The end of the.357 Magnum swung out of the farmhouse window, knocking a few more shards of glass onto the front porch. Goddamn, that thing looked as big as a cannon. She inhaled. The July sun beat down on the dirt drive, throwing up waves of heat. It was like breathing in an oven. "How 'bout you let me take those kids off your hands?"

"How 'bout you come up here and-" He launched into a graphic description of what he wanted her to do for him and what he was going to do to her. She hoped to God the children didn't understand.

"Let the kids go and we can talk about it," she shouted. "You want money? You want a ride outa here?"

"I want what's mine!" the shadowy figure with the gun yelled. "It's got nothing to do with you, bitch. Leave me alone and nobody will get hurt!" Something from the interior of the house caught his attention. He swiveled around. Yelled something she couldn't make out. Then the gun went off again.

Hadley was up and moving without thinking, running toward the house, her Glock 9 mm awkward and slippery in her hand. If she had any plan at all, it was to get past the end of the porch to the corner of the house, where he couldn't see her without opening a window and leaning out. He turned back toward her. She could see the outlines of his face now, his eyes glittering in the dimness of the front room. He brought up the.357. She heard the breath sawing in and out of her chest, the howling of women and children, the susurration of tires on dirt and gravel, and she knew she wasn't going to make the shelter of the house in time.

Oh God oh God oh God oh God-she heard the shot, higher and keener than the last two, and dove toward the hewn stone foundation, rolling hard into its cool dampness. The blow stunned her, numbed her, and she beat against herself with one hand while trying to raise her gun to a defensive position with the other, all the while wondering, Where is it? Where am I hit?

Then her head steadied and she looked back across the dooryard. A big red pickup straddled the drive-defensively sideways, not head-on like her cruiser. Russ Van Alstyne, the Millers Kill chief of police, had his arms braced on the hood of the truck, his Glock.40 tight in a two-handed grip, pointing at the porch. The gun, she realized, that she had just heard discharging.

"You okay, Knox?" Van Alstyne didn't take his eyes off the window.

"Yeah." She struggled to sit up. "I mean, yes, sir."

"Stay right there. Don't move." She glanced up. Some four or five feet above her, a closed window reflected the maple facing it. Hadley squeezed against the edge of the house, drawing her knees in close, doing her best to disappear.

"You shoot one more time and I swear I'll cap one of 'em here," the man screamed. "I'll blow one of these bitches' heads off!"

The chief raised one hand, showing it was empty, and carefully placed his sidearm on the hood of the truck with the other. Hadley heard the crunch of more tires. Another squad car pulled in, flanking the chief's. The door popped open on the far side. She caught the glint of bright red hair and then a bristle brush of gray. Kevin Flynn and Deputy Chief MacAuley. MacAuley and the chief had a short and inaudible conversation.

"What's going on?" the gunman demanded.

The chief had a way of making his voice big without yelling. "My deputy here says the state SWAT team is on the way. They're not interested in talking to you. But I am."

"Screw you!" the man yelled. His voice, so near, made Hadley's skin crawl.

"C'mon, man, talk to me." The chief sounded like he was about to buy the shooter a beer. "Whaddaya gonna do, shoot one of them? Shoot one of us? They'll send you up to Clinton, life with no chance of parole. For what? Is one of those bitches worth the rest of your life?"

Hadley felt the shock of the chief's words sizzle up her spine. Was this the same guy who said "Excuse me" when he accidentally swore within her ear-shot?

"C'mon," the chief went on. "You put your gun down, I put my gun down, we'll call it drunk and disorderly. You'll get thirty days on the county, watching cable TV and sitting in air-conditioned comfort."

"I don't want no trouble," the man yelled. "Me and my brothers just want what's ours. You hear?" his voice shifted, as if he had turned away from the window and shouted to the people inside. "Yeah, I'm talking to you, girlie! You been holding out on me?"

In the drive, Flynn and MacAuley had taken up positions ranged to either side of the chief. Van Alstyne pointed at Hadley, then toward the back of the house, then at his eyes. See what's around in back. She nodded. She rolled belly down on the ground and crawled knees-and-elbows toward the rear of the house. It reminded her of the funny salamander-style crawling Hudson had used when he was a baby, except he hadn't been saddled with a bulky belt and an increasingly heavy gun.

The chief was going on about the weather and the heat, and-Jesus Christ!-he actually offered the guy a cold one. Hadley crawled out from beneath the maple's shade, the sunlight pressing on her back like a hot iron taking the wrinkles out of her blouse. She paused at the corner of the building, wrestled her gun into a half-assed shooting position, and peeked around the side.

Peeling white clapboards. A wheezing air-conditioning unit dripping water on the ground. Five steps leading up to a narrow roofed porch. A rusty wheel supporting a clothesline bolted next to the back door… the back door that was half open to the room inside.

"Hel-lo, momma," she whispered. If the chief could keep the guy in the front room distracted, she could sneak in and try to get the kids out. There wasn't much cover-the land sloped away from the house, the clothesline running maybe fifty yards over open grass until it connected with a lone birch tree. But if she could get them down the porch steps and around the corner, she could keep them against the foundation, out of the line of fire.

She crawled forward, one foot, two, then raised herself up to get a better view of the door.

Hadley was staring into the eyes of a dead woman. She was half in, half out of the doorway, mouth still open from her last word, her blood soaked into her shirt and puddling beneath a plastic laundry basket filled with towels.

Oh, my God.

Hadley collapsed back onto the ground, squeezing her eyes shut like a kid hiding from the boogeyman. She swallowed, dry-mouthed, against her rising gorge. I'm not going to throw up, she thought. I'm not going to throw up. With her eyes closed, she noticed the things she should have earlier: the bright copper tang of blood, the nose-wrinkling suggestion of human waste, the buzzing of full-bellied flies.

She could hear the timbre of Van Alstyne's voice floating on the heat-saturated air. I have to let the chief know about this. Of course, to do that she was going to have to move, which she didn't want to do, not now, not maybe ever. She didn't want to deal with yet another dead person. What was this? The fourth? Fifth?

With that, she had another realization. The chief's promise of thirty days in the county jail-a lie to begin with, since the guy had shot at a cop, for God's sake-wasn't going to seduce this man. He wasn't going to give himself up. He was already headed for Clinton. He had nothing to lose.

Hadley reversed herself, staying as low to the ground as she could, then belly-crawled back around the side of the house. The chief was focused on the man with the gun, who was ranting about getting ripped off and not being able to trust anyone. Hadley ignored him. She stuck her hand up in the air to get someone's attention. The chief's eyes never wavered from the window where the shooter was hunkered down, but behind the squad car's tail, Kevin Flynn poked his head up and nodded once. He had been the MKPD's least experienced officer before she was sworn in, and his persistent attempts to be helpful and friendly didn't lessen the gall of playing catch-up with a guy eight years her junior. She hoped he was good at charades-there was no way she could use her radio this close to the house-as she laid her gun on the grass next to her.