Driving north on Cedar Swamp was the only way to reach their address. It was possible to approach the house from the opposite direction but only after driving around two hundred acres of state park and into a different township then back south once again. Hrubek had rammed him so hard the Subaru was surely useless; the psycho would now be on foot too. If the Atcheson property was his destination, he’d have to come this way.

Despite the delay to reset his shoulder Owen doubted that Hrubek had preceded him here. Unfamiliar with the area the man would first need to find a map. Then he’d have to orient himself and find the correct streets, many of which were not clearly marked.

Owen struggled into the intersection cautiously-a soldier on advance patrol, sighting out ambush and fire zones, high ground, backfields, perimeters. He saw a drainage ditch and a corrugated metal pipe, four feet wide. A good hidey-hole, he thought, falling easily into combat-speak. He pictured Hrubek loping cautiously down the middle of the road then Owen himself stepping out, silently, coming up behind with the pistol at his side.

The rain was cool and fragrant with the scents of a deep autumn. Owen inhaled this liquid air deeply then slipped down into the icy water that filled the ditch, guarding his damaged arm. But he was no longer faint and was able to ignore the worst of the pain. As he moved in his military crouch, he recited to himself the profile of kill areas: chest head abdomen groin, chest head abdomen groin… He repeated this gruesome mantra again and again as around him the rain grew fiercer.

Lis Atcheson escorted the man into the kitchen and handed him a towel. She decided that in the baseball cap, with the curly hair dipping toward his shoulders, he looked very much like the backhoe operator who’d dug the trench for their new septic tank last year. He stood with one hip cocked in a stiff way that made her wonder if he had fallen and injured it. He looked mussed enough, she thought, to have taken a tumble recently.

“I’m from over in Hammond Creek? East of here?” Trenton Heck spoke as if no one had ever heard of Hammond Creek-a town with which she wasn’t in fact familiar.

Lis introduced Portia, who glanced at Heck in a dismissing way. With a juvenile grin Heck waited for an explanation of the exotic name. “Like the car,” he laughed. The young woman offered nothing but her hand, and that unsmilingly.

The young officer was in the squad car, trying to get an update on Hrubek’s whereabouts.

“Mr. Heck-” Lis began.

“Trenton. Or Trent,” he said good-naturedly, laughing. “Mr. Heck, ha.”

“Would you like something?”

He declined a beer but guzzled a can of Coke in less than thirty seconds then leaned against the kitchen island, looking out the windows in an analytical, self-assured way that made Lis wonder if he was an undercover policeman. But, no, he explained, he was more of a consultant. When he told her how Hrubek had led the trackers astray then doubled back, Lis shook her head knowingly. “He’s no fool at all.”

“Nup.”

“I thought he was supposed to be crazy,” said Portia, who was rubbing the dog’s head with an enthusiasm the hound did not share.

“Well, he is that. But he’s a clever son of a gun is what he is too.”

Lis asked how he happened to come here.

“I met your husband over in Fredericks. We found this woman. Hrubek told her he was headed for Boyleston. So I went that way and your husband was going to keep on coming this way. The deputy tells me they think Hrubek drove him off the road.”

“We don’t know where he is. We don’t know where either of them are. Why’d you change your mind and come this way?”

It was something he just felt, Heck explained. He was halfway to Boyleston when he decided that Hrubek was leading them off track again. “He’d been too, you know, methodical about moving west and trying to throw us off or stop us. He even set out traps for Emil here.”

“No!”

“Surely did. I was thinking, he’s been clever up till now and there’s no reason for him to stop being clever.”

“But why didn’t you just call the police?”

He was suddenly awkward; she thought he was blushing. Eyes fixed on the window, he gave the women his account, which contained not a single period or comma, all about a reward and his being laid off and having been a state trooper for nearly but not quite ten years and a recession and a trailer that was about to be foreclosed on.

Heck then asked about Owen.

“There’re men out looking for him. The sheriff and another deputy.”

“I’m sure he’ll be okay,” Heck said. “He seems to know what he’s about. Was in the service, I’ll bet.”

“Two tours of duty,” Lis said distractedly, gazing outside.

Heck, paying no attention to the sisters, dropped to his knees and began drying the dog with paper towels in a wholly absorbed, methodical way, even blotting the inside of his collar and wiping the gaps between his stubby claws. He went through the same ritual as he dried his pistol. Watching this, Lis understood immediately that Trenton Heck was both simpler and sharper than she, and she resolved to take him more seriously than she’d been inclined to.

The deputy returned and squeegeed the water from his cheeks with thick fingers.

“Stanley tells me he notified the troopers about Owen’s truck. They’re passing that info along to some fellow in the state police named Haversham-”

“He’s in charge of the search, sure. My old boss,” Trenton Heck said. He seemed not to like this news. Because, Lis supposed, he was not keen on losing or sharing his reward. He added, “He’ll probably send a Tactical Services squad-”

“What’s that?” the deputy asked.

“Don’t you know? Like SWAT.”

“No fooling?” The deputy was impressed.

Heck continued, “They’ll be here in forty minutes, I’d guess. Maybe a little longer.”

“Why don’t they send them by helicopter?”

“Helicopter?” Heck snorted.

Lis looked past the others for a moment as a sheet of lightning canopied the sky. She felt the thunder in her chest. The deputy was asking her something but she didn’t hear a word of it and when she left the room she was running. Portia stepped after her and, alarmed, called, “Lis, are you all right? What is it?”

But Lis was by then taking the stairs two at a time.

In the bedroom she found the Colt Woodsman, a thin.22 automatic pistol that Owen kept beside the bed. He’d insisted that she learn to use it and had made her fire the pistol a dozen times into a paper target tacked to a pile of rotten wood behind the garage. She’d done so, dutiful and nervous, her hand jerking unartfully with every shot. She hadn’t touched it since then, perhaps three or four years ago.

She hefted the gun now and noted that, unlike rose petals, the checkered grip and metal of this long pistol left strong sensations upon her callused hands.

The pistol disappeared into her pocket. She walked slowly to the window. The immense blackness outside it-lacking any reference point-hypnotized her and drew her forward. Like a sleepwalker she approached the glass, three feet, two, compelled to find something visible on the other side of the blue-green panes-a branch, an owl, a cloud, the verdigris Pegasus weather vane atop the garage, anything that would make the darkness less infinite and permanent. Lightning lit the flooded driveway. She recalled waving goodbye to her husband. She realized with a shock that that gesture might have been the last communication between them ever, and, worse, perhaps one that he had not even seen.

She gazed into the night. Where are you, Owen? Where? Lis knew he was near. For she’d by now realized that, injured or not, he was making his way back to the house, trying to get Hrubek onto their property and complete his mission-to kill him and make it look like self-defense. They could be a mile from the house, or fifty yards away. It was only a matter of time.