A firefighter shouldered him out of the way. “Excuse me, sir.” They had started arriving a few minutes ago, hook and ladders and water trucks and emergency response vehicles. Lights whirling, hoses unrolling, men and women stomping around in bulky turnout suits. The fire fighter turned at the door and held up a megaphone. “Folks,” he said, his voice electronically amplified. “Please move away from this area. Please move back into the parking lot. Please stay away from the fire equipment so we can do our jobs.”

Like the nearby parking lot was safe. Shaun could see the burned and smoking ruins of one car already. He retreated downslope, instead, crossing the border of large riverstones demarcating the garden area, treading carelessly on the decorative heathers planted below the curving drive. He tried calling the foreman’s desk on the mill floor, but no one answered. He tried Jeremy’s number again. The cool edges of fear stroked his spine and coiled in his belly.

Then he saw Jeremy’s car pull into the lower parking lot. He plunged through the newly landscaped garden, churning up plants and clots of earth. The BMW drove closer and closer to the portico, stopping only when it was blocked by a line of cones. Shaun galloped toward Jeremy, thanking God, promising to mend his ways, whatever they might be. His ankle almost turned on one of the riverstones, and he had to hop over them to catch his balance. The door swung open. “Jeremy!” he called out.

Millie van der Hoeven stepped out.

She seemed as shocked to see him as he was to see her. Then she laughed, a painful, racking laugh. “You thought you’d get away with it, didn’t you?”

He was speechless.

“You thought you had me tied up tight in that godforsaken warehouse. One fire, and you get rid of the only witness who could link you to my brother’s murder.”

One fire?

“I was going to… I don’t know, punch you in the gut or something. Bite you again. Let you know what a miserable, despicable failure you are. But you know what? I don’t need to count coup on you.” She turned away from him. Toward the car.

“What-” His voice cracked. “What are you going to do?”

She stopped. Looked at him disbelievingly. “What do you think I’m going to do, you murdering bastard?” She spun on her heel.

He scooped up a fist-sized rock. It was dark down here, below the light and tumult at the resort’s entrance. But even in the dark, he could still throw. He was always good at throwing the ball.

The stone hit her hard, right behind her left ear. She went down with a thud. He strode over to her. Heaved her off the ground and threw her over his shoulder. He didn’t hesitate, as he had done this afternoon. Clearly there was only one course. And what could be more fortunate than a deadly fire close at hand? Shaun moved past the fire trucks and emergency vehicles, toward the far side of the hotel. All he had to do was get inside, somewhere away from the main entrance, and dump her into the flames.

It took him no more than five minutes. Skirting the light and the action, he discovered a side door that had been propped open with a chrome-and-rubber stop. He swung Millie from his shoulders into his arms. It was heavier and a lot less comfortable, but it would present the illusion of a man carrying a woman to safety.

He walked down the hall. He could hear the fire-a smashing, sucking, howling noise. The air was hot and heavy with smoke. He passed a door, opened onto a meeting room, and recognized where he was. The hallway leading to the ballroom. Could he slip into the conference room beside the ballroom and give her a little shove through the door?

“Hey, you!” The voice was weirdly muffled.

Shaun looked up. A firefighter, his face obscured by mask and eye shield, blocked the end of the hall. He had an ax in his hand and an oxygen tank strapped to his back. “You need to get out of here. This area’s not safe.”

Shaun nodded. He turned and walked in the opposite direction. He’d wait outside the doorway until the firefighter moved on, then bring her back. Maybe go upstairs, put her above the ballroom. Bash her a few more times and call it smoke inhalation. Even if the fire didn’t get her, who would know?

“Hey!” the muffled voice again. “That girl.”

Shaun looked down. Millie’s head had lolled back, and her long blond hair was swaying above the Oriental runner.

He kept walking.

“Stop!”

He walked faster. Behind him, he heard the thud of running feet. He broke into a run, but even his athlete’s body couldn’t function at peak with a hundred and forty pounds of young woman in his arms.

The firefighter’s tackle knocked him to the carpet. The girl bounced and rolled, coming to rest on her back, her head tilted to one side.

A hand grabbed his jacket and flipped him over. The firefighter set his ax, blade side down, against Shaun’s sternum. With his other hand, he shoved the face shield up and tugged his oxygen mask down.

Shaun frowned. It was… it was… He blinked. It was Ed Castle, the guy who supplied his pulp.

“What,” Ed Castle said, “are you doing with my daughter’s college roommate?”

Russ had finished getting a radio briefing from Lyle MacAuley on the three-alarm fire that was consuming the old mill on the Reid-Gruyn property. He turned to the newly arrived Mark Durkee and Noble Entwhistle. “What’s the flammable version of ‘It never rains, but it pours?’ ” Mark shrugged his shoulders. “Okay,” Russ said. “We’re going to need some crowd and traffic control here. I want you to-”

Someone grabbed his shoulder. He looked around at John Huggins. “Hey,” Huggins said. “I got a radio squawk from one of my guys. He’s calling for paramedics and the cops.” He pointed toward the edge of the hotel. “Go around there. The second door. It’ll be open.”

Huggins strode away before Russ could acknowledge the information. “You heard the man,” he said, pointing to Mark. “Let’s go.”

From the corner of his eye, Russ saw two paramedics from the Corinth squad shouldering their rolled pallet and medical kits. He let Mark lead, trusting his younger, keener night vision to find them footing.

They found the door. The firefighter who called them in was close by.

“Lookit who I found,” Ed said.

Mark knelt by Millie. “She’s got a bloody laceration at the back of her skull,” he said. “But she’s alive.”

Russ looked at Shaun a long moment. Then he looked at the man holding the ax. “Ed,” he said. He paused. He didn’t know what to say. “Thank you,” he finally got out.

Ed nodded. “It was her hair caught my eye. Like Becky’s.”

Russ pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. “Mark,” he said wearily. “Will you cuff Mr. Reid and inform him of his rights?”

Clare and Deacon Aberforth sat in Hugh Parteger’s car together, keeping warm.

“Do you think they’ll stop it?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m sure they will.” She looked through the window at the carnival of lights and hoses and moving reflective stripes. She sighed.

“I wonder if I’ll be able to get back to my room?”

“You can bunk in the rectory tonight, Father.”

He smiled at her for the first time. “You know, before all this, I would have said that was totally unacceptable.”

“And now?”

“And now, I think I’ll just say, ‘Thank you.’ ”

Clare leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes.

“Ms. Fergusson.”

She opened them again.

“I suspect you and I disagree on quite a number of things, including homosexuality, the proper degree of episcopal control of a parish, and, for all I know, the doctrines of immutable grace and virgin birth.”

“I may be a liberal, Father, but that doesn’t mean I’ve fallen under the sway of Bishop Spong.”