"Aw, Jesus." Del was there, and Lucas pulled off his coat and said, "We're making a sling, just… aw, fuck it. Del… " Lucas pulled his coat back on and said, "I'm gonna pick her up. Which side hurts, honey? Which side?"

HE PICKED HER up, cradling her, and Del asked, "Where're your keys?" and Lucas told him, and Del dug them out of Lucas's coat pocket and ran back to get the truck. One of the firemen ran up and asked, "She burned?" and Letty said, "No, I'm hurt." Del was there in a few seconds, and Lucas lifted her into the back seat and then crawled in with her, and Del put the truck on the highway and they were headed back to Armstrong, running at top speed.

"You okay?"

"I'm hurt bad… " She began sobbing again.

Lucas got on the cell phone, found a signal, called into the sheriff's comm center. "How do we get to the hospital? We've got a hurt kid."

"You on your way back to town?

"Running fast."

"Where are you?"

"Just went through Broderick."

"There'll be a car sitting on the edge of town with its light bar flashing. Blink your headlights a bunch of times when you come up, and he'll take you right through to the medical center."

"We're coming… "

Lucas relayed the information to Del, then turned back to Letty. "I know you're hurt. But tell me what happened, if you can."

"I was up in my bedroom, and Mom was down in hers, and I heard this knock… " She told the story, and when it was done, Del muttered, "Jesus Christ, Letty," and Lucas said, "You think he was shot."

"He was shot. He fell down."

"Maybe he was… you know, going down so you couldn't see him."

"He was shot," she said, stubbornly. "I'd never miss anyone that close. He's shot in the chest."

"All right. Twenty-two short?"

"Yes." Her body was shaking with grief and pain. "He shot Mom. She was yelling for me to run, and she was fighting him, and then there was a shot and she stopped yelling and he started coming up the steps… You didn't see her outside, in the yard or anything?"

Lucas said, "I didn't look. I was just trying to stay out of the way of the fire guys. You never saw the guy?"

"Only his outline. It was way dark. But… he talked to me. He knew who I was. He called me Letty. And he sounded like… he was from around here. He sounded like one of us."

"Did you see his car?"

After a moment of silence, she said, "He didn't have a car. He didn't have a car. I shot him and he fell down and then he got up and walked back to the house while I was trying to reload, and then I just sat there and the house caught on fire and I couldn't get up, and then the house burned and then you came. No car ever drove away."

"You're sure."

"No car. He didn't have a car."

"Okay. Listen… "

He was about to say something, but she pushed a hand out of her coat sleeve and tried to look at it, and Lucas saw a huge gash that started at her wrist and ran across the palm and disappeared between her middle and ring fingers.

"Better keep your hand down," he said. "It's bleeding a little."

"Coming up on the patrol car," Del said. Lucas looked down the highway, and saw the light bar. Del clicked the high beams off and on, and the patrol car pulled out on the highway, rolled slow until they'd gotten close, and then sped up and led them through town to the medical center's Emergency Room. Three people were standing on the ramp, and then a fourth joined them, pushing a gurney, and Del pulled up next to them.

THE FOUR MOVED Lucas and Del out of the way and loaded Letty onto the gurney and pushed her inside, and Lucas went over to a plastic trash barrel and punted it out into the driveway, where it rolled around spewing its garbage.

"Her fuckin' hand," he said to Del. "Her fuckin' hand looks like it's almost cut in half."

"What about the chest? Was she shot in the chest?"

"She was pretty alert for anything deep," he said. Then: "I gotta get inside."

"I'll park the car… "

Lucas stopped at the door and looked back: "You getting pissed yet?"

"Yeah. I'm pissed."

AYOUNG RESIDENT had been hustled out of bed when Lucas called in, and he was looking at Letty when Lucas pushed his way into the examination room. "How is she?"

Letty tried to push up, and the doc turned, looked at Lucas over his mask: "Who're you?"

"I'm a cop. How is she?"

The resident turned back to Letty, and as an aside to a nurse, in exactly the wrong tone, said, "Get that guy out of here."

Lucas snarled, "Listen, asshole, I'm not going into all the background, but if you want to keep your license in Minnesota, don't fuck with me. Now, how is she? Is she shot?"

The doc looked at a nurse, who shrugged, and showed no inclination to throw Lucas out. The doc said, "She has what might be a gunshot wound, but it's not life-threatening. Her hand is badly cut. We haven't fully evaluated it yet. We need to X-ray her foot. It's badly swollen and she complains of pain. It might be broken-it's at least badly sprained. Is that good enough?"

"What about the hand? That looked bad."

"I cut it on the broken window," Letty said. "Did you find Mom?"

"The hand will take, mmm, take some special attention," the resident said. "There's a surgeon in Fargo… "

"Fuck Fargo," Lucas said. He banged back out of the examining room, and went outside, met Del, told him what he was doing, pulled out his cell phone and called home. A sleepy Weather answered on the third ring.

"Hello?"

"It's me-I've got a problem."

He told her about it quickly, and when he was done, Weather said, "Get her down here as fast as you can. We need her while the wound is fresh. I don't do hands, but I can get Harry Larson to do her. How fast can you get her here?"

"I'll have to check. Go back to sleep-I'll call you. Are you cutting tomorrow morning?"

"Not until ten. What are you going to do?"

"See if I can find a plane. If I can't, I'll drive her down, or something. Get an ambulance."

"Listen: let me call over to Regions, see what they've got. Maybe it'd be quicker to get a fast helicopter out of here, rather than messing around."

"Good. Call me back."

"Who's paying?"

"We are. I am."

"Won't be cheap."

"Call 'em."

DEL ASKED, "WHAT 'RE we doing?"

"We're gonna take her out of here in a helicopter-Weather's taking care of it. She's gonna call back."

"I don't think her mom made it," Del said. "When I came running around the ditch, going back to where you were… somebody inside the house was burning." He wrinkled his nose, then made a spitting gesture off to the side. Burning people smelled like pork barbeque, and left a stink in your nose and mouth.

"She knows it," Lucas said. "She hasn't admitted it yet. Sounds like Mama took on the asshole, whoever he is."

"Wonder why he burned the house down? If he hadn't done that, Letty might have died out there. I'd figure he was after Letty… "

"Why? I mean, why was he after her?"

Del thought. "I dunno."

"What if he was after Mom?"

Del shook his head. "That doesn't feel right."

"Okay. But the whole thing is pretty interesting. Why was he after her? What was he burning? Where is he now, especially if he was shot?"

"I have my doubts about him being shot. I mean, we both know cops who've emptied a whole goddamn Glock at somebody down the hall, and didn't hit shit."

"Mmm. I kind of suggested that, and she said she hit him. Said there was no way she missed. I kind of think she might have hit him."

"Better get the word out to the local hospitals."

"We can do that."

THEY WERE STILL talking about it when Weather called back. "Turns out there's an air evac service out of Brainerd, which is almost halfway up there, and they can have a helicopter on its way in a half-hour. They'll call you when they're coming, and give you a time estimate. He says there's a landing pad right there at the hospital. He said it wouldn't be much more than an hour before they're coming in up there. I can meet her when she gets down here."