Joey Putata said, "You think we're far enough?"

The guy with the hat said, "How the fuck I know? Let's go that way and see if we can find Tony and Mike." Tony and Mike must be the other flankers.

From a very long way off there were two quick booms. Joey got excited and said, "Maybe we got'm." When he said it, he shoved the guy with the hat, and the guy with the hat turned sideways and saw me. I shot him once in the chest. The.357 slug hit him square in the sternum like an express-speed brick and punched him back into the vines. I said, "Hey, Joey. Don't you ever learn?"

Joey brought up the Mossberg, but he didn't bring it up fast enough. I shot him once in the neck and then I was moving back toward the field.

When I came out of the tree line, Pike was running toward the LeBaron. Charlie and the other three guys were gone and so was the black Town Car.

Pike said, "He took off a couple of minutes ago, heading away from town."

I came up next to Pike and reloaded the.357. "He's betting that the others are making for a road behind us and he's gone to look for it."

Pike cocked his head. "I don't figure he's looking. I figure it's the side road he came at us from and he knows just where it leads."

"Great."

We set off south across the field, running side by side past the little feed shack and falling into an easy rhythm. When we made the woods, it was easy to see where Karen and Toby and Peter had passed. The damp mat of dead winter leaves was kicked up and branches and small winter-dead saplings were broken.

The narrow dirt utility road was less than a mile in from the main road, closer than Toby had thought. We came out of the trees and went east, pounding along as the road cut through the woods, striding in tandem and feeling the cold air cut into our throats. There were foot tracks and fresh tire tracks in the snow, but the tire tracks didn't necessarily belong to Charlie's Town Car. They could have been anything. Pike said, "I see it."

The road broke out of the little section of woods and cut across flat white fields of pumpkins and squash and winter truck. Half a mile farther down the road, there was an orange wind sock flapping in the wind and a utility shed and a corrugated-metal hangar. If the wind sock wasn't orange, we would never have seen it against the snow. A couple of Piper Pawnee crop-dusting planes were next to the hangar, tarped and tied down, as winter-dead as the leaves.

The black Lincoln Town Car was parked by the utility shed and people moved between the planes.

We hadn't come out of the woods in time. Charlie DeLuca had them.

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

Pike and I picked up our pace, running on either side of the road, our breath great white plumes in the snowy air. We ran hard until we drew close, then we throttled back, trading speed for quiet as we moved up to the hangar. The shadow shapes we had seen when we came out of the woods were gone.

Charlie's Town Car was parked at a skew outside the corrugated-metal hangar, already collecting little pockets of snow on the windward side. The two Pawnees were on the field side of the hangar, and, before them, a couple of rusted water mules used for aviation gasoline and pesticides. Somewhere upwind, Karen Lloyd yelled and there was a single sharp pop, pistol, but the wind and the snow carried away the sound.

Pike said, "They'll be in the hangar or in the fields behind the planes."

We went to the hangar, looped around the corner, and saw them through a dust-streaked window built into a door. Karen Lloyd was on her knees, crying, and Charlie DeLuca was holding Toby by the hair, pointing a Browning.380 automatic at his right temple. Toby was crying, too. He was probably crying because he was scared, but he might've been crying because a fat guy was hitting Peter Alan Nelsen in the face and knocking him down. He would hit Peter and knock him down, and Peter would get up and go after him again. The fat guy was thick through the middle and the hips and the shoulders and the back, sort of like an overstuffed sausage, but it was hard fat. There wouldn't be a lot of stamina, but there was plenty of mean. Peter kept trying to get to Charlie, but the fat guy kept beating him up. Karen was yelling something about doing whatever Charlie wanted if only he'd stop. It was hard to hear them through the glass.

I touched Pike's shoulder and pointed past them to the big sliding doors at the back of the hangar. The doors were open.

Pike nodded, and we slipped under the window and took one step toward the field when the two other guys who'd been with Charlie DeLuca came around the corner. One of them was tall and the other wasn't. The shorter one had a dead cigar in his mouth and what looked like a.32 revolver in his right hand. The taller one was grousing about the cold, and neither of them knew we were there until they saw us. Joe Pike hit the shorter guy with an outside spin kick that sounded like it broke his neck. The taller guy said, "Hey," and fired what was maybe a Rossi.38 into the ground, and I shot him high in the chest. Blood squirted out in a little geyser, and he looked down at it and then started pressing on the blood, trying to make it stay where it was. Then he fell over.

Inside, there were the sounds of fast movement and Karen screamed something and there was the peculiar high shriek that only young children can make. Someone started shooting and bullets slammed through the side of the hangar, well wide of us, and then the shooting stopped.

We looked in through either side of the window in time to see Charlie drag Toby through the hangar doors. Karen followed them. Peter was lying on his side and the fat guy kicked him twice, then took a blue revolver from under his jacket. He pulled Peter's head back and put the revolver into Peter's mouth. Pike shot him in the top of the left shoulder with a load of number four. The fat guy fell backward and Pike shot him again.

We ran back between the two Pawnee crop dusters just as Charlie came around the hangar with one arm locked around Toby Lloyd's neck, looking for us. The Browning.380 was pressed under Toby's ear. Charlie's face was bright red and there were veins standing out on his forehead. He was checking the roofline. Batman and Robin always come down from the roof. He screamed, "You're mine, you sonofabitch. I'm gonna cut out your fuckin' guts and fry'm in a pan!"

Karen came around the corner behind them, tears washing her face, her hands tight and clawed. She wanted to run to Toby, but she was scared if she did the nut with the gun would kill him. She yelled, "Toby!"

Charlie DeLuca dug his pistol so deep under Toby's jaw that Toby shrieked again and wet his pants. Charlie yelled, "I'm gonna kill him, you chickenshit motherfuckers, you don't come out here. I'm gonna blow his fuckin' eyes out."

I glanced at Pike. Pike's flat black lenses were locked on Charlie DeLuca, the shotgun resting easy along the Pawnee's metal wing strut. Pike's a better shot than me. Maybe the best I've ever seen. I said, "He's going to do it. He's going to kill the boy."

"Yes."

I gave him the.357 and took the shotgun. "Can you make the shot?"

Karen screamed, "Help him, please. Somebody help!"

Pike said, "I can make the shot, but not with his gun on the boy that way. He could jerk when he dies."

Karen screamed, "Toby!"

Peter stumbled out of the hangar and said, "Let go my kid, you fat fuck!" There were cuts over both eyes and his nose was broken and his lips were split. There was so much blood on his face that he looked like he was wearing makeup. "I'm Peter Alan Nelsen, and I will kick your fat fucking ass!"

Karen screamed, "Peter! No!"

Charlie DeLuca smiled and swung the Browning toward Peter and said, "Kick this." Then he fired once.