He waited for her to speak. The stars were smoky, like dry ice evaporating on black velvet, the wind starting to gust through an arroyo behind her. She thought she could smell night-blooming flowers, water braiding along the edge of a bleached riverbed, an alluvial fan of damp sand cut by the hoofprints and the clawed feet of animals.

“Ma’am?” he said.

She couldn’t concentrate. What was he asking her? “Do you want a ride to your motel?” she said.

“Maybe I can make it. It was you I was worried about.”

“Pardon?”

“I got the sense those fellows in the Trans Am were hassling you. You know those fellows? That was them that roared on by, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know who they are. Do you want a ride?”

What had he just said? He had asked about the two men in the Trans Am, but he had been looking at her, not them, when they passed. He seemed to be thinking now, with an expression like that of a fool humorously considering his alternatives at someone else’s expense. The headlights that had silhouetted a hill in the distance disappeared, and the outline of the hill dissolved into the darkness. “I can limp in with this tire as it is, I guess. But it’s kind of you to stop. You’re mighty attractive. Not many women traveling alone would stop on the road at night to help a man in distress.”

“I hope your new job works out all right for you,” she said. She turned and walked toward her vehicle. She could feel the skin on her back twitching. Then she heard a sound that didn’t belong in the situation, that didn’t fit with everything the driver had told her.

He had opened a cell phone and was talking into it. She got in her vehicle and turned the key in the ignition. The engine caught for perhaps two seconds, then coughed and died. She turned the ignition again, pumping the accelerator. The stench of gasoline from a flooded carburetor rose into her face. She turned off the ignition so she would not run down the battery. She placed her hands on the steering wheel and kept them absolutely still, making her face devoid of all expression so he could read nothing in it. He approached her window, dropping the cell phone in his coat pocket, reaching with his other hand for something stuck in the back of his belt.

She unscrewed the plastic drinking cup from the top of her thermos, then unscrewed the cap and rubber plug on the thermal insert and began pouring coffee into the cup, her heart seizing up as his silhouette filled her window.

“People call me Preacher,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Everybody has got to have a name. Preacher is mine. Step out here with me, ma’am. We have to get going pretty quick,” he said.

“In your dreams,” she said.

“I promise I’ll do everything for you I can. Arguing about it won’t help. Everybody gets to the barn. But for you maybe that won’t necessarily have to happen tonight. You’re a kind woman. I’m not forgetting that.”

She threw the coffee at him. But he saw it coming and stepped away quickly, raising one arm in front of his face. In his other hand, he held an unblued titanium revolver, one with black rubber grips. It was not much larger than his palm.

“I cain’t blame you. But it’s time for you to get yourself in the trunk of my automobile. I’ve never struck a woman. I don’t want you to be the first,” he said.

She stared straight ahead, trying to think. What was it she was not seeing or remembering? Something that lay at the tips of her fingers, something that was like a piece of magic, something that God or a higher power or a dead Indian shaman out in the desert had already put at her disposal if only she could just remember what it was.

“I have nothing you want,” she said.

“You dealt the hand, woman. It’s your misfortune and none of my own,” he said, pulling open her door. “Now you slide yourself off that car seat and come along with me. Nothing is ever as bad as you think.”

Amid the litter on the floor, she felt the coldness of a metal cylinder touch her bare ankle. She reached down with her right hand and picked up the can of wasp spray, one that the manufacturer guaranteed could be fired steadily into a nest from twenty feet away. Vikki stuck the spout directly into the Nissan driver’s face and pressed down the plastic button on the applicator.

A jet of foaming lead-gray viscous liquid struck his mouth and nose and both of his eyes. He screamed and began wiping at his eyes and face with his coat sleeves, spinning around, off balance, all the while trying to hold on to his pistol and open his eyes wide enough to see where she was. She got out of the car and fired the spray into his face again, backing away from him as she did, spraying the back of his head, hitting him again when he tried to turn with her. He slammed against her vehicle and rolled on the ground, thrashing his feet, dropping the revolver in the grass.

She tried to get back inside her vehicle, but he was on his hands and knees, grabbing at her ankles, his eyes blistered almost shut. She fell backward and felt her forearm come down hard on the revolver. She picked it up, gathering its cool hardness into her palm, and staggered to her feet. But he came at her again, tackling her around one leg, striking at her genitalia with one fist.

She pointed the revolver downward. It was a Smith & Wesson Airweight.38 that held five rounds. She was amazed at how light yet solid and comforting it felt in her hand. She aimed at the back of his calf and pulled the trigger. The frame bucked in her hand, and fire flew from the muzzle. She saw the cloth in his trousers jump and even smoke for a second. Then it seemed as though his entire pants leg was darkening with his blood.

But the man who called himself Preacher wasn’t through. He made a grinding sound down in his throat, as though both eating his pain and energizing himself, and threw his weight against her, locking his arms around her knees. She fell in the grass and struck at his head with the revolver, lacerating his scalp, to no avail. Then she screwed the muzzle into his ear. “You want your brains on your shirt?” she said.

He didn’t let go. She lowered the revolver and aimed at the top of his shoe but couldn’t position her finger adequately to pull against the trigger’s tension. She worked her thumb over the hammer, cocked it back, and squeezed the trigger against the guard. The barrel made a second loud pop, and a jet of blood exploded from the bottom of his shoe. He sat up on his haunches and grabbed his foot with both hands, his jaw dropping open, his face the pained red of a boiled crab.

She got into her vehicle and turned the ignition. This time the engine caught, and she dropped the transmission into low and began easing back onto the highway.

“My father was a Medicine Lodge police officer and taught me how to shoot when I was ten years old. Next time you won’t get off so easy, bubba,” she said.

She flung the.38 through the passenger window into the darkness and rolled across his cell phone, crushing it into pieces. Then she pushed the accelerator to the floor, a cloud of blue-black oil smoke ballooning behind her.