“Let me call for help.”

He merely shook his head.

“Please.”

“Turn out the light.”

“No.”

He opened his eyes. “You’re using up the…the batteries, and they’re all I’ve got.”

“Sure they are.”

He sighed. “I swear.”

He seemed close to passing out. He was having trouble keeping his eyes open and focused. His speech was slow, as though he had to search for each word, and holding a thought seemed increasingly difficult.

He repeated softly, “Turn out the light.”

Since she hadn’t found extra spotlight batteries anywhere in the car, she reasoned that he might be telling the truth. She switched off the spotlight, plunging them into darkness.

For a time neither said anything, then he murmured, “If I go under, will you take off?”

“In all honesty? I haven’t decided.”

“Sucks to be you, Jordie Bennett. Always torn between morality and self-interest.”

“Perhaps I should become more like you.”

“Amoral, you mean.”

“If you were amoral, I would be dead.”

“Greed has kept you alive, not morality.” He shifted his weight slightly and moaned. He panted through the pain like a woman in labor. After a minute, he said, “If I pass out, will you turn this place inside out looking for the car keys?”

“Probably. And my phone. What did you do with my phone?”

“It’s a secret. When did you find that propeller blade?”

“While I was washing.”

“I shouldn’t have been so nice to you.”

“It was wedged between two boards in the wall. I couldn’t get it out while you were counting down. I had to leave it there.”

“When I discovered the arrow—”

“I never saw the arrow until you broke it over your knee.”

“I thought I’d trumped you.”

“So did I. I knew I had only one chance to get to that broken propeller.”

“And you took it.”

“Yes.”

“That was brave. But remember…if you’re ever in a similar situation…”

When his voice faltered, she prompted him. “What?”

“Go for the kill.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

She heard the rustle of the tarp beneath him as he moved restlessly, then he lay still and silent for a time. Finally, he said, “You…you…”

She pulled her legs out from under her hips and leaned down closer. “Yes?”

“You could have killed me a dozen times over by now. What’s kept you from it?”

“I told you, and I meant it, that I didn’t want you to die.”

“Because of the kiss?”

“The kiss?”

“You remember it. Sexy as hell? When we went from zero to sixty in about a second and a half? Virtual foreplay?”

“I don’t recall it like that.”

“Hell you don’t.”

“I just don’t want you to die, that’s all.”

“Okay, okay. Thanks for that.”

He groped in the darkness until he found her left hand, drew it to him, and laid it on his chest. The hair on it was soft, the skin hot. It was rising and falling rapidly and erratically. He rubbed the back of her hand and rolled slightly onto his right side, the one uninjured.

“But in case…in case you were to change your mind…”

Too late she realized what he was doing. He clipped the plastic cuff around her left wrist and his right. She made an inarticulate sound of outrage, mostly at herself for being so easily tricked by talk of sexy kisses.

She pulled hard on her hand, knowing already that it was futile. Then she remembered the knife. She had set it down after using it to cut the bandana into strips. She began searching for it with her free hand.

But he was ahead of her on that, too. “It’s in my seat pocket,” he said, “where the cuff was. It was careless of you to set it down within my reach after you used it.”

“I was trying to keep you from bleeding to death!”

“If I do, you’ll be able to roll me over, get the knife, and cut yourself free. But the only way you’ll get to it is if I’m dead.”

“Please don’t do this. I can’t help you if I can’t move around.”

“Right now you can help me by lying still and being quiet.”

“Be reasonable, Shaw. It’s over. You have a serious, possibly mortal wound. We have no way of knowing the extent of the internal injuries.” She went on like that for at least a full minute, pleading and arguing with him before she realized that he wasn’t arguing back.

When Shaw woke up, rain was beating against the tin roof like a shower of ball bearings. But it was pain not dulled by ibuprofen that had awakened him. Jordie had placed the spotlight even with his waistline, the beam directed onto his wound. She was palpating the area around it.

“Will you please stop that? It hurts like a son of a bitch.”

Her brow was furrowed. “Shaw, listen to me, you’re—”

“What time is it?” He crooked his left arm and blinked the numerals on his wristwatch into focus. It wasn’t too long till dawn which was why the darkness was no longer absolute black, but a dark gray. There wouldn’t be a sunrise, however. Not the way the rain was coming down.

“Are you lucid?” Jordie asked.

He looked at her and nodded.

“This is worse. It’s getting infected.”

Although he had to clench his jaw to keep from moaning, he struggled up so he could check for himself. Jordie had untied the makeshift binding and removed the blood-soaked bandana, exposing the torn, raw flesh. The area surrounding the wound had become puffy and red.

“You’re burning up,” she said.

Yes, he realized that he had a fever. His skin felt itchy and too tight; his eyes were stinging; he had a raging thirst. “Pass me that water bottle.”

She was quick to do so, reaching for it with her right hand, since her left was still shackled to his. As he raised the bottle to his mouth, he halted it midway. “What was that?”

“What?” She followed the direction of his gaze to the door. “Lightning. It’s been flashing off and on for at least an hour.” Coming back around, she said, “Shaw, you’ve got to give up. Let me cut myself free. Tell me where the phone battery is. Or the car keys. I’ll drive you—”

“Shh!”

“Don’t shush me. You’ve got—”

He pulled her down beside him and rolled partially on top of her so he could reach the spotlight with his left hand. He clicked it off.

“What are you doing?” She tried to throw him off, but he kept her pinned down, his left thigh thrown across her.

He trained his feverish eyes on the door where he saw another flicker of light, but the rumble he detected above the racket of the rain on the roof wasn’t thunder.

“Shaw—”

“Be quiet!”

“Let me up!”

Instead he clamped his left hand over her mouth. “Car,” he said. “If you say a word, if you even breathe hard, whoever is in it will likely die. His or her blood will be on your hands. Got it?”