GRAHAM BOYD DROVE

fast, away from the place where two bodies lay in a fancy vacation house, his wife’s clothing in another and her car at the bottom of a black lake.

He tried to leave those images behind. But he couldn’t.

He’d thought he’d be seeing Sandra, then stopping for a fast drink at JJ’s—so he could honestly tell Brynn he’d been to the poker game.

But, man, had everything changed…. He’d never experienced a night like this one.

Glancing up into the rearview mirror, he saw the police car behind him, coming up close, real fast. Graham glanced at the speedometer. He was doing eighty-five.

He drove a half mile farther, then pulled over. Leaned his head against the steering wheel, gripping the plastic compulsively with his strong hands.

A few minutes later a uniformed officer was standing beside the driver’s side window. Graham took a deep breath and climbed out of the car. He stepped up to the officer and shook Eric Munce’s hand. “Thanks. I really mean it. I knew you’d understand. Nobody else would.”

“Isn’t the most regular thing in the world but I’ll go on your word, Graham.”

Brynn’s husband zipped his jacket up. He got his flashlight and a Buck knife from the tool carrier in the back of the truck. As he relocked the box, he said, “I’m not sure I’m right. Not sure at all. But everything I know about her tells me that she’d head this way.”

“And the canoe?”

“If she used it, it was a trick. To fool those men. Shoved it in the lake and then took off on foot. Brynn hated the water. She’d never try to escape that way if she could help it.”

Lakes and oceans weren’t her environment. He didn’t explain to Munce about his wife’s control issue.

“I sure hope you’re right, Graham…. I’d like a piece of those bastards,” Munce muttered, eyes gleaming. He had a round face, narrow light-colored eyes and short blond hair. He looked more like a marine than a deputy and Graham wondered if he’d been in the military. He asked.

“Yessir, I was.” Then confessed: “National Guard. Never saw the big show, though.” He shrugged with a stoic grin and asked, “But there was that ranger station on the map. You saw it? The one near Apex Lake. Why wouldn’t she make for that?”

“Might have. I’m not saying I’m certain. But I think Brynn’ll take the harder route, like I was saying. It’ll equalize them, the women and those men after ’em. On a trail, the men can move faster. In the woods she’ll have the advantage. And Brynn won’t let anybody get an edge over her.”

“Woman must be hell to play cards with.”

“We don’t play cards,” Graham said absently, staring at the map.

He then looked over the dark woods. One car whizzed past. The highway was otherwise empty.

“You’d be a good cop, Graham.”

“Me?” He laughed grimly. “No, sir.” He tapped the map. “Here’s the Joliet Trail. She’ll leave the path about there.” He touched a spot. “Then make for the Snake River and follow it right up here to the interstate.”

Munce looked at the steep hill vanishing below them into a morass of woods. “That’s a tough climb. You ever been here?”

“To the park? Yeah, but not here. Hiking when I was younger.” Graham recalled asking Joey to come with him several times in the past year. The boy had always declined, with a look on his face that said, And I’d want to do that why? Graham had regretted that he hadn’t insisted. He believed he could’ve made Joey enjoy himself.

Thinking, Should’ve listened to my instincts.

Then: What does it matter?

Munce told him he was familiar with this area. He and Brynn had been involved in a search-and-recovery mission that had ended about a mile from here.

Graham noted the word “recovery,” as in “body recovery.” Not a successful rescue. The deputy continued, “I remember some paths. Hikers and rock climbers made them. There’re some level areas but we’re going to see mostly drop-offs, twenty, thirty feet, some of them. Even more. You’ll come on them real sudden. Watch where you walk.”

Graham nodded. He said, “I’m guessing they’ll stick close enough to hear the river, to guide them. That means they’ll be somewhere in a strip fifty, a hundred yards wide, from the edge of the gorge. That’s where we should make our way down. We can’t call to ’em loud, give ourselves away…. We’ll just have to stop every so often and look around us. We could probably whisper. The sheriff said it’s two men are after them, right?”

“Yeah, what the footprints show.”

Graham looked at the deputy’s car, the shotgun locked in the front seat.

“I don’t have a gun here, Eric.”

“I can’t do that, Graham. That’s a lose-your-job thing.”

“Ah.”

“Stay close. I scored second in the department shooting competition.”

“Well, maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to have two at least.”

Munce considered this. He returned to the car, unlocked the shotgun, pocketed a half dozen shells. He locked the car door and returned to Graham. Together they walked to the edge of the forest and peered down the slope of boulders and trees. To their left the river, a hundred feet down the sheer gorge walls, roared as it broke over boulders and tree trunks and a small dam, at the bottom of which was an eerie sinkhole where leaves and trash spiraled into a foul broth and disappeared.

“Looks like the waterway to hell.”

“Thanks for this, Eric. You going to get into trouble?”

“Sheriff sent us out to search. I said I was checking some roads north. I just didn’t say how far I was going.”

“Tom’s a good man but I have a feeling he’s wrong on this one. I know my wife.”

For a few minutes they wound, or muscled, their way through stands of thick brush, then over a soft bed of pine needles, which was a pleasure after the ornery forsythia, vinca and other viney and stalky plants that seemed unnaturally attracted to their boots. The hussssh of the water from the Snake River grew louder.

“Time to get serious here.” Munce bent down, spat in the dirt and made mud. He smeared it on his face and cheekbones. Graham hesitated, feeling foolish, then did the same.

“Okay. Well, let’s do it.” Munce racked the shotgun, put the safety on and led the way. They started downward into an impossible tangle of trees and branches and rocks and shadow.

Graham whispered, “Eric, curious. Was it Brynn who beat you?”

“Beat me?”

“In the shooting competition. You said you were second.”

“Oh, no, was Dobbie Masters. Boy come outa his momma’s tummy with a pistol in his hand. But I will say this, Brynn may not be the best shot, but she empties the clip and reloads twice as fast as anybody on the force. In a firefight, that counts for more. Believe me.”

 

JAMES JASONS FINISHED

his second hamburger, which was cold but he wanted the calories. He drove along the interstate, glancing from time to time at the screen on a small box stuck to the Lexus dashboard.

The indicator told him he was about one mile from his target, which had stopped moving and had been parked by the roadside for about ten minutes.

Jasons assessed his performance as the Feldmans’ grieving friend Ari Paskell, which was one of his four identities, complete with car registration and driver’s license. When you work for somebody like Stanley Mankewitz the budget isn’t quite unlimited but it’s big enough that you can afford the tools to do your job with—the union boss’s favorite word—efficiency.

Back at the Feldman house, as he’d pretended to compose himself after hearing the sad news, he’d learned plenty. He’d made up the story about a phone call from Steven to learn what the police actually suspected, that there were two of them and they weren’t physically large, thank you, Deputy Munce.

He’d also told the story to plant the seed that the killing was locally motivated; it didn’t originate in Milwaukee. He couldn’t tell if Dahl believed that or not.

Jasons had also overheard other snippets, giving him a good idea of what the police knew about the crime, while pretending to make a phone call—you’re invisible when you’re on your mobile; nobody thinks you’re listening. The sheriff missed that completely but Jasons didn’t put him down as a small-town rube. Brilliant people always look for the simplest, most logical explanation for a situation and Jasons had offered one: a grieving friend, a driver’s license and a legitimate tag number on a nice car.

It helped too that Jasons had left soon after, as he’d been asked to, before the sheriff started to wonder about this continued presence.

In fact, he didn’t need to stay. Because his next steps had nothing to do with how the police were handling the investigation. No, he had focused on the husband of that woman deputy who’d fled into the woods, escaping Emma Feldman’s killers. Noting the conspiratorial conversation that Graham Boyd had had with Munce, Jasons deduced that they were planning their own renegade search, independent of the sheriff’s plan.

Dahl might’ve known his staff and he might’ve known logic, and human nature in general—all good cops did—but he hadn’t known the sort of things you learn about a person by sharing his life and spending bedroom time with him. Jasons just had to look at his own relationship with Robert to know this was true.

So he put his money on the husband and Munce to lead him to the deputy—named Brynn—and to the Feldmans’ friend, the witness to the murder.

The two women who were the moths drawing the men Jasons was trying to keep alive tonight.

He recalled, back at the Lake Mondac house, Graham shaking “Paskell’s” hand and giving his sympathies. Then Jasons had wished them luck with the search. Graham had then turned away and spoken to Munce, the deputy looking down as he considered the words. Munce then said something back and they’d both looked at their watches.

Might as well shout their intentions over a megaphone.

But, it turned out, everybody else was concentrating on the business at hand and the exchange had gone unnoticed. On the pretext of asking another officer for directions, Jasons had passed by the husband’s pickup truck and dropped what looked like a small chip of wood inside the bed, behind some potted plants. The wood chip contained a GPS tracker—originally designed for hunters to use to track their dogs should they get overly enthusiastic when going after a shot bird and vanish into the distance.

Jasons owned and had used lots of equipment from security services, some of it worthy of master spies. But these dog trackers, which sold for about five hundred dollars, were far superior to the security equipment that cost ten times as much (even more if the customer was the federal government, he’d learned).

Now, as he approached what a sign reported was the Snake River Bridge, the tracker was humming steadily. Then he saw the white pickup and a squad car parked off the road, half hidden in some bushes about two hundred yards this side of the bridge.

Jasons piloted his Lexus past them.

So this was where they believed Deputy McKenzie and the two killers were heading.

Jasons drove over the bridge, below which was an impressive moonlit gorge. Then as soon as the interstate was deserted he made a U over the flat, grassy median and crossed the bridge again going the other way. Then, about even with where the men had parked, on the other side, he nosed his car into a woody area off the shoulder and pulled to a stop.

He climbed out and stretched. He opened the trunk and replaced his sports coat with a windbreaker and his dress shoes with boots. He took out a canvas bag, which he slung over his shoulder.

Waiting for a massive Peterbilt tractor-trailer to pass, swirling dust and grit in its wake, he crossed asphalt, the median and then more road and vanished into the woods.

 

AT THE POND,

an oval far smaller but no less dark and eerie than Lake Mondac, Brynn touched her finger to her lips and glanced at Amy, smiling.

The little girl nodded. She was wearing Brynn’s dark sweatshirt over her white T. Her legs were bare and pale but she didn’t seem cold. She’d given up asking about her mommy and now walked dutifully beside Brynn, cuddling Chester, a stuffed creature of indeterminate species.

Surveying the pond, their rallying point, Brynn thought how happy she’d been when she’d first met Charlie Gandy. An ally, a weapon, a ride to safety.

Control.

And it had all been just a cruel joke. She didn’t even have her spear anymore. She felt wholly depleted. She pulled the girl down beside her and continued to scan the pond carefully.

Motion. In the bushes. Brynn tensed and Amy looked at her warily.

Was it Hart and his partner?

Was it the wolf who’d attached himself to them?

No. Brynn exhaled long. It was Michelle.

The young woman was crouching, like a huntress. The spear in one hand and something in the other—the knife, it seemed. Waiting for the killers, defiant, tense, as if daring them to try to hurt her.

Brynn and the girl started to make their way toward the woman. In a whisper Brynn called, “Michelle! It’s me.”

The woman froze. But then Brynn moved forward and stepped into a wash of azure-white light from the moon.

“Brynn!” Michelle cried, slipping the knife into her pocket and running forward. She stopped, seeing Amy standing bewildered behind Brynn’s back.

The women embraced briefly and Michelle dropped to her knees, hugging the girl. “Who’s this?”

Amy eased free from the overly emotional embrace.

“This’s Amy. She’s going to come with us.” Brynn shook her head, foregoing for now the story of how she’d come by the new companion. The young woman was sensitive enough to ask no questions.

“You’re adorable! And who’s this?”

“Chester.”

“He’s as cute as you are.”

The little girl remained somber, sensing the atmosphere of tragedy if not comprehending the actual events that had caused it. If she didn’t know about her mother’s fate, maybe she hadn’t witnessed the other killings.

The moon was lower now, darkness was deepening. Curiously, Amy was the only one among them who didn’t seem uneasy at this. Maybe if you have parents like hers, fear of the dark doesn’t figure much in your life.

The girl blinked at a flying squirrel as it sailed past. Brynn hoped she’d laugh, or show a bit of delight at the bizarre animal. Nothing. Her face was a mask.

“I heard some noises,” Michelle said. Meaning the gunshots. “Our friends…?”

“Still with us. One hurt a little more but mobile.”

“So they could be on the way here.”

“We have to get going. To the Snake River. We’ll climb the gorge and be at the interstate in forty-five minutes. An hour, tops.”

“You said there was an easier way.”

“Easier but a lot longer. And Hart thinks we’re going that way.”

Michelle blinked. “You talked to him?”

“Yep.”

“You did?” the woman whispered in astonishment. “How’d that happen?”

She told her briefly about her captivity in the van.

“Oh, my God. He nearly killed you.”

It was pretty close to mutual, Brynn reflected.

“And what’d he say?”

“Not much. But I told him we were making for the interstate, so he’ll think we’re going toward Point of Rocks.”

“Like reverse psychology.”

“Yep.” Brynn dug the map out of her pocket and opened it.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Stole it from him—our friend Mr. Hart.”

Michelle gave an astonished laugh.

Brynn oriented herself and pointed out where they were. She didn’t need a compass reading. The map was detailed and it was easy to tell from landmarks the best route. She pointed out the direction to head.

“I want my mommy.”

Brynn shook her head at Michelle and said to the girl, “Honey, we have to get out of here before we can find her. And that means walking. Do you like to walk?”

“I guess.”

“And then we’re going to climb a hill.”

“Like rock climbing? There’s a climbing wall near my school. Charlie said he’d take me but he never did.”

“Well, this’ll be like that. Only more adventurous.”

“Like Dora the Explorer,” Michelle said. “And Boots…” When Amy looked at her blankly the young woman added, “The monkey.”

“I know. I just, like, haven’t seen that for years. That’s not what Mom and Charlie watch.”

Not wishing to speculate on what was viewing material in that household, Brynn said cheerfully, “Let’s go.” Then to Michelle: “You keep the spear. You can use it for a crutch. Let me have one of the knives.”

Michelle pulled a Chicago Cutlery out of her jacket and handed it to Brynn.

A bit of control. Not much. But better than nothing.

A faint laugh. Brynn turned to Michelle, who was studying her. “Do I look as bad as you?” the young woman asked.

“Doubt it. I just experienced my second car wreck of the night. I win. But, yep, you’re not so hot either. I wouldn’t go out on the town without a makeover.”

Michelle squeezed her arm.

They started hiking.

The Snake River was closer than she’d estimated. They made it in a half hour and that included keeping to the thickest cover and pausing to look behind them frequently for the men.

Of whom there was no sign. This was reassuring but Brynn wouldn’t allow herself the thought that Hart had fallen for her bluff and was in fact headed in the opposite direction along the riverbank.

They paused in a circle of tall grass to look up and down the bank of the wide, shallow river punctuated with rocks, logs and small islands.

No one.

“Wait here.” Clutching the knife, Brynn eased forward. She knelt on the bank and immersed her face in the freezing water. Now she didn’t mind the cold, which dulled the pain in her cheek and neck. Then she drank what must have been a quart. She hadn’t realized she was dehydrated.

She studied the otherworldly landscape, saw no one else and motioned to Michelle and Amy to join her. They too drank.

Then Brynn gazed up the hill, in the direction of the interstate. It couldn’t be more than a mile away.

Though a mile straight up.

“Jesus,” Michelle said, following Brynn’s eyes. About fifty feet away the landscape went up at a steep angle—at least thirty degrees, though at points it seemed forty-five. There were also vertical faces. They couldn’t climb those, of course, but Brynn knew, from the search-and-rescue a few years ago, that they wouldn’t have to. It was possible to hike up if you picked your route carefully. There were also a number of wide plateaus that were more or less flat and filled with vegetation for cover.

They now walked to the beginning of the hill, the churning river on their right, where the gorge began.

Looking back, Michelle gestured at the muddy ground behind them. “Wait, our footprints.”

“They don’t look too obvious.”

“They will to somebody with a flashlight.”

“Good point.”

Michelle ran back to where they’d taken their drinks and broke some branches off an evergreen bush. Then backing toward the cliff, she swept the leaves over the mud, wielding the improvised broom furiously, obscuring their footprints. Brynn could hear her gasping hard. Michelle ignored her injured ankle, though the pain must have been significant.

Brynn was watching a woman very different from the rich dilettante of earlier in the evening, bragging about future stardom and whining about other people’s shoes and thorn pricks. Brynn had known people who collapsed under the smallest stress and people who unexpectedly rose to meet impossible challenges. She’d been sure that Michelle fell into the first category.

She was wrong.

And she knew now she had an ally.

The young woman joined the others.

Amy yawned. “I’m tired.”

“I know, honey,” Michelle said. “We’ll get you to sleep soon. Can I put Chester in my pocket?”

“Will you zip it up so he won’t fall out?”

“You bet.”

“But don’t close it all the way. So he can breathe.”

Acting so much younger than her years, Brynn reflected sadly.

