I fire and miss. Cursing, he ducks sideways, keeps on coming. I have no grip. No aim. Little strength in my hand. I fire four more times. Yoder yelps and goes down three feet from where I’m huddled on the floor against the bed. He’s facedown. Still moving, scrabbling toward me. Hands reaching. I fire the final round. He jolts and goes still.

Swiveling, I jam my hand beneath the mattress, yank my cell phone from its nest. I’m trying to dial Betancourt when pounding sounds at the front door. If it’s Suggs or Smucker I’m done. I have nothing left.

Betancourt picks up with a harried, “Where are you?”

“My trailer,” I pant. “I’m down. Hurry.”

He says something, but I don’t hear. I drop the cell without disconnecting and pick up the .38 even though the cylinder is empty.

“New York State Police! Chief Burkholder!” comes a male voice. “Kate Burkholder! New York State Police! Are you there?”

The trailer rocks as someone comes inside.

The .38 clatters to the floor. I sag against the bed, put my face in my hands. It’s not until I speak that I realize I’m crying. “I’m here,” I say. “I’m here.”

A man wearing a navy parka with the iconic flat-brimmed trooper hat stops at the end of the hall. I catch a glimpse of his sidearm in hand an instant before he blinds me with his flashlight.

“You Burkholder?” he asks.

“Yes.”

Lowering his head slightly, he speaks into his shoulder mike. “I’m ten seventy-five Burkholder.” He lets dispatch know he’s made contact with me as he approaches. “Ten fifty-two,” he adds, requesting an ambulance. “I got an officer down. I repeat, officer down.”

Chapter 24

CHAPTER 24

One of my most vivid memories of the police academy was the day the instructor brought in a retired vice detective who proceeded to tell us it’s usually the easy cases that kill you. That case you swagger into with a shit-eating grin on your face because you think it’s going to be a cakewalk. Those are the cases, he told us, where in the end you’ll probably end up getting your ass handed to you.

We got a good laugh out of that. Some old dude with an eye patch and a limp. What did a dinosaur like him know about law enforcement today? Turned out he knew plenty because in addition to the eye patch and limp, he also had a dead partner. He’d worked undercover narcotics for seven years. He’d infiltrated a dangerous cartel and become one of them—until the day he was found out. The cartel had tortured him nearly to death with a cattle prod and roofing nails. He wasn’t quite so cocky the day they airlifted him to the hospital with the assignment left unfinished.