Suddenly Pierce raised his bound hands to his face, pressed his palms together and mouthed something to the sky. A prayer.

“Oh hell…” Dani whispered.

“I’m in, if you are,” Sam said. “Now or never.”

Dani sucked in a last deep breath. “Now.”

She lunged to her feet, and a second later the two of them were sprinting for the barnyard, the night air streaming past their ears. Sam felt his heart slamming against his ribs, for reasons that had nothing to do with running. His eyes kept darting back and forth between the grave ahead and the barn door off to the left. The doorway stayed empty. For the moment.

He was a step behind Dani, sprinting in single file, their feet leaving a ragged path through the alfalfa. A moment later they passed beyond it, onto the hard-packed ground of the barnyard. Pierce was only twenty yards ahead. Then ten.

They hardly stopped when they got to him. They slid to a halt, reached down and took hold of an elbow each.

“Forward,” Sam hissed. “Take him to the road.”

Dani nodded, and like that they were moving again, the two of them dragging Pierce along over the hardpan dirt.

Sam looked back as they went, scrutinizing the ground behind them.

They were leaving no tracks at all. Not even drag marks where Pierce’s legs trailed over the dry soil.

Farther behind them, he saw the near edge of the alfalfa field, just visible in the light from the barn door. He could see the crushed, single trail he and Dani had made as they crossed it.

A wild hope flickered in him, at the sight of it. He pushed it away and turned his attention forward again.

He and Dani were twenty or thirty yards from the road yet, which lay in the darkness beyond the light spilling from the barn; for the moment, the three of them were still inside that light—bugs on a white tablecloth.

Sam craned his neck to look at the open door again, willing it to stay vacant a little longer. So far, so good.

They reached the edge of the bright zone and slipped beyond it, into the cover of dark. No more than five seconds later, a man’s voice shouted angrily behind them. Sam looked back again. One of the others had re-emerged from the barn. The man was staring at the empty ground beside the grave, where Pierce should’ve been.

“He doesn’t see us,” Sam whispered. “Don’t slow down, whatever you do.”

The man at the doorway called back inside for the others, his words laced with curses Sam could just make out.

He and Dani kept moving. Dragging Pierce deeper into the darkness. Closer and closer to the road.

Now there came footsteps behind them. Pounding the hard ground. Men scattering from the barn and splitting up to search the night.