He grabbed Johnny by the hair.

“Don’t go anywhere.”

He pushed Johnny back down then disappeared into the hallway, into Johnny’s room. There was a scraping sound, something heavy; and when he came back, he held the lead pipe that Johnny kept under his bed.

“You think I didn’t know about this? This is my house.” He struck Johnny again, lead pipe on the meaty part of Johnny’s leg. “My house,” he said. “No one messes with me in my own fucking house.”

Ken straightened and Johnny watched him. He crossed the room, lifted a roll of silver tape from the table and tore off a ten-inch stretch. He held Johnny’s mother by the hair, and she fought as he slapped the tape over her mouth. “Should have done that a week ago,” he said. Then he ignored her. The mirror was on the television. Ken picked up a rolled bill, pinched a nostril and snorted two lines off the mirror. When he turned, his eyes were huge and black.

“Where’s your daddy, now?”

Holloway crossed the room, pipe up, and Johnny kicked him in the shin, then in the kneecap.

His mother thrashed as Ken hefted the pipe.

Johnny screamed.

And then the front door exploded. It slammed back, loose on its hinges, and Levi Freemantle filled the frame. Yellow eyes shot with red, breathing hard, his shoulders were so wide they touched wood on either side. He looked at the raised pipe, then stepped over the threshold. Holloway shrunk in his shadow, stepped backward, and his perfect shoe touched Johnny’s ribs.

Freemantle moved into the room and the smell of him filled the air. There was no limp in his step, no hesitation. “The little ones are gifts,” he said, and Holloway swung the pipe as the giant man came for him. But as tall as Ken stood, he was a child to Freemantle.

Just like a child.

Freemantle caught the pipe with one hand, twisted it away, and brought it from the hip in a backhand blow that drove eight pounds of lead into Holloway’s throat. Holloway staggered once, then dropped to his knees in front of Johnny. His hands rose to his neck, and when he fell, their eyes were mere inches apart. Johnny watched him try to breathe, and knew what he was feeling. He saw the awareness rise, the certainty, and then the terror. Holloway clawed at his ruined throat. His heels drummed the wall, the floor, and then fell still. The last light was pulled from his eyes, and in its place rose a shadow, a flicker, a reflection of wings.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

Hunt braked the car, cut the wheel right and felt the end drift. The car was heavy, still going fast. It slid in gravel, then shuddered across washboard dirt. Hunt took in the Escalade with its crushed fender, the front door standing wide, the darkness beyond it. He racked the transmission into park and hit the yard at a dead run, weapon out and hot. Ten feet from the door, a hot wind touched his face. Shadows flitted across the ground.

Hunt broke the plane of the door and saw Katherine, bound on the floor. Silver tape covered her mouth, and she was sucking hard through her nose. Johnny lay on the ground, filthy, bleached of color. He was bleeding, too, bruised, and the look on his face was one of pure terror. Holloway was a sack of bones beside him, either dead or close to it. Freemantle stood above them, two feet of metal pipe in his hand. Torn and bloody and fierce, he looked like a desperate man, like a killer. For Hunt, the math was easy.

Lead pipe. Cinder block.

Same thing.

The gun tracked right.

“Don’t,” Johnny said.

But Hunt took the shot. He fired a single round that hit high and right. It was not a kill shot. Hunt wanted him down but alive.

The shot staggered Freemantle. It drove him back, but he stayed up. Hunt stepped closer, weapon trained, but Freemantle made no aggressive move. A strange emotion crossed his face, confusion, then something like joy-sunlight, if such a thing were possible. His hand rose, fingers spread. He looked past Hunt, to the clear blue sky and the high yellow sun. He stood long enough to say a single word.

“Sofia.”

Then he folded at the knees, dead before he hit the floor.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

When Hunt called it in, there was no way to keep it quiet. He needed cops, paramedics, the medical examiner. Word spread like a brush fire, and the reporters made a mass exodus from the road in front of the Jarvis site. An escaped convict was dead, so was the richest man in town. The bodies were in Johnny Merrimon’s house.

Johnny Merrimon.

Again.

Hunt had to cordon off the street. He gave himself a quarter mile on each side of the house and put marked cars across the narrow road. He called in for barricades and had them erected, too. The day moved to midafternoon.

Hunt asked a few necessary questions, then gave Katherine and Johnny into the care of the paramedics. They were battered, both of them. Johnny could barely stand, but the paramedics thought they would be okay. In pain for a long time, but okay. Hunt kept his own feelings tamped down: his concern and relief, some stronger emotions that he was not prepared to deal with. He checked to make sure that the cordon was secure, then went back into the house.

Holloway was dead.

Freemantle, dead.

Hunt thought of Yoakum, and wanted to ask Johnny if Yoakum had been the man he’d seen at Jarvis’s house. But he didn’t have a photograph of Yoakum, and the kid was still in shock, so he left Johnny alone. He coordinated the photographers, the crime scene techs, and for the first time in his career, he felt overwhelmed. Ronda Jeffries, Clinton Rhodes, David Wilson. The children buried behind the Jarvis house. Jarvis himself. Meechum. Now Freemantle and Holloway. So much death, so many questions. When the Chief arrived, he stared first at Holloway, whose lips had pulled back beneath wide, glazed eyes, then at Freemantle, who, even in death, seemed massive and unstoppable.

“Another fatal shooting,” the Chief said.

“I didn’t hit him that hard. He shouldn’t be dead.”

“But he is.”

“So fire me.”

The Chief stood for a long minute. “One more dead convict.”

“What about Holloway?”

The Chief stared at Holloway’s swollen features. “He was beating the boy?”

“And the mother.”

Sadness moved on the Chief’s face, disappointment. “I think that maybe Yoakum was right.”

“How’s that?”

“Maybe darkness is a cancer of the human heart.”

“Not always,” Hunt said. “And not with everyone.”

“Maybe you’re right.” The Chief turned away. “Or not.”

An hour later, Hunt gave the news about Johnny’s father. He told Katherine first, because he thought that was the right thing to do. She needed to get her head around the man’s death in order to help her son do the same. She needed to be there for the boy. He told her in the yard, lost in the bustle of cops and paramedics. She took it well. No tears or wailing. A silence that lasted a full five minutes; then a question, her voice so weak he barely caught it.

“Was he wearing his wedding ring?”

Hunt didn’t know. He called over the medical examiner and spoke quietly as Katherine watched her son, who was still being treated at the rear of an ambulance. When Hunt approached, she faced him again, and she was as thin as glass.

“Yes,” Hunt said, and he watched her bend.

When Johnny was able, she and Hunt led him to the backyard, to a quiet place far from anyone’s view. She sat beside him on the patchy grass and held his hand as Hunt told Johnny what they’d found in the woods behind the Jarvis house.

“He was looking for Alyssa,” Hunt said, then paused, the moment full of meaning. “Just like you.”