Michelle slipped the stuffed animal into her pocket and they started to climb as in the distance, on the interstate, a truck’s engine brake rattled harshly, beckoning them forward.

 

GRAHAM AND MUNCE

were making their way carefully down the slope from the interstate.

A truck sped past behind them, the noise dampened by the foliage and confused by the wind as the driver downshifted and filled the night with the rattle of a Gatling gun.

Soon they were well into the trek, not talking, uttering only labored breathing—the effort to stay upright and not fall forward was as great as a climb upward would have been. They could hear the rush of the river, a hundred feet below, in the cellar of the gorge.

Graham made his living with flora and he was keenly aware of how different the vegetation around him now was from that at his company, plants sitting subdued in ceramic pots or lolling on bundled root-balls. For years he’d changed the geography of residences and offices by plopping a few camellias or rhododendrons into planting beds primed with limey soil and tucking them away under a blanket of mulch. Here, plants weren’t decorations; they were the infrastructure, population, society itself. Controlling all. He and Munce meant nothing, were less than insignificant, as were all the animals here. It seemed to Graham that the croaks and hisses and hoots were desperate pleas that the trees and plants blithely ignored. Indifferent.

And treacherous too. Once, they had to tightrope walk across a log above a thick sea of poison ivy, to which he was allergic. Had any touched his face, the rash and swelling would have blinded him. Even dead vegetation was dangerous. Munce stepped on a ledge covered with last year’s leaves, which slid out from underneath him, starting a small avalanche of loam, gravel and dirt. He’d saved himself from a twenty-foot fall down a steep, rocky slope by grabbing a fortuitous overhanging branch.

And as they wound downward, looking for the safest route, Graham couldn’t help but think that the noise from stepping on a desiccated branch or kicking an unnoticed pile of crisp leaves might also alert the killers.

They found some paths, which summer hikers had worn, but the trails were sporadic and didn’t run very far so the men were forced to make their own. Sometimes a path would vanish at the edge of a cliff and they had to climb down six, seven feet. When they did this Munce set the safety on the shotgun and handed it to Graham, who waited until the deputy was down, and then regretfully passed it back.

They were now a hundred yards from the interstate with the dangerous precipice above of the gorge not far away on their left.

To maintain silence Munce would give hand commands. He’d indicate pause, go right or left, look at this or that. Graham thought it was as silly as the face paint but he’d talked Munce into this mission and if the young man wanted to play soldier, fine with him.

They paused, looking down a very steep hill. They’d have to use saplings and trees as handholds. Munce grimaced and started to reach out for one when Graham cried out in a whisper, “No! Eric, no!”

The deputy turned back quickly, eyes wide, fumbling with the gun. He slipped on the incline and went down hard, sliding headfirst along the bed of pine needles, slippery as ice. Graham lunged forward and managed to seize the deputy’s cuff.

“Jesus. What?” The deputy managed to turn around, grab Graham’s hand and together they scrabbled to more level ground. “You see something?”

“Sorry,” Graham said. “Look.”

Eric, frowning, didn’t get it at first. Then he saw that Graham was pointing to the thin tree trunk he’d almost grabbed. From it protruded needle-sharp thorns, each about two inches long.

“It’s a honey locust. Most dangerous tree in the forest. They’re illegal to plant in a lot of places. One of those thorns’d go right through your hand. People’ve died from infections.”

“Lord, I never looked. There more of ’em around here?”

“Oh, yeah, if there’s one there’s others. And over there? See that?” Graham pointed to a stubby trunk. “Hercules’-club. Hard to see in the dark but they’ve got thorns too. And with the woods thinning that means more sun and more blackberry—you know, brambles—and wild roses. Blackberry thorns’ll break off in your skin. And you don’t get ’em out right away they’ll get infected. In a big way.”

“Damn land mines,” Munce muttered. Then he froze. And, foregoing the cryptic hand signals, he whispered, “Way down there. A flash. You see anything?”

Graham nodded—a faint dot of bluish light. Maybe a flashlight or a reflection of the moonlight on metal or glass. It was about three-quarters of a mile away.

Munce undid the thong that covered his black pistol and gestured to Graham to follow him.

 

HART WAS LOOKING

down at the GPS, which had survived the van crash in better condition than he had. Nothing broken, just sore—but everyplace was sore and the bullet wound in his arm had started to bleed again.

Thank you, Michelle.

Thank you, Brynn.

A wave of anger seared him and for a moment he didn’t give a damn about craftsmanship; he wanted to get even. He wanted to pay them both back in a big way. Sweet, bloody revenge…

Maybe Compton Lewis was onto something.

They were standing on the banks of the Snake River, which ambled out of the flatter forests, east, on their right, and flowed into the compressed gorge west.

He’d lost the map in the crash but they’d gotten here by using the GPS, which wasn’t as detailed but was good enough. “Way I figure it…” His voice faded as he glanced at Lewis. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

The other man was standing with his hands at his sides, holding the shotgun. Apart from his natural slump, he looked like a soldier on guard duty.

“Bothered you, killing that woman, right?”

“Didn’t think it would. But…seeing her eyes, you know.”

“That’s hard,” Hart said. He was thinking, Maybe the first one. Then you don’t even notice it.

He was replaying the scene at the camper. Lewis starting the fire beneath the Winnebago, then returning to the other side. Two men had rushed out the front door, a fat one and a thinner one, with a beard, carrying a fire extinguisher. A woman hurried out the back door, looking frantically around, screaming. Hart had shot the men quickly, before the fat one could even reach for his gun. Lewis, in the rear, had the shotgun trained on the woman. But he’d done nothing at first.

Hart was going to do Lewis a favor and shoot her too but he heard the bang as the shotgun went off, as if by itself. Lewis seemed surprised. As the heavy woman flew backward her chest and neck rippled, then started to bleed. She dropped to her knees and began to crawl toward Lewis. The second time, he actually aimed and fired. She fell backward, kicked some, then died.

“That was unpleasant,” Hart said.

Lewis nodded.

“I was telling you, they were tweakers. Probably slamming their own stuff. Nobody cooks meth without using it. Maybe not at first but they get addicted. It eats their souls.”

“Yeah,” Lewis said softly. Then he came back to earth, Hart could see in his eyes.

Hart continued, “Way I figure it is this.” He showed him the GPS on the BlackBerry. “It’s nearly six miles to Point of Rocks, going that way, upstream.” He pointed right. Then he indicated the gorge, to their left. “But that way, up that hill, they’ll be at the interstate in forty minutes, an hour. And that’s where they’re going.”

“You’re sure?”

“Pretty sure. She told me she was. When we were in the van. But she’s the Trickster, remember? She knew there was a chance I’d survive the crash. Which meant that she had to give me information that’d lead me in a different direction. She’d said the interstate, thinking I’d believe it was really Point of Rocks.”

“You think she was playing that game?”

Hart put away the BlackBerry and strode up and down the riverbank. “Hey, Lewis, what’s that look like to you?” He shone the flashlight on the ground.

“Like, I don’t know. Somebody was sweeping, covering up footprints.”

“Yeah. It does.” He walked to the base of the steep hill. “Okay. Here we go.” He found a broken branch. “Here’s her broom. They did come this way. And look at that….” He pointed out a tiny set of shoe prints. “That little girl. In the camper. She must’ve got out.”

Lewis had gone quiet again, and he rubbed his tattoo—the cross on his neck—compulsively.

Hart said, “I’m not inclined to kill children. We’ll take care of the women but let the girl be.”

But, funny, Lewis was bothered by something else.

“One thing I want to say. I should’ve before. But…”

“Go on, Comp.”

“That robbery I told you about?”

“The robbery?”

“The bank.”

In the snow, Hart remembered. Where he’d traded shots with the bank guard who was a former cop. “Yeah?”

“Wasn’t quite honest with you.”

“That right?”

“Something’s been eating at me, Hart.”

He was no longer the sarcastic “my friend.” And hadn’t been for hours. He said, “Go ahead, Comp. What is it?”

“Truth is…we didn’t get away with fifty thousand. Or whatever I said. Was closer to…okay, it was closer to three. Really two and some change. And, okay, it wasn’t a bank. Was a guard refilling the ATM outside…and I only fired to scare him. He dropped his gun. And peed his pants, I think. He didn’t have any backup piece either…. I boost things up sometimes, exaggerate, you know. Got into the habit around my brother. Kind of had to, growing up…got disrespected a lot. So. There you have it.”

“That’s it, the confession?”

“Guess so.”

“Hell, Comp, I wouldn’t want to work with somebody didn’t have a healthy ego. Way you can look at it, you made two thousand bucks for, what, two minutes’ work?”

“’Bout that.”

“That’s about sixty thousand an hour. And he peed his pants? Hell, that made it worth it right there.” Hart laughed.

Lewis asked shyly, “You still interested in doing a heist together, you and me?”

“You bet I am. Sooner we’re done here, the sooner we can start planning some jobs that don’t crash and burn. One hundred ten percent.”

Repressing a grin, Lewis tapped his cigarettes again, like a good Catholic blessing himself.

 

THE TREK WAS

much harder than she’d anticipated.

The hillside was so steep in places that it couldn’t be climbed, at least not with a nine-year-old in tow. Brynn frequently had to find alternative routes.

“How about there?”

Brynn glanced at the place where Michelle was pointing. It seemed to be a fairly level path between a rock ledge and a dense cluster of trees. Brynn considered it but that way would leave them completely exposed from below, with no escape routes. They had to bypass the path, taking precious minutes to find a way around. Brynn wasn’t entirely confident that Hart had bought the ploy about Point of Rocks. She was beginning to feel an itching sensation on the back of her neck, as if the men were drawing close.

The women continued upward, looping around a formation of limestone, twenty feet high. Brynn could see that rock climbers had been here. Metal spikes had been pounded into the cracks. Tonight the hobby struck her as pure madness. Something Joey would try. But she put her son out of her head. Concentrate, she told herself.

A brief respite as they traversed a fairly level trail. Then upward again, gasping for breath, all three of them.

The sound of the Snake running through the gorge on their right grew softer as they moved higher. Brynn guessed they were now sixty feet or so above the river.

“Oh, no,” Michelle whispered. Brynn too stopped. Their level plain suddenly ended in a sheer rock wall, a dead end. To the right, the ground extended to a steep drop-off into the gorge. Brynn walked toward it slowly. Dizzy, uncomfortable with the height, she didn’t get to the edge itself but returned quickly. “We can’t go that way.”

She sighed in frustration. The men couldn’t be more than a half mile from the interstate but the hike was taking forever. To go back and find a way around the wall would add another ten minutes.

Brynn looked back, then surveyed the wall. It was about twenty feet high and not completely vertical. The slope was probably seventy degrees in most places and the surface was cracked and craggy. She asked Michelle, “Can you do it?”

“Damn right, I can.”

Brynn smiled, said to Amy, “You remember when you were little, Amy? You and I’ll climb together. We’ll play piggyback?”

“I guess. Rudy wants me to ride piggyback sometimes. I don’t like it. He smells bad.”

Brynn shot a glance to Michelle, who grimaced in disgust. But Brynn smiled at Amy. “Well, I probably don’t smell too good either. But it’ll be fun. Come on. Let’s go.” Brynn turned around. She whispered to Michelle, “I’ll go up first. If something happens, I drop her, try to break her fall. Don’t worry about me.”

Michelle nodded and boosted the girl up, whispering, “Can you handle her?”

“No choice,” Brynn gasped.

The theme for the evening.

Though the burden wasn’t as great as it could be. She was thinking how thin the little girl was…and about the sad fate that had landed her squarely in such neglect.

They started up the cliff, a foot at a time. Heart slamming, legs burning, Brynn slowly climbed. About fifteen feet from the ground, the muscles in her legs began quivering. More from fear than from effort. How she hated heights…. She paused frequently.

Amy, with her arms around Brynn’s neck, was holding on very tightly, making it hard for Brynn to breathe, but she’d rather the child kept a solid grip.

Her rubber legs propelled her another five feet, then ten, grasping handholds harder than she needed to, fingers cramping. Even her toes curled, as if she were climbing barefoot.

Finally, an eternity, her head was over the edge, and she was looking at a flatter plain. In front of her was a huge tangle of forsythia. Not daring to look down, she grabbed all the vines within arm’s length in her right hand, tested them and, with a deep breath, let go of the rock. She pulled herself halfway over the edge and then said, “Amy, go over my head. Put your knees on my shoulders and climb. When you’re on the top, stop. Just stand there.”

Brynn was about to offer more reassurance but the girl said quickly, “Okay,” and climbed off. And stood motionless, at attention.

A child used to doing exactly as she was told.

Brynn then pulled herself the rest of the way over the top and sat down, breathing hard. She looked over the side—disappointingly, it seemed much less intimidating from this end, as if the effort and fear had been wasted. She beckoned Michelle up. The young woman climbed quickly, despite her bad ankle—thanks to youth and that fancy butt-firming health club of hers. Brynn helped her over the edge and the three sat together in a huddle, catching their breath.

Brynn oriented herself and, looking around, found what seemed to be a path that led upward. They started walking again.

Michelle eased close to Brynn. “What’ll happen to her?”

“If she doesn’t have kin, a foster home.”

“That’s sad. She should be with a family.”

“The system’s pretty good in Kennesha. They check on the families real well.”

“Just nice if she could go to somebody who really wanted her. I’d love her.”

Maybe one of the problems between Michelle and her husband had to do with children. He might not have wanted any.

“Adoptions’re possible. I don’t know how that works.” Brynn touched her cheek. It hurt like hell. She saw Michelle’s eyes focused on Amy. “So you’d like kids?”

“Oh, they’re the best. I just love them…. The way you guide them, teach them things. And what they teach you. They’re always a challenge. Children make you, I don’t know, whole. You’re not a complete person without them.”

“You sound like an expert. You’ll be a good mother.”

Michelle gave a laugh. “I intend to be.”

For the moment at least, thoughts of unfaithful husbands and marriages in shambles had faded and the woman seemed to be looking at a brighter future.

And what about me? Brynn thought.

Keep going, she told herself. Keep going.

 

LEWIS HAD MADE

an improvised sling for the shotgun and was carrying the weapon on his back. The men were going straight up the slope as best they could, Hart figuring that the women would be taking an easier route because of the girl.

Hart thought of the professional couples and their kids he saw at the rock-climbing walls at recreation areas and sports stores near where he lived. He’d wondered if any of the parents actually had jobs that required them to climb like this. But no, of course they didn’t. They were paper pushers. They made ten times what he did, their lives were never endangered, they never felt the pain that Hart was experiencing. Yet he would never dream of swapping lives with them for any money.

They’re nothing but dead bodies, Brynn. Sitting around, upset, angry about something they saw on TV doesn’t mean a single thing to them personally. Going to their jobs, coming home, talking stuff they don’t know or care about….

They came to a flat stretch and paused, looking around carefully. He wasn’t going to forget that both women had attempted to kill them tonight and he had no reason to think they’d given up trying. Sure, they wanted to escape. But he couldn’t get Brynn’s eyes out of his mind. Both in the driveway of the Feldmans’ house and then in the van just before she released the brake, risking her own death to stop him.

You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney….

Hart had to smile.

At that moment a faint scream sounded in the distance, ahead of them. A high squeal.

“The hell’s that?” Lewis looked alarmed. “Fucking Blair Witch Project.”

Hart laughed. “That’s the girl. The little girl.”

“She’s as good as your GPS, Hart.”

And they broke into a run.

 

“AN ANIMAL?” MUNCE

asked in a whisper.

Graham cocked his head, listening to the keening howl somewhere nearby, to their left, it seemed, carried on the breeze. He’d seen an animal—a coyote or feral dog, maybe even a wolf—on a ridge, looking their way. Was that the source of the sound? He knew plants, he knew soil and silt and rock. He didn’t know animals or their habits.

“Could be, I don’t know.”

It hadn’t sounded like a woman’s voice. It had almost seemed like a child. But that couldn’t be.

“Maybe the wind,” Munce offered.

Though there’d been a sense of alarm, an uneasiness about it. Fear more than pain. Now silence.

Wind, bird, animal…Please. Let it be one of those.

“Down there,” Munce said. “Right below us.”

Graham was frowning at the daunting sweep of trees that disappeared away from them. They’d come about a quarter mile, picking their way slowly through the dense woodland. It was a much longer trek than expected, owing to detours around brush thick as scouring pads and steep cliffs that couldn’t be negotiated without rappelling gear—which Munce had announced he wished they’d had and Graham was grateful they didn’t.

They started down the hillside, using trees as handholds once again. Then they found themselves stymied—in a funnel of rock. “I think that’s our only option,” Munce said, pointing down a chute descending away from them. It was about six feet wide and at a forty-five-degree slope, littered with shale and gravel and dirt. Slippery as ice. And if you fell you’d slide along the rugged stone surface for a good fifty feet to a precipice. They couldn’t see what lay beyond. “Or we go back and try to make our way around.”

Just then another wail filled the night. The men looked at each other, eyes wide.

There was no doubt the sound had come from a human throat.

