Only once did she almost panic and try to get away. They were in the departure lounge, waiting for their flight call, and a cop walked by, the kind of cop you needed in a situation like this. A big one, big and mean, not the kind who helps old ladies across streets. She stirred in her seat, ready to run, to scream maybe, but Craig was as fast and as sensitive as a cat. His left hand reached out and touched her arm, and pain scalded through her. He let it go, and she saw that his right hand was inside his coat.
"No," he said. "Not yet." She sat very still. "I had to do that to your uncle once," he said. "You're a hard family to convince."
Then the flight call came, and they went out to the 727 and he was polite and attentive all over again as he sat by her side. It should have felt like a nightmare, she thought, but it wasn't. She knew that everything he had told her was true, and she was very frightened. For the first time in her twenty-three years of life, death was real to her. She did exactly what he told her, and the smiling, polite man watched her as intently as ever. When they touched down at Miami he bought her a meal, then took her to the car-rental firm that tries harder, and watched as she hired a Chevrolet coupe with the money he had given her. She drove, and he made her pull up on the road into town, slipped something into her hand. "Here," he said. "Put it on."
It was a wedding ring. Slowly, hating him, she put it on her finger.
"Don't be sentimental," Craig said. "That's a luxury, believe me—and we can't afford luxuries. You're alive, Miss Loman. Be thankful."
She drove on, and he made her pull up at a supermarket. They went inside and he bought whisky, sandals, a shirt and jeans for her, and for himself, toothbrushes and a zippered traveling bag. They went to a motel then, and he booked them in for the night, saying little and sounding, when he did speak, like a New Yorker. The woman at reception hardly looked at him, at her not at all. The unending soap opera on the transistor radio had all her attention. Craig thanked her even so, and they drove past the dusty palms, the minute swimming pool to cabin seven. She switched on the air conditioning at once as Craig carried in the bag. The plastic-and-vinyl room was as glittering and unreal as a television ad, but the chairs were comfortable and the twin beds still had springs. Craig opened the bag, took out the whisky, and mixed two drinks, offered one to her. She shook her head.
"Suit yourself," he said, and took off his coat and sprawled on the bed. She saw for the first time the supple leather harness of his shoulder holster, the gun butt that looked like an obscene extension of his body. Her eyes misted with tears.
"Not yet," said Craig. "You can cry later. Drink your drink."
"I hate you," she said.
"I know. Drink your drink."
The whisky was strong, and she choked on it, but the tears left her.
"Get your uncle on the phone," he said, "and tell him exactly what I say. Tell him you're with me—and he's not to worry about you if he does as he's told. Then tell him to meet us at the skeet-shooting place—does he know where it is?"
She nodded. "He was at the championship here five years ago," she said.
"Tell him to be there in an hour."
She looked up the Portland Arms in the phone book, and did just as he said. Aunt Ida was at the beauty shop, and that made it easier. Her uncle took a lot of convincing.
"Craig?" he said. "That tough Englishman?" "You're to meet him at the skeet-shoot—in an hour," she said.
"Honey—you know I can't do that."
She said quickly, "Marcus, you've got to. If you don't— I'm all right now. But if you don't—maybe I won't be. I'm not fooling, Marcus."
"He's with you?"
"Yes," she said. "He's with me. Marcus—please do as I say."
Craig took the phone from her.
"That's good advice, Mr. Kaplan," he said.
"If you harm that girl-"
"It'll be because you didn't turn up," said Craig. "Drive carefully."
He hung up. She was looking at him in loathing. "I don't believe it," she said. "The first time I met you— I liked you."
"It doesn't matter," he said. "Get changed." "Here?"
"In the bathroom, if you're shy," he said. "Just do it. And hurry."
When she came back she wore the shirt and jeans. The gun lay on the bed, near her hand, and her eyes went to it at once.
n
"Go on," said Craig. "Pick it up. Shoot me." She didn't move. "Go on. Get the gun."
She leaped for it then, and the speed of his reaction was terrifying. He came at her like a diver, and a hard shoulder slammed her into the bed as one hand pinioned her gun hand, the other splayed beneath her chin, thumb and forefinger pressing. She forgot the pain that made her drop the gun, forgot the pain in her breast where his shoulder had caught her, and thought only of the agony the thumb and finger made, crushing nerves, choking out breath.
"Please," she gasped. "Oh, please."
He let her go, and the intake of air was an unavoidable agony to her. He picked up the gun and dropped it near her hand.
"Want to try again?" he said. She shook her head. "Poor Miss Loman," said Craig. "But I had to do it, you know." "Why?" she said. "Why?"
"To show you you can't win. Look at my hands, Miss Loman."
He held them up in front of her, and she saw the hard ridges of skin from fingertip to wrist, and across the knuckles.
"I can break wooden boards with these. With my feet, too. It's called karate. I'm a Seventh Dan black belt. There are only five men outside Japan who can beat me—and they're not in Miami. Miss Loman, we're not taking the gun." He moved his hands closer to her. "Just these."
"You're hell on women," she said.
"And middle-aged furriers. I want you to remember that."
She drove him to the skeet-shoot club, through downtown Miami, past the resort hotels and the restaurants and the pastel-blue Atlantic. Traffic was light, the tourist season was over, and they made good time. Craig sat back easy and relaxed, drinking in the wealth of the place. There was so much of it, and it went on for so long. They left it at last, and got into country-club land, golf-club land, where shaven grass was as obvious a sign of wealth as a Cadillac or a chinchilla coat, and stopped at last before a building of glittering white stone, of the kind
that she had called Hispaniola Baroque that time she had kidded Marcus about it, when he'd shot there five years ago—a glittering white building with pillars and pilasters and mullioned windows, and miniature cannon on its embrasured roof. All it needed, she'd said, was Long John Silver limping down the stairs, a parrot on his shoulder. Marcus had laughed then. He wasn't laughing now.
They left the car to a Negro attendant in white, a scarlet cummerbund round his waist, and walked up the steps toward him, Craig on her right. When they reached him Craig's left arm went round her waist, his right hand held out to Marcus, who hesitated.
"Take it," said Craig, "or I'll hurt her."
His fingers moved, and the girl gasped. At once Marcus's hand came out to him.
"Great to see you again," Marcus said. "How are you?"
"Fine," said Craig, "Everything's fine. So far. Let's get on with the match, shall we?"
They went inside the building then, through a low, cool bar to the gun room, where Kaplan signed for two guns and ammunition, then picked up one gun as Craig took up the other. With the gun in his hands, Kaplan changed at once. The gun was something he knew; it gave him confidence, even courage.
Craig said, "You walk ahead, Miriam. Lead the way while Marcus and I talk."
She did as he bade her at once, without question, and Craig followed, the shotgun under his arm, English style, the muzzle aimed at a point behind her feet, but Marcus knew, capable of tilting to her back in less than a second. He had been warned about shotgun wounds, knew what they could do to her at such close range. His courage receded.