I push Tempest’s lifeless body aside and scramble across the tarp for the dropped gun. The roar of a shotgun tears through the night. Out of my peripheral vision I see blood spatter and Lynda crumple. She is missing part of her head.

The night has turned blue as the wailing cruisers pull up behind Tanner’s Suburban, bathing the scene in their pulsing lights. A sled whines as someone takes off into the trees.

My hand closes around the grip of the Smith and Wesson revolver. I raise my arm.

Tori swings the semi-automatic shotgun around. The flashlight attached to the barrel finds me in the darkness.

We pull our triggers simultaneously.

If you go into a gun store and tell the clerk you want a gun for personal protection, nine times out of ten they will try to sell you a revolver.

“The advantage of revolvers over semi-autos,” they will say, “is they almost never jam.”

The Benelli jams.

My Smith and Wesson doesn’t.

40

At the hospital I refused all visitors, but I couldn’t keep out the detectives.

The doctors had needed twelve stitches to close the gunshot wound in my leg and two pints of blood to replace what I had lost overnight. My toes were pale and swollen with second-degree frostbite, as were my ears. Ice crystals had formed beneath the skin, but I was unlikely to lose any body parts, the docs said. I had sustained multiple contusions, as well as abrasions to my thighs, shins, and chin from my Nantucket sleigh ride behind Tiff’s Yamaha. My ballistic vest had minimized injuries to my torso although my ribs were most certainly bruised. To no one’s surprise, my left wrist and elbow were sprained. To everyone’s surprise, I had sustained no broken bones.

“It’s because I drink so much milk,” I told my physician, a towering, long-faced man with a high forehead. He had a mossy gray beard and reminded me of a giant tree creature out of J. R. R. Tolkien, an Ent.

Somehow, too, I had not received a concussion from having my head slammed against the rock when Tanner’s Suburban nearly ran over me.

“Antibiotics are fine, but don’t shoot me full of painkillers,” I told the doctor when I heard him discussing the specific medications he planned on injecting into my veins.

“You need to sleep.” He had a deep, slow, Entish way of speaking.

“I can do that without being pumped full of opiates. Besides I need to be alert to give my statements. I want to get patched up and get out of here.”

He stared at me with deep-set eyes that had seen everything. “Is there somewhere you need to be?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact.”

I was thinking of Shadow.