“We go,” Graham said, torn between a frantic need to find the source of the screams and fear that, if they lost their footing here, they’d find themselves tumbling off a cliff—or sliding into a grove of deadly honey locust.

 

“WHERE’S MY MOTHER?”

Amy shrieked again.

“Please, honey,” Brynn said to the little girl. Held her finger to her lips. “Please be quiet.”

Exhausted, emotionally drained, the little girl was losing it.

“No!” she wailed. Her face was bright red, eyes and nose streaming. “Noooo!”

“Those men will hurt us, Amy. We have to be quiet.”

“Mommy!”

They were on a relatively flat stretch of ground in a thick forest, the trees only a yard or two apart. They’d been moving along well when suddenly Amy had become hysterical.

“Where’s my mommy? I want to go back to Mommy!”

Forcing a smile onto her face, Brynn knelt down and took the girl by the shoulders. “Please, honey, we have to be quiet. We’re playing that game, remember? We need to be quiet.”

“I don’t want to play any game! I want to go back! I want Mommy!”

The girl’s age was close to ten but once again Brynn thought she was acting more like a five-or six-year-old—maybe a reaction to this terrible evening, maybe a harrowing insight about her upbringing.

“Please!”

“Nooo!” The volume of the accompanying squeal was astonishing.

“Let me try,” Michelle said, kneeling in front of Amy and setting down the spear. She handed the girl her stuffed toy. Amy flung it to the ground.

Brynn said, “I’ll check behind us. If they’re nearby they had to’ve heard her.” She jogged back twenty feet and climbed a small hillock, gazed back.

The girl’s screaming seemed like a siren.

Brynn squinted through the night.

Oh, no…

She was dismayed, but not surprised to see, two hundred yards away, the men making their way in this direction. They paused and looked around, trying to find the source of the commotion.

Thank goodness, though, just at that moment Amy fell silent.

The men continued to look around them for a moment and then started walking again. They vanished behind a stone wall.

Brynn returned to Michelle and Amy. The little girl, though still unhappy, had stopped crying and was clutching her toy once more.

“How’d you do that?”

Michelle shrugged, grimacing. Whispered: “Wasn’t such a great idea. I told her we were on our way to see her mommy. Couldn’t think of what else to say.”

Well, it didn’t matter. The girl would learn the truth sooner or later but for now they sure couldn’t afford the screaming. Brynn whispered, “They’re back there.”

“What? Hart and his partner?”

A nod.

“How?”

Hart, of course. Brynn said, “Reverse-reverse psychology. Two hundred yards or so back. We’ve got to move.”

They headed toward the gorge, the ground being flatter, then north again toward the interstate. They knew the direction, because the river was on their right but, with the landscape more open as they rose higher, they were forced to zigzag—now seeking out brush and trees for cover. It was taking too long, Brynn reflected, feeling Hart’s presence growing closer.

She led Michelle and Amy back into the thicker woods and they continued north. Suddenly faint light streaked from left to right, a truck or car on the interstate. A half mile, maybe less. Brynn and Michelle shared a smile and started forward again.

Which is when they heard a snap of a footstep, to their left, somewhere in a thick pine forest. The sound was close. Brynn looked at the little girl, whose gaunt face warned of another outburst.

Another snap. Closer. Footsteps, definitely.

Hart and his partner must have moved faster than Brynn had expected, closing the two hundred yards in only fifteen minutes. They’d probably found a smooth trail the women had missed.

Brynn pointed to the ground. The three of them went prone behind a fallen tree. Amy started to cry again but Michelle pulled her close and worked her magic once more. Brynn picked up handfuls of leaves and, as quietly as she could, spread them on top of the other two. Then she also lay down and camouflaged herself.

The footsteps grew closer, then were lost in the rustling wind.

Then Brynn gasped. She believed she heard somebody whispering her name.

Her imagination, of course. It was just the breeze, which was blowing steadily, swirling leaves and hissing through branches.

But then she heard it again. Yes, definitely, “Brynn,” in a faint whisper.

Her jaw quivered in shock. Hart!

Eerie, as if he had a sixth sense she was nearby.

Again, though the name was indistinct, lost in the sounds of the forest.

In her exhaustion and pain she almost thought the voice sounded like Graham’s. But that was impossible, of course. Her husband was home, asleep now.

Or perhaps not home and asleep.

“Brynn…”

She touched her finger to her lips. Michelle nodded, reaching into her jacket for the knife.

The steps began again, very close, it seemed, and heading directly toward the fallen tree they hid beneath.

Times to fight and times to run.

Time to hide too.

Thinking of the men with their loud, loud guns, another memory came back to her again: her first husband, eyes wide in shock and agony, stumbling back under the nearly point-blank impact of the slug, as Brynn’s service weapon clattered to their kitchen floor after the discharge.

Was some sort of justice at work here, a divine or spiritual payback?

Would her fate now be similar to Keith’s?

The footsteps grew closer.

Silently Brynn sprinkled more leaves over the threesome. And closed her eyes, recalling that when he was younger Joey believed that doing this would make you disappear.

 

“BRYNN,” GRAHAM CALLED

again, as loud as he dared, but still in a whisper.

Listening. Nothing.

As they’d approached this portion of the woods, the screaming had stopped. And they’d seen no one. But as they continued their trek, Graham was convinced he’d heard a woman’s voice, whispering, and some rustling of leaves very close by. He couldn’t tell where, though, and risked saying his wife’s name.

No response but he heard more rustling and they’d headed for the sound, Munce with his shotgun ready.

“Brynn?”

Now the men were next to the trunk of a large fallen oak, looking around in all directions. Graham frowned and touched his ear. Munce shook his head.

But then the deputy stiffened, pointing to a field of rocks and brush. Graham caught a glimpse of a figure about a hundred yards away, holding a rifle or shotgun, moving from right to left.

The killers. They were here!

Graham pointed down at the deputy’s radio, which was off. But Munce shook his head and pointed again to his own ear, meaning presumably that to turn it on would result in a telltale crackle.

Munce hurried along a path Graham hadn’t seen before. He realized the deputy was going to flank the man with the gun.

He thought: What the hell am I doing here?

And lost himself entirely in this mad pursuit.

 

THE FOOTSTEPS RECEDED

from the oak tree.

Finally Brynn lifted her head, gingerly, worried about the noise the leaves would make.

But when she peered over the tree trunk she saw the shadowy forms moving away into the early-morning murkiness.

The men had been just a few feet away from where they’d hidden. If Amy had made a single whimper all three of them would be dead now. Brynn’s hands were shivering.

The men vanished into a wall of trees.

“Come on,” she whispered. “They’re headed away from us. Looks like they’re going back down the hill. Let’s move fast. We’re not far from the highway.”

They rose, shedding leaves, and started uphill again.

“That was close,” Michelle said. “Why’d they go on past?”

“Maybe heard something. A deer.” Brynn wondered if their guardian angel, their wolf, had distracted the men. She looked at Amy. “I’m proud of you, honey. You stayed quiet real nice.”

The girl clutched Chester and said nothing, remaining sullen and red-eyed. Her expression echoed exactly how Brynn felt.

They wound their way up several long slopes. Michelle gave a smile and pointed to the horizon. Brynn saw another flash of headlights.

The glow of heaven.

She assessed the last obstacle: a tall rocky hill, to the right of which was a hundred-foot drop into the gorge. To the left was a dense thicket of brambles that extended some distance to more tall, rocky outcroppings.

They couldn’t climb the hill itself; the face was a sheer ascent that rose forty or fifty feet above their heads. But on the left side of the rise, above the brush, a narrow ledge ran upward and appeared to lead directly to a field and, beyond that, the interstate. The ledge was steep but could be hiked. It was apparently a popular starting point for rock climbers; the stone face above it, like the ones she’d seen earlier, was peppered with metal spikes.

Brynn was wary of the ledge for two reasons. It would completely expose them to the men for the five or so minutes it would take to traverse. Also, it was very narrow—they’d have to go single file—and a fall, though not far, would land them in a tangle of bushes that included barberries. She remembered these from Graham’s nursery. They were popular with customers, having striking berries and brilliant color in the autumn, but evolution had armed them with thin, brittle needles. After the winter’s dieback these beds were now barren of foliage and the needles, along the entire lengths of the branches, were vicious spikes.

But, she decided, they’d have to chance it. There wasn’t time to look for alternative routes.

Besides, she recalled, after coming so close to the oak tree where the women had been hiding, Hart and his partner had turned the other way, moving back down the hillside.

“Time to go home,” Brynn murmured and they began to climb.

 

GRAHAM AND MUNCE,

moving cautiously, in silence, were getting close to where they’d seen the man with the shotgun disappear into the bushes.

Munce motioned for them to stop. The deputy cocked his head and scanned the landscape, the muzzle of the scattergun following the course of his gaze.

Graham wished he’d insisted on a weapon. The Buck knife in his pocket seemed pointless. He thought about asking for the deputy’s pistol. But he didn’t dare make a sound now. Ahead, no more than thirty feet, came a rustle of branches and dry leaves as the invisible suspect pushed through brush.

A snap of a footstep. Another.

Graham’s heart pounded. He forced himself to breathe quietly. His jaw was trembling. Munce, on the other hand, looked completely in his element. Confident, making economical movements. Like he’d done this a thousand times. He crouched and pointed to the crook of a large rock, meaning, Graham understood, to wait. The landscaper nodded. The deputy touched his pistol once, as if to orient himself as to its exact location, and gripping the shotgun in both hands moved forward slowly, keeping his head up, looking around but sensing leaves and branches and avoiding them perfectly.

More footfalls on the other side of the bushes. Graham looked closely but could see no one. The sound was clear, though: the man was stalking through the woods, pausing occasionally.

Munce moved toward the killer in complete silence.

He paused, about twenty feet from the line of brush, cocked his head, listening.

They heard the footsteps again on the far side of the foliage, the men not trying to be silent; they were ignorant that they were no longer hunters but were themselves prey.

Munce stepped forward silently.

It was then that the man with the shotgun stepped out from behind a tree, no more than six feet behind Munce, and shot him in the back.

The deputy gave a cry as he was blown forward onto his belly, the weapon flying from his hand.

Graham, eyes wide in horror, gasped. Jesus, oh…Jesus.

The attacker hadn’t said a word. No warning, no instruction, no shout to give up.

He’d just appeared and pulled the trigger.

Eric Munce lay on his stomach, his lower back shredded and black with blood. His feet danced a bit, one arm moved. A hand clenched and unclenched.

“Hart, I got him,” the shooter called to someone else, whispering.

Another man came running up from behind the hedge, breathing hard, holding a pistol. He looked down at the deputy, who was barely conscious, rolled him over. Graham realized that this other one—Hart, apparently—had been in the bushes, making the noise of footsteps to distract Munce.

Horrified, Graham eased back into the crevice of basalt, as far as he could go. He was only twenty feet from them, hidden by saplings and a dozen brown husks of last year’s ferns. He looked out through the plants.

“Shit, Hart, it’s another cop.” Looking around. “There’s gotta be more of them.”

“You see anybody else?”

“No. But we can ask him. I aimed low. Coulda killed him. But I shot low to keep him alive.”

“That was good thinking, Comp.”

Hart knelt beside Munce. “Where are the others?”

Graham pressed against the rock, hard, as if it could swallow him up. His hands shaking, he could barely control his breathing. He thought he might be sick.

“Where are the others?…What?” He lowered his head. “I can’t hear you. Talk louder, tell me and we’ll get you help.”

“What’d he say, Hart?”

“He said there weren’t any. He came by here on his own to look for some women escaped from two burglars.”

“He telling the truth?”

“I don’t know. Wait…he’s saying something else.” Hart listened and stood. In an unemotional voice he said, “Just, we can go fuck ourselves.”

The one called Comp said to Munce, “Well, sir, you’re pretty much the one fucked here.”

Hart paused. He knelt again. Then stood. “He’s gone.”

Graham stared at the limp form of the deputy. He wanted to sob.

Then he saw, ten feet away, Munce’s shotgun, lying where it had landed when the deputy had flown to the ground. It was half covered with leaves.

Graham thought: Please, don’t look that way. Leave it. I want that gun. I want it so bad I can taste it. He realized how easily he could kill right now. Shoot them both in the back. Give them the same chance they’d given the deputy.

Please…

While the man who’d killed Munce stood guard, his gun ready, Hart searched him and pulled the radio off the deputy’s belt. He clicked it on. Graham heard staticky transmissions. Hart said to Comp, “There’s a search party but everybody’s over at Six Eighty-two and Lake Mondac itself…. I think maybe this boy was telling the truth. He must’ve come over here on a hunch.” Hart shone a flashlight on the front of the deputy’s uniform, read his nametag, then stood up and spoke into the radio. “This’s Eric. Over.”

A clattery response Graham couldn’t hear.

“Bad reception here. Over.”

More static.

“Real bad. I can’t find any trace of anybody over here. You copy? Over.”

“Say again, Eric. Where are you?” a voice asked, carrying through the air to Graham’s ears.

“Repeat, bad reception. Nobody’s here. Over.”

“Where are you?”

Hart shrugged. “I’m north. No sign of anybody. How’s it looking at the lake?”

“Nothing around the lake so far. We’re still looking. Divers haven’t found any bodies.”

“That’s good. I’ll let you know if I find anything. Out.”

“Out.”

Graham was staring at the shotgun, as if he could will it to become invisible.

Hart said, “Why isn’t anybody over here, except him, though? I don’t get it.”

“They’re not as smart as you, Hart. That’s why.”

“We better get a move on. Take his Glock, his extra clips.”

Graham shrank back against the rock.

Leave the shotgun. Please, leave the shotgun.

Footsteps sounded on the crinkly leaves.

Were they coming his way? Graham couldn’t tell.

Then the steps stopped. The men were very close.

Hart asked, “You want the cop’s scattergun?”

“Naw, not really. Don’t need two.”

“Don’t want anybody else finding it. You want to pitch it into the river?”

“Sure thing.”

No!

More footsteps. Then a grunt of somebody throwing a heavy object. “There she goes.”

After a delay Graham heard a clatter.

The men resumed walking. They were closer yet to where Graham huddled between earth and stone. If they went to their left, around the boulder, they’d miss him. To the right they’d trip over him.

He unfolded his knife. It clicked open. Graham recalled that the last time he’d used it was to cut a graft for a rosebush.

 

AT THE SOUND

of the gunshot—it was close—Michelle had gasped and spun around, letting go of Amy’s hand.

The girl, panicked again, hurried back down the ledge, whimpering.

“No!” Brynn called, “Amy!” She eased past Michelle, staring at the thorny bushes below, and then trotted after Amy. The girl saw her coming, though, and just as Brynn approached, she dropped to the ledge, squirming away. “No!” she squealed. She dropped Chester, who tumbled over the side. The girl lunged for the toy and went over the edge herself, pitching for the barberries. Brynn’s hand shot out and caught Amy by the sweatshirt. Luckily she was facing downward. Had she been upright the skinny girl would have slipped out of the garment and fallen into the mass of thorns.

The girl screamed in fear and pain and for the loss of her toy.

“Quiet, please!” Brynn cried.

Michelle ran back, reached down, grabbed the girl’s leg, and together the women wrestled her onto the ledge.

The girl was going to scream again but Michelle leaned close and whispered something, stroking her head. Amy once again fell silent.

Brynn thought, Why can’t I do that?

“I promised her we’d come back and get Chester,” Michelle whispered as they started moving up the ledge again.

“Goddamn it, if we get out of here, I will personally wade through those thorns and get him,” Brynn said. “Thanks.”

They had another two hundred feet to go before they reached the top.

Please, let there be a truck when we get there. I’ll get ’em to stop if I have to strip naked to do it.

“What was that shooting?” Michelle asked. “Who was—”

“Oh, no,” Brynn muttered, looking back.

Hart and his partner were breaking from the same bushes where Brynn had paused to consider whether to climb the ledge five minutes ago.

They paused. Hart looked up and his eyes met Brynn’s. He grabbed his partner’s arm and pointed directly at the women on the ledge.

The partner worked the shotgun, ejecting one spent shell and chambering a new one and both men began to sprint forward.

 

“TAKE YOUR SHOT,”

Hart called to Lewis.

They were both breathless, gasping. His heart was pounding too hard to use the pistol but his partner might be able with the shotgun to hit the one who was last going up the rocky ledge, Michelle.

Good.

Kill the bitch.

Lewis stopped, took a deep breath and fired a round.

It was close—Hart could see from the dust on the rock—but the pellets missed. And just then the trio vanished as they leapt off the ledge at the top into what seemed to be a field.

“They’ll be making straight for the highway—through the clearing and into the woods. They’ve got the kid. We can beat them if we move.”

The men were winded. But Lewis nodded gamely and they started up the ledge.

 

GRAHAM BOYD FLINCHED

as the gunshot sounded, no more than a quarter mile away.

He was in a precarious position, perched on the edge of a cliff of sandstone, the Snake River churning past nearly a hundred feet below. He was staring down and in the dim light he believed he could see the shotgun that Eric Munce’s murderer had flung over the edge. It was about fifteen feet below him on a jutting rock.

