Nothing to do now but ignore it.

Lucas said to his group, “We can dodge along behind houses until we get a line that’ll let us go directly to the bar. The big problem, of course, would be if one of Pilate’s people is inside one of the houses. So we go in groups. Guys in uniforms will lead, so the locals don’t freak out and shoot us—Rome will lead, then Peters, and I’ll follow. The rest of you guys will stay back one house, under cover. Three of you should watch the windows we’re exposed to. You see movement at the windows, fire a shot high over the window, through the wall. If they break out a window and you see a gun, then take them out. We don’t want to kill anybody, but we don’t want them killing us, either. Everybody got it?”

“Just like hopscotch, going in,” Laurent said.

“The other two guys,” Lucas said, “should be looking backwards. If one of Pilate’s guys that we don’t know about is in a house, and lays low until we go by, he could back-shoot us. So two of you should be looking at windows behind us.”

When they were sure that everyone knew his assignment, Lucas and Laurent led the way out.

•   •   •

FRISELL AND THE THREE MEN with him walked in the woods past Lucas’s SUV and Laurent’s truck, and one of the cops saw the bullet holes in Lucas’s SUV windows and whistled. “That would tend to tighten your testicles,” he said.

“Tightened mine,” Frisell said. “Since I’m the squad leader here, I’ll make the call and say that I’m going down to the bridge and I want Jim to come with me, because we’ve worked together. One of you guys has to go straight across the creek and into the woods, and down the highway, and stop traffic. Any preferences?”

One of the deputies suggested that the other guy should do it, and the other guy shrugged and said, “Okay,” and they left it at that.

Frisell went first, down the creek and under the bridge. Jim Bennett, the post office guy, was next, followed by the third deputy. The fourth guy crossed the creek, climbed the opposite bank, and disappeared into the trees.

They missed Pilate and Kristen by five minutes.

•   •   •

LAURENT, PETERS, AND LUCAS led the way into town, crossing the open spaces in a hurry, huddling behind the houses they’d reached while they looked at the next one, searching for signs of life or guns. They saw no one, and after the last short sprint, climbed on a folding chair and through the window into the bar. The people inside had little information about who was where, but thought that most of the people in town were either in the bar or in the gas station. A few had holed up in their houses, doors locked. Most of them had guns and were willing to use them. The state cop had given them just enough warning to get organized a bit, but not completely synchronized.

“Somebody’s in the blue house, we know that,” the bartender said. He was a meaty guy with a mustard-stained white apron, with a shotgun in his hand and boxing scars under his eyes. “I mean, one of these crazies, or maybe two or three are in there. We know they’re in the hardware store, because they were shooting at us after we shot at one of the crazies—he was out in the open and we know he was one of them. We missed him, though. We’re pretty sure they’re in the inn and we think they’ve got the artists. We don’t think anyone warned the artists.”

“We’ve been shot at from the inn, so we know they’ve got that for sure,” Lucas said.

•   •   •

THERE WAS AN EMPTY LOT between the bar and the inn, with eight windows on the inn facing the bar and three in the bar facing the inn. All the inn windows had been broken out, but they could see no faces or movement behind the windows.

Lucas, Laurent, and Peters crouched behind the bar windows, looking across at the inn, and Lucas asked Laurent, “What do you think?”

“If we can take the high ground, we can get them out of the hardware store and the blue house—but if they get up on that roof, we’ve got a big problem.”

Lucas nodded. “That’s what I think. We got to get them out of there.”

“You got a plan?”

“I do, but it’s sorta horseshit.”

•   •   •

LAURENT CALLED IN the deputies who’d been assigned to cover Lucas’s group as they went for the bar. Once inside, he gave them their directions—they’d be covering the windows of the inn, both first and second floors, and the edge of the roof. While he was doing that, Lucas called Frisell at the bridge, and when he’d told Frisell what he wanted, Frisell said, “We can do that. When do you want it?”

“Stay by the phone. When we’re cocked and ready to go, I’ll call you.”

“We’re all set here. Go anytime. Good luck.”

Lucas, Laurent, and Peters went out the back door of the bar, and edged close to the corner nearest the inn. Peters said, “I’m the tiniest bit scared. Nothing to quit over, though.”

“Think about what a great fuckin’ story this’ll make—we’ll be living off this for years,” Laurent said.

Lucas said, “Shut up,” and called Frisell. He said, “Anytime you’re ready. Aim for the ceilings.”

Three seconds later, a barrage of gunfire hit the second floor on the other side of the inn, the three cops in the creek bed deliberately aiming at a sharp angle up through the windows, hoping the slugs would embed in the roof and not go ricocheting around inside the upper floor.

As soon as the shooting started, Lucas, Laurent, and Peters dashed for the corner of the inn, where they couldn’t easily be seen by anyone inside. They crouched at the corner for a minute, until the gunfire stopped.

Behind them, in the hotel, they could see the rest of their group at the windows, ready to open fire if anyone showed at the windows of the inn. In the sudden silence after the spurt of gunfire, Lucas said, “I’m going to peek,” and at that moment, a woman began screaming on the second floor and then a man began shouting: it didn’t sound like terror, it sounded like an argument.

Lucas peeked through a broken ground-floor window, a quick half second. Saw nobody, dropped to his knees, and waited. No reaction. Looked again, this time a longer peek, then another, then he whispered to Laurent and Peters, “You’re not going to believe this, but there’s nobody in there. At all. It looks like it used to be a kitchen, and there’s nobody in there.”

“Can you get through the window?” Laurent asked.

“I could if we could get the window open.” Though the glass had been broken out, the wooden crossbars that held the glass panes were still intact.

Laurent was the lightest of the three of them, so Peters made a stirrup with his hands and boosted Laurent high enough that he could reach the lock on the double-hung window, and turn it open. When that was done, he dropped back to the ground; the window had been painted shut, but with some careful pressure on the side bars, they were able to get it loose enough to lift.

Lucas went through the window first, with his pistol, which would be handier than a rifle in the close confines of the kitchen. The wooden floor squeaked underfoot, but he managed to tiptoe to the kitchen door and peek out into the lobby. Nobody there—nothing but a vacant spot where a check-in desk used to be, a pile of what looked like discarded curtains, and stairs going up to the second floor. The whole place smelled of mold and wood rot; a bird’s nest was stuck on a corner beam, with a little pile of black-and-white-speckled droppings on the floor beneath it.

Lucas motioned to Laurent, still outside the window, and he pushed himself through, followed by Peters. They opened the kitchen door and stepped out into the lobby: nobody there. The windows on both sides of the building had been broken, as though somebody had been stationed there, but had gone somewhere else.

There had been two restrooms down a hall that led to a back door. The doors had been scavenged off the restrooms, and they stood open to the hall. Lucas took off his shoes and tiptoed down the hall, checked the two, found them empty—somebody had taken out all the fixtures, including the lights and paper-towel dispensers. The remains of a condom dispenser still hung from a wall in the men’s room, but it had been smashed open and now looked like a toaster that had been hit by a train.