The silence seemed larger here. He paid attention to it, sorting through wind-sounds for the rumble of a motor. There was nothing. He braced himself against a brick wall and leaned into the street. He looked hard east and west and saw only streetlights, traffic signals, and the icy white sidewalks.

He located Howard’s silhouette in the alleyway and waved an all-clear.

Howard jogged toward the meridian of Oak in gawky, birdlike strides. He wore a khaki hunting jacket that came nearly to his knees and a black watch cap too low over his eyes. His duct-taped eyeglasses winked in the artificial light. He looked like a cartoon terrorist, Dex thought, and why the hell didn’t he get a move on? He was a target out there.

Howard had only just crossed the white line when Dex saw headlights probing the corner of Oak and Beacon.

He took a half step out of the alley and waved frantically at Howard, trying to hurry him in. Howard saw him and did exactly the wrong thing: froze in place, confused and frightened.

Dex heard the sound of an approaching motor, probably headed south on Beacon. We are seconds away from being seen, he thought. Shouting was a risk, but unavoidable now. He cupped his hands. “Howard! Get the fuck over here! RUN, YOU DUMB SON OF A BITCH!”

Howard looked left and saw the headlights reflected in window glass. It seemed to untangle his legs. He began to sprint, and Dex admired the speed with which the physicist covered those final yards of blacktop.

But the car, a black patrol car, had turned the corner, and there was no way of knowing what the men inside might have seen.

“Get down,” Dex said. “Down behind the Dumpster. Back against the wall. Draw your knees up.” And he did the same.

The patrol car had turned and was coming their way along Oak; he could tell by the sound of its engine.

It growled a lower note. They’ve seen us, Dex thought. He tried to imagine an escape route. South down this alley and maybe out some fire lane to Beacon or one of the suburban streets: get lost in tree shadows or crouch under a porch…

There was a sudden light. Dex watched it sweep the alley. He pictured the patrol car, the driver, the militiaman in the passenger seat with a hand-held spot. He was aware of the sound of Howard’s tortured breathing. “Run,” he whispered. “Run if you have to. You cut left, I’ll cut right.”

But the alley was suddenly dark again. The engine coughed and tires crunched on cold asphalt.

Dex heard the sound fade down Oak.

Howard let out a shuddering breath.

“Must be they only caught a glimpse,” Dex said, “or they’d be down here after us. Christ, that was a near call.” He stood and helped Howard up. “I vote we get the hell back across Oak and head for home while we can. Pardon me, Howard, but this whole thing was a stupid idea.”

Howard pulled away and shook his head. “We didn’t get what we came for. We’re not finished. At least, I’m not. You can go home if you want.”

Dex regarded his friend. “Well, hell,” he said finally. “Look who’s Rambo.”

Clifford Stockton sat at the top of the high hill at the center of Powell Creek Park with his bicycle beside him and the cold night wind plucking his hair.

There had already been flurries of snow this season, and it felt like there might soon be more, although the sky tonight had grown crisply, vividly clear. But the cold didn’t bother him. It was exhilarating. He felt completely alive and completely himself, far from the world of his mother and the soldiers and school.

The town lay at his feet. From this high place it resembled the map he had pinned to his bulletin board back home. It was completely static, a grid of stationary lights, except for the patrol cars performing their slow waltz. The cars moved like a glittering clockwork, pausing a beat at each intersection.

“Go to hell,” Clifford told them. This was a whisper. A delicious heresy. The wind carried it away. But there was nobody around to hear him. Giddy, Clifford stood up and shouted it. “GO TO HELL!”

The patrol cars wheeled on, as implacable as the motion of the stars. Clifford laughed but felt near tears.

It was almost time to go home. He had proved he could do this; all that remained was to prove he could get back safely. He was excited, but the cold air began to seem colder and he thought about his room, his bed, with a first pang of longing.

He picked up his bike. Down the brick path to Cleveland Avenue and west toward home. That should be easy enough.

But something caught his eye.

The hilly part of Powell Creek Park overlooked the business district. Clifford enjoyed an unobstructed view down to the intersection of Oak and Beacon. He saw the twin red taillights of a patrol car as it reached the corner—on schedule.

But the car turned west on Oak… and shouldn’t it have gone east?

And now the car slowed, and that was strange, too. Its spotlight probed an alleyway behind Beacon Street. Clifford crouched on the grass, watching. He felt suddenly vulnerable, too obvious. He wished he had his scanner; maybe he could listen in.

The spotlight winked out and the patrol car moved on along Oak and turned a corner. It disappeared from Clifford’s view behind the stores on Knight, but he was able to track the glow of its headlights. Down Knight to Promontory, farther from the park. Then east again. Then, mysteriously, back onto Beacon.

Circling, Clifford thought.

And now slowing, now stopping.

The headlights winked off.

Something was happening, Clifford thought. Something was happening or was about to happen on Beacon Street.

Far off along Commercial Street he saw a second car coming fast, probably summoned by the first. A call must have gone out by radio. All the patrol cars were converging on Beacon.

Which meant the schedule was messed up…

Which meant he wasn’t safe here.

He ran for his bike.

Dex Graham worked the point of the crowbar between the frame and the rear door of Desktop Solutions and leaned on it. The lock came away from the wood with a sound like a gunshot. Howard winced.

The door sprang open. Dex said, “Be my guest.”

Howard pulled a long watchman’s flashlight out of the deeps of his jacket and entered the store.

Dex stayed outside, watching the alley. He calculated that this trip from the Cantwell house to the computer store had taken no more than twenty minutes, though it seemed like much longer. Thank God, the deed was nearly done. Here we are, he thought, two of the least likely break-and-enter artists ever to jimmy a lock in the town of Two Rivers. And the least competent.

Now that the adrenaline rush had faded, he was cold. He rubbed his hands together and warmed them with a breath. Alone here, he was uncomfortably aware of the perilous distance between himself and safety. Until the close call with the patrol car there had been an edge of excitement to this trip; that was gone, replaced by a sour anxiety.

The wind rattled a loose doorway down the alley. Winter at the heels of a wind like that, Dex thought. When he came here five years ago he had been startled by the severity of the northern Michigan winter. He wondered how much of Two Rivers would survive the season and what would be left of it by spring. The question was unanswerable but the possibilities were mainly bleak.

He heard a percussive rattle and whirled to face it, but the culprit was only a dog, a hound nosing a trash barrel overturned by the wind. The dog looked at Dex with an expression of rheumy indifference and shivered from the neck down. I know how you feel, Dex thought.

He looked at his watch, then peered into the dim interior of the store “Hey, Howard, how you doing in there?”