Oh, did he want that gun!

The men had passed by him, on the other side of the rock, and vanished into the tangle of the woods. When he could no longer hear them, Graham had risen and, crouching, made his way to the edge of the gorge.

Could he make the climb down and retrieve the weapon?

Well, goddamn it, he was sure going to try. He was burning with fury. He’d never wanted anything more in his life than to get his hands on that gun.

He squinted and, studying the rock face, found what seemed to be enough hand-and footholds to climb down to a ledge and from there grab the shotgun.

Hurry. Get going.

Breathing hard, he turned his back to the gorge and eased over the side. He began feeling his way down. Five feet, eight. Then ten. He moved as fast as he dared. If he fell he’d bounce off the outcropping and tumble down the steep incline of the gorge walls—vertical in places—into the rocky water far below; streaks of white foam trailing downstream were evidence that boulders were plentiful.

Twelve feet.

He glanced down.

Yes, there was the shotgun. It was balanced unsteadily right on the edge of the outcropping. He felt a panicked urgency to grab the gun fast before a gust of wind tipped it over the side. He continued down, getting as close as he could. Finally he was level with the weapon, though it was still four or five feet to his right. Graham had thought there was some way to ease sideways toward it but what seemed like the shadows of footholds were just dark rock.

Inhaling hard, pressing his face against a cold, smooth muddy rock. Go for it, he told himself angrily. You’ve come this far.

Gripping a thin sapling growing from a crack in the cliff, he reached for the gun. He came within eight inches of the barrel—the black disk of the muzzle was pointed directly at him.

Below the water raged.

Graham sighed in frustration. Just a few inches more. Now!

He slid his hand farther along the sapling and swung out with his right again, more forcefully this time. Two inches from the gun.

Extending his grip once more, he tried a third time.

Yes! He got his fingers around the barrel.

Now, just—

The sapling snapped under his weight and he slipped sideways a foot or so, held in place only by a strand of slick wood and bark. Crying out, Graham tried to keep a grip on the shotgun. But it slipped from his sweat-slick fingers and tumbled over the side, striking another outcropping ten feet below and cartwheeling into the river, eighty feet below.

“No!” He watched miserably as the weapon vanished into the black water.

But he had no time to mourn its fate. The sapling gave way completely, and Graham grabbed the outcropping, though he was able to keep his grip for merely ten seconds before his fingers slipped and he began to fall, almost in the same trajectory as the shotgun he’d so dearly desired.

 

THEY’D NEVER MAKE

it to the highway in time, Brynn realized.

She gasped in dismay. Just as the shotgun fired they’d leapt off the rocky shelf and into the field. But she’d misjudged the distance to the trees. The strip of forest next to the interstate was an easy three hundred yards away. The ground was flat, filled with reed canary grass, heather and a few saplings and scorched trunks. She recalled that this had been the site of a forest fire a year ago.

It would take them ten minutes to cross and the men would be here in far less time than that; they were probably already on the ledge.

Brynn looked at Amy, her terrified face ruddy with tears and streaked with dirt.

What can we possibly do?

It was Michelle, leaning against the spear, gasping, who supplied the answer. “No more running. It’s time to fight.”

Brynn held her eye. “We’re way outgunned here.”

“I don’t care.”

“It’s a long shot, you know.”

“My life’s been nothing but sure things. Treadmills and lunch at the Ritz and nail salons. I’m sick of it.”

They shared a smile. Then Brynn looked around and saw that they could turn to the right and climb up a steep incline to the top of the cliff, which was above the ledge the men were on now. “Up there. Come on.”

Brynn led the way, then Amy, then Michelle. They looked down to see the men moving cautiously along the trail, a third of the way into it. Hart was in the lead.

They assessed their pathetic weapons: the spear and the knife. But Brynn wanted to keep those for the last minute. She pointed to the rocks littering the area: some were too big to budge, but others could, with some difficulty, be rolled or lifted. Also, there were plenty of logs and thick branches.

Brynn growled, “Let’s send ’em into the thorns.”

Michelle nodded.

Then Brynn had an idea. She took the compass bottle from her pocket. With the knife she cut off a long strip of cloth from her ski parka and tied it around the bottle. She gripped the candle lighter.

Michelle pointed out, “It’s just water.”

“They don’t know that. As far as they know it’s full of alcohol. It’ll stop ’em long enough for us to get some rocks down on them.”

Brynn peered down. The men were almost directly below them. She whispered, “You ready?”

“You bet I am,” Michelle said. She lit the strip—the nylon burned bright and sizzling.

Brynn leaned over the edge, judged the distance and let the bottle fall from her hand. It landed on the ledge about five feet in front of Hart and bounced but stayed put.

“What—?” Hart gasped.

“Shit, it’s alcohol! It’s going to blow, get back.”

“Where are they?”

“Up there. Someplace.”

The shotgun fired and a few pellets struck the rock face near the women. Amy, huddled nearby, began to scream. But Brynn didn’t care. Somehow screaming and howling seemed just right at the moment. They weren’t a deputy and a dilettante actress. They were warriors. Queens of the Jungle. She wanted to give one of her wolf cries at the moment herself.

Together they rolled the biggest rock they could—it must’ve weighed forty or fifty pounds—toward the edge of the cliff. They muscled it up and Brynn rolled it into space. Then looked down.

The aim was perfect but fate intervened. The rock wall wasn’t completely vertical; the missile hit a small outcropping and bounced outward, missing Hart’s head by inches. The rock did, however, crack apart the formation it struck and showered the men with fragments. They backed up ten feet along the ledge. The partner fired again but the pellets hissed past the women and upward.

“We can’t stop,” Brynn called, gasping in a whisper. “Hit them with everything we can pick up.”

They pitched a log, two boulders and a dozen smaller rocks.

They heard a cry. “Hart, my hand. Broke my fucking hand.”

Brynn risked a peek. The partner had dropped his shotgun into the brambles.

Yes!

Hart was gazing upward. He saw Brynn and fired two shots from his Glock. One spattered the cliff nearby but she dodged before the shrapnel hit her.

She heard Hart call, “Comp, the fuse’s out. Look. Get that rubble off the path. Kick it off.”

“Hell, Hart, they’re going to break our skulls.”

“Go ahead. I’ll cover you.”

Brynn was nodding at a log, about five feet long and a foot in diameter, with several sharp spiky limbs a few inches long. “That.”

“Yes!” Michelle smiled. Together the women got onto their knees and pushed the trunk parallel to the cliff’s edge. Gasping from the effort, they collapsed against it.

Brynn held up a finger. “When I tell you to, throw a rock behind them.”

Michelle nodded.

Brynn grabbed the spear.

She thought of Joey. She thought of Graham.

For some reason her first husband’s image made an appearance.

Then she nodded. Michelle pitched a rock down the ledge.

Brynn stood. She saw Hart looking behind him, toward the clatter of the rock and, giving an otherworldly howl, she flung the spear at the partner’s back as he bent down to muscle some debris off the ledge.

“Comp!” Hart cried, looking up at just that moment.

The man spun around and danced back from the spear, which missed him by inches, digging into the stone at his feet with a burst of sparks. He slipped and rolled off the ledge. All that kept him from falling was his left-handed grip on a crack in the rock. His feet dangled above the vicious thorns.

Hurrying to him, Hart glanced up and fired. But Brynn was out of his line of sight and helping Michelle push the deadly log closer to the edge.

Brynn took another fast look—Hart was bent over, his back to her, gripping his partner by the jacket and struggling to pull him up. They were thirty feet below, in a direct line, and the rock face here was smooth. The impact of the log would shatter bones if not kill outright. One of them at least would be knocked into the sea of thorns.

No hesitation now.

Brynn got a good grip on her side of the log and Michelle on hers. “Go!” Brynn whispered.

The log was twelve inches from the edge of the cliff.

“More!”

Six inches.

Which was when a sharp crack sounded on the cliff face only feet below Brynn and Michelle, and a shower of dust and stone chips blew into the night. A moment later the distant boom of a rifle shot filled the air.

The women dropped to their stomachs. Brynn crawled to Amy and pulled the hysterical girl to the ground, cradling her.

Another shot. More rock exploded.

“Who?” Michelle gasped. “That wasn’t from them. There’s somebody else out there! Shooting at us.”

Brynn stared into the distant woods.

A muzzle flash from a long way off. “Get down!” She ducked and another high-velocity rifle round slammed into the log they’d been pushing forward.

Brynn risked a fast look downward. Hart had pulled his partner back onto the ledge but they too were crouching, not sure of what was going on. It seemed the shooter was focusing on the women but the men were probably wondering if they themselves were the targets. The two men, completely exposed, apparently decided to retreat back down the ledge.

Brynn said, “They’re leaving. Let’s get out of here.”

“Who the hell is it?” Michelle muttered. “We almost had them!”

“Come on. Hurry.”

They couldn’t return to the clearing, where they’d be easy targets for whoever was shooting, so they crawled closer to the gorge, away from the sniper. They were soon safe on the other side of the hill, though nearby was a sheer drop into the gorge; Brynn eyed it warily and kept as far away as she could. She asked Amy, “Honey, did Rudy and your mommy have other friends who stayed with you? Somebody who wasn’t at the camper tonight?”

“Sometimes.”

That was probably it; a partner of Gandy and Rudy who’d seen the carnage at the meth lab and had somehow trailed them here.

The silence was interrupted by the beckoning sound of a big tractor-trailer downshifting as it came to the bridge. Brynn looked along the edge of the gorge. They could walk that way to the interstate under pretty good cover.

The sky was now growing lighter—dawn couldn’t be too far off—and they could easily pick their way through the paths toward the highway. Brynn hugged Michelle. “We almost had ’em.”

Not smiling, Michelle said, “Next time.”

Brynn hesitated. “Well, let’s hope there isn’t one.”

Though it seemed from her fierce expression that the young woman wasn’t hoping for that at all.

 

“ANOTHER COP?” LEWIS

asked, referring to the shooter.

He was flexing his hand. It wasn’t broken but the rock had jammed his thumb. The man was mostly upset he’d lost his shotgun in the bramble patch. And his anger at the women had grown exponentially.

As they hunkered down behind a boulder at the foot of the ledge, Hart listened to the dead deputy’s radio. Routine transmissions about search parties. Nobody had even heard the shots. Nothing about any other cops in the area.

“More meth people, I’ll bet. On the way to the camper.” Hart turned on his GPS. He had to tame his anger. They were so close to their prey. But they couldn’t go after them; the ledge was the only way and they’d be sitting ducks.

“We’ll go around to the left, through the woods. It’s longer but we’ll have good cover right to the highway.”

“What time is it?” Lewis asked.

“What does it matter?”

“I just want to know how long we’ve been doing this shit.”

“Way too long,” Hart said.

 

HOLDING THE BUSHMASTER

.223 rifle, James Jasons looked at the rock face he’d just been firing at. He’d done the best he could, considering there was virtually no light and he was more than two hundred yards away from the target.

He waited, scanning the area with his night-vision binoculars, but saw no signs of the men or the women. There would have been quite a story about how the cave-man confrontation—the two men dodging rocks and logs—had come about.

For ten minutes he scanned the field and forest around him.

Where were they?

The men had fled back down the rocky ledge. Since they had apparently lost their car they’d be making for the interstate—to flag down a ride. But there were a lot of different routes they could take to get to the highway from the ledge. The odds were that they’d be coming in this general direction. It was wildly overgrown but possibly Jasons could find them. On the other hand, they might have gone around to the far side of the hill, after the women. It seemed like a much steeper climb and would have to be made without cover, but who knew? Maybe the men were pissed off about the attack and hell-bent on getting their prey.

Still, Jasons didn’t want to do anything too quickly. He looked over the brush, scanning with the night-vision binoculars. Much of the vegetation moved but that seemed due to the breeze, not escaping humans.

He saw movement not far away. He blinked and gave a gasp as he focused his binoculars. He was looking at a wild animal of some kind, a coyote or wolf. The night-vision system gave it a ghostly green-gray color. Its face was lean and the teeth white and perfect, visible through the slightly bared lips and jowls. He was glad the creature was some distance away. It was magnificent but fierce.

The animal lifted its head, sniffed, and in an instant was gone.

I’m a long, long way from home, James Jasons thought. He’d tell Robert an edited version of the story, in which the animal, though not the gunfire, would figure.

He continued to scan the nearby field and forest but saw no sign of Emma Feldman’s killers. They could easily have been here but it was impossible to tell with the dense vegetation.

And what about Graham and the deputy?

The gunshot he’d heard before the killers arrived at the rock ledge hinted at their fate. It was a shame—but you can’t get in over your head. Just can’t do it.

Jasons waited another ten minutes and decided it was time to get back to the interstate. He slung the canvas bag over his shoulder and without disassembling the rifle melted into the forest.

 

THEY CONTINUED ALONG

the ridge of the gorge and toward the highway, the Snake River pounding over rocks far below.

Brynn didn’t dare look to her right, where ten feet away the world ended, a sheer cliff. She held Amy’s hand, and stared directly ahead at the path in front of them.

She paused once, looking back. Michelle was hobbling along well enough, though clearly exhausted. The little girl appeared almost catatonic.

The time was still very early and, from what they could hear, there wasn’t much traffic on the road yet. But an occasional semi or sedan would cruise by. And all they needed was one.

The bridge suddenly loomed ahead and to the right. They plunged into a band of trees and emerged into a strip of grass about thirty feet wide. Beyond that were the shoulder of the interstate and the beautiful strips of graying asphalt.

But Brynn held up her hand for them to stop; there were no cars or trucks in sight just yet and they’d come too far to make mistakes now.

They remained in the tall grass, like timid hitchhikers. Brynn found herself weaving a bit; this was about the first smooth, level ground she’d been on in close to nine or so hours and her inner ear’s gyroscope was having trouble navigating.

Then she laughed, looking down the highway.

A car was heading around a curve toward them, on the shoulder. It was a Kennesha County Sheriff’s Department car, its lights flashing, moving slow. A driver had heard the shots and called 911 or the State Police’s #77.

Brynn raised a hand to the car, thinking: she’d have to call in immediately about the shooter at the ledge.

The car slowed and swerved onto the shoulder and then eased to a stop between her and the highway.

The doors opened.

Hart climbed out of the driver’s side, his partner from the other.

 

“NO!” MICHELLE GASPED.

Brynn exhaled a disgusted sigh. She glanced at the car. It was Eric Munce’s. Her eyes went wide.

“Yeah, he didn’t make it,” said the partner, the man she’d come close to shooting back in the Feldman’s dining room. “Fell for the oldest trick in the book.”

She briefly closed her eyes in horror. Eric Munce…the cowboy had come out to save her. And charged to his own death, outmatched.

Hart said nothing. He held his black pistol and gazed at the captives.

The partner continued. “And how are you, Michelle?” Emphasizing the name. He pulled a woman’s purse out of his pocket. Stuffed it back. “Nice to make your acquaintance.”

The woman said nothing, just put her arms around the little girl protectively, pulled her close.

“You ladies have a nice stroll through the woods tonight? Good conversation? You stop for a tea party?”

Hart focused on Brynn. He nodded. She easily held his eye. He lowered the gun as a sedan on the far side of the divider cruised past. It didn’t even slow. In the pale dawn light it might have been hard to see the drama unfolding in the grass on the other side of the road. Soon the car was gone and the highway was empty.

“Comp?” Hart asked, his eye on Brynn.

The skinny man glanced over, kneading his earlobe. “Yeah?”

“Stay right in front of them.”

“Here?”

“Yeah.”

“You bet,” the partner, “Comp” apparently, said. “You want me to cover ’em?” He started to reach for the silver automatic pistol in his jacket.

“No, that’s okay.” Hart stepped directly in front of the man, facing him.

Comp gave an uncertain smile. “What is it, Hart?”

Only a moment’s hesitation. Then Hart lifted the gun to his face.

Smiling uncertainly, Comp touched the blue-and-red tattoo of a cross on his neck, then his earlobe. He shook his head. “Hey, what’re you—?”

Hart shot him twice in the head. The man collapsed on his back, left knee up.

Amy screamed. Brynn could only stare as Hart turned and, keeping his gun on the women and girl, stepped backward to his partner’s body.

Michelle’s eyes went cold.

Hart bent down and pulled Comp’s SIG-Sauer 9mm from his waistband and wrapped the dead man’s limp fingers around it.

So this was to be the scenario, Brynn understood. With the man’s hand around the Sig, he’d shoot the women, leaving telltale gunshot residue on the partner’s skin. He’d then stand over Brynn’s body to do the same, putting a second gun in her hand—Munce’s Glock, probably—and fire a couple of rounds into the trees.

The police would reason that the partner had killed the three of them and Brynn got off two final shots to take him out before she died.

And Hart would disappear forever.

A curious feeling, having only minutes to live. Her life wasn’t replaying itself. But she was thinking of regrets. She gazed at the woods, the smooth edge of trees and brush severed by the shoulder and highway, tamed. She nearly expected their wolf friend to stick its head out and look their way before vanishing into the woods again.

