"Move and you're dead, bitch," he told her, and started for the door.
It was brightly lit in the shithouse and almost as brightly lit in the rest-area parking lot, but in the notch between the two wings it was dark. For a moment he was blind, and that was when something hit him high up on the back, driving him forward in a stumbling run that took him only two steps forward before he tripped over something else-a leg-and went sprawling on the concrete.
There was no pause, no hesitation. A boot kicked him in the thigh, freezing the big muscle there, and then high up on his blue-jeaned ass, almost to the small of his back. He started to scramble-
A voice above him said, "Don't roll over, Lee. I've got a tire iron in my hand. Stay on your stomach or I'll beat your head in."
Lee lay where he was with his hands out in front of him, almost touching.
"Come out of there, Ellen," said the man who had hit him. "We have no time to fool around. Come out right now."
There was a pause. Then the hoor's voice, trembling and thick: "Did you hurt him? Don't you hurt him!"
"He's okay, but if you don't come out right now, I'm going to hurt him bad. I'll have to." A pause, then: "And it'll be your fault."
Meanwhile, the car horn, beating monotonously into the night-Bamp! Bamp! Bamp! Bamp!
Lee started to turn his head on the pavement. It hurt. What had the f**ker hit him with? Had he said a tire iron? He couldn't remember.
The boot slammed into his ass again. Lee yelled and turned his face back to the pavement.
"Come out, lady, or I'm going to open up his head! I have no choice here!"
When she spoke again, she was closer. Her voice was unsteady, but now tending toward outrage: "Why did you do that? You didn't have to do that!"
"I called the police on my cell," the man standing above him said. "There was a trooper at mile 140. So we've got ten minutes, maybe a little less. Mr. Lee-Lee, do you have the car keys or does she?"
Lee had to think about it.
"She does," he said at last. "She said I was too drunk to drive."
"All right. Ellen, you go down there and get in that PT Cruiser, and you drive away. You keep going until you get to Lake City, and if you've got the brains God gave a duck, you won't turn around there, either."
"I ain't leaving him with you!" She sounded very angry now. "Not when you got that thing!"
"Yes, you are. You do it right now or I'll f**k him up royally."
"You bully!"
The man laughed, and the sound frightened Lee more than the fellow's speaking voice. "I'll count to thirty. If you're not driving southbound out of the rest area by then, I'll take his head right off his shoulders. I'll drive it like a golf ball."
"You can't-"
"Do it, Ellie. Do it, honey."
"You heard him," the man said. "Your big old teddy bear wants you to go. If you want to let him finish beating the shit out of you tomorrow night-and the baby-that's fine with me. I won't be around tomorrow night. But right now I'm done f**king with you; so you put your dumb ass in gear."
This was a command she understood, delivered in language familiar to her, and Lee saw her bare legs and sandals moving past his lowered line of vision. The man who'd sandbagged him started counting loudly: "One, two, three, four..."
"Hurry the hell up!" Lee shouted, and the boot was on his ass, but more gently now, rocking him rather than whacking him. But it still hurt. Meanwhile, Bamp! Bamp! Bamp! into the night. "Get your ass in gear!"
At that her sandals began to run. Her shadow ran beside them. The man had reached twenty when the PT Cruiser's little sewing-machine engine started up, had reached thirty when Lee saw its taillights backing into the parking area. Lee waited for the man to start whacking and was relieved when he didn't.
Then the PT Cruiser started down the exit lane and the engine sound began to fade, and then the man standing over him spoke with a kind of perplexity.
"Now," the man who'd sandbagged him said, "what am I going to do with you?"
"Don't hurt me," Lee said. "Don't hurt me, mister."
Once the PT Cruiser's taillights were out of sight, Hardin shifted the tire iron from one hand to the other. His palms were sweaty and he almost dropped it. That would have been bad. The tire iron would have clanged loudly on the concrete if he'd dropped it, and Lee would have been up in a flash. He wasn't as big as Dykstra had imagined, but he was dangerous. He'd already proved that.
Sure, dangerous to pregnant women.
But that was no way to think. If he let old Lee-Lee get up on his feet, this would be a whole new ball game. He could feel Dykstra trying to come back, wanting to discuss this and perhaps a few other points. Hardin pushed him away. This was not the time or place for a college English instructor.
"Now, what am I going to do with you?" he asked, the question one of honest perplexity.