Sleepy looked down at the gunman lying nearest them. Henry followed his gaze. At least one of Henry’s shots had taken the man dead center. Dead, he thought, thankful that his emotions were dulled by chemicals.

“We’d better move,” Sleepy said. “Shouldn’t be anybody left but Mr. Royal and his son-in-law, if that guy outside told the truth. But if we don’t find that basement quick, they’ll be gone and your friends dead.”

A searing pain arced through Henry’s abdomen, and the OxyContin didn’t blunt it at all. Either his knife wound had reopened, or something else was going on. As he tried to gather himself, the hand that held his mother’s shotgun began to shake.

“Let’s go,” he gasped, after he got his breath. “You’re right. I don’t think we have much time.”

CHAPTER 95

WHILE THE GUNS thundered upstairs, Royal told his son-in-law that if the FBI had come, there was no point trying to break out. Better to wait for an arrest and try to find a way to flee the country. But as he listened to the pounding of feet, the quick pops of pistols, and the muffled roar of a shotgun, he said, “I don’t think that’s the FBI. They’d have hit both floors at once. And we wouldn’t be hearing their rounds.”

“Sheriff Dennis?” Regan suggests, his body taut with the effort of holding his ground while his instincts tell him to run.

Royal shakes his head, one hand held high like a sensitive antenna. No guns have fired for several seconds. “Get over by a shooting station and cover them. Then sit tight and see what comes through that door.”

In the subsequent silence, Caitlin and I look steadily at each other, more feeling passing between us than ever has through the medium of language. A few moments ago, death seemed certain; now our hearts thunder with hope that someone has come for us.

Regan backs into one of the shooting-station partitions, his flamethrower trained on Caitlin and me, but we ignore him. Brody moves quietly across the floor to the firing range door. Flattening himself to one side, he waits with his pistol drawn and ready.

In the adjoining gun room, a door crashes open with a muted impact. Twenty seconds of silence follow.

“Mayor Cage!” shouts an unfamiliar voice. “Are you in there?”

My heart leaps. Whoever has come for us seems to have won the gun battle upstairs. But who are they? SWAT officers led by either John Kaiser or Walker Dennis? The leader’s voice sounds older, though. Walt Garrity, maybe? Or Chief Logan, from Natchez? Sometimes the local departments practice mobilizing a multi-force SWAT team.