Then Hart was twisting the dead partner’s arm up and to the left, aiming at Brynn first with the SIG-Sauer.

Michelle pulled Amy even closer in front of her, and was reaching into her leather jacket, perhaps for their last Chicago Cutlery knife. She was going to fling it at Hart, it seemed.

A final, desperate gesture. And futile, of course.

Joey, Brynn thought, I—

Then came the shout, startling them all.

“Don’t move! Drop it!”

Breathless and limping, Graham Boyd pushed from the woods behind Hart, holding a small revolver.

“Graham,” Brynn cried in astonishment. “My God.”

“Drop it. Now! Put it down.” Her husband’s clothes were streaked with mud—and blood too, she could now see—and torn in several places. His face was bruised and filthy too and through the mask his eyes shone with pure anger. She’d never seen him like this.

Hart hesitated. Graham fired a round into the dirt at his feet. The killer flinched, sighed. He set the gun on the ground.

Brynn recognized the pistol; it was Eric Munce’s backup, which he kept strapped to his ankle. She remembered mentioning to Graham that he kept a second gun there. There were mysteries here but at the moment Brynn wasn’t speculating about how her husband and Munce had come to be at the Snake River Gorge. She stepped forward, took the pistol from her husband, verified that it was loaded still and motioned Hart out of the grass and onto the shoulder, where he’d be more visible. And a better target.

Control…

“Kneel down. Hands on the top of your head. If a hand comes off your head, you’ll die.”

“Of course, Brynn.” Hart complied.

More vehicles were hissing past now, drivers off late shifts or hurrying to early ones. If anyone inside the cars or trucks saw the drama unfolding on the shoulder, nobody was stopping

“Graham, get his Glock and the other gun.” Indicating the ostentatious silver SIG-Sauer that Comp had been carrying. “There’s one weapon unaccounted for. Eric’s. Search him.” Keith had taught her always to count weapons at scenes.

Graham did and found the deputy’s service Glock. He put Hart’s black gun and Comp’s silver one on the grass beside Brynn.

But he kept Munce’s pistol. He looked at it closely. There are no safeties as such on Glocks. You just point and shoot. Graham knew this; Brynn had instructed him and Joey about how to load and fire hers. Just in case. He fired a shot into the ground, presumably to make sure it was loaded and cocked.

“Graham!”

He ignored his wife. In a low, threatening tone he asked Hart, “Who’d I talk to when I called? The dead one or you?”

“It was me,” Hart said.

Graham turned the square automatic on Hart, who gazed past the muzzle, his gray eyes calm.

“Graham,” she whispered. “Everything’s going to be fine now. Help me, honey. I need some plastic hand restraints. Look in the glove compartment.”

Her husband continued to stare into Hart’s eyes. The gun pointed unwaveringly at his head. The trigger poundage was very light. A twitch was enough to release a round.

“Graham? Honey?…Please.” There was desperation in her voice. If he fired it would be murder. “Please.”

The big man took a deep breath. He lowered the gun. Finally he said, “Where? The restraints?”

“Graham, please, give me the gun.”

“Where are they?” he snapped angrily. He kept the pistol. Brynn noticed Hart smiling at her.

She ignored it and answered her husband, “The glove compartment.”

He stepped to the car. “I don’t see any.”

“Try the trunk. They’ll be in a plastic bag. Maybe a box. But first, call it in. The radio’s on the dash. Just push the button, say who you are, say ten-thirteen and then give the location. The engine doesn’t have to be on.”

Staring at Hart, Graham picked up the microphone and made the call. Frantic responses came from a half dozen deputies and troopers but, bless him, he said only what was necessary: location and the situation. He dropped the mike on the seat and popped the trunk.

Hart kept his eyes on Michelle, who stared back with pure hatred. He smiled. “You came close, Michelle. Real close.”

She said nothing. Then he turned to Brynn and, in a voice that only she could hear, asked, “At the camper back there, after you crashed the van?” He nodded at the vastness they’d just come through. “When I was out of it, just lying there. You saw me, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“My piece was nearby. Did you see that too?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you go for it?”

“The little girl was going to fall. I went after her instead.”

“One of those hard choices.” He nodded “They do present themselves at the worst possible times, don’t they?”

“If they didn’t, then they wouldn’t be hard choices, would they?”

He gave a faint laugh at this. “Well, say the girl hadn’t been there. Would you have taken my piece and killed me? Shot me while I was out?” He cocked his head and said softly, “Tell the truth…no lies between us, Brynn. No lies. Would you have killed me?”

She hesitated.

“You thought about it, didn’t you?” He smiled.

“I thought about it.”

“You should have. You should’ve killed me. I would’ve, it’d been you. And you and me…we’re peas in a pod.”

Brynn glanced at Graham, who couldn’t hear the exchange.

“There have to be a few differences between us, Hart.”

“But that’s not one of ’em…. You’re saying you would just’ve arrested me?”

“You forget. I already had.”

Another smile, both his mouth and his gray eyes.

A truck roared past. An occasional car.

Then Graham called, “I’ve got them.”

Which was all Hart needed. As Brynn glanced up he sprang to his feet. He wasn’t close enough to get to her—Brynn had made sure of that. But that wasn’t his intent. He jumped over the body of his partner and sprinted the twenty feet to the highway. Brynn’s shot missed him by an inch. She couldn’t fire again because of the oncoming cars. Not even looking, Hart sprinted into traffic, an act of pure faith. He could have been killed instantly.

He made it to the center lane, froze, then leapt aside as the driver of a Toyota SUV swerved in panic. The vehicle rolled onto its left side and, in a shower of sparks and a hideous screech, skidded along the shoulder and right lane, missing the women and the child by feet. They dove to the ground, pure instinct.

The SUV jettisoned plastic and glass and metal bits and finally came to a rest, the horn wailing and airbag dust rising from the empty window frames.

A dozen other cars and trucks skidded to a stop. And before Brynn could draw another target on Hart, he’d run into the far lane, leapt over the hood of a stopped sedan, dragged out the driver—a man in a suit—and climbed in. He sped onto the median and accelerated past the stopped cars then into the lane again. Brynn aimed Munce’s revolver but had only a brief clear target—between two good Samaritans climbing out of their vehicles—and she wouldn’t risk injuring them.

She lowered the gun and ran to the Highlander to help the occupants.

 

A WITNESS TO

the carnage, James Jasons crouched in fragrant bushes a hundred yards down the highway from where the SUV lay on its side.

Sirens sounded in the distance.

He believed he saw Graham Boyd helping some of the injured. The absence of the uniformed deputy, Munce, might explain the gunshot he’d heard earlier from deep within the forest.

The sirens grew closer as he dismantled his gun and put it in the canvas bag. The traffic on this side of the highway was at a standstill. On the other side the cars and trucks were still moving but slowly, as voyeurs strained to see what had happened.

As if there was an explanation for these bizarre events.

One of the killers apparently lay dead—his body now covered by a tarp—and the other had escaped, but there seemed to be no other serious injuries.

Jasons had been partially successful. There was nothing to do but leave.

With his cap low over his eyes he walked through the stopped line of traffic and onto the median. It took a bit more dancing but the gawkers let him through three lanes without his even having to run. Though once on the other side he moved quickly into the woods to make sure none of the law enforcers noticed him. He sprinted to his Lexus.

Jasons started it up and eased out onto the shoulder then accelerated to the speed of traffic—it was only about thirty miles an hour—and merged. He pulled the satellite phone from the bag, which was now on the seat next to him, and scrolled through speed dial. He went past his partner’s name, and then his mother’s and pushed the third button on the list.

Even though it was very early in the morning, Stanley Mankewitz answered on the second ring.

 

“NO ID.”

Brynn glanced up from the back step of the ambulance, where she sat next to Graham.

Tom Dahl was referring to Comp, the man shot and killed by Hart. His partner. Of all the horrors that night perhaps the worst was the look of betrayal in the young man’s face just before Hart pulled the trigger.

“We got money, a couple boxes of ammo, cigarettes, gloves, Seiko watch. That’s it.” They’d recovered Michelle’s purse too, which might contain the men’s fingerprints. Dahl would send officers to find Comp’s shotgun in the brambles and Eric Munce’s, which Graham explained was in the river.

Brynn’s husband had told the story of how he’d tried to retrieve it but had fallen in the process. He’d landed on a shelf of rock, bruised and scraped but otherwise unhurt. He’d then climbed up the cliff face and was walking back past Eric Munce’s body when he recalled that the man was wearing an ankle holster with a backup revolver in it. He’d taken the gun and hurried toward where he’d heard the gunshot.

“What was his name?” the sheriff asked, looking at the man’s body, covered by a green tarp and lying nearby.

“Comp,” Brynn said. “Something like that.”

A medical technician had daubed Brynn’s cheek with brown Betadine and Lanocaine and was now easing a massive bandage onto it. He was going to stitch it. She said no. A needle and thread would make a bigger scar and the thought of two facial deformities was too much for her.

He put a tight butterfly bandage on and told her to see a doctor later that day. “Dentist too. That busted tooth’ll start to bother your tongue pretty soon.”

Start to?

She told him she would.

Brynn was staring at Comp’s body. She simply couldn’t understand why Hart had killed him. This was the man Hart had risked his own life to save just a half hour earlier on the ledge—nearly getting crushed by a log, in fact, to pull the man to safety.

And Hart had told him to stand still, then shot him—casual as could be.

She looked around, the circus of flashing lights. Heard voices shouting, the crackle of radios.

In addition to Dahl, there were other deputies from the Kennesha County Sheriff’s Department and a baker’s dozen of state troopers. Two FBI agents too, who’d tossed off their suit jackets, were helping out however they could, including stringing crime scene tape. No egos were present. They’d show up later.

Head down, Michelle sat on the grass, her back against a tree, cradling sleeping Amy, both wrapped in blankets. The medics had looked them over and neither was badly injured. Michelle’s ankle turned out to be just a pulled muscle.

Somber, Michelle clutched the girl tightly, and Brynn supposed she was mourning for them both—two people who had lost someone close to them so violently on this terrible night, two people who had left an innocence behind, dead or dying, in the tangled woods.

Brynn rose from the ambulance and stiffly walked over the grass to Michelle. “Did you get through to them?” Brynn asked. Michelle was going to call her brother and his wife, who lived north of Chicago, to come pick her up.

“They’re on their way.” Then her voice faded and she gave a stoic smile. “Never got a message from my husband.”

“Did you call him?”

She shook her head. And her body language said she wanted to be alone. She brushed Amy’s hair gently. The child was snoring softly.

Brynn tested her wounded face, wincing despite the topical anesthetic cream, then joined Dahl and the FBI agents. She fought through her fuzzy mind—once the pursuit had stopped, disorientation had flooded into the vacuum with a smack—and gave them a synopsis of everything that had happened from her arrival at Lake Mondac: the escape, the portable meth lab, the surprise gunshots fired at them when they were on the rock ledge.

“One of Rudy Hamilton’s people?” an FBI agent said, hearing Brynn’s opinion as to the identity of the sniper by the ledge. “I don’t know.” He seemed doubtful.

“Rudy said somebody named Fletcher might be in the area.”

The agent nodded. “Kevin Fletcher, sure. Meth and crack bigwig. But no evidence he operates around here. He sticks close to Green Bay. Makes ten times as much up there. No, I’m still betting the shooter was some muscle Mankewitz sent.”

“Drove down here to protect his hit men?”

“I’m guessing,” the other said.

Of course they were eager to pin anything on Mankewitz, short of the Kennedy assassination. Still, Brynn didn’t disagree; it would make sense. And the shooter had saved Hart and Comp from crushed skulls or a fall into the barbwire thorns.

“You get a look at him?”

“Nope. Don’t even know where he was.”

The agent looked out over the woods. “That’s not going to be an easy crime scene.”

And then they all grew silent as a recovery team carried Eric Munce’s body from the woods. The bag was dark green. The men started to set it near the body of the other killer, but hesitated and, out of respect, set it farther away, on the grass, not the shoulder.

“I’ve seen those bags a dozen times,” Brynn said softly to Dahl. “But never with one of ours inside.”

The driver of the SUV and his girlfriend were sitting dazed on the ground near the ambulance. Their seat belts had kept them from any damage other than bruising. The man who’d been pulled from his car by Hart was uninjured but his fear or ego kept prompting him to mutter about lawsuits until somebody suggested he could sell his story to People or Us. It was meant sarcastically to shut him up. But he seemed to like the idea. And he did shut up.

Brynn walked up to her husband and he put his arm around her. She asked Dahl, “Eric’s wife?”

A sigh. “I’m going by there now. In person, no calls.”

Graham looked at the body bag containing the deputy. “Well,” he said, as if it hurt to take enough breath to speak. Brynn rested her head against his shoulder. She was still astonished that he’d driven all this way to try to find her. Dahl wasn’t happy that he and Munce had tried an end run, particularly as it had resulted in the deputy’s death. Still, if they hadn’t, Brynn, Michelle and Amy would be dead now. And they wouldn’t have stopped at least one of the killers and collected good evidence that might lead to Hart and ultimately the man who had hired them.

Deputies Pete Gibbs and big Howie Prescott, breathing hard, came out of the forest with several state troopers. They were carrying clear plastic bags. Inside were shell casings and an empty ammunition clip.

They placed Comp’s personal effects into another bag. Michelle’s purse and Hart’s map went into others.

Brynn looked over the evidence, thinking: Hart, who the hell are you? “Tom, did CS do a prelim dusting at the Lake Mondac house?”

“Sure. Found about five hundred prints. Mostly the Feldmans’. None of the others set off alarms. The stolen Ford had about sixty and they were negative too. Those boys wore gloves the whole time. Smarter’n our criminals round here.”

“What about the spent brass and shells?”

“Found a ton of it. Yours, theirs. Went over the whole place with a metal detector. Even fished some out of that creek beside the garage. But no prints on a single shell.”

“None?” Brynn asked, dismayed. “They wore gloves loading their weapons?”

“Looks like it.”

Yep, smarter than our criminals…

Then she jabbed a finger at one of the evidence bags. “Tom, this’s our chance. Maybe there’re no prints on the brass—Hart’d expect to leave that. But he’s taken his weapon apart to clean and load it. There’s a print on one of those clips, I guarantee it. And the map. And they were carting around Michelle’s purse. They must’ve opened it. I’m taking the evidence up there myself—to the lab in Gardener.”

“You?” Dahl scoffed. “Don’t be nuts, Brynn. The state folk can handle that. Get some rest.”

“I’ll get some sleep in the car on the way home. Grab a shower and head over there.”

Dahl nodded at the troopers. “Half these boys’re stationed in Gardener They’ll drop everything off at the lab.”

She whispered, “And everything’ll sit gathering dust for two weeks. I want that guy.” A nod up the highway, where, peering over the ribbed pistol barrel, she’d last seen Hart in the ’jacked car speeding away. “I’m going to stand over the tech like a school teacher till I get some names from AIFIS. I want that man bad.”

Dahl looked at her grim, determined expression. “All right.”

Brynn locked the bags in the glove compartment of Graham’s truck, which he’d collected a quarter mile down the road. She noticed ripe green azaleas in the back bed. They were just starting to bud. Pink and white.

She leaned her head against her husband’s shoulder again. “Oh, honey. What a night.” He looked up. “You came. You came to find me.”

“I did, yes.” He gave her a distracted smile. He was clearly shaken—who wouldn’t be?—having seen and experienced what he had tonight.

“Let’s get home. I called Anna but they’ll want to see you. Joey didn’t take this whole thing too well.” He was going to say something else, she sensed. But didn’t.

Then another State Police car pulled up and a trooper and a short woman in a suit, Latina, climbed out. She was from Child Protective Services.

Brynn joined them, introduced herself and explained what had happened. The trooper, who was solid, square-jawed and looked like an ex-soldier, registered some shock at the news. The social worker, her face calm and observant, apparently had heard it all before. She nodded matter-of-factly and jotted some notes. “My office has lined up an emergency foster couple. They’re good people. I know them well. We’ll stop by the doctor, get her checked out and I’ll take her over there now.”

Brynn whispered, “Can you imagine? Meth cookers for parents. And they had her helping them? And look at her neck.” She’d noticed sausage red marks from where her mother or Gandy—or maybe that disgusting Rudy—had grabbed Amy by her throat, a threat or punishment. They didn’t seem serious but Brynn still shivered with anger. And for a troubling moment felt a dark satisfaction that Hart had killed them.

They joined Michelle, whose face was as pale as the cloudy dawn sky overhead. She was clutching Amy possessively. The girl was now awake.

The social worker nodded at Michelle and then crouched down. “Hi, Amy. I’m Consuela. You can call me Connie, if you want.”

The girl blinked.

“We’re going to take you for a ride to see some nice people.”

“Where’s Mommy?”

“These are some very nice people. You’ll like them.”

“I don’t like Mommy’s friends.”

“No, they’re not friends of hers.”

“Where’s Chester?”

“We’ll get Chester for you,” Brynn said. “That’s a promise.”

