the force. I couldn’t get a fix on the human mind, let alone the criminal one.”
“Insanity’s its own unique mindset, Romana. No one can get an accurate fix on that.”
“Except the criminal in question.” She shook the hair from her face. “Let’s just pick three trees, load up and hope that if he is here, he’ll follow us back to the city before opening fire. I spent most of today jumping at shadows, terrified that he’d take aim at me and hit someone in my family.”
Although he appeared to be examining the trees, Jacob watched for movement in his peripheral vision. “I’ll take that one.” He nodded at a spindly pine with too many limbs and not enough needles to cover them. “I was kind of into Charlie Brown as a kid.”
Romana’s sighing laugh eased the tension and immediately took his mind in a very different direction. Just for a moment, he pictured the two of them on the floor, under that spindly Christmas tree, making love and not worrying about any of this. A smile touched his lips. It would be one hell of a Christmas present.
The man in the money apron dragged a large sled behind him. He helped Jacob load the trees and offered his son’s help strapping them onto the roof. At the rate the father moved, Jacob figured they’d be lucky to get out of there by midnight.
Ten minutes later, Romana joined them. “Okay, we’re all paid up for trees, topiaries, wreaths and boughs.”
Jacob secured Fitz’s tree on the sled. “What are topiaries?”
“Balls of manicured greenery in a pot. Nothing you’d want, but my niece loves them.”
Jacob’s skin prickled a second time as a woman drew Romana aside to ask for advice. Instinct had him sliding a hand into his jacket. He fingered his gun and scoured the winter darkness, but he still saw nothing and no one.
A breath of wind whispered across his cheek. It played with the ends of his hair and blew the top layer of snow around in circles. He didn’t realize he still had his hand in his jacket until the old farmer waved him off with a cheerful, “Money part’s done. I heard your wife saying she paid inside. Topiaries.” He snugged the rope around Romana’s spruce. “The missus has been making the silly things for sixteen years now, and every year we sell right out of them. Shows you what I know.”
“Ditto.” Jacob caught a movement in one of the larger shadows, but it was only a man with an ax emerging from the U-cut area.
“Which one’s yours, then?” a new and deeper voice asked. Preoccupied, Jacob knocked the trunk of the spindly tree with his knee. “This one.”
“Which vehicle?” the voice grunted.
“It’s the black Pathfinder,” Romana returned to say. She nudged Jacob’s arm. “What is it?”
“Other than Paul Bunyon coming out of the forest, nothing.”
“He’s the owner’s youngest son. Look, let’s get out of here before the shadows really do come alive.”
He nodded, took one last, long look, then swung around- and found himself staring at a chest twice as broad as his own.
“You must be the owner’s oldest son,” Romana said. “Your mother showed me pictures when I was in the barn.”
The man flushed. “I hate it when she does that.” A projectile whizzing past his head drew a scowl. “Damn kids and their snowballs.”
No way could Jacob wrestle Paul Bunyon’s big brother to the ground, so he merely drew his gun and shouldered past. “That wasn’t a snowball. Get down.”
“What was it?” Romana demanded.
“It looked like a dart.”
Another object flew past. It missed Romana’s arm by less than six inches.
Jacob didn’t waste his breath. “Under my jacket, waistband, right side,” he said. “Cover me.”
She pulled out his backup gun, searched for movement as he did. “So many people,” he heard her murmur.
“There.” He spied the weapon as it was raised. “Get down,” he ordered a group of six in front of him. “Romana…”
He took off to his right, made a point of staying in the light. It would give Critch a target and Romana a chance to whisk the bystanders out of harm’s way.
“Come on, Critch,” he invited softly. “I’m the one you want, not them.”
But he wanted Romana, too, and knowing that made Jacob hesitate, glance back when he should have been focused on his quarry.
Critch’s dart came out of the blackness too fast for him to dodge it. The tip ripped through his leather jacket and scraped painfully across his upper arm.
He felt it instantly, the numbness that spread upward into his left shoulder and shot straight down to his elbow.
He slowed, but didn’t stop. Away from the farm’s floodlights, he could make out shapes between the trees.
He spied a movement and took shelter behind a Scotch pine. But it wasn’t Critch who tottered around a stack of cut trees; it was the old man in the money apron, oblivious to what was happening as he zipped his fly.
Jacob spotted another movement and swung out around the pine. “Get down!” he shouted.
The man gaped at his gun. The best Jacob could do was shove him sideways as another dart flew past.
This one embedded itself in the trunk of the pine.
Jacob crouched. “Stay on the ground,” he warned the man.
He scanned the snow for footprints. There were dozens. Motionless, he listened for any sound, but like him, Critch had gone dead-still. Which made it a waiting game.
“Move, you bastard.”
The old man bellied forward.
“Not you,” Jacob said over his shoulder.
But the old man kept coming. He pointed with a woolly finger. “Boots,” he rasped. “The toes are sticking out from behind that knotty pine.”
Jacob touched the man’s shoulder in passing. He kept low. His left arm was virtually useless, and his breathing felt tight.
He spied the boots and circled. But the old man behind him slipped as he struggled to his knees, and both Critch and the boots disappeared.
Another dart blew past. Snow gusted up. Jacob glimpsed an arm, fired, and heard a yelp-of pain, he sincerely hoped.
His head felt heavy, and he wanted to stumble. He cursed both Critch and the drugged dart, and kept going.
Feet thudded on the snow. Branches shook. Ice pellets scattered.
Jacob trailed Critch by sound, realized he was heading toward the U-cut grove and took a zigzag course through the leaning stacks.
He saw a group of teenagers, heard another dart discharge. Before he could locate the source, a gun fired behind him. The bullet zinged off a thick trunk and into the night.
The teenagers took a collective step back, then began to run. Jacob bent slightly to catch his breath. A half second later, someone crashed into his back.
“Ouch!” Romana grabbed his arms for balance. “Why did you stop?”
He motioned at the kids. “Bystanders. Two o’clock.”
He dropped to one knee, not so much out of desire but necessity. Was his jaw going numb?
The question felt hazy, and he had to concentrate to keep it from slipping away.
“Jacob?”
She fingered his torn sleeve with her free hand.
“It’s nothing.”
Her fingers came out red. She curled them around his forearm, shook. “Do you feel anything?”
“Yeah, pissed off.”
The thrashing had stopped; the thudding footsteps had faded.
With his gun tipped skyward, Jacob rested an elbow on his upraised knee. “He’s gone.”
