“Okay, here’s what we’re doing,” Lucy said in a low voice. “It’s getting late. We’re going as far as we can while there’s still some light. Then we’ll have Jim bring us some supplies for the night. We’ll be camping out. We’re going to assume they’re gunning for us and we’re going to act accordingly. Now, let’s get across the bridge and look for their trail. Everybody locked and loaded?”

Ned and Trey said they were. Jesse Corn stared at the shattered boat for a moment then slowly nodded.

“Then let’s go.”

The four deputies started over the fifty yards of unprotected bridge—but they didn’t walk in a cluster. They were in a long line so that if Amelia Sachs were to shoot again she couldn’t hit more than one of them before the others got to cover and could return fire. The formation was Trey’s idea, one that he got from a World War II movie, and because he’d thought of it he assumed he’d take the point position. But that was the spot Lucy Kerr insisted on taking for herself.

“You came damn close to hitting him.”

Harris Tomel said, “No way.”

But Culbeau persisted. “I said, scare ’em. You’d hit Ned, you know what kinda shit we’d be in?”

“I know what I’m doing, Rich. Give me a little credit, okay?”

Fucking schoolboy, Culbeau thought.

The three men were on the north shore of the Paquo, trekking along a path that followed the river.

In fact, while Culbeau was pissed that Tomel had fired too close to the deputy swimming out to the boat, he was sure the sniping had worked. Lucy and the other deputies’d be skittish as sheep now and would move nice and slow.

The shooting also had another beneficial effect—Sean O’Sarian was spooked and was being quiet for a change.

They walked for twenty minutes then Tomel asked Culbeau, “You know the boy’s going in this direction?”

“Yep.”

“But you don’t have any idea where he’s gonna end up.”

“’Course not,” Culbeau said. “If I did we could just go there direct, right?”

Come on, schoolboy. Use your fucking noggin.

“But—”

“Don’t worry. We’re gonna find him.”

“Can I have some water?” O’Sarian finally asked.

“Water? You want water?”

O’Sarian said complacently, “Yeah, that’s what I’d like.”

Culbeau glanced at him suspiciously and handed him a bottle. He’d never known the scrawny young man to actually drink something that wasn’t beer, whisky or ’shine. He drank it down, wiped a mouth surrounded by freckles and tossed the bottle aside.

Culbeau sighed. He said sarcastically, “Hey now, Sean, you sure you want to leave something with your fingerprints on the trail?”

“Oh, right.” The skinny man scurried into the brush and retrieved it. “Sorry.”