The social worker put her arm around Amy and helped her to her feet, then wrapped the blanket tighter around the girl. “Let’s go for a ride.”

The girl gazed absently at Michelle and nodded.

The young woman watched her go with such a look of affection that one might have thought she was the girl’s mother.

There was silence for a moment.

“I know all you’ve been through. But I have something else to ask.”

Michelle glanced at her.

“It’ll be a couple of hours before your brother gets here?”

“I guess.”

“I know this is hard. I know you don’t want to. But will you come back to my house for a little while? We’re not too far away. I can get you a change of clothes, something to eat and drink.”

“Brynn,” Graham said. He was shaking his head. “No.”

She glanced his way but continued speaking to the young woman. “I need you to tell me everything you can remember about Hart. Anything he mentioned or any mannerisms. Or anything Emma might’ve said about her case. While it’s fresh in your mind.”

“Absolutely.”

“She needs rest,” Graham said, nodding at Michelle.

“She has to wait somewhere.”

“No, it’s okay, really,” Michelle said to Graham. “I don’t want him to hurt anybody else. I’m not sure what I can do. But I’ll help.” Her voice was firm.

The medical examiner’s van headed off, the two bodies in the back. Brynn noted that it was her husband who seemed the most upset of any of them as they watched the departure of the boxy vehicle, sickly yellow-green. The sky was now light, the color of diluted egg yolk, and the traffic was thicker, easing through the one open lane, gawkers taking in the overturned SUV, the dark puddles on the highway.

Brynn explained to Tom Dahl about interviewing Michelle. “She can wait at my house until her brother arrives. Anna’ll look after her while I’m at the state lab.”

The sheriff nodded. Then said, “And we’ll need to talk to you, Graham, about what happened with Eric. Can you come down to the station?”

Graham looked at his watch. “I should get Joey to his English tutor.”

Brynn said, “He can stay home today. We’ll both be too busy.”

“I think he should go.”

“Not today,” Brynn said.

Graham shrugged then turned to the sheriff and said that he’d call the station and arrange a time.

Dahl then extended his hand to her. She blinked at the solemn gesture. She took it awkwardly. “I owe you more than a half day, Brynn. A lot more.”

“Sure.” She took Michelle’s arm and they followed Graham to his truck.

 

“MOM. LIKE, WHERE

were you? Shit. What happened to your face?”

“Just an accident. Watch your language.”

“My God!” Anna cried.

“It’s all right.”

“It’s not all right. It’s all black and blue. And yellow. And I can’t even see what’s under the bandage.”

Brynn recalled that she’d have to make an appointment for a new molar. She touched the gap with her tongue. The pain had vanished. Her mouth just felt weird.

“What happened, Mom?” Joey was wide-eyed.

“I fell.” Brynn hugged her son. “Tripped. You know how clumsy I am.”

Her mother eyed the bandage and said no more.

Michelle walked into the living room. The tape on her ankle—and the painkillers—had done the trick. She was no longer limping.

“Mom, this is Michelle,” Brynn said.

“Hello, dear.”

The young woman nodded politely.

“Joey, you go upstairs. I’ll call your tutor. Graham and I’ll be busy today. You’re staying home.”

Graham said, “Really. I can drop him off.”

“Please, honey, it’ll be better.”

“You two are a mess,” Anna announced. “What happened?”

Brynn glanced at the TV, off at the moment. Her mother would find out soon enough but she was glad the local news wasn’t on. “I’ll tell you in a bit. Joey, you’ve had breakfast?”

“Yeah.”

“Upstairs. Work on your history project.”

“All right.”

The boy trooped off, with a glance back at Michelle. Graham went into the kitchen.

In her deputy voice, her calm voice, Brynn said, “Mom, Michelle’s friends were killed. That was the case I was on tonight.”

“Oh, no.” Shocked, Anna stepped close and took Michelle’s hand. “I’m so sorry, dear.”

“Thank you.”

“Her brother’s on his way. She’ll be here for a little while until he gets here.”

“You come over here and sit down.” Anna indicated the green couch in the family room, where Graham and Brynn sat together in the evenings if TV was on the agenda. It was perpendicular to Anna’s rocker.

Michelle said, “I’d really like to take a shower, if I could.”

“Of course. There’s a bathroom down that hall. There.” Brynn pointed. “I’ll bring you some clothes. Unless you’d rather not.” Thinking of the woman’s earlier aversion to wearing Emma Feldman’s boots.

Michelle was smiling. “I’d love some. Thanks. Anything you’ve got.”

“I’ll hang them on the door,” Brynn said, thinking that at last she’d have a use for her skinny-girl jeans, which she hadn’t worn in two years but hadn’t quite been able to throw out.

Anna said, “There’re bath towels in the closet. I’ve got coffee. Do you want tea? I’ll make you some food.”

“Thanks. If it’s not too much trouble.”

Brynn noted that the woman’s last complaint about her blood sugar had been eons ago.

Anna led her to the bathroom and returned.

“I’ll give you the details later, Mom. They tried to kill her too. She found the bodies.”

“No!” Anna’s hand went to her mouth. “No…What’s the poor thing going to do? Should I call Reverend Jack? He could be here in ten minutes.”

“Let’s ask her. Might be a good idea. But I don’t know. She’s had so much coming at her. And one of our deputies was killed.”

“No! Who?”

“Eric.”

“That cute boy? With the brunet wife?”

Brynn sighed. She nodded.

With the brunet wife and a young baby.

“Did you get shot?” Anna asked abruptly.

“Collateral injury. Like a ricochet.”

“But you were shot?”

She nodded.

“What on earth happened?”

Brynn’s calm broke, like pond ice cracking. “Some really bad things, Mom.”

Anna hugged her, and Brynn felt her frail body shaking, as was her own. “I’m sorry, honey. I’m sorry. But everything’s going to be fine now.” Her mother stepped away, turning quickly, wiping her eyes. “I’ll get breakfast going. For you too. You need something.”

A smile. “Thanks, Mom.” Brynn watched her go and then called into the kitchen, “Where’s Graham?”

“Was here. I don’t know. Out back, I guess.”

Water began to flow in the front bathroom. The pipes squealed.

Brynn went upstairs to get some clothes for Michelle. In the bedroom she looked at her matted hair, the cuts and bruises, the white bandage with its aureole of yellow and purple.

She replayed Comp’s horrific death: the look on his face as he gazed at Hart, revealing pure betrayal.

Then the image of Hart’s face looking back at her as he sped away in the stolen sedan, the image frozen over the bead sight of the pistol she held firmly.

You should’ve killed me….

She wanted a shower badly but she’d get clothes for Michelle first. She’d interview the young woman, then call Tom Dahl and the State Police and FBI with any new information about Emma Feldman or Hart or his partner that Michelle could recall—something that might lead to Mankewitz. Then she’d speed up to Gardener and bully the evidence through the crime lab.

Brynn found a T-shirt, sweats, the jeans, socks and a pair of running shoes. She’d get a garbage bag for Michelle to put her dirty clothes in. She supposed the designer items would have to be dry cleaned. She whiffed, smelled her own sweat, powerful. Smelled rusty blood too, mixed with the perfume of antiseptic.

In the kitchen the tea kettle started whistling, then stopped.

Listening to the whining pipes in the first-floor bathroom, Brynn rested her forehead against the cool glass of the window, looking out at Graham’s truck. She was thinking of the evidence in the glove compartment, wondering how long it would take to get answers from the State Police lab in Gardener. Fingerprints could be done quickly now, thanks to the FBI’s integrated identification system. Ballistics would take longer but Wisconsin had a good database that might be able to trace one of the slugs in Hart’s or Comp’s pistols to prior crimes. Which might in turn lead to a full identification…or at least to somebody who could be pressured to dime Hart out.

Not a single print on the brass…She sighed, shaking her head.

A thought occurred to her. Brynn sat down on the edge of the bed, absently poked her tummy, as she often did, and called Tom Dahl.

“How you doing?” he asked. “Exhausted, betcha.”

“Not yet. Waiting for it to hit. Got a question.”

“Sure thing.”

“About the scene at Lake Mondac.”

“Go ahead.”

“You said Arlen’s Crime Scene folks searched the house with a metal detector and all they recovered was brass, right?”

“Yep. Fancy thing. Not like what the tourists use looking for arrowheads.”

“And no firearms?”

“Just brass and spent shells.”

“You said they searched the streams?”

“Yep. Found some brass there too. It was everywhere. Place was a turkey shoot.”

As I well know. “Now, Michelle said she picked up one of their guns. She shot Hart with it. And then the tires. She used up all the ammo and threw it in the stream.”

“Wonder why nobody found it. Maybe it was one of those other creeks.”

“I’d love to get my hands on it…. And I don’t like the idea of unaccounted-for firearms. Anybody over at the house still?”

“Pete Gibbs’s there. And Arlen has a couple of his boys. Might be somebody from Crime Scene too.”

“Thanks, Tom.”

“Wish you’d get some rest.”

“All in good time.”

She hung up and pulled on sweats, then called Gibbs at the Feldman house.

“Pete. It’s me.”

“Oh, hey, Brynn. How you doing?”

“Ugh.”

“I hear that.”

She asked if any Crime Scene people were still there.

“Yep. A couple of ’em.”

“Do me a favor. See if anybody’s recovered any pistols.”

“Sure, hold on.”

After a moment he came back on the line and reported that all they’d found were a few more shell casings that’d been missed last night. No weapons.

She sighed again. “Thanks. How you doing?” He sounded shaken. She assumed it was Munce’s death, but there was another source.

“Kind of an unpleasant thing happened,” he said ruefully. “I had to break the news to one of the Feldmans’ friends. She hadn’t heard. Man, I hate doing that. She broke down. Went totally bonkers.”

“A friend?”

“Yeah. Took her nearly a hour to calm down. Though she was one lucky lady, I’ll tell you. She was supposed to come up last night but something happened at work. She couldn’t get on the road till this morning. Imagine if that hadn’t happened.”

“Where’d she drive up from?”

“Chicago.”

“You get her number?”

“No. Didn’t think to. Should I have?”

“I’ll call you back.”

Brynn sat back on the bed, considering this.

A second houseguest was coming to visit last night? Another woman, and also from Chicago?

Wasn’t impossible. But wouldn’t Michelle have mentioned her? And why wouldn’t the two women drive up here together?

An absurd thought began unraveling…

Embarrassingly absurd.

Yet Brynn couldn’t quite dismiss it. All right, she’d been assuming all night that Michelle was the Feldmans’ houseguest. But when she considered the question now, she realized that she had no evidence that she actually was.

In fact, Brynn thought, what if she was a stranger who wanted to pretend she knew them? I gave her all the information she’d need to play the role. “Are you their friend from Chicago?” I asked her. “What’s your name?” Which told her I didn’t know anything about her. “Did you practice law with Emma?”

I’m an actress….

But, no, this was crazy. What would her motive be for lying?

Brynn gasped as another thought occurred to her, answering that question with horrifying clarity. On the interstate—at the Snake River Bridge—she’d recovered handguns from the men: Hart’s Glock and Comp’s SIG-Sauer. With the weapon that Michelle claimed to have found that meant the two men had brought three semiauto pistols and a shotgun.

Even for professional hit men that seemed excessive.

And why had Crime Scene found all that brass with the metal detector but not the missing pistol?

My Lord, what if the gun wasn’t Hart’s or Comp’s, but Michelle’s?

But why would she bring a gun with her?

One answer: because she’d been hired by Stanley Mankewitz to kill Emma Feldman and had brought along Hart and Comp, intending to kill them at the scene.

And leave their bodies behind, the fall guys.

Then Brynn recalled Michelle reaching into her jacket at the interstate. She wasn’t reaching for the knife; she was going for the gun she’d been carrying with her all night.

Which meant she still had it.

On the first floor the pipes stopped squealing as Michelle shut off the water.

 

WITH A GRIMACE

toward the empty gun lockbox, Brynn ran into the hallway and stepped into Joey’s room and took him by the shoulders.

“Mom, what’s wrong?” His eyes were wide.

“Listen to me, honey. We have a problem. You know how I tell you never to lock your door?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, today’s different. I want you to lock your door and not open it for any reason. Unless it’s me or your stepdad or Grams.”

“Mom, you look funny. I’m scared.”

“It’ll be okay. Just do what I tell you.”

“Sure. What—”

“Just do it.”

Brynn closed the door. She ran down the stairs as quietly as she could, intending to get to the only guns nearby: the ones in Graham’s truck, sealed in evidence bags.

On the second-to-the-bottom step Brynn stopped. The bathroom door was open. No sign of Michelle.

Go for the truck or not?

“Tea’ll be ready in just a moment,” Anna called.

Brynn stepped into the ground-floor hall.

Just as Michelle walked through an archway four feet away. In her hand was a small black automatic pistol. It was known as a baby Glock.

Their eyes met.

As the killer spun toward her, Brynn snagged a picture off the wall, a large family photo, and flung it at her. It missed but as she dodged, Brynn launched herself forward. The women collided hard, both grunting. Brynn fiercely gripped Michelle’s right wrist, digging her short nails into the woman’s skin as hard as she could.

Michelle cried out, striking Brynn’s head with her free hand.

The gun discharged once, then, as Michelle lowered it toward the deputy’s body, it fired three times more. All the slugs missed.

Anna screamed and called for Graham.

Brynn slammed a fist into Michelle’s face. She blinked in pain and spit flew. Eyebrows narrowed, her mouth a taut grimace, Michelle kicked Brynn’s groin and elbowed her in the belly. But Brynn wasn’t letting go of the gun, nothing could make her do that. The anger of the terrible evening, fueled by this betrayal—and her own gullibility—burned within her. She flailed and kicked and growled the way she had when the wolf approached them in the woods.

The women grappled, knocking over furniture. Michelle fought furiously—no longer the helpless dilettante in the thousand-dollar boots. She was crazed, fighting for survival.

The gun fired again. Then several times more. Brynn was counting the rounds. Baby Glocks held ten bullets.

Another sharp crack—and the weapon was empty, the slide locking back automatically, awaiting a fresh clip of ammunition. The women went down on the floor, Brynn pounding the woman’s head, aiming for her throat. Michelle fought back just as fiercely, though—muscles toned at a health club, if that story was true, and backed by pure desperation.

Still, there was no doubt in Brynn’s mind that she was going to stop this woman, kill her if she had to, no doubt whatsoever. Using hands and teeth and feete… she was pure rage, pure animal.

You should’ve killed me….

Well, this time I won’t make the same mistake.

Her fingers found Michelle’s throat.

“Jesus, Brynn—” A man ran through the door and for a tiny portion of a second Brynn thought it was Hart. But by the time she realized it was her husband the distraction had had its effect. Michelle broke free and slammed the gun into Brynn’s wounded cheek. The pain was so intense her vision clouded and she retched.

Michelle hit the lock on the gun and the receiver snapped shut. Though the gun was empty it appeared loaded and ready to fire. She aimed at Graham. “Keys. To your truck.”

“What are you—? What?”

“Emmy, Emmy,” Brynn muttered, clutching her face, clawing futilely at Michelle.

“I’ll kill her.” Shoving the gun into Brynn’s neck. “The fucking keys!”

“No, no! Here, take them. Please! Just leave!”

“Emmy!”

Michelle grabbed the keys. And ran outside.

Graham dropped to his knees, pulling his cell phone out, and dialed 911. He cradled Brynn, who pulled away and climbed to her feet. She started to black out, swayed against the stair rail. “Emmy…”

“Who’s Emmy?”

She forced herself to speak clearly through the pain. “Empty. The gun was empty.”

“Shit.” Graham ran to the door as his truck skidded down the street and vanished.

Brynn rose, then heard a soft voice from nearby: “Could somebody—”

Both Brynn and Graham turned toward the kitchen door, where Anna stood, her hands covered with blood.

“Please, could somebody…Look. Look at this.”

And she spiraled to the floor.

 

ROWS OF ORANGE

plastic chairs in the corner of the brightly lit room. Walls and tiles scuffed.

Graham sat across from Brynn, knees close but not touching. Their eyes were focused mostly on the linoleum and they looked up only from time to time when the double doors swung open. But the doctors and employees pushing through them were dealing with matters unrelated to Anna McKenzie’s life.

Twining her fingers together, Brynn stared at her untouched coffee.

Sick with horror, sick with exhaustion.

Her phone quivered. She looked at the screen and muted the ringer, because she didn’t want to take the call, not because of the No Cell Phone Use sign nearby.

A patient walked from the admitting window into the waiting area, sat down. Squeezed his arm and winced. He glanced once at Brynn and returned to his waiting state of numb silence.

“Been an hour,” Graham said.

“Nearly.”

“Long time. But that’s not necessarily bad.”

“No.”

Silence again, broken by cryptic announcements over the hospital PA. Then Brynn’s phone was vibrating again. This call she took. “Tom.”

“Brynn, how’s your mother?”

“We don’t know yet. What do you have?”

“Okay. Michelle got through the roadblocks somehow. They haven’t found your husband’s truck.”

