"They're shooting," Amelia said, her voice and its hysterical timbre muffled by his shoulder.

"Come on," Jose said, crawling now through the tangle, branches clawing his face.

No more shots came, but Jose waited for some time before he dared rise to a crouch and quicken their pace. He had no idea how to get to the main road, and the bark of the dog at the house made him nervous they'd be tracked.

Gradually the way became more clear until they found themselves darting between the thick trunks of old oaks in the wan light of a clouded moon. When they reached the edge of a wide pasture and the ripe smell of cattle, Jose stopped and took Amelia by the shoulders.

"Are you all right?" he asked in a whisper.

He could feel her shaking beneath his grip, but she bit her lower lip and nodded. Jose listened and heard nothing.

"I think we're okay," he said. "Do you know where this is?"

Amelia looked out over the animals, still as boulders, some staring in their direction. She shook her head.

Jose raised the wire and slipped through the fence, moving out into the pasture. From there, he could see off to his left a yellow glow on the horizon above the trees. He knew it must be the lights from Dallas, giving him the direction they needed to go to get back to the road. He scanned the open ground and listened with a hand cupped to his ear for sounds of men or dogs, heard nothing but the small rustle of wind and leaves, and retrieved Amelia.

They kept to the fence line, breached it, and found themselves again in a wood open enough for easy going. When they came out the other side, a slight slope lay in front of them with a scrub line hedging the road beyond. On the other side of the road open wasteland stretched as far as he could see under the false twilight of the city. Nothing rode the small breeze but a distant chorus of coyotes. The broad sky above pressed down on the earth, heavy with dull shapeless clouds backlit by the half-moon.

Earth and stones skittered along in front of them as they descended to the scrub line. Jose blazed a path through that and they found themselves on the desolate road where the power line above snapped randomly at a transformer box. Jose walked looking over his shoulder, but nothing disturbed them all the way to the bridge. His skin began to crawl as he peered down over the bank at where he knew his truck waited.

"Stay here," he said in a low voice to Amelia, planting her by the shoulders beneath the shadow of a roadside shrub while he scrabbled down the bank.

As he closed the gap, the vague white shape of the truck appeared as if by magic in the heart of the darkness. Looking left and right, he held forth his hands like a blind man, feeling for its metal, finding it, and hurrying into the cab. The dome light came to life like an old friend, easing the rhythm of his heart. He fired the engine and let the big machine climb the hill, stopping briefly for Amelia, then spun the wheels in the dirt in his eagerness to gain the road.

The sigh had no sooner left his chest than headlights seared through the cab. He glanced instinctively, blinded, but aware of the sudden burst of flashing lights from their midst. The siren barked. Jose pulled over and dug the cell phone from his pocket. The trembling of his fingers surprised and annoyed him, but his eyes kept returning to the big side mirror and the shape of the enormous cop as Gage got out and fitted the big hat atop his head. In the mirror beyond Amelia on the other side of the truck, Jose saw a second shape emerge from the other side of Gage's car.

The phone rang and he got Ken Trent's voice mail. Jose punched in Ken's home phone and put the call through. Gage had reached the back corner of his truck and he rested a hand on the pistol at his hip. The gun came out and Jose reached for the nine-millimeter Glock under his arm, but the idea of a shoot-out with a cop short-circuited his brain and he simply sat with the cell phone hidden beside his leg as Gage tapped the barrel of the pistol against his window. Jose put the window down.

"You're getting to be like a bad penny," Gage said, the skin along his jawline taut and shifting in the glare of the flashing red lights, "turning up all the time in places you're not likely wanted."

"Someone took a shot at us," Jose said. "You get a call?"

"Got a call about someone trespassing," Gage said. "Maybe a kidnapping. That you?"

Gage flicked his eyes at Amelia.

"She's with me," Jose said.

"I'm going to have to ask you to get out of the truck," Gage said. "You, too, miss."

The shadow of the second man fell across Amelia's window and Jose knew they would take her. He heard a tiny voice and spoke up.

"Ken?" he said, seeing from the illuminated face of his phone that the call had gone through. "Hang on, it's me, Jose."

He raised the phone so Gage could see it. "I've got Ken Trent on the line here, from Dallas PD. You want to talk to him?"

"Shut that down," Gage said, growling.

"Ken, I'm with Chief Gage down in Wilmer," Jose said, raising his voice so Ken would be sure to hear him, even with the phone so far from his face. "He's got a gun on me. Maybe you could talk some sense into him, Ken."

He hefted the glowing cell phone at Gage and said, "Ken's my old captain, Dallas PD."

Gage's face twisted. Through his teeth, he said, "Put the phone down. I'm telling you to get the fuck out of the truck."

Gage thumbed back the hammer on his shiny Colt.45. The metallic click knotted Jose's stomach. He placed the phone on the dash and held up his hands, saying a small prayer that his old friend had heard him and hadn't simply hung up the phone. Gage yanked open the door.

"I'm cooperating with him, Ken," Jose said to the phone as he got out. "I'm out at Senator Chase's place with a worker named Amelia."

Gage reached into the truck and pitched the phone down on the pavement, stamping on it and grinding the plastic into the gravel with his boot heel.

"Bad connection?" Gage asked, grinning.

"But he knows I'm here," Jose said. "And he knows you're here. So I don't get to disappear in the night like Nelly."

Something shifted in Gage's eye, like a guttering flame.

"Amelia, too," Jose said. "She's with me. Ask her. She's not going anywhere, either."

Amelia sat rigid in the truck, her hands clutching the seat and her eyes locked on the windshield even with the shadow of the other man lurking in her window.

"She works for the Chases," Gage said. "We'll be taking her home."

"No," Jose said, holding the chief's pale eyes with his own. "She's with me. You can't get rid of me, and you can't get rid of her, either, not without a whole lot of TV cameras lighting up the town."

Jose kept his hands in the air and Gage raised his pistol, easing it toward Jose's face in the flashing lights from the cop car until the cold barrel ticked the tip of his nose. Jose never flinched, even when Gage jerked the gun, clicking free the hammer, and returned it to its closed position.

The chief leaned into the open truck, and said, "You want to come with me, don't you, girl? You got work back at the ranch waiting for you."

"You do what you want, Amelia," Jose said.

She looked over at them, eyes wide and lips crushed together. She shook her head.

"I don't want to go," she said, cringing as if she expected a slap.

Gage jabbed a thick finger at her.

"You walk away, you're walking away from a job and a place to stay. You leave now, you're leaving for good," he said. "You want that?"

Amelia's eyes lost focus. She stared straight ahead, but nodded her head yes.

"Everything you say," Gage said, "everything you do, you'll answer for it. That's the law, no matter what this slick spic tells you."

Gage stepped away and Jose climbed back into his truck. The shadow beside Amelia melted away and Jose watched Gage's huge figure as he holstered his gun, then diminished in the side mirror. Jose pulled away from the cop car with its flashing lights and blinding high beams and out onto the open road.