Ice reached for his wallet. His wounds had stopped bleeding, but they still stung. He grimaced as he pulled the wallet out of his pocket. He had twenty-five hundred-dollar bills.

“Two grand. Is that enough for a down payment?” He held out twenty bills.

Camo Dude took them, looked them over, then grinned. “That’ll be just fine. I had something else to do, but it can wait. For five grand, it can wait. We got a bit of a walk ahead—you good for that?”

“Just get me to the airport.”

He nodded and turned slightly, picked up his pace, and Ice followed.

33

Tess was not lacking a sense of urgency. It took all of her self-control not to rush out and chase the gunman who’d fled to the back of the Scaleses’ property. But even after a year living here, she was in no way an expert at forest searches. She wanted to catch the man without getting anyone hurt—or killed. Already guilt was building. I never should have let Bass shelter Chevy here. I’ve put the whole town in jeopardy. I broke my own rule—I should have trusted my gut.

After she recovered from the shock of being shot at, Livie Harp was dead set against doing any waiting, and she was a living, breathing characterization of what Tess felt inside.

“We need to start searching now,” Harp said. She’d been pacing in the kitchen since she came back inside the house. “I saw him head toward the back of the property. It’s fenced back there. We can corner him and catch him.”

Tense, Tess said, “Cornered means more dangerous. We need a coordinated, orderly, and safe search. I’m not sending people out willy-nilly to get shot by a man who could be lying in wait.” It had taken Steve an hour to get here, but he’d brought three deputies with him so Tess would not need to stretch RHPD any tighter.

“There’s no rush because there’s nowhere for him to go,” Bender added. “We’ve got Del Jeffers out on the road, Curtis on the far corner of the property, we’re here. The only direction left is into the forest, and from there even on a trail, it’s fifteen miles to the nearest paved road.” He left with a map of the property to wait with the deputy outside the house for the search dog.

“Right.” Steve Logan nodded in agreement. “If this guy is hurt like you say, he’s not getting through the forest quickly unless he’s Superman. The search dog should be here shortly.”