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“Then this is the only way. ”

Pete knew he was right. He’d been thinking himself in circles trying to come up with something else, but the only other “something else” he’d been able to scare up involved facing down Green Eyes again, and he frankly lacked the intestinal fortitude.

“He’s only a kid. ”

“We’re not going to hurt him,” Orin reminded him. “We’ve just got to make him leave. ”

“He’ll be leaving at the end of next year, anyway. When he graduates he’ll go off to school someplace else. ”

“You want to wait another year and a half?”

“No. ” Pete sulked. Orin was right. After making a few discreet phone calls, Orin had learned that Ryan Boynton had been orphaned as a youngster and fostered through middle school, when good grades, exceptional test scores, and a knack for football had landed him at McCallie, an expensive, exclusive boys’ school. So he was alone, and so far as Pete and Orin could tell, the last of his kind.

They just needed to put the fear of God into the kid, and Orin had a plan for that. Pete wasn’t happy about it, but kept reminding himself that this was exactly why he’d brought Orin on board in the first place: Because Pete’s plans were usually rotten, and he needed someone else to help him think.

He wasn’t morally averse to the idea of scaring some kid into another county; he didn’t mind that part at all. If anything, it almost sounded like fun. But it definitely sounded risky, especially since they were using real guns and real ammunition.

“It’s safer that way,” Orin had said. Pete knew what he meant, but it still sounded wrong. “Safer for us, anyway,” Orin clarified. “The kid’s a football player, and what? Maybe sixteen? He’s gonna be a fast, slippery bruiser of a thing, and we don’t want to take a chance that he’ll get away. We probably won’t get a second chance. ” So Pete carried his . 357, and Orin had brought a sawed-off shotgun because he thought it looked meaner than a handgun.

And they weren’t going to kill him or anything. No way. Too risky, and unnecessary. All they had to do, if they understood the folklore correctly, was make him leave. Though, as Orin had pointed out, if merely making him leave didn’t work, there were always options. There were always alternatives.

Pete chose not to think about them yet.

He chose instead to focus on the fact that he was sitting in the cab of his uncle’s car while armed to the teeth and wearing a black ski mask that practically screamed “criminal” at thirty paces.

The kid would be heading back to his dorm from practice at any moment. He would be driving pretty fast so as not to miss curfew. He probably would not notice the tree lying down across his shortcut until he was right on top of it. At least that’s what Orin figured, which was why his dad’s still-warm chain-saw was lying in the trunk of Pete’s uncle’s car.

Headlights crawled quickly around the bend. They held their breaths. They were cutting this close, and they had only hope and prayer to prevent the vehicle from belonging to some other poor driver.

It had to be the kid. It had to be.

Orin had enjoyed playing mastermind so much that he’d planned every small detail. They’d almost been caught while they were taking down the tree, and they’d almost let it drop right on top of an innocent bypasser’s car, but luck had been with them so far.

But Christ, it was dark.

They’d turned off the dome light and sat in the blackness, listening to each other try not to breathe. This next vehicle, it had to be the one. It had to be the small red pickup truck.

And it was.

Ryan hit the brake pedal and swerved, nearly managing to stop, but losing control instead. He slid sideways into the trunk, brakes squealing all the way. The driver’s side door crumpled, and all around the cab glass shattered in a spray of blue crystals. One headlight went out, but one stayed on.

Rock 105 didn’t miss a beat, and with all the windows busted out, Pete and Rudy could hear the hard rock tune loudly enough to bother them both.

“We’ve got to turn that off,” Pete observed, sliding his hands into the gloves he’d brought.

“I don’t see why,” Orin said. “If nobody heard that crash, nobody’s going to give a damn about the radio music. ”

In the cab, the driver’s head wobbled loosely on his neck, side to side. In his disorientation, he hadn’t noticed the tree holding his door closed, so he tried it and found himself pinned from the left. He fumbled with his seat belt and released it.

Pete opened his own door, and Orin did the same. They tugged their masks down over their ears and checked their weapons.

Orin reached the passenger door first, yanking it open and pointing his shotgun inside. “Get out of there, boy,” he ordered.

Ryan was crawling forward along the seat. His head might’ve been the thing that broke the window, for the left side of his face was bloody, and one of his eyes looked like it was glued shut. “I’m trying,” he said, not seeing the gun or not registering it well enough to understand. “Did you see what happened? Can you call the cops?”

“We’re not calling nobody. You’re getting out and—”

“Shit,” the kid said, seeing the rough, circular edges of the weapon pointing down at his nose.