As his eyes followed that direction, she hurdled Gus and dived for the gun hand. It was not as great a distance as it seemed, for the motor home was compactly organized.

“Thatch!” Gus repeated. “I’m hurt!”

She got the gun hand and clubbed Thatch’s wrist with the stiffened side of her own hand. Not hard enough; she lacked the training to be really effective. He did not let go. Instead his other arm came around to grab her. They wrestled clumsily, jammed between the two front seats, their feet skidding on the carpeted platform. But she got her shoulder into his chest and bent the gun hand back until his grip loosened.

Still Thatch clung to her with desperate strength, hugging her in a manner that would have been ludicrous if intended to be romantic and suicidal if combative—except for the gun. Obviously he knew nothing about fighting, and he was trying to restrain her rather than hurt her. At another time she might have appreciated the consideration, if that were what it was. Maybe they just didn’t like damaged merchandise.

She wrestled the gun from his weakened grasp and swung it at his head. But his clumsy hold entangled her, and the blow only grazed his ear. The butt of the gun bent the earpiece of his glasses, and the lenses fell sidewise across his face, suspended from his other ear. The blow hurt, she was sure, but he did not collapse the way Gus had.

She hit him again, more squarely, but the gun lacked heft, and still he would not yield, though his glasses continued to dangle perilously against his chin. His hand wrenched at the back of her blouse, pulling it out of the band of the skirt, and they both tripped over Gus’s legs and toppled. She did not have proper hold of the gun, and it fell out of her hand as she struggled to disengage herself from the two men.

“Thatch!” Gus cried again, though he was now only peripherally involved.