Maybe it meant something. Maybe it didn’t. But she had to know the answer. She didn’t like loose ends. “Why were you stopped?” Larry arched an eyebrow. “Say what?” “I saw you go blazing by me, like you were on your way to somewhere important in a big damn hurry.” Jessica’s thumb caressed the .38’s hammer. She felt a strange kind of intimacy with the weapon. An easy familiarity she found comforting. It was a bond forged in blood and noise, in the acrid scent of gunpowder and memories of the still bodies of dead adversaries. She could put this gun to Larry’s head, if she had a reason. Put the barrel right up against his temple and squeeze the trigger, watch the bullet blow his head apart. But she really hoped he wouldn’t provide a reason. “I took off after you fast as I could, but you should have gotten away. So…why did you stop?” Larry removed the cigarette from his mouth, the third he’d smoked in their brief time together, and said, “I do believe I detect a note of paranoia in that question.”
