They crawl, Hodges slightly in the lead. The pain is still bad, but now that he’s off his feet, the arrow in his guts is smoldering rather than burning.

Got to save some energy, though, he thinks. Just enough.

It’s forty or fifty feet from the edge of the woods to the window with the chandelier hanging in it, and his uncovered hand has lost all feeling by the time they’re halfway there. He can’t believe he’s brought his best friend to this place and this moment, crawling through the snow like children playing a war game, miles from any help. He had his reasons, and they made sense back in that Airport Hilton. Now, not so much.

He looks left, at the silent hulk of Library Al’s Malibu. He looks right, and sees a snow-covered woodpile. He starts to look ahead again, at the living room window, then snaps his head back to the woodpile, alarm bells ringing just a little too late.

There are tracks in the snow. The angle was wrong to see them from the edge of the woods, but he can see them clearly now. They lead from the back of the house to that stack of fireplace fuel. He came outside through the kitchen door, Hodges thinks. That’s why the light was on in there. I should have guessed. I would have, if I hadn’t been so sick.

He scrabbles for the Glock, but the too-small glove slows his grip, and when he finally gets hold of it and tries to pull it out, the gun snags in the pocket. Meanwhile, a dark shape has risen from behind the woodpile. The shape covers the fifteen feet between it and them in four great looping strides. The face is that of an alien in a horror movie, featureless except for the round, projecting eyes.

“Holly, look out!”

She lifts her head just as the butt of the Scar comes down to meet it. There’s a sickening crack and she drops face-first into the snow with her arms thrown out to either side: a puppet with its strings cut. Hodges frees the Glock from his coat pocket just as the butt comes down again. Hodges both feels and hears his wrist break; he sees the Glock land in the snow and almost disappear.

Still on his knees, Hodges looks up and sees a tall man—much taller than Brady Hartsfield—standing in front of ­Holly’s motionless form. He’s wearing a balaclava and night-vision goggles.

He saw us as soon as we came out of the trees, Hodges thinks dully. For all I know, he saw us in the trees, while I was pulling on Holly’s glove.

“Hello, Detective Hodges.”

Hodges doesn’t reply. He wonders if Holly is still alive, and if she’ll ever recover from the blow she’s just been dealt, if she is. But of course, that’s stupid. Brady isn’t going to give her any chance to recover.