In the kitchen, she sat on the floor and pulled on socks, then her jeans and shoes. Her shirt was light-colored, but there was no help for that now because he sure as hell wasn’t sending her back to change; she’d be wearing her coat anyway.

“Flashlight?” he asked, wondering if she’d forgotten.

“I put it in my coat pocket.” She pulled the flashlight out and passed it to him.

He stifled a sigh as his big hand closed around the slender tube; it wasn’t much larger than a penlight. He couldn’t use it until they were safe, of course, but lights this size were basically made for a single task directly in front of the holder, not for helping them safely make their way across rough ground. Still, any light at all was better than none.

“All right, let’s slip out the back door and get away from here.”

Teague’s two-way crackled to life, a taint voice coming from the radio speaker.

“Hawk, this is Owl. Hawk, this is Owl.”

Owl was Blake, manning the farthest firing position. Teague moved away from Goss and Toxtel, taking care to remain behind cover. Those people on the other side of the stream had rifles, and he hadn’t forgotten it for a minute. He had the volume on the two-way turned down because noise carried at night; he sure as hell didn’t want to pinpoint his position for some lucky shot. With a large outcropping of rock securely between him and the community, he thumbed the “talk” button to reply. “This is Hawk. Go ahead.”

“Hawk, that guy you had Billy follow? I’ve sort of kept an eye on him, just in case you needed to know where he was. He went in that two-story building, third on the right—”

That was the feed store, Teague thought, pulling up his mental layout of the place. The place closed at five pm, so what was Creed doing there? Not that it mattered; he was just curious. “Yeah, what about it?”

“He stayed just a few minutes; then he came out and walked down to this first house on the right. Never came out, at least not before you started the dance. I’ve been pretty busy since then, but I’ve still tried to keep a lookout for him and I haven’t seen anything move. I put a few rounds in the place, maybe I got him.”

“Maybe. Thanks for the info. Keep putting rounds into those houses, and anything you see moving.” Teague clipped the radio onto his belt again, then worked his way back to his position near

Goss. Going prone on the ground for the most stable firing platform, he lifted his weapon and put the scope on the house in question.

Carefully he panned the infrared scope from left to right, looking for a telltale heat signature. The house itself glowed from its interior heat, making it more difficult to differentiate body heat—more difficult, but not impossible. Blake might be optimistic that he’d gotten a round in Creed, but Teague wasn’t of that opinion. Creed would have hit the floor before the shooting ever started, and immediately sought the most cover available.

At least one other person, maybe more, would be in the house, league had no idea who lived there, didn’t care. What mattered was that Creed would assess the situation and then pull back to a more secure location. He sure as hell wasn’t going to simply walk out the front door—so that meant he’d be going out the back.

Teague’s pulse jumped at the idea of being able to pick off Creed like a cherry on a tree. Of course, he might already have pulled an Elvis and left the building, but not that much time had elapsed, maybe ten minutes, and being Creed, he would have first organized the people inside the house. Teague chewed his lip, then made a decision and pulled out the radio, keyed his buddies’ radios. “This is Hawk. I’m moving to the right, trying to get into position to see behind this first house.” Keeping them apprised of his movement was a good idea, so one of them wouldn’t accidentally blow his head off.

He repeated the same information to Goss, who gave one sharp nod of the head before returning his attention to his post. Teague was sort of impressed by Goss, not because he’d done anything spectacular, but because he seemed to immediately grasp the why of anything Teague did.

Teague couldn’t move all that far to the right, maybe seventy yards or less, before the ground sharply dropped away to the river. This side of the road was nothing but treacherous boulders on a steep incline; if he put a foot wrong, he was risking a sprained ankle or knee at the least, and maybe a broken bone. Moss made the boulders slippery, and the going slow, plus he had to carry the rifle and take damned good care of the heavy scope mounted on it. He couldn’t use a flashlight without pinpointing his own position, which made the going even slower. With every passing minute, he was aware that Creed could be slipping away, but there was nothing he could do to hurry. Damn it, if Blake had just told him where Creed was before the bridge blew—

At last, when he put the rifle to his shoulder to check the angle, he could see the back of the house, or at least part of it. The angle wasn’t the best, but he’d gone about as far as he could go. He settled behind a boulder and rested the rifle barrel on the rock to steady it, put the scope on the house, and waited.

No shots had come from this location. Creed would have automatically noted where the rounds were being tired from, so if he wanted to eyeball the situation, the most logical position would be from the near back corner of the house. He might allow for the possibility that they’d have starlight scopes, but he wouldn’t expect infrared because it was so damned expensive, and not exactly convenient. He would be moving cautiously as he approached the corner…

An enormous heat signature burst out of the house, moving fast, then diving behind something and vanishing. Swearing under his breath, Teague tracked with the scope, trying to get the crosshairs settled, but he’d been caught off guard and if he fired now, he would essentially be firing blind—and alerting Creed to his position. He’d have to wait for a better shot.

Jesus, that heat signature had looked weird, like some huge spider. Still unsettled, Teague’s brain took another moment before it interpreted the signal his eyes had sent and translated it to two people, moving practically in lockstep, with the big one in back right against the smaller one in front. Four legs, four arms, extra-thick body: two people.

Right now he could have used a starlight instead of the infrared, so he could tell exactly what they’d dived behind. A car, maybe; made sense to park one there, close to the back floor. No heat signature emanated from the black bulk that was all he could see, though, so if it was a car, it. had been sitting there long enough for the engine to get cold. Too bad; the engine block of a car was damn good armor, certainly enough to stop any round they had.

But by holding his fire, he’d given Creed a false sense of security, ‘league figured. Thinking they were unseen, Creed wouldn’t be as careful in his next movement. This time, Teague would be ready.

A sliver of light in the scope caught his attention; then it bobbed out of sight. Shit. What were they doing? Changing position maybe, shifting around and getting ready for another run. They’ wouldn’t be running back toward the house, and they wouldn’t be coming toward the bridge, so that left only two directions. Creed had someone with him, someone he was trying to protect—someone smaller. A woman? Logically he would be trying to put more cover, more walls, more distance, between them and the shooters, which meant he would be pulling back, toward the river.

Time passed—way too much time. What the fuck was Creed waiting for—Christmas? Teague checked the luminous dial of his watch and saw that thirty-four minutes had passed since Blake had radioed with the info about Creed, making it maybe forty-four, forty-five minutes since the bridge blew. The rifle shots now weren’t being fired at anyone, because all the inhabitants were either down, behind cover, or had withdrawn beyond the range of the scopes. The occasional shot now was meant to remind them to stay where they were. Maybe that was what Creed had decided to do.