“You’re coming inside with me,” Brady says. “The question is whether or not we bring her, or leave her out here, to turn into a Popsicle.” And, as if he’s read Hodges’s mind (for all Hodges knows, he can do that): “Oh, she’s still alive, at least for now. I can see her back going up and down. Although after a hit that hard, and with her face in the snow, who knows for how long?”

“I’ll carry her,” Hodges says, and he will. No matter how much it hurts.

“Okay.” No pause to think it over, and Hodges knows it’s what Brady expected and what Brady wanted. He’s one step ahead. Has been all along. And whose fault is that?

Mine. Entirely mine. It’s what I get for playing the Lone Ranger yet again . . . but what else could I do? Who would ever have believed it?

“Pick her up,” Brady says. “Let’s see if you really can. Because, tell you what, you look mighty shaky to me.”

Hodges gets his arms under Holly. In the woods, he couldn’t make it to his feet after he fell, but now he gathers everything he has left and does a clean-and-jerk with her limp body. He staggers, almost goes down, and finds his balance again. The burning arrow is gone, incinerated in the forest fire it has touched off inside him. But he hugs her to his chest.

“That’s good.” Brady sounds genuinely admiring. “Now let’s see if you can make it to the house.”

Somehow, Hodges does.

31

The wood in the fireplace is burning well and throwing a stuporous heat. Gasping for breath, the snow on his borrowed hat melting and running down his face in slushy streams, Hodges gets to the middle of the room and then goes to his knees, having to cradle Holly’s neck in the crook of his elbow because of his broken wrist, which is swelling up like a sausage. He manages to keep her head from banging on the hardwood floor, and that’s good. Her head has taken enough abuse tonight.

Brady has removed his coat, the night-vision goggles, and the balaclava. It’s Babineau’s face and Babineau’s silvery hair (now in unaccustomed disarray), but it’s Brady Hartsfield, all right. Hodges’s last doubts have departed.

“Has she got a gun?”

“No.”

The man who looks like Felix Babineau smiles. “Well, here’s what I’m going to do, Bill. I’ll search her pockets, and if I do find a gun, I’ll blow her narrow ass into the next state. How’s that for a deal?”

“It’s a .38,” Hodges says. “She’s right-handed, so if she brought it, it’s probably in the right front pocket of her coat.”

Brady bends, keeping the Scar trained on Hodges as he does so, finger on the trigger and the butt-plate braced against the right side of his chest. He finds the revolver, examines it briefly, then tucks it into his belt at the small of his back. In spite of his pain and despair, Hodges feels a certain sour amusement. Brady’s probably seen badass dudes do that in a hundred TV shows and action movies, but it really only works with automatics, which are flat.