“Oh? What do you call murder?”

“Murder?” he whispered harshly, spinning around, and nodding toward the upstairs of the house. “Don’t you ever think about what you’re saying? What if she heard you?”

“Portia isn’t going to turn you in. That’s not the point. The point is you can’t just track somebody down and-”

“You forget what happened at Indian Leap,” he snapped. “I sometimes think I was more upset by it than you were.”

She turned away as if slapped.

“Lis…” He calmed quickly, wincing at his own outburst. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that… Look, he’s not a human being. He’s an animal. You know what he’s capable of. You more than anybody.”

He continued his argument smoothly: “He escaped this time, he could escape again. He got away long enough to mail that letter to you when he was in Gloucester. Next time he’s there maybe he’ll wander off. And head this way.”

“They’ll catch him tonight. They’ll put him in jail this time.”

“If he’s still mentally incompetent he goes right back into the hospital. That’s the law. Lis, look at the news-casts, they’re emptying the hospitals. You hear about it every day. Maybe next year, the year after, they’ll just turn him out on the street. And we’d never know when he might show up here. In the yard. In the bedroom.”

Then the first tears started and she knew that she’d lost the argument. She had probably known it when she first heard his steps on the basement stairs. Owen was not always right, she reflected, but he was perpetually confident. It seemed wholly natural for him to load up the 4x4 with guns and cruise off into the middle of a stormy night to hunt down a psychopath.

“I want you and Portia to go to the Inn. We’ve done enough sandbagging.”

She was shaking her head.

“I’m insisting.”

“No! Owen, the water’s already up two feet and it hasn’t even started to rain here. The part by the dock? Where the creek flows in? We need another foot or two there.”

“I finished that part. I added plenty of bags. It’s three feet high. If the crest’s higher than that, there’s nothing we could do anyway.”

She spoke coldly. “Fine. Go if you want. Go play soldier. But I’m staying. I still have to tape the greenhouse.”

“Forget the greenhouse. We’re insured against wind damage.”

“I don’t care about the money. For heaven’s sake, those roses are my life. I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to them.” She sat again on the bench. Lis had noticed that she commanded less authority standing beside her husband, with him a foot taller. Seated, though much lower, she paradoxically felt more his equal.

“Nothing’s going to happen. A few broken windows.”

“You heard the report. Eighty-mile-an-hour winds.”

Owen sat beside her and gripped her thigh, pressing hard. His elbow was against her breast. Instead of comfort she felt vulnerability, her defenses breached by his proximity.

“I’m not going to argue this,” he said evenly. “I don’t want to have to worry about you. I want you to go to the Inn. Once they get him-”

“Once you get him, you mean.”

“Once they get him I’ll call you. You two come back to the house and we’ll finish the work together.”

“Owen, he’s going the other way.”

His eyes flashed. “Are you trying to deny it? Lis, he’s run seven miles in forty-five minutes. He’s up to something. Think about it. Why’re you being so damn stubborn? There’s a killer out there. A psychotic killer! He knows your name and address.”

Lis said nothing. She breathed shallowly.

Owen pressed his face against her hair. He whispered, “Don’t you remember him? Don’t you remember the trial?”

Lis happened to glance up and see on the wall a stone bust of a leering gargoyle. She heard in her memory Hrubek chanting, “Lis-bone, Lis-bone, my Eve of betrayal. My pretty Lis-bone.”

A cheerful voice filled the room. “Little late for fishing, isn’t it, Owen?” Portia stood in the doorway, eyeing his outfit. “The party breaking up?”

Owen stepped away from his wife but he kept his eyes on her.

“I’ll pack a few things,” Lis said.

“Going somewhere?” her sister asked.

“The Inn,” Owen said.

“So soon? I thought that was later on the program. When the crazy man showed up to boogie. Oops, sorry. Was that in bad taste?”

“He’s traveled farther than they thought. I’m going to talk to the sheriff about what they’re doing to find him. Lis and you’re going to a bed-and-breakfast up the road.”

“God, he’s not coming this way?” Portia asked.

“No, he’s going east.” Lis looked at her sister. “It’ll just be better to spend the night at the Inn.”

“Okay by me.” Portia shrugged and went to collect her backpack.

Lis rose. Owen squeezed her leg. What, she wondered, does that mean? Thanks? I won? I love you? Hand me my guns, woman?

“I won’t be long. A few hours, tops. Come lock the door after me.”

They walked into the kitchen and he kissed her for a long moment but she could see that his mind was already in the fields and on the roads where his prey wandered. He pocketed the pistol and slung his deer rifle over his shoulder. He then walked outside.

Lis double-locked the door behind him, watching him climb into the truck. She stepped to the window and looked down at the garage. The black Cherokee backed out and paused for a moment. The interior of the truck was dark and she wondered if he was waving to her. She lifted her own hand.

He pulled into the driveway. Of course Owen was right. He knew more about Hrubek than all of the pros did-the troopers, the sheriffs, the doctors. And, what’s more, Lis knew too. She knew Hrubek wasn’t harmless, that he wasn’t wandering around like a dim animal, that he had something on his mind, damaged though it was. She knew these things not as facts but as messages from her heart.

Her cheek pressed against the window for a moment. She backed away and gazed at the uneven, bubble-flecked glass, realizing something she’d never thought of-that these panes had been made two and a half centuries ago. How, Lis wondered, had the fragile glass survived intact all those turbulent years? When she focused again on the yard, the truck’s taillights were gone. Yet she continued for a long time to gaze at the shadowy driveway down which the truck had vanished.

Here I am, she thought in disbelief, a pioneer wife, staring into the wilderness after my husband, who’s traveling through the night, on his way to kill the man who would kill me.

The lingering dust raised by the vehicles settled and their taillights vanished behind a hill far to the east. The night was still again. Overhead the clouds that swept in from the west obscured a sallow moon, which sat over a rock outcropping above the deserted highway.

There was as yet no hint of storm. No breeze at all. And for a moment this portion of highway was absolutely silent.

Then Michael Hrubek, pulling his precious Irish cap down over his head, pushed aside the grass and walked directly into the middle of Route 236. He replaced his pistol in the backpack.

GET TO

These words swam into his mind and floated there for a moment, doing slow loop-the-loops. He knew they were vitally important but their meaning kept evading him. They vanished and he was left with a prickling reminder of their absence.

What do they mean? he wondered. What was he supposed to do with them?

He stood on the asphalt and walked in a circle, searching through his confused mind for the answer. What did GET TO mean? Filled with a churning dread, he knew that they were jamming his thoughts. They: the soldiers who’d just been pursuing him.

Let’s think about this.

GET TO

What could it possibly mean?

Hrubek again looked east down the highway, the direction in which the soldiers had disappeared. Conspirators! With their dogs on ropes, sniffing and growling. Fuckers! One man in gray, one man in blue. One Confederate soldier. And one Union, the man with the limp. He was the one Hrubek hated the most.