought, however, Bolan wondered if evacuation would achieve the ends he desired. If he was right, Rivera's gunners had already beaten one man, unaccountably allowing him to live. They were endangered by a witness now, the threat compounded by their victim's contact with his son and Dr. Kent. The ambulance attendants, if they came, would stand as two more leaks to plague Rivera, granting always that they were allowed to leave.

It would not matter, Bolan realized, if he exposed himself to the Rivera hit team now, or not. They had to finish mopping up behind them, and in the process, they were likely to encounter other witnesses in Santa Rosa. The stage was set for a chaotic bloodbath, and the Executioner could not escape a feeling of responsibility for having set the wheels in motion. If there had been something, anything, that might have been done otherwise...

He pushed the morbid train of thought aside. Regrets and self-recriminations would do nothing to prevent a massacre in Santa Rosa. On the other hand, there might be something that the Executioner could do.

"I'll need those weapons."

"No." The doctor's tone was resolute, as if she knew he would not resort to force. "Not yet."

He frowned. What was she waiting for? Could he trust her to decide when it was time, without delays that might prove fatal to them all?

He could have torn the place apart and found the guns himself, no doubt, but Bolan hesitated. It could wait, however briefly, while he calculated odds and angles. In a few more hours, it might make no difference either way.

Rick Stancell hit the sidewalk running, closing off his mind to the incessant heat and keeping up a driving pace around the back of Dr. Kent's clinic toward Main Street. Grundys' combination home and office was positioned on the southern edge of town, perhaps three hundred yards away. The pavement in front of Rick gave off waves of heat that made the storefronts shimmer like hallucinations.

He bolted across the sidewalk, onto Main Street in full stride, without a backward glance. He heard the screech of brakes, an angry horn and raised one open hand by way of an apology as he hot-footed toward the opposite curb. He spared a sidelong glance for the sedan that slithered past, a big dark Chevy, four men riding low behind the slightly tinted windows, plates from Mexico. It wasn't all that odd, and Rick had put them out of mind before he cleared another twenty yards, the Chevy disappearing down a side street, rolling lazylike, as if the driver were engaged in looking for an address that he couldn't find.

Rick Stancell didn't waste time wondering how anyone could lose their way in Santa Rosa. His thoughts were concentrated on his father and the hope that Amos Grundy wasn't sleeping off one of his famous drunks. If necessary, Rick would drive the goddamned ambulance himself, or take his father in the truck, if Dr. Kent would come along.

He trusted her implicitly and knew that she would never put his father into another doctor's hands if there was anything that she could do herself. He knew enough about internal injuries to understand you couldn't treat them in a doctor's office.

Dr. Kent would never let his father down, but now it was up to Rick — to secure the ambulance; to see him safely off to Tucson, following him in the truck as soon as he could close the station down; to wait beside his father's bed and find out what the surgeon had to say.

To find the animals who were responsible for his condition.

More than one man was involved; Rick knew that much instinctively. His father might be getting soft in middle age, but he could still defend himself, and he had not forgotten all those tricks he had learned in the Marine Corps, tricks that had been practiced time and time again on human beings in Korea. If he was afraid of anyone or anything, Bud Stancell never let it show, and Rick could not believe that he would take a beating passively.