The steel hoof pick the Gracidas’s farrier had given her.

She unclipped it from the belt loop and fixed it in her hand like a claw. It wasn’t much, but it was what she had.

Be brave, Leah, she heard her mother say as she turned around and ran back toward the van to try to save her mother’s life.

Lauren kept the hammer poised in front of her as she backed toward the van.

Hewitt was coming from her right. He had pulled Leah’s screwdriver out of his face and held it now like a dagger. He was a monster with his once-handsome face smashed and torn and oozing blood. He was trying to shout, trying to curse. The sounds were garbled and grotesque. His tongue was swelling out of his mouth, dripping blood.

He staggered side to side as he came at her with the screwdriver clutched in his one good hand, his eyes glassy and unfocused.

Ballencoa came at her from her left, his face twisted with rage, spewing obscenities. The hunting knife had come out of his hand as they had tumbled to the ground, but he had recovered it, and he came at her with it now.

They were both too close. If she backed up any more, they would have her trapped against the van.

She bolted like a cornered horse, banging hard into Hewitt. He careened sideways, losing his balance, and they went down in a heap of tangled legs and arms. He lost the screwdriver but grabbed at her with his one good hand as Lauren scrambled frantically to get away from him.

He snatched hold of her ankle, yanking her leg out from under her. Lauren kicked and struggled like a drowning swimmer to free herself, getting first one foot under her, then the other.

She hadn’t taken two strides when Ballencoa was on her. He hit her hard between the shoulder blades, knocking the breath from her, and she hit the ground hard, rocks biting into her flesh.

The hammer came out of her hand. She grabbed at it, fingernails breaking as her fingertips hit nothing but dirt and stone.

This wasn’t what she’d had in mind, she thought dimly as her vision blurred and darkened around the edges. How many times had she imagined having Roland Ballencoa on his knees, begging her for his life? A thousand? A million?

In her dreams he told her where Leslie was before she shot him dead.

Body. Body. Head shot. Breathe . . .

Leah saw her mother try to run. She saw her fall. She could hear nothing but the pounding of her pulse in her head and the pounding of her feet against the earth as she ran. She had never run so hard or so fast in her life, and still terror gripped her throat at the idea that she couldn’t run fast enough to get to her mother in time.