Brynn hunched forward and pressed her injured cheek, as if the pain were payment for her misjudgment.

Dahl continued, “You were right. We found that friend who drove up from Chicago this morning. She was the only one coming to visit. Michelle, we guess, is a hit man…. Well, hit woman.”

“Hired by Mankewitz or one of his people.”

“What they’re figuring,” Dahl said.

“So Hart and Comp were supposed to be the bodies left behind.”

“The what?”

“The bodies left behind…. She was going to make it look like they were the only killers and they got into a fight between themselves after the Feldmans were dead. So we wouldn’t bother to look further. But it went bad. Hart reacted too fast or her gun jammed, who knows? She had to run. Then I found her in the woods.” Brynn pinched the bridge of her nose. Her laugh was bitter. “And rescued her.”

Another doctor came out, through the double doors. Brynn stopped talking. The physician, wearing blue scrubs, kept going.

Brynn was reflecting on the look that passed between Hart and the young woman at the interstate.

You came close, Michelle. Real close….

Hart’s words to her by the highway had a whole different meaning, now that Brynn knew the truth.

And she recalled Michelle’s shocked reaction when Brynn told her about meeting Hart in the van beside the meth cookers’ camper. The woman would have been terrified that Hart had mentioned Michelle’s real identity.

“And somebody from Mankewitz’s crew was probably going to come pick her up when it was over. Hell, that’s who was taking shots at us when we were on that cliff.”

Brynn was aware that Graham was staring at her, taking in the conversation.

She continued to the sheriff, “She needed the evidence I’d brought with me—the guns and clips, the map, the boxes of ammunition. Her purse. That’s why she was so willing to come back with us to our house. Something probably had her prints on them. Or trace evidence that might lead us to her. She’d planned to collect it at Lake Mondac after she’d killed Hart and his friend…. Wait, Tom. What about her shoes? A pair of women’s shoes at the Feldmans’ house? In the yard. Any prints?”

“Recovered them. But no prints.”

“None?”

“Looks like they were wiped off, like the Ford. Wiped off with Windex.”

A faint laugh. “She did that when I went for the canoe…. Brother, did she have me fooled.” Brynn rubbed a knuckle against a faint bump on her rebuilt jaw, as she often did when thoughtful or upset. The betrayal stung her deeply. And she said in a soft voice, “I was supposed to be one too.”

“What?”

“A body left behind. She was using me as bait. She didn’t have a sprained ankle at all. She was moving slow to draw the men close. And she tried to keep them following in our direction all night. She broke the Mercedes window to set off the alarm—probably as the men were heading toward the highway. And complained about putting on those boots, made a big deal of it. She was stalling, trying to get them closer to us. And who knows what else? She had some crackers. I’ll bet she dropped those.” Brynn laughed sourly, shaking her head. “Once, she had this outburst, screamed like a banshee. It was to let them know where we were. She was waiting for them to catch up. Then she’d shoot them in the woods. Me too.”

“Well, Brynn, why didn’t she, you know, just shoot you right up front?” Dahl asked.

“She needed me for insurance maybe, or to help her get out of the area. Most likely use me to help her kill them.”

Aware that Graham had fallen silent, his jaw set, large hands clasped together.

Brynn told Tom she’d better go and asked him to call her if they found anything at all.

They disconnected and she turned to her husband to give him a summary of what had happened. He closed his eyes and rocked back. “That’s okay,” he said, cutting her off. “I got enough.”

She touched his leg. He didn’t respond. After a few minutes, she lifted her fingers away and called the neighbor where Joey was staying. She talked to her son for some moments, telling him the truth—that they didn’t know anything yet about his grandmother. She let him ramble on about a video game he’d been playing. Brynn told him she loved him and hung up.

Husband and wife sat in silence. Brynn looked at her husband once then shifted her gaze down at the floor. Finally, after an eternity, he rested his hand on her knee. They remained that way, motionless, for some minutes—until a doctor came out of the double door. He looked at the man with the hurt arm and then walked directly toward Brynn and Graham.

 

HART GOT RID

of the car he’d hijacked on the interstate.

He did this as efficiently as he knew how: He parked it in the Avenues West area of Milwaukee with the doors locked but the keys in the ignition. Some kids wouldn’t notice and some would notice but think it was a sting and some—in the quickly redeveloping area—would notice but would do the right thing and pass the car by.

The car, however, would still be gone within one hour. And harvested for parts in twelve.

Head down, exhausted and in agony from the gunshot and the other trauma of the night, Hart walked quickly away from the vehicle. It was a cool morning, the sky clear. The smell of fires from construction site scrap teased his nose. His instincts were still running the show and were directing him underground as fast as possible.

Walking along the sparsely populated streets he found the Brewline Hotel, though it was nowhere near the Brewline. It was the sort of place that thrived on business by the hour or by the week but rarely by the day. He paid for one week in advance with a bonus for a private bath, and was given a remote control and a set of sheets. The overweight woman clerk took no notice of his physical condition or absence of luggage. He trooped up the two flights of stairs and into room 238. He locked the door, stripped and dumped his fetid clothes into a pile that reminded him very much of Brynn McKenzie’s soaked uniform at the second house on Lake View Drive.

He pictured her stripping.

The image aroused him for a few minutes until the throbbing in his arm tipped him out of the mood.

He examined the wound closely. Hart had taken paramedic training courses—because his job often involved physical injuries. He now assessed the wound and concluded that he didn’t need a doctor. He knew several medicos who’d lost their tickets and would stitch him up, no questions asked or gunshots reported, for a thousand bucks. But the bleeding had stopped, the bone was intact and, though his bruise was impressive, the infection was minor. He’d start on antibiotics later today.

Hart showered under a stuttering stream of water, doing his best to keep his arm dry.

He returned to the bed, naked, and lay down. He wanted to consider the night, to try to make sense of it. He thought back several weeks—to a Starbucks in Kenosha, where he was meeting with a guy he’d worked with a few times in Wisconsin. Gordon Potts was a big, hulking man, not brilliant but decent and someone you could trust. And he could hook you up with dependable labor when you needed it. Potts had said he’d been approached by a woman in Milwaukee who was smart, tough and pretty. He vouched for her. (Hart now realized that Michelle had bought the credentials with a blow job or two.)

Hart was interested. He was between jobs and bored. There was a deal going down in Chicago but that wasn’t until mid-May. He wanted something now, needed some action, adrenaline. The same way that the tweaker Hart had killed in the state park last night needed to slam meth.

Besides, the job was a lark Potts told him.

A few days later Potts had hooked him up with “Brenda”—the fake name Michelle had offered—in a coffee shop in the Broadway District of Green Bay. She said, “So, Hart. How you doing?”

She shook his hand firmly.

“Good. You?”

“I’m okay. Listen, I’m interested in hiring somebody. You interested in some work?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. So how do you know Gordon Potts? You go back a long ways?”

“Not so long.”

“How’d you meet him?”

“A mutual friend.”

“Who’d that be?”

“Freddy Lancaster.”

“Freddy, sure. How’s his wife doing?”

Michelle had laughed. “That’d be tough to find out, Hart. She died two years ago.”

And Hart had laughed too. “Oh, that’s right. Bad memory. How does Freddy like St. Paul?”

“St. Paul? He lives in Milwaukee.”

“This memory of mine.”

The Dance…

After his first meeting with Brenda-Michelle, Hart had made phone calls to both Gordon Potts and Freddy Lancaster to verify times, dates and places down to the tenth decimal. A dozen other calls too, after which he was confident that nobody was working for the law. Brenda Jennings was a petty thief with no history of informing on her partners—and was also, Hart now knew, an identity Michelle had stolen.

So he arranged another meeting to discuss the job itself.

Michelle had explained she’d heard that Steven Feldman had been making inquiries about swapping old bills, silver certificates, for newer Federal Reserve notes. She’d looked into the situation and learned about some meatpacking executive who’d hidden cash in his summer home in the 1950s. A million bucks. She gave Hart the details.

“That’s a lot of money.”

“Yeah, it is, Hart. So you’re interested?”

“Keep going.”

“Here’s a map of the area. That’s a private road. Lake View Drive. And there? That’s a state park, all of it. Hardly any people around. Here’s a diagram of the house.”

“Okay…This a dirt road or paved?”

“Dirt…Hart, they tell me you’re good. Are you good? I hear you’re a craftsman. That’s what they say.”

As he’d studied the map he’d asked absently, “Who’s ‘they’?”

“People.”

“Well, yeah, I’m a craftsman.”

Hart had been aware of her studying him closely. He looked back into her eyes. She said, “Can I ask you a question?”

A lifted eyebrow. “Yeah.”

“I’m curious. Why’re you in this line of work?”

“It suits me.”

Hart was somebody who didn’t believe in psychoanalysis or spending too much time contemplating your soul. He believed you felt in harmony or you didn’t, and if you bucked that feeling you were making a big mistake.

God, doesn’t the boredom just kill them? It would me. I need more, Brynn. Don’t you?

Michelle had nodded, as if she understood exactly what he meant and had been hoping for just that answer. She said, “It looks like it does.”

He got tired of talking about himself. “Okay. What’s the threat situation?”

“The what?”

“How risky’s the job going to be? How many people up there, weapons, police nearby? It’s a lake house—are the other houses on Lake View occupied?”

“It’ll be a piece of cake, Hart. Hardly any risk at all. The other places’ll be vacant. And only the two of them up there, the Feldmans. And no rangers in the park or cops around for miles.”

“They have weapons?”

“Are you kidding? They’re city people. She’s a lawyer, he’s a social worker.”

“Just the Feldmans, nobody else? It’ll make a big difference.”

“That’s my information. And it’s solid. Just the two of them.”

“And nobody gets hurt?”

“Absolutely not,” she had said. “I wouldn’t do this if there was a chance anybody’d get hurt.” Brenda-Michelle had smiled reassuringly.

Lots of money, nobody hurt. Sounded good. Still, he’d said, “I’ll get back to you.”

Hart had driven home and researched what she’d told him. Sitting at his computer, he’d laughed out loud. Sure enough, it was all true. And he was confident that no cops in the world would come up with a sting like this. They offered drugs, perped merchandise, funny money, but they didn’t suggest a caper out of a Nicholas Cage movie.

Then came the big day. They’d driven up to Lake Mondac in the stolen Ford together. He, Compton Lewis and Michelle. The two men had broken in and, while they held the Feldmans at gunpoint, Michelle was supposed to come into the kitchen, tape up their hands and start interrogating them about the money. Instead of the duct tape, though, she was carrying a 9mm subcompact Glock. She’d walked past Hart and shot the couple point-blank.

In the ringing silence that followed she turned around and walked into the living room like nothing had happened.

Hart had stared at her, trying to figure it out.

“The fuck did you do?” gasped Lewis, who’d been poking around in the fridge for food, rather than where he should’ve been—watching the front of the house.

“Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.” She’d started going through the briefcase and backpack.

The men had been staring in shock at the bodies, while—they’d assumed—she was looking for a key to a secret room or lockbox or something. Hart himself had been frantically tallying up the offenses they’d just bought into. Felony murder being number one.

Then he saw her reflection—she was coming up behind him, lifting the gun.

He leapt sideways, instinctively.

Crack…

The tug on his arm.

Then returning fire as she escaped.

Lying in the spongy bed now, Hart knew exactly what had happened. There was no hidden treasure. Michelle had been hired to kill the Feldmans—Brynn had suggested as much as they’d sat in the van beside the meth cookers’ camper.

Her plan was to leave Hart and Lewis in the Feldmans’ house, the fall guys.

And Hart couldn’t help but laugh now. He’d hired Compton Lewis for exactly the same reason Michelle had hired Hart: an insurance policy, a fall guy. In case the robbery went bad and people ended up dead, Hart had been going to kill Lewis and set him up to look like the sole perp. That was why he’d gotten a loser he’d had no previous connection with. That scenario had nearly played out on the interstate. With Michelle, Brynn and the little girl together—and Hart had the squad car to escape by—it was time to conclude the evening. He killed Lewis and was about to kill the others with the SIG when who shows up but Brynn’s husband?

I was thinking with my contacts, guys in my crew, and your, you know, the way you plan things and think, we’d be a good team.

Oh, you sad bastard, Hart thought. You really did believe that, didn’t you? And here you were, 50 percent dead from the first time we sat down together, you tugging your green earring and scoffing about why were we in a faggot place like this that only sold coffee and not a real bar?

With sleep closing in, he pictured Michelle. Of all the people he’d worked with and for—dangerous Jamaican drug lords, South Side gangstas and OC bosses throughout the Midwest—the petite, young redhead was the most deadly.

The cloak of sweet, the cloak of helpless, the cloak of harmless—hiding a scorpion.

He speculated about the two women together last night. What on earth had they talked about? Brynn McKenzie was not a woman easily fooled, and yet Michelle had been the consummate actress. He thought of those surreal moments in the van with Brynn.

So, Michelle was a friend of the family? Is that how she got mixed up in this whole thing? Wrong time and wrong place, you might say. A lot of that going around tonight….

The Trickster.

In the Feldmans’ house he’d glanced quickly at a credit card in her purse and gotten her name. Michelle S. Kepler, he believed. Maybe Michelle A. There’d probably been a driver’s license but he hadn’t bothered to look for it then. He’d have to find her—before the police did, of course. She’d give him up in a minute. Oh, he had some work to do in the next few days.

But then, like Compton Lewis, Michelle faded from his thoughts and he fell asleep with only one image in his mind: the calm, confident eyes of Deputy Brynn McKenzie, sitting beside him in the front seat of the van.

You have the right to remain silent….

 

THEY RETURNED FROM

the hospital at 8 P.M.

Brynn and Graham picked up Joey from the neighbor’s house and they drove home. Brynn got out of the car first and went up to the deputy, Jimmy Barnes, the one whose birthday was today. The balding, ruddy-faced man was parked on the shoulder in front of their house, all grim and quiet—the way everybody was in the Kennesha County Sheriff’s Department, because of Munce.

In fact, the way a lot of people throughout the town of Humboldt were.

“Nobody’s come by, Brynn.” He waved to Graham. “Made the rounds a few times.”

“Thanks.”

She suspected that Michelle, whoever she was, would be long gone but the woman seemed frighteningly obsessed.

And, she reflected, Hart too knew her last name.

“Crime Scene’s got what they need. I locked up after.”

“They say anything?”

“Nope. You know the state boys.”

It’d be against the laws of nature for the brass and the slugs from Lake Mondac not to match those collected in her house.

Barnes asked, “Wasn’t her friends? She was making all that up?”

“That’s right.”

“And your mom. Heard she’ll be okay?”

“She’ll live.”

“Where’d she get hit?”

“The leg. Hospital another day or two. Therapy.”

“Sorry about that.”

Brynn shrugged. “Lot of people don’t make it round to see therapy.”

“Lucky.”

If your daughter bringing an armed killer into your house is luck, then I guess.

“’Night now. Somebody’ll make the rounds off and on.”

“Thanks, Jimmy. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“You’ll be in?”

“Yep. You have a package for me?”

“Oh, yeah.” Barnes reached into the back and handed her a heavy paper bag. She looked inside at a well-worn department Glock and two extra clips, along with a box of Winchester 9mm hollow points.

He then lifted a clipboard. She signed for the weapon.

“You got a clip loaded. Thirteen. None in the bedroom.”

“Thanks.”

“Get some rest, Brynn.”

“’Night. And happy birthday.”

As he drove off she checked the clip anyway and chambered a round.

The family walked inside the house.

Upstairs she put the gun in the lockbox and returned to the kitchen.

Joey had eaten pizza at the neighbor’s. He walked around, staring at the bullet holes in the walls until Brynn told him not to.

Brynn took a long shower, the water hot as she could stand, and tied her hair back after towel-drying it. Didn’t want the noise of the dryer. She changed the bandage on her face, threw on sweats and went downstairs, where Graham was heating up spaghetti from last night. She wasn’t hungry but felt she’d abused her system enough in the past twenty-four hours and was expecting it to go on strike if she didn’t start to pamper soon.

They went into the dining room and ate for a while in silence. She sat back, looked at the label on her beer. She wondered what exactly hops were.

Then she asked Graham, “What is it?”

“Hmm?”

“There was something you wanted to say at the hospital.”

“Don’t remember.”

“You sure? I think you might.”

“Maybe something. But not now. It’s late.”

“I think now is good.” She was chiding but serious too.

Joey came downstairs and was channel surfing in the family room, sitting on the green couch.

Graham stuck his head in the door. “Joey, go upstairs and read. No TV.”

“Just ten min—”

Brynn started to speak. Graham continued into the family room. He said something that Brynn couldn’t hear.

The TV shut off and she caught a glimpse of her sullen son climbing the stairs.

What was that about?

Her husband sat down at the table.

“Come on, Graham.” They rarely used each other’s name. “What is it? Tell me?”

Her husband sat forward, and she saw he was lost in debate. Eventually he said, “Do you know how Joey hurt himself yesterday?”

“The skateboard? At school?”

“It wasn’t at school. And it wasn’t just three steps in the parking lot. He was ’phalting. You know what that is?”

