Lewis gave an uneasy laugh. “Well, aren’t we a couple of gunslingers.”

“Move in slow, move in quiet. Get the fire going. Then come back around. Let ’em all get out before you start shooting. Last thing we want is to have to go in and get anybody. You counted three, right?”

“Yeah, but now I think about it, the woman turned her head and said something. She wasn’t looking at the two men. Maybe there’s somebody else.”

“Okay, we’ll plan on four.”

THE ROPE GANDY had used to hook her to the tie-down in the back of the fourteen-foot van was thick and made of nylon-strong but slippery. Brynn finally managed to untie it. The tape on her hands, behind her, wouldn’t yield but she managed to climb to her feet. The buttons in the back doors were flush and she couldn’t lift them. She stumbled to the front of the van, tripped over the transmission shifter and hit her head on the dash. She lay stunned for a moment. Then managed to right herself and, turning her back to the glove box, got it open. Empty, except for papers.

She collapsed into the front seat of the van, catching her breath. Her stomach muscles were in agony from the navigation to the front and from the smack of the club Gandy’s wife had used on her. Brynn tried for the unlock button on the armrest but it was just out of reach of her bound hands. She surveyed the rest of the van, the junk, the boxes, the shopping bags. No knives or tools. No phones. She sat back in the seat, despairing eyes closing.

Then behind her a woman screamed.

“Michelle,” she whispered. Had she returned, had they found her at the lake and dragged her back here? Brynn spun around. But there were only two windows in the van aside from those in the front: in the rear doors. They were opaque with dirt.

Brynn looked in the side-view mirror. Smoke filled the night. Was the camper burning? Meth labs were notorious for incinerating the cookers.

The little girl was inside! she thought, panicked.

The voice called again, “No, no! Please!” The woman’s voice wasn’t Michelle’s. It was Amy’s mother’s.

Then the crack of pistol fire.

The boom of a shotgun.

Four or five more rounds. A pause, for reloading maybe. More shots.

Silence. Then a voice, high-pitched in fear or desperation. A man or woman or child?…Brynn couldn’t tell.

Another shot.

More silence.

Please, let her be all right. Please…picturing the tiny girl’s face.

Motion flickered in the side-view mirror. A figure, carrying a pistol, was walking around the camper, studying it carefully and the bushes nearby.

He then turned toward the van Brynn sat in.

She looked around for anything that would free her hands. She slipped them around the gearshift lever between the seats and began to saw. The gesture was futile.

She glanced outside. The figure was now looking directly at the van.

SHERIFF TOM DAHL stood over the two bodies in the kitchen: a businesswoman in her thirties, looking like she’d kicked off her shoes after work, happily anticipating a weekend of relaxation; the other corpse was a solid man about her age, with a mop of post-college hair. He was the sort of guy you’d have a beer with at The Corner Place in Humboldt. The blood made huge stains on the floor.

Although Dahl had the edge most law enforcers develop from the job, this particular crime shook him. The majority of deaths in Kennesha County were accidental and occurred outside. Homeless people frozen, car accident victims, workers betrayed by their equipment and sportsmen by the forces of nature. Seeing these poor young folks inside their own home, gangland-killed like this, was hard.

He was staring at their pale hands; those of the typical dead around here were ruddy and calloused.

And on top of it all, his own deputy-his secret favorite in the department, the daughter he would have liked to have-was missing from a house tattooed with small-arms fire.

He exhaled slowly.

Footsteps came downstairs. “The friend?” Dahl asked Eric Munce, the man he’d chosen not to send here, picking instead Kristen Brynn McKenzie. And the man whose future presence in the department would be a constant reminder of that decision, however things turned out.

“No sign of her.”

One relief. He’d been sure that they were going to find her body upstairs in the bedroom. Murdered and maybe not right away.

Munce said, “They might have her with them. Or she’s with Brynn, hiding somewhere.”

Let’s pray for that, Dahl thought, and he did, though very briefly.

A call came in for him. The FBI, Special Agent Brindle explained, was sending several agents-now that Emma Feldman, a witness in the case against Mankewitz was dead. A State Police commander was headed here too and wouldn’t like the Feebies-he tended to squeeze hard in pissing contests-but Dahl was all for the more the merrier. No criminals ever escaped because too many talented cops were on his trail. Well, most of the time.

A crime scene unit from the State Police was en route as well, so Dahl ordered his boys to leave the evidence for collection but to look everywhere they needed in order to figure out what had happened and where Brynn and the Feldmans’ friend might be.

It didn’t take long to find significant pieces of the puzzle: gunshots through windows, gunshots inside, gunshots outside, footprints that suggested two males were probably the perps. Brynn’s Sheriff Department uniform shoes were inside, and the friend had abandoned her chic city boots beside the Feldmans’ Mercedes-both in favor of practical hiking footgear. One was injured; she was using a cane or crutch and appeared to be dragging one foot.

The Mercedes sat in front of the garage with gunshots in two tires, window smashed and hood up, a battery cable dangling. Another car had burned rubber-well, scattered gravel-as it fled. Another had limped out, dragging a flat.

But the jigsaw pieces didn’t give any sense of the big picture. Now, standing in front of the fragrant fireplace in the living room, Dahl summarized to himself: a mess. We got a mess on our hands.

And where the hell is Brynn?

Eric?

I’d rather it wasn’t him. You know how he gets.

Dahl noticed something in the woodwork. “Anybody trying to play CSI?” he asked sourly, eyes on Munce.

The deputy looked where he was pointing. It seemed like someone had dug a bullet out of the molding. “Not me.”

Why would somebody take the trouble to dig out one but not the other bullets? Why? Because it had his DNA on it?

Most likely, and that meant he was wounded.

It also meant that he was a pro. Most crimes in Kennesha County involved people who didn’t even know what DNA was, much less worried about leaving any.

A hit man.

Okay, think. The two men had been hired to kill Emma Feldman. They’d done that-and killed her husband too. Then, maybe, they’d been surprised by the friend who’d driven up with them. Maybe she’d been out for a walk or upstairs in the shower when the killers arrived.

Or maybe it was Brynn who’d surprised them.

Somebody, Brynn probably, had shot one of the men, wounding him. He’d dug the DNA-coated bullet out of the wall.

But what had happened next?

Had they ditched their car somewhere and taken Brynn’s? Were the friend and Brynn with them, captives? Had the women put on those hiking boots to run off into the woods?

Were they dead?

He called deputy Howie Prescott on his radio. The big man was near the lake in the yard between 2 and 3 Lake View, where they’d found some footprints. He was looking for any sign of a trail anybody’d left. Prescott was the best hunter in the office, though how the 280-pound man snuck up on his prey was a mystery to them all.

“Anything, Howie?”

“No, sir. But it’s dark as night here.”