"You can tell her yourself when you see her," Lyle said.

He inhaled again, but it wasn't enough. His lungs burned. His head buzzed. She would know. She would have to know.

"Russ?" Lyle's voice receded into the distance, with the children and the gunshots. "Don't you die on me, Russ!"

So, how do you pray? he'd asked her once.

She'd thought about it a long moment. She always listened, always took his questions seriously. Say what you believe, she said. Say what you're thankful for. Say what you love.

He'd never been one for prayer. But there was a last time for everything. "Clare," he said. Then everything stopped.

XV

No official church involvement, that was the dictat. Volunteers, on their own, could work with the migrant farmhands. That's what they had agreed on. Well, it was her day off. She could do what she wanted on her day off. And if she wanted to drive to the Rehabilitation Center and pick up Lucia Pirone for a sedate drive around the countryside, that was her own business. If they happened to stop in at a few farms and check in with the Spanish-speaking workers, that was her own damn business, too.

"You're sure this isn't going to get you in trouble with your bishop?" Sister Lucia shifted in the passenger seat. The pin in her hip was healed enough for the center to release her for the afternoon, but it was plain it hadn't healed enough to be comfortable.

"Absolutely sure," Clare said. "If he doesn't find out."

Sister Lucia laughed. "I like the way you think."

"We're going to have to find a better solution, though. Sooner rather than later. I'm away one weekend out of four as it is. Smuggling you out of the center three days a month doesn't cut it."

"You know Christophe St. Laurent? From Sacred Heart? He's willing to drum up volunteers, but he'd like to talk to you at some point and see if any of your people would consider continuing on, even if the outreach isn't sponsored by your church."

In the rearview mirror, a whirl of red and white bloomed. She glanced at the speedometer; caught up in conversation, she had eased off the gas. She was now going the legal speed. She steered for the shoulder.

The first car blew past her at a speed that rattled her windows. A second car, and then an SUV, flew in its wake. State police. No sirens. Responding to a call.

Her chest squeezed, as if someone had wrapped an unfriendly hand around her heart.

Then she heard the whoop-whoop-whoop of an emergency vehicle. She stomped on the brake, grinding her front wheels into the dirt at the shoulder. "What on earth?" Sister Lucia threw out a hand to brace herself on the dashboard.

Clare turned around in time to see the ambulance crest the rise behind her, blue lights beating in time with the pulse of her blood. From the corner of her eye, she could see Sister Lucia cross herself.

The vehicle blazed past, almost too fast to read MILLERS KILL EMERGENCY on its side.

"Do you think-" Sister Lucia started. She read the papers like everyone else. "Could they have found another body?"

Clare shook her head. "Those weren't Millers Kill police cruisers. They don't normally get the state police involved, unless they need one of their special units, like crime scene or a dive team or"-the penny fell as she said the words-"tactical response."

"Which is?"

"The men who show up if there's a hostage situation or officers under fire." Clare released the brake and tromped on the gas, jumping her Subaru back onto the road, sparing a glance for oncoming traffic only after it would've been too late to avoid it.

She accelerated down the country highway. Sister Lucia kept one hand wedged against the dash and grabbed her armrest with the other. "Perhaps," she shouted-the open windows that had let in a pleasant breeze at forty miles an hour were shrieking wind tunnels at sixty-five-"they've found the killer!"

That's what Clare was afraid of. Oh, God, please be with them. Please let the ambulance just be a precaution. Please let nobody be hurt.

She reached an intersection. "Which way?" she asked. "Where'd they go?"

Sister Lucia's hand, soft and powder-dry, settled over her arm. "Wait," she said. "If they came along this road, chances are good they'll return this way as well."

"But it might be too late!"

The nun looked at her, a twist of a smile drying her face. "My dear, what do you think you're going to do?"

"Not sit here and wait to see what happens." Clare spun the wheel, and the Subaru squealed onto Seven Mile Road. Sister Lucia whooped and grabbed for the door handle.

"What if this is the wrong way?" the nun shouted.

"Fly or die," Clare yelled.

Sister Lucia rolled her window up, shutting off half the rush of air. "Remember what I said about fearlessness?"

"Sure do."

"I take it back."

A wail from somewhere, rising, falling. Clare glanced in her rearview mirror. A whirl of blue and white. Another ambulance. She took her foot off the gas and let the Subaru roll, half on, half off, the narrow dirt shoulder. The Corinth ambulance screamed past them, followed by a Millers Kill squad car. Clare caught the driver's blocky outline, but it could have been almost any of them. She kicked the car back up to speed and then some, racing after the emergency vehicles, bombing over the low hills, bouncing into the hollows, slanting way over the lines as she powered through curves.

The ambulance and the cruiser had turned up a skinflint country road and she followed too fast; she skidded, lost her grip on the road, the whole car sliding toward the ditch. She cursed and gave the wheel some slack and trod on the gas, and the tires caught, spinning a shower of shredded Indian paintbrush and buttercups as she surged back onto the asphalt.

She took the turn onto the dirt road a little slower. Roared through a wide-open gate, up and up until she crested and saw the carnival from Hell, ambulances and cop cars and uniforms and guns. Children and trees and peeling clapboards and broken glass. Dust hanging in the air, loud voices, weeping, and the electric-burr sound of radios demanding information.

She hit the brakes and skidded, heeling her car onto the grass at the side of the drive. She leaped out, spun in place, and pointed to Sister Lucia. "Stay here!"

State SWAT team members, ominous in black and armor, stalked across the dooryard and around the house and barn in patterns that made sense only to them. She slowed down, uncertain what was going on, where the center was, the thought dawning that maybe the ambulances were just a precaution, like she had hoped, and she was going to look pretty silly when-then she spotted Kevin Flynn. Standing alone at the bottom of the porch steps. Crying.

Her feet moved her forward even though her head was howling, Run! Run! She had been here before, at this moment. No going back to before. There would only be after. After the diagnosis. After the accident. After hearing whatever terrible thing Kevin was going to tell her.

Hadley Knox ran onto the porch, followed by Eric McCrea. "Flynn!" she yelled, then stared, open-mouthed, at Clare. Movement, voices, behind the officers. McCrea shoved Knox out of the way, and the paramedics emerged, carrying their burden with controlled speed. One of them was rapid-firing unintelligible information into her radio. One of them held a trembling IV bag aloft, and the third balanced a portable heart monitor against the side of the cart, its beep-beep-beep counting out the seconds.

The rest of it she saw as fragments: his sandy hair, the oxygen mask, one boot lolling off the stretcher. Khaki sleeve, blue surgical bandages, red blood. So much blood.

Kevin was sobbing beside her, but she couldn't make a sound. It felt as if her chest was bound and locked.