Steady Hands very deliberately moves her red dot a foot from Reynolds’s thrashing head and fires into the ground. The shot echoes across the field.

What choice do I have?

“Send every available unit,” I shout into the phone.

And because I am afraid for Reynolds, I softly toss the cell at him. My aim is too good. It bounces off the poor guy’s chest and lies glowing on the snow beside his flailing elbow.

The red laser finds the screen and a second later the phone disintegrates in a small explosion of glass, metal, and lead fragments.

The state police will have at least three cruisers roaming northern Androscoggin and western Kennebec counties, more with the bad weather. I can also count on at least two sheriff’s deputies in the vicinity. Maybe a warden on patrol. Lewiston and Auburn have patrol officers working their streets, but the Twin Cities are half an hour away on these slick roads. Everyone else will need to be called out of their homes.

Can I stall for five minutes?

Maybe.

What about ten?

Not a chance.

“Now, throw out the shotgun,” shouts a woman. I think it’s Tori.

Law enforcement officers are told never to give up your gun. The idea is drummed into our heads so hard it leaves a permanent scar on the cerebellum. Our first week at the academy, we’re taught about the famous Onion Field incident where two LAPD detectives made that mistake and found themselves transported to a farm outside Bakersfield for summary execution.

I have only one card to play.

Tori, whom I am imagining as the leader, is betting I will comply with her demand rather than watch helplessly while they execute poor Reynolds. But if they kill their only hostage, they will have lost their leverage over me. I can hunker down, return fire, and wait until I hear sirens approaching. They’ll be the ones fighting the clock, not me.

Those same thoughts must be going through her mind, too, because she locates the significant flaw in my logic.

Steady Hands fires another shot, into Reynolds’s collarbone.

His scream tears a hole in me.

“Throw out the gun or the next one’s through his face,” Tori says, and her voice sounds even nearer. Thirty yards at most. She’s left the cover of the trees, darted into the field.

Reynolds’s cries are no longer even words.

My throat burns with acid that I can taste in my mouth.

I want to scream obscenities. But I can’t let them know they’re weakening my resolve. I have to remain dead silent for Reynolds’s sake as much as mine.

They can’t risk killing him, I tell myself. But I am not sure I believe my own reassurances.

Tori’s strategy isn’t working. She knows they’re running out of time.

I hear a radio squawk to my left. Then her voice again: “Finish it!”