Lucy had gone around for three and a half months with an unloaded service pistol, collaring ’shiners and militiamen and big, snotty teens huffed to oblivion on butane. And she’d handled them all on bluff alone.

Then she woke up one morning and, as if a fever had passed, had gone to Shakey’s Hardware on Maple Street and bought a box of Winchester .357 shells. (“Jeez, Lucy, the county’s in worser shape than I thought, making you buy your own ammo.”) She’d gone home and loaded her weapon and kept it that way ever since.

It was a significant event for her. The reloaded gun was an emblem of survival.

Amelia, I shared my darkest moments with you. I told you about the surgery—which is the black hole of my life. I told you about my shyness with men. About my love for children. I backed you up when Sean O’Sarian got your gun. I apologized when you were right and I was wrong.

I trusted you. I—

A hand touched her shoulder. She glanced at Jesse Corn. He was giving her one of his gentle smiles. “The highway curves up ahead,” he said. “I’d just as soon we made that curve too.”

Lucy exhaled slowly and sat back in the seat, let her shoulders slump. She eased off on the speed.

Still, when they made the curve Jesse’d mentioned, which was posted forty, she was doing sixty-five.

“A hundred feet up the road,” Jesse Corn whispered.

They were out of their cars, the deputies, and were clustered around Mason Germain and Lucy Kerr.

The state police had finally lost the signal from Amelia’s cell phone but only after it’d been stationary for about five minutes at the location they were now looking at: a barn fifty feet from a house in the woods—a mile off Route 112. It was, Lucy noted, west of Tanner’s Corner. Just as Lincoln Rhyme had predicted.

“You don’t think Mary Beth’s in there, do you?” asked Frank Sturgis, brushing at his yellow-stained moustache. “I mean, it’s all of seven miles from downtown. I’d feel pretty foolish, he’s been keeping the girl that close to town.”

“Naw, they’re just waiting for us to go past,” Mason said. “Then they’re gonna go on to Hobeth Falls and pick up the rental car.”

“Anyway,” Jesse said, “somebody lives here.” He’d called in the address of the house. “Pete Hallburton. Anybody know him?”

“Think so,” said Trey Williams. “Married. No connection to Garrett that I know of.”

“They have kids?”

Trey shrugged. “Think they might. Seem to recall a soccer game last year…”

“It’s summer. The youngsters might be home,” Frank muttered. “Garrett might’ve taken ’em hostage inside.”