Chapter 12: Silver

I started walking toward him.

Shane brought the rifle up.

"Stop there, Danny."

I kept walking.

The first shot took me in the right thigh, low and clean, exactly where I'd told Marta it would.

My leg went hot and then cold, and I went down on one knee.

Five thousand people made a sound.

I stood back up.

I'd carried a boy's bite on that leg all week, and I'd carried pianos on worse.

I took another step.

"Stay down!" Shane said. "Stay down, you idiot!"

The second shot hit my left shoulder and turned me halfway around.

I heard Rosie scream from the bleachers.

I turned back and kept walking.

Shane backed up a step, and then another.

The rifle came up again, and for the first time it pointed at my face.

It shook.

In the years I'd carried his cases, he'd shot crawlers out of the air, and I'd never once seen his rifle shake.

"Shane," I said. "You won't."

His jaw worked.

The barrel dropped six inches.

I walked the last three steps and put my left hand on the rifle barrel, and I pushed it down toward the floor.

Then I took his right hand in mine.

I held it without squeezing, the way you'd hold a kid's hand crossing Broadway.

"What are you doing?" he said.

"I'm not fighting you."

"Then let go!"

"I can't," I said. "If I let go I'll fall down, and then you win."