She picked up a rock shaped a bit like an ax head. Gazed at the weapon manically.

Then Brynn recalled finding Joey bloody and gasping after eighth-grader Carl Bedermier had challenged him after school. Acting by rote, from her medical training, she’d examined the wounds, pronounced him fine and then said, “Honey, there are times to fight and times to run. Mostly, you run.”

So what the hell are you doing? she now snapped to herself, staring at the chunk of granite in her hand.

Run.

She dropped the rock and continued up the incline to the private road. As she neared the top her foot slipped, dislodging an avalanche of shale and gravel. It fell in a huge clatter. Brynn dropped to her belly, smelling compost and wet rock.

But no one came running. She wondered if the men were deafened themselves from the shooting.

Probably. Guns are much louder than people think.

Move fast while you can still take advantage of it.

Another few feet. Then ten. Twenty. The ground leveled some and she could move faster. Eventually she was at Lake View Drive. She saw no one on it and crossed fast, then rolled into a ditch on the far side, hugging herself and gasping.

No. Don’t stop.

She thought of a high-speed chase last year. Bart Pinchett in his Mustang GT, yellow as yolk.

“Why didn’t you pull over?” she’d muttered, ratcheting the cuffs on. “You knew we’d get you sooner or later.”

He’d lifted a surprised eyebrow. “Well, long as I was moving, I was still a free man.”

Brynn rolled to her knees and stood. She slogged up the hill away from the road and into the trees, plunging into a field of tall yellow and brown grass.

Ahead of her, two or three hundred yards or so, she saw the silhouette of the house at 2 Lake View. As earlier, it was dark. Would the telephone be on? Did they even have a telephone?

Brynn gave a brief prayer that they would. Then she looked around her. No sign of the attackers. She shook her head again, swiveling it from side to side until the second water bead burst.

Which made the sudden sound-footfalls charging through the grass directly toward her-all the more vivid.

Brynn gasped and started to sprint away from Hart or his partner, maybe both, when a forsythia branch caught her foot and she went down hard, breathlessly hard, in a tangle of branches, which were covered with yellow buds bright as you’d see on wallpaper in a baby’s bedroom.

THEY WERE DRIVING back from Rita’s, a mile away. It seemed to Graham that every place in Humboldt was a mile away from every other place.

He’d brought Joey along-didn’t want to leave him alone, because of the skateboard injury, even if he was “fine,” and because he’d ditch homework for video games, instant messaging and MySpace on the computer and texting from his iPhone. The boy wasn’t crazy about picking up his grandmother but he was in pretty good humor as he sat in the backseat and text-messaged a friend-or half the school, to judge from the volume of his keyboarding.

They collected Anna and headed back home. There, Joey charged upstairs, taking the steps several at a time.

“Homework,” Graham called.

“I will.”

The phone rang.

Brynn? he wondered. No. A name he didn’t recognize on caller ID.

“Hello?”

“Hi. This’s Mr. Raditzky, Joey’s central section advisor.”

Middle school was a lot different nowadays, Graham reflected. He’d never had advisors. And “central section” sounded like a communist spy organization.

“Graham Boyd. I’m Brynn’s husband.”

“Sure. How you doing?”

“Good, thanks.”

“Is Ms. McKenzie there?”

“She’s out, I’m afraid. Can I take a message? Or can I help you?”

Graham had always wanted children. He made his living with plants but he had an innate desire to nurture more than that. His first wife had decided against motherhood, suddenly and emphatically-and well into the marriage. Which was a big disappointment to Graham. He believed he had instinctive skills for parenting and his radar was picking up early warning signals from Mr. Raditzky’s tone.

“Well, I want to talk to you about something… Did you know Joey cut school today? And that he was ’phalting.” Something faintly accusatory in the tone.

“Cut school? No, he was there. I dropped him off myself. Brynn had to be at work early.”

“Well, he did cut, Mr. Boyd.”

Graham fought the urge to deny. “Go on, please.”

“Joey came to central section this morning, gave me a note that he had a doctor’s appointment. And left at ten. It was signed by Ms. McKenzie. But after we heard he hurt himself, I checked in the office. It wasn’t her signature. He forged it.”

Graham now experienced the same unexpected alarm he’d felt last summer while wheeling a plant across a customer’s yard, not realizing he’d rolled it over a yellow jackets nest. Blithe and happy, enjoying the day, unaware that the threat had already been unleashed and dozens of attackers were on their way.

“Oh.” He looked up in the direction of the boy’s bedroom. From it came the muted sounds of a video game.

Homework…

“And what else did you say? ‘Defaulting’?”

“The word is apostrophe P-H, ’phalting. As in ‘asphalt.’ It’s when kids run up behind a truck at a stoplight with their skateboards and hold on. That’s how Joey hurt himself.”

“He wasn’t in your school lot?”

“No, Mr. Boyd. One of our substitutes was on her way home. She saw him on Elden Street.”

“The highway?”

In downtown Humboldt, Elden was a broad commercial strip but once past the town line it returned to its true nature, a truck route between Eau Claire and Green Bay, where the posted limit meant nothing.

“She said the truck was doing probably forty when he fell. He’s only alive because there weren’t any cars close behind him and he veered into a patch of grass. Could’ve been a telephone pole or a building.”

“Jesus.”

“This needs some attention.”

I talked to him…

“It sure does, Mr. Raditzky. I’ll tell Brynn. I know she’ll want to talk to you.”

“Thanks, Mr. Boyd. How’s he doing?”

“Okay. Scraped up a little.”

He’s fine…

“He’s one lucky young man.” Though there was an undercurrent of criticism in the man’s tone. And Graham didn’t blame him.

He was about to say good-bye when something else popped into his head. “Mr. Raditzky.” Graham crafted a credible lie. “We were just talking about something yesterday. Was there any fallout from that scuffle Joey was in?”

A pause. “Well, which one?”

Lord, how many were there? Graham hedged. “I was thinking about the one last fall.”

“Oh, the bad one. In October. The suspension.”

Treading again blithely over a yellow jackets nest…Brynn’d told him there was a pushing match at the school’s Halloween party, nothing serious. Graham recalled Joey had stayed home afterward for a few days-because he hadn’t felt well, Brynn explained. But that was a lie, it seemed. So he’d been suspended.

The teacher said, “Ms. McKenzie told you the parents decided not to sue, didn’t she?”

Lawsuit?…What exactly had Joey done? He said, “Sure. But I was mostly wondering about the other student.”

“Oh, he transferred out. He was a problem, ED.”

“What?”

“Emotionally disturbed. He’d been taunting Joey. But that’s no excuse for nearly breaking his nose.”

“Of course not. I was just curious.”

“You folks dodged a bullet on that one. It could have cost you big.”

More criticism now.

“We were lucky.” Graham felt his gut chill. What else didn’t he know about his family?

A little pushing match. It’s nothing. Joey went to the Halloween party as a Green Bay Packer and this other boy was a Bears’ fan… Something silly like that. A little rivalry. I’ll keep him out of school for a bit. He’s got the flu anyway.