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wipe out all of your tracks, yours and your car’s. You’ll be throwing away your whole lives for one night.”
    “Mr. Pasbury, you assume way too much. First of all, we don’t need to kill anyone. We’re not from around here and no one knows us, certainly not your little woman at the gas station. Second, the car is stolen. We’ll be driving something else a few hours from now. Third, you seem to jump to the erroneous conclusionthat this is our first time. Actually, I like to think of us as professionals.”
    Dad turned his hand slightly and I saw what he had picked up. The plastic lighter-fluid bottle he used to start the fire. I wondered what Will would do if I turned and threw up on his shoes?
    “Taylor, run!” Dad reached into the fire and grabbed a log. As the flames seared the skin from his hand, he screamed an animal scream—a sound I still hear in the night—and lunged at Chad. He squirted the lighter fluid onto Chad’s face and slammed the burning log into the side of his head.
    Chad howled. His cheek exploded in flames. He fell onto his side, thrashing at his head and hair as the flames melted his ear like candle wax. One arm lay twisted beneath him, snapped in the fall. He howled again.
    Dad dropped the log and wheeled toward Will. “Run, Taylor!” He lowered his head and charged directly toward Will, who stood transfixed at my side. Then Will’s eyes brightened. He dropped the shotgun from his shoulder to his hip and leveled it at Dad, who was too far away to reach him in time.
    I have relived the next moment a thousand times over the years. I see myself diving at Will’s legs, knocking him off balance. I see the shotgun’s barrel lurch upward and hear its report slam the air above our heads. I see Dad lunge at Will and tackle him, and I know Will is no match for Dad in close quarters.
    That’s how I see it in my mind.
    But I did not dive at Will’s legs. I turned and ran toward the truck. I heard the shotgun blast, and I heard Dad moan. When I reached the truck, I dove into the front seat, where I finally took a breath.
    I reached under the dash for the metal holster that hung there, and fumbled to find the release. Finally, my fingers hit the latch. Dad’s 9MM, semi-automatic dropped into my hand. I opened the door and rolled out onto the ground behind the truck. The shotgun blasted again, and I hoped that Dad had somehow wrestled it from Will.
    I rose and peered over the bed of the truck. Dad writhed in the dirt at Will’s feet, his pant leg and shirt dark with blood. Will was facing my direction, but his attention was on the ground, not me. He grinned down at Dad as he reached into his pocket, found two shells, and loaded them. He lowered the barrel toward Dad’s head. I braced my hands on the truck’s fender and leveled the pistol at Will’s chest. The shot was neither long nor difficult. An odd sense of calm drifted over me in the moment before I fired, so that everything seemed to move in slow motion. The middle of Will’s chest seemed as big as a barn, and I squeezed my trigger before he squeezed his.
    He fell across Dad’s legs.
    By the time I reached Dad, Will’s eyes were glassy. The entry hole near his shirt pocket told me that he would be dead in minutes. I kicked him off of Dad’s legs and knelt to the ground. Dad’s skin was gray and his breath came in gasps. His eyes were closed.
    I held his face in my hands and pressed my cheek against his. “Why did you do it?” I sat on the ground and pulled his head onto my lap. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry.”
    He opened his eyes and looked up at me. “I’m proud of you, sweetie. You did it just right.” He moaned and blood ran from the corner of his mouth.
    “I should have hit him. I could have saved you, but I ran.”
    “We’d both be lying here if you had.” He lifted his leg, exposing a dark puddle in the dirt beneath him where the blood splashed in pulses. I slid his head from my lap, tore off my shirt and wrapped it