Amid the shouting and the confusion, Edgars yelled, “Come on out, Cross. Join the wrap party for the whole cast and crew!”
Saying nothing, peering all around me, I noticed a three-inch gap between the bottom of the spreader and its wheels. I rolled onto my side and extended my right arm and pistol, trying to spot Edgars’s feet and lower legs.
But he was too far to my right, blocked from view by the blade of a small bulldozer. I needed the man to move.
“The FBI is surrounding this place, Edgars!” I yelled out. “Put your weapons down!”
“Bullshit,” Edgars said, holding his ground. “The FBI would never let you come in here alone. I’ve hacked into their systems, read their protocols.”
“They’re right behind me. I radioed them my position!”
“Impossible. I’ve jammed everything within ten miles.”
That idea seemed to embolden him because he burst out from behind the bulldozer blade at a steep retreating angle, so fast I had no shot. He skidded to a stop right behind the gas tanks. Definitely no shot.
Unaware of what I could and couldn’t see, Edgars kept his camera rolling, set his rifle on the ground, and stood back up.
He’s filming and needs a free hand to open the gas valves, I thought, realizing in a split second that I had only one option, and I needed to take that option right now or never. I aimed at the top turret of the halo sight, right above the AR’s action, and fired my .40 S&W.
The hundred-and-fifty-grain bullet hit the turret, blew through the sight, and smashed into the action with four hundred foot-pounds of energy. The gun went skidding across the concrete floor and under a combine’s blades.
I pushed myself up into a crouch, saw a shocked Edgars spin away from the gas tanks, yank down his gas mask, and run toward the combine. I took off after him, gun up.
“Stop or I’ll shoot!” I yelled a moment before I smelled the propane hissing full force from the tanks.
With my left arm and jacket sleeve across my nose and mouth, I hobbled past the women and Pratt, who was unconscious, and the tanks. Edgars was flat on his belly thirty feet beyond them, reaching under the combine. I feared shooting because of the gas. Before I could get close enough to jump on him, he twisted around, pointing the rifle and the camera at me. I skidded to a stop, aiming my pistol at him.
“Shoot him!” Lourdes Rodriguez screamed.
“Shoot him!” the other women cried.
Edgars bellowed from inside the mask, “He shoots, you all die!”
I stared at him. “You shoot, we all die.”
“Maybe that’s the point.”
“Why the hell are you doing this, Edgars?”
He looked at me as if I were stupid and said, “I hate blondes. I always have. Bitches, every one of them.”
“No one will see your last little film if you shoot and blow this place up.”
He beamed at me through the glass eyeholes of the gas mask. “The cameras are streaming, uploading over Wi-Fi.”
“We can all walk out of here.”
“No, we can’t,” he said, and he looked over the top of his busted sight at me. “Best thing? I can’t miss from here, so I get to see you die first. Just a half second before we all go up in flames.”
For the first time, I felt woozy from the gas. Edgars lifted his camera higher and glanced at the screen on the back as if trying to frame me, the gas canisters, and the women behind me for one final shot.
“All blondes must die eventually,” Edgars said. “And cops and geniuses.”
“Don’t!”
He pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER