'I didn't have a choice…' she said.

The words seemed to force action back into the reporter's limbs. He stepped across the room and seized the shotgun from the floor. He swiftly cracked it open and stared at the two empty chambers, one for each barrel.

'Empty,' he said.

'No,' Shaeffer replied.

He held the weapon up to her.

'No, she said again, quietly. 'Damn.'

She looked toward the reporter, as if seeking reassurance. She seemed suddenly terribly young.

'I didn't have a choice,' she repeated.

From outside, they heard the crash of shots.

Matthew Cowart ducked involuntarily. It seemed to him that the silence between the gun reports was somehow deeper, thicker, and he felt like a swimmer treading water in the ocean. He took a shallow breath and jumped toward the front door. Andrea Shaeffer moved in swiftly behind him.

He saw Tanny Brown's back at the edge of the porch and realized the policeman was feverishly emptying spent casings from his revolver. The shells clattered against the wooden boards at his feet, and he started to jam fresh bullets into the gun's cylinders.

'Where is he?' Cowart asked.

Brown spun toward him. 'The old woman?'

'She's dead,' Shaeffer replied. 'I didn't know…'

He interrupted, 'You couldn't help it.'

'The shotgun was empty,' Cowart said.

Tanny Brown stared at him but had no response, save a single, sad shrug of his shoulders. Then, in the same instant, he straightened up and pointed toward the forest.

'I'm going after him.'

Shaeffer nodded, feeling that she was being tugged along by some current she could not see, only feel. Matthew Cowart nodded as well.

Tanny Brown pushed past the two of them, leaped off the porch, and moved rapidly across the clearing toward the edge of shadows some thirty yards distant. He picked up his pace as he crossed the open space so that by the time he reached the small cut in the darkness that had swallowed up Ferguson, he was loping in an easy run, not pushed into a sprint, but making up for each moment that the killer had stolen.

He was aware of the harsh breathing of the two others a few feet behind him, but he paid them no mind. Instead, he leaned forward into the cool green half-light of the forest, eyes dead ahead on a small trail, searching for Robert Earl Ferguson, knowing that it would not be long before the chased creature turned in ambush to fight. He told himself, This is my country, too. I grew up here, too. It's as familiar to me as it is to him.

He reassured himself with lies and pushed on.

Heat fractured the morning, rising about them with sticky insistence, sucking at their strength as they penetrated the tangled branches and vines in pursuit.

They clung to the small path, Shaeffer and Cowart following the swath cut by Tanny Brown's single-minded search. He forced himself ahead steadily, trying to anticipate what Ferguson would do.

There were occasional signs that Ferguson, too, was following the path. Tanny Brown spotted a footprint in the wet earth. Cowart noticed a small swatch of gray material stuck on the end of a thorn, pulled from the killer's sweatshirt.

Sweat and fear clogged their eyes.

Brown remembered the war, thought, I've been here before, felt a joint apprehension and excitement within him and continued. Shaeffer plodded on, seeing only the old woman's body tossed by death into a corner of the shack. The vision blended with a distant memory of the sight of Bruce Wilcox disappearing into the gloom of the inner-city night. She thought death seemed to be mocking her; whenever she tried to do what was right it tripped her, sent her sprawling into wrong. She had so much to correct and had no idea how to do it.

Cowart thought each step was pushing him further into a nightmare. He'd lost his notebook and pen. A ridge of brambles had stolen them from his hand and sliced open a line of blood that pulsated and stung infuriatingly. For an instant he wondered what he was doing there. Then he told himself, Writing the last paragraph.

He jogged to keep up.

The ground beneath their feet began to ooze and grasp at their shoes. A thick, damp heat surrounded them. The forest seemed to grow more snarled and knotted together as it gave way to swamp, almost as if the two elements of nature were struggling over possession of the earth beneath their feet. They were streaked with grime and dirt, their clothes ripped. Cowart thought that somewhere there was morning, with clarity and warmth, but not there, not beneath the mat of overhanging tree branches that shut out the sky. He was no longer aware how long they had been pursuing Ferguson. Five minutes. An hour. It seemed to him that they'd all been pursuing Ferguson all their lives.

Tanny Brown stopped abruptly, kneeling down and signaling the two others to crouch. They huddled up close to him and followed his gaze.

'Do you know where we are?' whispered Shaeffer.

The police lieutenant nodded. 'He knows,' Brown replied softly, gesturing toward Cowart.

The reporter breathed in hard. 'Not far from where the little girl's body was found,' he said.

Brown nodded.

'Can you see anything?' Shaeffer asked.

'Not yet.'

They stopped and listened. Cowart heard a bird rise through the branches of a nearby bush. There was a small noise from adjacent underbrush. A snake, he thought, taking cover. He shivered despite the warmth. A breeze moved across the treetops, seeming very distant.

'He's out there,' Brown said.

He gestured toward a break in the thick mire of swamp and forest. Shafts of sunlight measured a small open space in the path before them. The clearing couldn't have been more than ten yards across, surrounded by the maze of greenery. They could see where the path they were following sidled between two trees on the far side, like a slice of darkness.

'We have to cross that open space,' he said quietly. 'Then it's not too far down to the water. The water runs back, miles. Goes all the way to the next county. He's got a couple of options: keep going, but that's tough country to cross, and when he gets out on the other side, assuming he can without getting lost or bit by a snake or chewed on by an alligator or whatever, he'll be cold and wet and knows maybe I'll be waiting. What he'll really want to do is double back, get past us and back out the easy way. Get back to the car, get over the Alabama border and start to make things happen for himself that way.'

'How's he going to do that?' Cowart asked.

'Lead us on. String us out. Then make a move.' Brown paused before adding, 'Precisely what he has been doing.'

'And the clearing?' Cowart asked. His voice was slow with fatigue.

'A good place to do it.'

Shaeffer stared directly ahead. She spoke with a sullen, awful finality. 'He means to kill us.'

None of them wanted to debate that observation.

'What are we going to do?'

Brown shrugged. 'Not let him.'

Cowart stared at the opening in the forest and said quietly, 'That's what it always comes down to, right? Eventually you always have to step out into the open.'

Tanny Brown, half rising, nodded. He glanced back toward the small space and thought it a good spot to turn and fight. It would be the spot he would select. There's no way around it. No way to avoid it. We have to cross through it. He thought it suddenly unfair that the edge of the swamp seemed to be conspiring with Ferguson to help him escape. Every tree branch, every obstacle, hindered them, hid him. He scanned the tree line, searching for any sign of color or shape that didn't fit. Make a move, he said to himself. Just a single little twitch that I can see. He cursed to himself when he saw none.

He saw no option, except going ahead. 'Watch carefully,' he whispered.

He stepped out into the clearing, pistol in his hand, muscles tense, listening. Shaeffer was only two feet behind him. She kept both hands on her pistol, thinking, This is where it will end. She was overcome by the desire to do a single thing right before she died. Cowart picked himself up and followed behind her another couple of feet. He wondered whether the others were as frightened as he was, then wondered why that made any difference.