At six, she drove home. The big field was empty. She stopped at the mailbox, thinking Chase would have been there already, but the mailbox was full. The dog whined behind the gate of the kennel, and Gina let him out. The front door was unlocked. She guessed Chase had come home and gone out again, without locking the door. That was crazy, under the circumstances, but if she told him so, he’d say she was paranoid. Standing in the entryway, she heard a man’s angry voice upstairs. She couldn’t make out the words, but a phone was put down, and then there was the sound of a cell phone ringing in the same room. Gina slipped out, caught the dog’s collar and put him in the car, and drove to a pay phone to call the police. Three squad cars met her near the house five minutes later; one was the sheriff’s.

“Stay in your car with the door locked,” the sheriff said. The three officers drew their guns and disappeared on foot down the drive. Gina stayed with the puzzled dog, afraid the boy with the gun would appear, unsure what to do if he did. She had told the officers it was a man’s voice upstairs, not a boy’s, and she thought the sheriff must know something, to come with two men and act so alarmed. Gina had once owned a gun, a gift from her mother: a Saturday-night special with a mother-of-pearl handle. She had sold it when her mother died, but now she wished she had kept it in the glove box. She tried to reassure the dog, saying, “Yes you are, yes you are,” but neither of them was fooled.

Ten minutes later the taller of the deputies appeared at the car window. She rolled the window down.

“Ma’am?” he said. “Do you have a husband?”

She nodded.

“We think he’s upstairs watching TV.”

Gina went in, and confirmed that the man in the living room in his T-shirt and boxer shorts was her husband. She avoided his eye. The T-shirt was an old white one, worn thin at the shoulders; the boxers were blue-striped.

“Don’t you be embarrassed, now,” the sheriff said. “You did the right thing. Never go into a house you think is dangerous. We’d rather get the call from you. Okay?”

Gina nodded.

“Okay, Chase?” the sheriff said, and his voice was friendly, conspiratorial.

“Sure,” Chase said. He’d recovered himself, and didn’t seem like a man in his underwear.

“There’s been an armed fugitive out here,” the tall deputy told Gina. “You did just the right thing.”

The sheriff said, “We’ll have him tonight. Don’t you worry.”

Gina waited until they were gone to close the door. The house was growing dim, and she turned on a floor lamp.

“What was that about?” Chase asked.

“I heard a man’s voice.”