Their snowshoes creaked in unison, and the steam from their breaths joined in a single cloud. Her exposed sock was soaked, her toes aching in the cold. Bear scrambled ahead of them, but they moved slowly, so slowly. Surely their pursuers could mark their quarry’s progress up the barren slope.

She heard Bear growl, and she looked up the trail. The dog stood stock-still, his ears laid back. But he was not facing their pursuers in the valley; he was looking toward a plateau above them, where something dark was moving.

Gunfire cracked, echoing like thunder against the cliffs.

Maura felt Rat stumble against her. Suddenly the shoulder that had been supporting her collapsed and his arm slid away from her waist. As his knees buckled, she was the one trying to hold him up, but she wasn’t strong enough. The best she could do was to break his fall as he sank to the ground. He fell beside a stand of boulders and lay on his back, as though to make a snow angel. He stared up at her with a look of astonishment. Only then did she notice the splatters of blood on the snow.

“No,” she cried. “Oh God, no.”

“Go,” he whispered.

“Rat. Honey,” she murmured, fighting not to cry, to keep her voice steady. “You’re going to be okay. I swear you’re going to be okay, baby.”

She unzipped his jacket and stared down in horror at the stain spreading across his shirt. She ripped the fabric apart and exposed the bullet wound that had punched into his chest. He was still breathing, but his jugular veins were distended, bulging like thick blue pipes. She touched his skin and felt the crackle of crepitus as air leaked from his chest and infiltrated the soft tissues, distorting his face, his neck. Punctured right lung. Pneumothorax.

Bear bounded back and licked Rat’s face as the boy struggled to speak. Maura had to push the dog away so she could hear the boy’s words.

“They’re coming,” he whispered. “Use the gun. Take it…”

She looked down at the deputy’s weapon, which he’d pulled out of his jacket pocket. So this is how it’s going to end, she thought. Their attackers had given them no warning, made no attempt to negotiate. The first shot had been meant to kill. There would be no chance to surrender; this was to be an execution.

And she was their next target.

Maura rose to a crouch to peer over the boulders. A lone man was moving down the mountain toward them. He carried a rifle.

Bear gave a threatening bark, but before he could lunge from the cover of the boulders, Maura grabbed his collar and commanded: “Stay. Stay.”

Rat’s lips had darkened to blue. With every breath he took, the punctured lung was leaking air into the chest cavity, where it was trapped, unable to escape. The pressure was building, squeezing that lung, shifting all the organs in his chest. If I don’t act now, she thought, he will die.

She yanked open Rat’s backpack and scrabbled through the contents for his knife. Sliding open the blade, she found it streaked with rust and dirt. To hell with sterility; he had only minutes left to live.

Bear barked again, a sound so frantic that she swung around to look at what had alarmed him. Now he was facing down the hill, where a dozen men were climbing toward them. A man with a rifle above us. More armed men approaching from below us. We are trapped between them.

She looked down at the gun, which had fallen in the snow beside Rat. The deputy’s weapon. When this was over, when she and Rat were both dead, they would point to this gun as proof that they were cop-killers. No one would ever know the truth.

“Mommy.” The word was barely a whisper. A child’s plea from a young man’s dying lips. “Mommy.”

She bent close to the boy and touched his cheek. Though he was looking straight at her, he seemed to be seeing someone else. Someone who made his lips slowly curve into a weak smile.

“I’m here, darling.” She blinked as tears slid down her cheeks and chilled on her skin. “Your mommy will always be here.”

The snap of a breaking branch made her stiffen. She raised her head to peer over the boulder and saw the lone rifleman just as he saw her.

He fired.

The bullet kicked snow into her eyes and she dropped back to the ground beside the dying boy.

No negotiations. No mercy.

I refuse to be slaughtered like an animal. She picked up the deputy’s gun. Raising the barrel, she fired high into the air. A warning shot, to slow him down. To make him think.

Lower on the slope, dogs barked and men shouted. She saw the approaching posse scrambling up the mountain toward her. She had no cover against their gunfire. Crouching here beside Rat, she was exposed to the firing squad moving toward her.

“My name is Maura Isles!” she shouted. “I want to surrender! Please, let me surrender! My friend is hurt and he needs…” Her voice died as a shadow loomed above her. She looked up, into the barrel of a rifle.

The man holding it said, quietly: “Give me the gun.”

“I want to give up,” Maura pleaded. “My name is Maura Isles, and-”

“Just hand me that gun.” He was an older man, with implacable eyes and authority in his voice. Though the words were spoken quietly, there was no compromise in that command. “Give it to me. Slowly.”

Only as she started to obey him did she suddenly realize this move was wrong, all wrong. The gun in her grasp. Her arm lifting to hand it over. The men watching from below would not see a woman about to surrender; they would see a woman preparing to fire. Instantly she released her grip, letting the gun tumble from her fingers. But the man standing above her had already lifted his rifle to fire. His decision to kill her had been preordained.

The blast made her flinch. She fell to her knees, cowering in the snow beside Rat. Wondering why she felt no pain, saw no blood. Why am I still alive?

The man on the boulder above her gave a grunt of surprise as the rifle dropped from his hands. “Who’s shooting at me?” he yelled.

“Back away from her, Loftus!” a voice commanded.

“She was gonna shoot me! I had to defend myself!”

“I said back away.”

I know that voice. It’s Gabriel Dean.

Slowly Maura raised her head and saw not one, but two familiar figures moving toward her. Gabriel kept his weapon aimed squarely at the man on the boulder, as Anthony Sansone ran to her side.

“Are you all right, Maura?” Sansone asked.

She had no time to waste on questions, no time to marvel over the miraculous appearance of these two men. “He’s dying,” she sobbed. “Help me save him.”

Sansone dropped to his knees beside the boy. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

“I’m going to decompress the chest. I need a chest tube. Anything hollow will work-even a ballpoint pen!”

She picked up Rat’s knife and stared at the thin chest, at the ribs that stood out so starkly beneath the pale skin. Even on that frigid mountainside, her palm was sweating against the grip as she gathered the nerve to do what had to be done.

She found her landmark, pressed the blade against his skin, and sliced into the boy’s chest.