“Stop playing, will you?” I said crossly, as I set the fingers of my left hand around her wrist and started to lead her back to the roadster. “This is a serious business. Don’t be so childish!”
“You are hurting my arm.”
I knew I wasn’t hurting her arm, and I knew this girl for the direct cause of four, or perhaps five, deaths; yet I loosened my grip on her wrist until it wasn’t much more than a friendly clasp. She went back willingly enough to the roadster, where, still holding her wrist, I switched on the lights.
Kilcourse lay just beneath the headlight’s glare, huddled on his face, with one knee drawn up under him.
I put the girl squarely in the line of light.
“Now stand there,” I said, “and behave. The first break you make, I’m going to shoot a leg out from under you,” and I meant it.
I found Kilcourse’s gun, pocketed it, and knelt beside him.
He was dead, with a bullet-hole above his collarbone.
“Is he—” her mouth trembled.
“Yes.”
She looked down at him, and shivered a little.
“Poor Fag,” she whispered.