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bounced off the grill of the Jeep, twirled once in the headlight beams and fell face forward into the snow.

Gator shifted to the smaller target, but she was darting through the headlights, and with the snow, he briefly lost her. She reappeared, racing toward the barn. He fired again, but it was too far now, the light uncertain. Saw her duck into the narrow black vertical shadow of the ajar door to the left of the garage.

He turned and pounded Sheryl on the arm. Sheryl, practically useless now, had her hands up one on each side of her face. All freaked out and motor mouth, “Jesus, Gator, Jesus; when is this going to fuckin’ stop?”

“Soon’s we nail that little bitch. Now listen. You go in where she did, push her on through. I’ll be around back, by the pens. Catch her when she runs out. Go.” He shoved Sheryl toward the partially open sliding door. Took off running around the barn.

Kit wiggled through the door and ran on pure instinct, just a pounding heart and lungs wrapped around a bottle rocket of fright. Her boots skidded in the dark, collided with something hard, steel, some machine. She sprawled on the floor. Crawling, feeling with her right hand along a series of wooden panels. Ripe rotten grainy smells. She heard somebody take a sobbing breath as they squeezed through the door behind her. The bad woman who had put her in the trunk. Coming after her.

Kit scrambled to the end of the wooden thing and huddled, hiding behind it. She could hear the woman, feeling around in the dark, by the door. Kit swung her head. Eyes bulging, runaway heart; she saw that the back end of the enclosure was open to the storm. This empty floor dusted with white. And in the middle of it she saw a tiny familiar black silhouette arch up against the flickering snow.

Sheryl staggered forward-Jesus, what a bummer, talk about bad tripping on plain old real life-averting her eyes going past the prone figure under the Jeep high beams, the long black hair so like her own, rippling in the wind. She reached the barn, squirmed through the door, and tried to get her bearings. Their secret storehouse. Okay. Where’s the light switch? Up on the wall to the right. Her hand fumbled in the dark. There it is. She took a step into the long room, her arm stretched back, fingers on the switch. Poised to flush the kid. Aw right, ready or not, here I come. She snapped the switch.

Chapter Fifty-five

Knowing the road, doing a hundred over the Barrens’ flat, Nygard shouted adrenaline-spiked tactics to Barlow on the radio. “There’s the barn to the left, then a cement-block shop and the farmhouse to the right, you know it?”

“Been by it, don’t know it,” Barlow shouted back in a crackle of static.

“I’ll go in to the right of the house, you take the left. First one out of the car rushes the front door. We go straight in.”

“Straight in,” Barlow repeated in a throaty shiver. “No fucking around.”

Another transmission, broke the static. “Keith, Howie; maybe you should wait, we’re just ten, fifteen minutes behind you…got four cars on the road…more on the way…”

“Straight in,” Nygard shouted back. “If it’s for real, the last thing we want is Gator getting in the woods, figure he’s got a deer gun at least.” Nygard’s face was working, staring into the snow. Then he yelled into the mike. “County Z, three minutes out.”

“Three minutes,” Barlow yelled back.

Broker and Nina sat silent, listening to the cops go back and forth on the radio. No communication between them. Past getting ready. Past tactics.

Almost three minutes to the dot, Nygard yelled, “See it on the right!” He switched off the headlights, and they hurtled through a spun gray tunnel. Then Broker and Nina saw the blur of the display light, the red of the tractor. Other lights, car lights. The shadows of buildings.

“Here we go,” Nygard yelled, swerving off the road, sledding through a ditch, throwing up a cloud of snow as the cruiser stove through the drifts, skidding into the yard.

Nina and Broker leaped out before the car even came to a halt, were already bounding forward when the barn erupted in a sheet of fire. The confusion of snow disappeared in the roaring yellow orange plume of light. Instinctively they looked away, protecting their eyesight.

A few seconds later, Nina screamed in a voice loud enough to carry over the roar of the fire: “Two o’clock!”

Gator hugged the mudguard of an old rusty Deere at the edge of the tractor graveyard, where he had a good view of the open loafing shed in back of the barn. Caught movement, swung the Luger. Okay…

Huh? He held off, seeing the rabbit-ass cat running out from the shed. Cutting in back of the shop. He giggled nervously. No shit. Black cat crossing my path…

Then, just like hunting; let the doe go by, wait for the buck. He saw the kid dart from the shed, running like hell, chasing the cat. Saw her dive into the snow, wrap the cat in her arms. Get up, running clumsy now, arms out of play, clutching the cat. Goddamn, he thought, leveling the pistol. Why didn’t I think of that?

No more than ten yards. Almost reach out and touch. Moving with her. All right, you little runt…

Just as he squeezed the trigger, the back end of the barn shuddered with a whoosh of flame, knocking him back, sending the shot wild, like he pulled the trigger and blew the fucker up or something. Scorched his face. Blinding him. What the…

Blinking, he saw the kid, sprawled in the snow, not fifteen yards away. His eyes blooming with spots, Gator couldn’t aim the pistol. He stepped out from cover. She saw him, pushed up on her feet, and started running again.

Gator’s breath came in a helpless giggle as he sprinted after her. Gaining on her going past the shop-clinging to the damn cat cut her speed. Rounding the house, reaching out now, feeling the tips of her hair whipping in the wind, grazing his fingertips.

“Got you,” he yelled, grabbing a handful of her hair, yanking her roughly back as he skidded to a halt, grasping her hair at arm’s length while she swung one arm, kicked at him. Her breath coming in fierce little sobs. Damn cat squirming in the crook of her elbow.

Heard someone yell over the rushing flames. Sheryl?

Stunned, he focused his eyes on the yard in front of the house, at the vision of two figures running in the hellfire blaze. Running straight at him. A man on the left with a shotgun and a woman on the right, in pajamas it looked like, with her arms outstretched, hands empty. Behind them he saw the county cruiser at the end of a trough of snow, somebody who could have been Keith, one hand shielding his eyes from the fire, the other raising a pistol.

Immediately Gator wrapped the girl in his left arm, pulling her in close, and jammed the muzzle of the Luger against her head.

“Everybody stop where you are,” he shouted.

They didn’t stop.

They were all in. Broker keyed on Nina. “Call it!” he screamed, running at the guy who was holding a pistol to Kit’s head fifty yards away.

“Break left, draw fire,” Nina yelled back.

Without slowing his stride, Broker swerved to the left, danced briefly, giving her time to close the distance. Then he raised the shotgun and ran straight at the guy, screaming, out-of-his-mind crazy: “Let her go, or I’ll blow your fucking head off. Let her go. LET HER GO!”

Nina continued forward, plodding now, arms outstretched, pleading, hysterical. “Don’t hurt her. PLEASE. Don’t hurt her.” Slowed her pace to a deliberate walk, out of sync with the frantic screaming all around, the rolling fire light, the crunch of a secondary explosion, flaming debris arcing up. Thirty yards…

Nygard’s shaking voice calling out, “Wait, wait.” Barlow behind him, yelling too. Kit’s screams topping off the bedlam. “Mom, Dad!”