“Forty miles, maybe fifty.”

“Listen carefully, Lieutenant,” Slater said. Between the helmet and the face mask, all he could really see of the young man’s face was a pair of bright brown eyes. “I need you to call whoever’s in charge, and tell them to set up another roadblock at the Heron River Bridge. Tell them to do it right away, and to keep an eye out for that van.”

He put the ambulance into gear, and the lieutenant said, “Hey, wait — where do you think you’re going?”

“The bridge. Now clear the road.”

The lieutenant looked torn. “My orders are still in effect, and I’m supposed to stop all traffic in both directions.”

“And you’re doing a fine job,” Slater said. “But I’m the one in charge of this operation — you said it yourself — and I’m telling you to move your vehicle.”

Just to shut off any further debate, Slater rolled up his window and flicked the switch that activated the siren and flash bar atop the ambulance. The lieutenant hesitated, but when Slater glared at him and pointed his finger at the truck, he waved to his soldiers to move the vehicle out of the way. A couple of others peeled up a spike strip that Slater only now saw had been placed in the roadway just beyond. He was glad that he hadn’t run out of patience and simply decided to barrel through the barricade.

The moment the path was clear, he steered the ambulance through the opening and pulled the mitten out of the hole. He needed the windshield wipers more than he needed the windbreak. And once the roadblock was no longer visible even in his rearview mirror, he killed the siren and flashing lights.

“I don’t want to give the Vanes any more warning than I have to,” he said, speeding up as much as the slippery pavement and damaged car would allow.

“By now, I’m sure they’ve figured a few things out,” Nika said. “They know that somebody must be coming after them, or they wouldn’t be off-roading.”

True enough, he thought, flexing his fingers on the steering wheel and plowing on through the rising snowstorm. But did they know that the gravest danger of all was riding right along with them in their van?

Chapter 53

Charlie’s mind was churning. He hadn’t seen a single other vehicle moving on the highway in either direction, but on a night like this, who in his right mind would be out? Only long-haul truckers would brave it, and that was only because they had to. The snow was coming down so fast, the windshield wipers were having trouble handling it, even at their top speed.

Glancing into the rearview mirror, he saw Harley huddled in the backseat, and if he thought he looked sickly before, it was worse now. His forehead was beaded with sweat, his eyes had a weird glaze, and his fingers kept picking at that damn wound on his leg; all Charlie knew was that he must have gotten into some mean shit on that island. Mean shit, which was probably infecting the whole car by now. He’d have to tell Rebekah and Bathsheba to scrub down and sanitize the whole van once he got back to Port Orlov.

With the back of his hand, Charlie checked his own forehead, and he was as cool as a cucumber. Didn’t have a cough or anything else, either. At least not so far. But if Harley did have something contagious, and he gave it to Charlie, there was going to be hell to pay.

A sign flashed by in the darkness, saying NEXT FOOD AND FUEL—50 MILES, and Charlie glanced at the gas gauge; he had about half a tank left, but with the extra canisters in the back he could easily make it to Nome without stopping. He didn’t want to risk using his credit card at a service station, or showing his face at a diner. One thing he’d learned was, people remembered the guy in the wheelchair, and just in case anyone came along trying to follow his trail, he didn’t want to leave any more clues than he had to. Let ’em guess what the Vane boys were up to.

In a weird way, he found it exhilarating to be out on the road like this. It reminded him of his former life, before he’d given himself over to the Lord. When they weren’t out crabbing, he and Harley had always been off running some scam, or hijacking somebody’s boat, or burglarizing some rich bastard’s vacation home. He knew now that what he’d been doing was wrong, that he was breaking the third, or was it the fourth, commandment, the one about not stealing, but he also knew that he’d felt a rush nothing else could come close to. These days, when he was preaching and really getting into it, really feeling the Presence of the Lord, it was sort of like that.

But if he was completely honest with himself, it still wasn’t as good as cracking open somebody’s wall safe and finding a stack of hundreds inside. Why was that? It was something he would have to take up with Jesus during his next heart-to-heart.

Fumbling inside his coat, he pulled a cigarette and a Bic lighter out of his shirt pocket. With the women gone, he could sneak in a smoke. He inhaled deeply, and dropped the lighter on the passenger seat. Funny, how a cigarette could make your lungs feel bigger even as, in actual fact, it shrunk ’em up.

A gust of wind slapped the side of the van so hard it roused Harley from his stupor. “The icon,” he said, in a worried voice, “what did you do with it?”

“It’s right here in the glove compartment. Same as the cross.”

“I need it.”

“What for?” Charlie couldn’t tell if his brother was in his right mind or not.

“To save me.”

Now he knew. “How’s it gonna save you, Harley?”

“It’s got the baby Jesus on it. Jesus saved you, right?”

“Yes, He did. But you don’t need an old icon for that.”

“I do,” Harley croaked. “I need something ’cuz I’m gonna die tonight.”

Charlie had never heard his brother say anything like that, not ever, and when he looked in the rearview mirror again, he saw that Harley’s eyes were burning like black coals and his whole head was shaking.

“Nobody’s dying tonight,” Charlie said. His mind went back to the night he’d seen — imagined — the hollow-eyed man in the long coat, reaching for the cross from the backseat. He didn’t care how much this Russian stuff was worth anymore — he was starting to wish he’d never laid eyes on any of it. “As soon as we get to Nome, we’ll take you to a doctor. Get you fixed right up.”

The road was veering now, as it began to track along the rim of the Heron River Gorge. Normally, that alone — the site of the accident that had left Charlie a paraplegic for life — was enough to rattle him, even if all this other crap hadn’t been going on.

But it was going on, which made his apprehension just that much worse.

A sign said the bridge was coming up ahead. Huge, snow-covered hunks of granite, left by ancient glaciers, lined the shoulders like train cars waiting to be hitched.

“There’s not enough time,” Harley said. “Give me the icon now.”

“I can’t reach over that far. I’ll get it for you once we cross the bridge.”

“Too late,” Harley said, with chilling certainty. “That’ll be too late.”

The van rocked and swayed as it hit a stretch of asphalt buckled from frost heave. Every year, the highway department had to come out in the spring and repair the damage done in the winter. Once in their youth, Charlie and Harley had tried to make off with one of their road graders, before realizing that its top speed was about ten miles per hour.

The gorge cut a deep swath through the land for nearly nine miles, and the bridge over it had been built at the narrowest spot available, between two rocky bluffs. He kept a close eye on the road, which was rapidly disappearing under a shifting scrim of snow and ice. Even with four-wheel drive and chains on his tires, he was losing traction now and then. His brother moaned, and when he glanced in the rearview mirror to check on him, what he noticed instead was a tiny pinprick of light, way down the road behind them.