“Killing Baptiste,” she said. “You did us all a favor.” She pulled her hair to one side of her neck and leaned over to tug her stocking up to her thigh. She hoped they were watching her and that they couldn’t see that her hands were shaking. She thought of Baptiste dead, how she was standing on an open road, no other car in sight for miles, with the men who had killed him. She dropped her skirt quickly and tried to smile at Harvey. Harvey was looking at Jules. “You know what we have to do,” he said. They spoke a code Louise understood. She looked up to see the grimace on Jules’s face, knowing he was turning toward the idea of her death.

Jules looked at Louise.

“What’s up?” She tried to make her voice sound light. “I’m not talking. I won’t be telling anybody about this.” Her knees were trembling. Jules leaned on the car and swiped his hands through his hair.

“Let’s just get this over with,” Stoner said.

“I can’t,” Jules said. “I won’t.”

Louise knew their plan was closing around her. Stoner glanced toward the river. She looked for the clearest path in the darkness and then she made a run for it. She could think of nothing else to save her. She pushed hard. She prayed and her prayers smoked behind her in the cold wind of her passing. She decided to head for the river. She would take her chances on the ice. She could hear them running behind her. She heard one of them slip and fall and she turned to see Jules catching himself and then lifting up again in his run. She jumped the barrow pit and sank for a moment in a swell of snow.

When she reached the river edge she held her breath and took to the ice. The moon lifted through the clouds she had hoped would hide her. She heard the crack and then the low moan, saw the black cobweb beneath her feet as the frozen river gave way, the sudden pool of water to her ankle. She leaped to catch the opaque ice and then she was clear of the river. Jules trailed her. She turned to see Jules’s leg plunging into a black swirl of water, the ice shattering around him. He yelled to Harvey but Harvey pressed past him in his run. They were far behind her.