Rickenharp said. “What the hell. I mean, if I have to stay in this fucking truck alone—this fucking truck I’ve been in all fucking day long. Not to complain or anything.”Carmen paused, straddling the truck’s closed tail-gate, and looked back at him. She’d just said, Stay here, don’t move, if anybody speaks to you play dumb. We’re going to see if the pass is open.Now she was a silhouette, spiky black against the deep indigo of the late evening sky. Even her cold-plumed breath showed in silhouette.And Rickenharp was sitting with his back to the cold steel, his muscles cramping with the chill of it.Carmen made a hissing sound of impatience and swung back into the rear of the truck. She crouched by her pack, and he heard the crisp sound of nylon rustling. She took a wedge of darkness from the pack and, moving crabwise, came to hunch beside him.He felt something cold and heavy pressed into his hands. She was a figure of darkness giving him the means to kill. “It’s a machine pistol,”
