Arlene, who didn’t dive as fast as I did, got a crease across her shoulder. Agent Weiss took the bullet—the same one that creased Arlene—in the upper right side of her chest. Andy shot Whit Spradlin. Special Agent Lattesta missed Donny Boling with his first shot, got him with his second. It took weeks to establish the sequence, but that’s what happened.

And then the firing was over. Lattesta was calling 911 while I was still prone on the ground, counting my fingers and toes to make sure I was intact. Andy was equally quick calling the sheriff’s department to report that shots had been fired and an officer and civilians were down.

Arlene was screaming over her little wound like she’d been gut shot.

Agent Weiss was lying in the weeds bleeding, her eyes wide with fear, her mouth clamped shut. The bullet had gone in under her raised arm. She was thinking of her children and her husband and of dying out here in the sticks, leaving them behind. Lattesta pulled off her vest and put pressure on her wound, and Andy ran over to secure the two shooters.

I slowly pushed up to a sitting position. There was no way I could stand. I sat there in the pine needles and dirt and looked at Donny Boling, who was dead. There was not the faintest trace of activity in his brain. Whit was still alive though not in good shape. After Andy gave Arlene a cursory examination and told her to shut up, she quit shrieking and settled down to cry.

I have had lots of things to blame myself about in the course of my life. I added this whole incident to the list as I watched the blood seeping into the dirt around Donny’s left side. No one would have gotten shot if I’d just climbed back in my car and driven away. But no, I had to try to catch Crystal’s killers. And I knew now—too late—that these idiots weren’t even the culprits. I told myself that Andy had asked me to help, that Jason needed me to help . . . but right now, I couldn’t foresee feeling okay about this for a long time.

For a brief moment I considered lying back down and wishing myself dead.

“Are you okay?” Andy called after he’d cuffed Whit and checked on Donny.

“Yeah,” I said. “Andy, I’m sorry.” But he’d run into the front yard to wave down the ambulance. Suddenly there were a lot more people around.

“Are you all right?” asked a woman wearing an EMT uniform. Her sleeves were folded up neatly to show muscles I didn’t know women could develop. You could see each one rippling under her mocha skin. “You look kind of out of it.”

“I’m not used to seeing people get shot,” I said. Which was mostly true.