Think.

She was out there alone, maybe hurt. There was nobody else out there-the countryside was empty, he could shoot a machine-gun at her and nobody would hear. He ran down the stairs, realized his arm was burning. He looked at it, quickly, as he hurried through the living room and out on the porch: blood. Then he was around the house, and he got out the flash and got under the window and flicked the penlight on, and started tracking her. At the back of the house, he found blood, so he'd hit her, maybe, unless she'd cut herself going out of the house…

He tracked her for a minute, then called out, "Letty. You might as well stop, I can see you."

She called, "Who are you?" and he stopped, trying to focus on the direction. It was dark as a coal sack.

Then a star burst in front of him, a muzzle flash, and he felt a sharp slap on his chest and he involuntarily sat down. He could hear her running again but he paid no attention: he thought, I'm shot. I'm shot. He couldn't believe it-he was shot. Shit at and missed, shot at and hit. He almost giggled. Had to do something about this.

He crawled back toward the house, then got on his feet, staggering, got inside, and looked at his chest. Nothing: but it hurt bad. After a second, he spotted a tiny dimple in the parka fabric. A hole, he thought, wonderingly. He unzipped the parka, found a small circle of blood on his uniform shirt. Pulled his shirt open, found a bigger circle on his undershirt. Pulled that up, and found a hole in his chest, just right of his left nipple. The skin was already beginning to bruise, and when he touched it, pain rippled across his chest.

Shit. He was shot.

Didn't hurt as bad as his arm, though. He took a few experimental breaths. He was breathing okay. And he thought, She yelled, "Who are you?"

Did she really not know? When would she have seen his face?

He began to see some possibilities-maybe he could pull this off yet. And then he thought, DNA. Goddamn DNA. Martha West had cut him up, they might find his blood anywhere…

LETTY FIRED THE shot, then stumbled away from her muzzle flash, aware that it would have given her away. The man was crunching through the snow again, and she found another shell with her good hand -what was wrong with her left? It just didn't work-and tried to get it in the gun. She fumbled it, found another, got this one in, stopped to listen.

Nothing. Where was he? She began to get the creepy feeling that he was right next to her, breathing quietly, and she slowly dropped to her knees, huddling into the dried Russian thistles along the West Ditch. Waited. Where was he…

Two minutes passed, though it took an eternity. Another minute? Where was he? What happened to Mom? She almost gagged, because she thought she knew what happened to Mom. Though Mom had fought the guy long enough for her to go out the window…

More light. What was that? More light, lots more light…

The house was burning. She was drawn to it-was there something she could do, or was the gunman simply pulling her in? Frightened, she shrank farther back into the dark, and farther back, as the flames grew.

When the first of the volunteer trucks arrived, twenty minutes later, the fire was five stories high and climbing into the night like a volcano.

15

LUCAS HAD STOLEN an old copy of Fortune magazine from the motel lobby and lay in bed, reading an article about how he could still retire rich, when the phone rang. Del?

He picked it up and got the comm center clerk from the Law Enforcement Center. "Mr. Davenport? This is Susan Conrad down at the sheriff's office. We've just dispatched our fire department to the West house. The call coming in said the whole house was burning like crazy. Thought you might want to know."

"Jesus. Thanks."

Lucas slammed the phone back on the hook and ran barefoot in his underwear to the door and out, down two, and began pounding on Del's door. "Get up. Del. Get up."

Without waiting for an answer he ran back to his room, left the door open, and began pulling on his jeans. He'd been outside for no more than ten seconds and he was cold-God only knew what the temperature was. He was pulling on his shirt when Del stumbled into the room, pulling on jeans, still wearing his pajama top.

"West house is burning down. Fire trucks on the way," Lucas blurted. Del disappeared. Lucas pulled on his socks and shoes, and in the distance, through the open door, could hear the siren that called in the volunteer fire department, and the roar of the truck heading out.

Shoes on, Lucas got his wallet and keys and coat and gloves and headed out to the truck, climbed inside, saw Del running toward him, popped the passenger-side door lock, and Del was inside and Lucas took off.

Del was carrying his shirt and coat and boots and dressed as they headed toward the highway. "Not a coincidence," he grunted.

"We been out with that kid all over the place, it's like we were dragging bait. I didn't even think about it," Lucas said. They were probably two or three miles behind the fire truck when they got to Highway 36, but once past the last house going out of town, Lucas dropped the pedal to the floor and left it there. Two minutes out, he pushed the button that lit his information screen, which said that it was fourteen degrees below zero. Another minute out, they could see a glow to the north, burning faintly above the closer red lights of the fire truck. "Jesus Christ, that can't be it," Del said. "We're too far away."

"Gotta be it," Lucas said, "Unless the report was wrong."

They were closing quickly on the first-responder fire truck, but didn't catch it until they were just outside of Broderick. By then, they knew the reports had been right: the fire was north of Broderick and huge, and there was nothing else out there.

Lucas, worried that some of the town residents might be in the highway, in the dark, looking at the fire, let the truck lead them through town. When the truck pulled into the house, Lucas swung past it and turned in at West Ditch Road.

Even from there, on the opposite side of the ditch, the heat was ferocious. "If there's anybody in there, they're gone," Del said. One of the firemen had jumped off the truck, slid down the bank of the ditch and began hacking at the ice on the bottom with an oversized ax. As he did that, another man was uncoiling a hose, and when he had enough of it, he rolled it down the bank, and the ax-man dragged it to the hole he'd cut and shoved it under the ice.

A minute later, a thin stream of water was splashing onto the house, but it was obvious that it was doing no good at all-it was like pissing into a welding torch. The fire was eating everything. More lights now, police cars and two more fire trucks.

Then:

"Lucas."

The voice was high and shrill but somehow weak, and might almost have been the scream of a failing joist in the fire. But Lucas knew it wasn't, and he ran down the gravel track, in the direction of the sound, and shouted, "Letty? Letty?"

"Over here. Here." He could see the pale half-oval of her face across the ditch, half of her face lit by the fire. "I'm hurt bad."

"Hang on," Lucas shouted. Del yelled, "Not that way," as Lucas went straight down the wall of the ditch, sliding, crawled halfway up the other side, slid back, tried again, slid back, and finally ran thirty feet down the ditch to where some tumbleweeds were still rooted in the side, and clambered out of it. Del had run around the end of it, and was coming toward him. "Letty?" He'd lost track of her.

"I'm hurt bad, and I think Mom's… Mom's in there. Somebody came and shot her." She began sobbing and Lucas came up, and he bent to pick her up and she shrank away and said, "My hand is hurt bad, and my side hurts, I think I'm shot, and my ankle might be broke… "