The woman only cries harder, and the man presses his gun to the side of her head. His voice is lowand full of acid when he speaks.
“I can kill you and claim you tried to run.”
Immediately, everyone around me stands taller and the woman’s cries end abruptly with one lastsniffle.
The guards can’t hurt us, but they can stop us from leaving. And right now, he is the only guard onduty. Which is as good as making him God.
I look over my shoulder to see which guard he is. I want to be sure and steer clear of him as much aspossible in the days ahead.
As soon as I look back, however, the guard’s attention snaps to me.
He has a thick black mustache and matching salt-and-pepper hair. If I had passed him on the street, Iwould have taken him for a small-town sheriff or a butcher. He