“I know ’phalting. Sure. But Joey wouldn’t do that.”

“Why? Why do you say that? You don’t have any idea.”

She blinked.

“He was ’phalting. He was doing close to forty or fifty on the back of a truck down Elden Street.”

“The highway?”

“Yes. And he’d been doing it all day.”

“Impossible.”

“Why do you say that? A teacher saw him. His section teacher called, Mr. Raditzky. Joey skipped school. And he forged your name to a note.”

With yesterday’s horror less immediate, this news was shocking. “Forged?”

“Went in in the morning. Left and never came back.”

Was this true? She looked at the ceiling. A black dot of a bullet hole was in the corner. Small as a fly. The slug had come all the way through here. “I had no idea. I’ll talk to him.”

“I tried. He wouldn’t listen.”

“He gets that way.”

In a harsh voice Graham said, “But he can’t get that way. That’s not an excuse. He kept lying to me and I told him no skateboarding for a month.”

“Are you sure—” Her initial reaction was to defend her son, to question Mr. Raditzky’s credibility, to ask who the witness was, to cross-examine. She fell silent.

Graham was tense, shoulders forward.

More was coming.

But, fair enough. She’d asked for this.

“And the fight, Brynn. Last year? You told me it was a pushing match. Mr. Raditzky told me what really happened.”

“He was a bully. He—”

“—was just taunting Joey. Talking to him is all. But Joey hurt him bad. We almost got sued. You never told me that.”

She fell silent. Then said, “I didn’t want word to get around. I pulled some strings. It wasn’t all on the up-and-up. But I had to do it. I wanted to protect him.”

“He’s not going to break, Brynn. You spoil him. His bedroom looks like a Best Buy.”

“I pay for everything I bought him myself.” She instantly regretted the barbed words, seeing the grimace on Graham’s face. This had nothing to do with money, of course.

“I don’t think it’s good for him, all that indulgence. You don’t have to be mean. But have to say no sometimes. And punish him if he doesn’t listen to you.”

“I do.”

“No, you don’t. It’s like you owe him, like you’re guilty about something and paying back this debt. What’s it all about, Brynn?”

“You’re making it into something more than it is. Way more.” She gave a faint laugh, though she felt her heart chill—the way her skin had when the cold, black water rushed into her car at Lake Mondac. “His fight at school…it was just something between Joey and me.”

“Oh, Brynn, that’s the problem. See? That’s what this is all about. It’s never been ‘us.’ It’s always you and Joey. I’m along for the ride.”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it? What’s this all about?” He waved his hand around the house. “Is it about us, the three of us, a family? Or is it about you? You and your son?”

“It’s about us, Graham, really.” She tried holding his eye but couldn’t.

No lies between us, Brynn…

But that was Hart. And it was Keith…. Graham was different. This is so wrong, she thought, being honest with bad men, while the good ones get lied to and neglected.

He stretched. She noticed that both their beers were exactly three-quarters full. He said, “Forget it. Let’s go to bed. We need sleep.”

She asked, “When?”

“When what?”

“Are you leaving?”

“Brynn. This is enough for tonight.” A laugh. “We never talk, not about anything serious. And now we can’t stop. Tonight of all nights. We’re exhausted. Let’s just get some rest.”

“When?” she repeated.

He rubbed his eyes, first one, then both. He lowered his hands, looked at a deep scratch inflicted at some point last night in the woods. A tear in the skin from a thorn or rock. He seemed surprised. He said, “I don’t know. A month. A week. I don’t know.”

She sighed. “I’ve seen it coming.”

He looked perplexed. “Seen it coming? How? I didn’t know it till last night.”

What did he mean by that? She asked, “Who is she?”

“‘She’?”

“You know who. That woman you’re seeing.”

“I’m not seeing anybody.” He sounded put out, as if she’d delivered a cheap insult.

She debated but kept to the course. She said harshly, “JJ’s poker games. Sometimes you go. Sometimes you don’t.”

“You’ve been spying on me.”

“You lied to me. I could tell. I do this for a living, remember?”

He’s no good at deception.

Unlike me.

Anger now. But more troubling, he sounded disgusted. “What’d you do? Put a bug in the car? Have somebody from the department tail me?”

“I saw you once. By coincidence. Outside the motel on Albemarle. And, yeah, I followed you later. You said you were going to the game. But you went there again…” She snapped, “Why are you laughing? It broke my heart, Graham!”

“To break somebody’s heart, you need to own a bit of it. And I don’t. I don’t have an ounce of yours. I don’t think I ever did.”

“That’s not true! There’s no excuse for cheating.”

He was nodding slowly. “Cheating, ah…Did you ask me about it? Did you sit down and say, ‘Honey, we have a problem, I’m concerned, let’s talk about it? Get it worked out’?”

“I—”

“You know your mother told me about what Keith did. To your face. You know my first reaction? Oh, my God, that explains so much. How could I be mad at you? But then I realized that, hell, yes, I could be mad. I should be mad. And you should have told me. I deserved to be told.”

Brynn had considered telling him a hundred times. Yet she’d made up a bullshit story about a car crash. She thought now: But how could I tell him? That somebody flew into a rage and hit me. That I cried off and on for months afterward. That I cringed at the sound of his voice. That I broke into a hundred pieces like a child. I was ashamed that I didn’t leave him, just bundle Joey up and walk out the door.

That I was afraid. That I was weak.

And that my delaying would have even more horrific consequences.

Keith…

But even now she couldn’t tell him exactly what had happened.

And here, she understood, was a clue to the crime she’d committed against Graham, against the two of them: her silence, this inability to talk. Yet she felt that whatever the clue led to, even if she managed to figure it out, the solution would come too late. It was like finding conclusive evidence as to a killer’s identity, only to discover that the perp had already died of natural causes.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But you still…” Her voice faded as she watched him pulling his wallet from his slacks, fishing in it. She watched, obsessively touching the bandage on her cheek.

Jesus. Was it his lover’s picture? she wondered.

He handed her a small white card.

Brynn squinted; the cheek wound made reading difficult out of her right, her stronger, eye.

She stared at the raised type: Sandra Weinstein, M.D., LLC. 2942 Albemarle Avenue, Ste. 302, Humboldt, Wisconsin. Handwritten at the bottom was: Friday 7:30, April 17. Brynn began, “She’s a—”

“Therapist. Psychiatrist…Shrink.”

“You—”

“You saw us near the motel, Brynn, but not at the motel. She’s in the professional building next door. I’m usually her last patient at night. Sometimes we leave the office at the same time. That’s probably when you saw us.”

Brynn flicked the card.

“Call her. Go see her. I’ll give her permission to tell you all about it. Please, go talk to her. Help me figure out why you love the job more than me. Why you’d rather be in your squad car than at home. Help me figure out how to be a father to a son you won’t let me near. Why you got married to me in the first place. Maybe you two can figure it out. I sure can’t.”

Brynn offered lamely, “But why didn’t you tell me? Ask me to go with you to counseling? I would have!” She meant this.

He lowered his head. And she realized she’d touched a painful spot—like her tongue probing the gum where her tooth had once been.

“I should have. Sandra keeps suggesting it. I almost asked you a dozen times. I couldn’t.”

“But why?”

“Afraid of what you’d do. Give up on us, think I was being too demanding, walk out the door. Or take control and I’d get lost in the shuffle…Make it seem like there was no problem at all.” He shrugged. “I should have asked you. I couldn’t. But look, Brynn, the time for that has passed. You’re you, I’m me. Apples and oranges. We’re so different. It’s best for both of us.”

“But it’s not too late. Don’t judge by last night. This was…this was a nightmare.”

Then, astonishing her, he snapped. He shoved the chair back and leapt to his feet. The beer bottle fell, spewing foam over the plates. The easygoing man was now enraged. Brynn froze inside, replaying those nights with Keith. Her hand rose to her jaw. She knew that Graham wouldn’t hurt her. Still, she couldn’t help the defensive gesture. She blinked up at him and saw the wolf hovering nearby in the state park.

Yet, she realized the rage wasn’t at her. It was, she believed, directed purely at himself. “But I have to judge by last night. That’s what did it, Brynn. Last night…”

What he’d said before. He wasn’t planning on leaving until then. What did he mean? “I don’t understand.”

He inhaled deeply. “Eric.”

“Eric Munce?”

“He’s dead because of me.”

“You? No, no, we all knew he was reckless. Whatever happened didn’t have anything to do with you.”

“Yes, it did! It had everything to do with me.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“I used him!” His own jaw, square and perfect, was trembling. “I know you all thought he was a cowboy. Last night nobody was going to look for you at the interstate. But I knew you’d go that way. So I told Eric if he wanted to see some action he ought to come with me. That’s where the killers were headed.” Graham shook his head. “I threw that out like it was a hunting dog’s favorite treat…. And he’s dead because of me. Because I went someplace I had no business going. And I have to live with that forever.”

She leaned forward. He recoiled from her hand. She sat back and asked, “Why, Graham? Why did you come, then?”

He gave a cold laugh. “Oh, Brynn. I plant trees and flowers for a living. You carry a gun and do high-speed chases. I want to watch TV at night; you want to study the latest drug-testing kits. I can’t compete with your life. I sure can’t in Joey’s eyes…Last night, I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. Maybe that there was some gunfighter deep inside me. I could prove myself. But that was a joke. All I did was get another human being killed…. No goddamn business going out there. And I have no business here. You don’t want me, Brynn. You sure don’t need me.”

“No, honey, no…”

“Yes,” he whispered. Then held up a hand. The gesture meant: enough, no more.

He gripped her arm and squeezed softly. “Let’s get some sleep.”

As Graham went upstairs Brynn absently daubed at the spilled beer until the paper napkins disintegrated. She got a dish towel and finished the job. With another she tried to stanch the tears.

She heard his footsteps coming downstairs again. He was carrying a pillow and blanket. Without a glance her way, he walked to the green couch, made up a bed and closed the family room door.

 

“ALL DONE, MA’AM.”

Brynn peered over at the painter, who was gesturing toward the living room and its repaired ceiling and walls.

“What do I owe you?” She peered around as if a checkbook floated nearby.

“Sam’ll send you a bill. You’re good for it. We trust you.” He gestured at her uniform. Smiled then stopped. “The funeral’s tomorrow? Deputy Munce?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m sorry about what happened. My son painted his garage. The deputy was very civil to him. Some people aren’t. They gave him an iced tea…. I’m sorry.”

A nod.

After the painter left she continued to stare at the blank walls. No trace of the 9mm holes remained. She thought she should put up the pictures once more. But she didn’t have the energy. The house was completely silent.

She looked over a list of things she had to do—calls to return, evidence to follow up on, interviews to conduct. Someone named Andrew Sheridan had called twice—he had some business connection with Emma Feldman and was asking about the files recovered from the house in Lake Mondac. She wondered what that was about. And somebody from the state’s attorney’s office had heard from the couple injured when their SUV overturned on the interstate. They were suing. The owner of the house at 2 Lake View had made a claim too. The ammonia had ruined the floor. Bullet holes too, of course. She needed to file a report. She’d delay that as long as she could.

She heard footsteps on the front porch.

Graham’s?

A knock on the wooden frame. She rose.

“The bell’s out, I think,” Tom Dahl said.

“Hey. Come on in.”

The sheriff walked inside. He noticed the smooth walls. Didn’t comment on them. “How’s your mother doing?”

“She’ll be okay. Feisty, you know.” She tilted her head toward the closed family room door. “We made her up a bedroom downstairs. She’s sleeping now.”

“Oh, I’ll keep my voice down.”

“With the meds she’s on, she’d sleep through a party.”

The sheriff sat and massaged his leg. “I liked the way you phrased it. About those two killers: the bodies left behind. Described it pretty good.”

“Anything at all, Tom?”

“I’ll tell you up front there’s not much. That fellow got himself shot was Compton Lewis. Lived in Milwaukee.”

“Compton was his first name?”

“Ask his mother or father. Fellow was just a punk, a wannabe. Did construction around the lakefront and ran some petty scams, smash-and-grab at gas stations and convenience stores. Biggest thing was he and some folks tried to rob a guard refilling an ATM outside of Madison last year. They think Lewis was supposedly the getaway driver but he dropped his keys in the snow. His buddies ran off and he got busted. Did six months.” Dahl shook his head. “Only kin I could track down was Lewis’s older brother. The only one still in the state. The man took the news hard, I’ll tell you. Started crying like a baby. Had to hang up and called me back a half hour later…Didn’t have much to say, but here’s his number if you want to talk to him.” He handed her a Post-it note.

“How about Hart?” She’d checked every criminal database in five states, all the nicknames, all the mug shots for everybody named Hart, Heart, Harte, Hartman, Harting…nothing.

“No leads at all. That man…he’s good. Look at the fingerprints. Didn’t leave a one anywhere. And digging the bullet with his DNA out of the woodwork? He knows what he’s doing.”

“And Michelle? She would’ve given Hart and Lewis a fake name but I’d guess Michelle is real; Hart and Lewis found her purse and probably looked through it. And she’d’ve told the truth to me—because I’d be dead by morning.”

Dahl said, “They’re more concerned about her ’cause the FBI’s sure it’s Mankewitz who hired her, and they want to prove him or one of his people hired her. But so far the snitches haven’t come up with anything concrete.”

“Are they taking the composite picture of her I did to acting schools and health clubs?” Brynn was pretty sure the biography Michelle had told that night was a lie, its purpose to elicit sympathy from Brynn, but the young woman had been so credible it was worth checking out.

“I think they’re working from the top down more, going for a Mankewitz connection first.”

He went on to say that he’d opened files on the four meth cookers killed by Hart and Lewis. They were murder charges; like ’em or not, drug dealers have a right not to be killed too.

If the mysterious shooter near the ledge in Marquette State Park in the early hours of April 18 had any connection to the methamphetamine industry in Wisconsin or to Mankewitz, nobody’d been able to find it. The State Police had found the probable location of the shooter’s nest but they’d recovered no physical evidence whatsoever. He’d collected all his brass and obscured his shoeprints. “Everybody’s a damn pro,” Dahl muttered. Then asked, “How’s that little girl doing?”

“Amy? No other family that Child Protective Services can find.”

“Sad.”

“Not really, Tom. At least she’ll have a chance for a decent life now. She wouldn’t’ve survived there with Gandy and his wife…. And I have to say she’s looking okay. Pretty happy.”

“You saw her?”

“This morning. I bought her a new Chester and took it up.”

“A new…?”

“Toy. I don’t know what. Donkey-monkey or something. I was planning on going back to the park and getting the original. Just didn’t have the heart.”

“That’d be above and beyond, Brynn. Physically, she’s okay?”

“Well, nobody’d gone south.”

“Thank God for that.”

“But the marks on her neck?” Brynn grimaced angrily. “The doctor who looked her over that night said they’d been made in the past few hours.”

“Few hours? You mean, it was Michelle did that?”

“Yep.” Brynn sighed. “Amy was making some noise, and Hart and Lewis were nearby. Michelle pulled her aside to talk to her. And she was quiet after that. Half strangled the poor kid, I’ve got a feeling.”

“Lord, what a witch.”

“And Amy was terrified for the rest of the night. I never connected it.”

“Poor thing. Good you went to see her.”

She asked, “That FBI fellow who’s checking on Mankewitz? He’ll call us? Or are they thinking we’re bumpkins?”

“Never knew where that word came from.”

Brynn lifted an eyebrow.

“They think we’re bumpkins but they said they’d let us know,” Dahl said.

“Still, give me his number. I’ll call just to say hello.”

Snickering, Dahl dug through his wallet and found a card. Showed it to Brynn and she wrote down the information.

“You look tired. I owe you that time off. And I’m insisting you take it. That’s from your boss. Kick back. Let Graham take care of things for a while. A man oughta know his way around the kitchen and grocery store and laundry. Lord knows, I do. Carole’s whipped me into shape.”

Brynn laughed and Dahl missed the mournful tone. “Well, I will. Promise. But not just yet. We’ve got open homicides and even if Mankewitz is behind it and the U.S. attorney comes in on RICO or conspiracy counts, it’s still a state crime happened in our county.”

“What’re you planning to do?” Dahl asked.

“Go where the leads take me. Here, Milwaukee, wherever.” She at least would follow up on some of the acting school and health club connections, anything else she could think of. Maybe gun clubs. The woman certainly knew how to use a firearm.

“And it won’t do any good saying no?”

“You can fire me.”

He chuckled.

Brynn sighed. “And this all ended up in our lap.”

“Usually, you know, you can’t pick the bullet that hits you. Usually you can’t even hear it coming.”

“What’re you and Carole doing this weekend?”

“Maybe a movie. Only if her mother comes to babysit. These teenagers? They charge you ten dollars an hour and you have to feed them. I mean, something hot. What do you pay?”

“Graham and I don’t go out much.”

“Better that way. Stay home, have dinner. No need to go out. Especially with cable. Best be going.”

“Say hi to Carole for me.”

“Will do. And regards to your mom. Wish her well.”

She watched him go and she stood, looking over the first item on her list.