of some kind, for sure.'
Gino grunted from the sofa behind the driver's seat. Charlie sat next to him, looking out the window. 'We had a big swamp fire north of the Cities a few years ago. Never could figure that one out. I mean, there's about fifty acres of waterlogged frog city burning like it was dry kindling. Anyway, the smoke was black like that.'
Bonar said, 'Peat.'
'Who's Pete?'
'Very funny. There's a high peat content in swamps, rotting vegetation and all that. Oil in the making. Burns like a son of a gun forever once it gets a good start. Smells bad, too.'
Gino sighed. 'I'm on a road trip with Mr. Britannica.'
Halloran came up from the back and looked out at the smoke. 'I finally got through to Sheriff Pitala's office. His phones have been jammed with calls on the fire. That FBI agent who gave us the raid sites said they've got a lot of their people heading our way, fire trucks from all over the county, plus Pitala put the patrols back on the road, so we might be running into some serious traffic when we get close. There's a little town dead center in that fire. Sounds like it's gone.'
Magozzi had been standing behind Harley, watching him punch commands into the GPS. He looked over his shoulder at Halloran. 'What about the residents?'
Halloran shrugged. 'He said it started small. They're assuming everyone had a chance to get out.'
'They're not sure?'
'No. Ed's on the way for a closer look. His sister lives in there.'
'Oh, Lord,' Bonar murmured.
Gino stroked Charlie's back absently. 'How shook up was the Fed you talked to?'
'Pretty much. But there's a lot going on up there with the phones ringing off the hook and people yelling in the background. Why?'
'Nothing. You just gotta wonder if whatever the Feebs are up to has anything to do with a fire that suddenly pops up out of nowhere.'
'It's fire season, Gino.'
'Yeah, well, nothing's ever that simple.'
Harley had his face close to the windshield now. 'Jesus. I think I just saw some flames shooting up in the middle of that cloud.'
'Could be,' Bonar said. 'When those pines are dry enough and hot enough, they literally explode, and the flames can shoot straight up like bottle rockets.'
'Shit. I gotta pull over. We are not driving into that thing unless I know we can get the hell out fast if we need to, and this damn GPS map is telling me there's only one turn off this road for the next ten miles, and that's the turn that leads right into Four Corners.'
'Four Corners?' Magozzi asked.
'That's the name of the town in the middle of all this,' Halloran said.
'We could turn around,' Bonar offered.
'In this rig? On this peanut road? Are you kidding?' Harley pulled the RV to one side of the road and stopped.
Bonar was actually wringing his hands. 'There's probably lots of little dirt roads cutting off this one that won't show up on that map. The county's checkered with them.'
''Probably' doesn't cut it for me. What if we get in there and the fire jumps the road behind us?'
'We'll all cook in here like pork roasts.'
'You got that right. And can anybody tell me why we're planning to drive straight into hell anyhow? We're looking for our ladies, and I can guarantee that the one place they'renot is in the middle of that shit up there.'
'Like Gino said, it's just one more coincidence in a long string of them,' Magozzi said behind him. 'We know for sure at least one of our missing people disappeared in a dead zone, and now there's a big fire smack in the middle of one. If we're going with coincidence and a possible connection to the Feds' operation, we've got to take it all the way. We've got no place else to go. And my gut tells me those women are somewhere near that fire, either running from it, trapped by it, or-' He stopped dead, but nobody seemed to notice.
Harley grunted derisively. 'No way they're trapped in there. They're just too goddamned smart.'
Magozzi looked at him. 'Smart enough to send up a flare? What if Grace wasn't saying four people were dead. What if she was trying to say 'Four Corners'?'
Harley stomped on the accelerator.
BARELY A MOMENT had passed since Sharon Mueller had raised her gun and blown away Deputy Diebel's head.
Annie couldn't hear anything over the ringing in her ears, and she couldn't see very well, either, because she hadn't blinked in a long time.
Blink. You have to blink, or your eyeballs will dry up and fall out, and then you'll be blind-blind and deaf, and your last memory of sound will be the thunderous roar of a gun, and your last memory of sight will be this shocking thing that Sharon just did. Don't look-
She was actually staring at Sharon's face-the side of her face, actually-sort of three quarters, sort of profile, and she didn't recognize her at all. She blinked at last, but that didn't help. She moved her jaw, trying to clear her ears, and then someone turned down the ringing sound. It was still there, but it was softer, hiding way behind theeardrum, muffled like a jangling phone under a pillow. Another noise began to tiptoe in. Sharon, she realized, making the oddest little sound, like she was screaming as loud as she could with her mouth closed, screaming through her nose.
Oh, dear. Poor Sharon. She was staring at something awful in the front of the car, on the other side of the cage, and Annie knew what she was looking at. She'd had just a glimpse, just the tiniest flash on the back of her retina before she'd shifted her gaze to Sharon's face and refused to look forward again, just like when you went to a horror movie. You didn't keep looking at the screen when something gross happened. You just shifted your eyes a little to one side, not so far that anyone would notice, just far enough, and then later, when people asked how you could watch that stuff, you just shrugged and said it wasn't so bad, really. It was a trick, a secret trick. She should have told Sharon about it, because Sharon was still staring at all the blood and little pieces of matter sliding down the windshield.
'Sharon.' Grace reached across Annie to touch Sharon's left hand, which had fallen into her lap like a dead thing. It was ice-cold. Her right hand still held the 9mm, still pointed at the place where Deputy Diebel's head had been before his body slumped to the right, over the console. 'Sharon.'
Annie watched Sharon's eyes move just a little, hardly far enough to notice-maybe she did know the trick. Hello, Sharon. Anybody in there?
The noises stopped, and Sharon's throat moved. Her mouth opened and a whistle came out, then a whisper: 'Sorry about the noise.' And then her right hand started to shake, hard, and she lowered it slowly to lie in her lap with the left one. She felt Annie and Grace looking at her, and she turned her head to meet their eyes.
'I'm sorry,' she said, her tone calm, perfectly controlled, pretending to be normal but sounding hideously abnormal coming from her face. It was a ghastly gray color, and all the skin looked loose.
Grace didn't know what to say to that. Sharon had just killed the man who was driving them to safety, a deputy just like her, and now she was apologizing as if she'd burped at the dinner table.
'I have to do it again,' Sharon said suddenly, lifting the gun so fast that Grace couldn't believe it, firing two quick shots and blowing out her side window.
Annie slammed her hands over her ears, but it was too late. Instant deafness. She couldn't hear the safety glass falling to the ground as Sharon pounded at it with the butt of her gun, desperate to reach for the outside door handle, to crawl through the window opening itself if she had to, anything to get out of the car.
In the end, she couldn't manage it. Not just yet. She was simply too tired. Funny how pulling a little trigger could wear you out. But that wasn't really true, either. On the range, she could get a hundred shots off without feeling the strain in her finger or the muscles in her forearm quiver. Killing an actual person was surprisingly exhausting. Sharon had never done it before, had never dreamed she would ever have to do it, in spite of all the training and preparation. She sat there on the edge of the seat, ready to do something she couldn't quite remember, her thoughts tripping away to touch on things, losing focus almost immediately. The psychology major
