He turned, saw Sachs motioning for him to join her. He frowned, seeing the urgency in her eyes. Then he glanced to his left, into the bushes, and she saw terror blossom in his face. He held his hands out, a defensive gesture. He cried, “Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me!”

Sachs dropped into a crouch, curled her finger around the trigger, cocked the pistol and aimed toward the bushes.

It happened so quickly …

Garrett falling to his belly in fear, crying out, “Don’t, don’t!”

Amelia lifting her pistol, two-handed combat stance, pressure on the trigger, waiting for a target to present…

The man bursting from the bushes into the clearing, gun raised toward Garrett…. Just as Deputy Ned Spoto turned the corner of the trailer right beside Sachs, blinked in surprise and leapt toward her, arms outstretched. Startled, Sachs stumbled away from him. Her weapon fired, bucking hard in her hand.

And thirty feet away—beyond the faint cloud of smoke from the muzzle—she saw the bullet from her gun strike the forehead of the man who’d been in the bushes—not Sean O’Sarian at all but Jesse Corn. A black dot appeared above the young deputy’s eye and, as his head jerked back, a horrible pink cloud puffed out behind him. Without a sound he dropped straight to the ground.

Sachs gasped, staring at the body, which twitched once and then lay completely still. She was breathless. She dropped to her knees, the gun tumbling from her hand.

“Oh, Jesus,” Ned muttered, also staring in shock at the body. Before the deputy could recover and draw his gun, Garrett rushed him. The boy snagged Sachs’s pistol from the ground and pointed it at Ned’s head, then took the deputy’s weapon and flung it into the bushes.

“Lie down!” Garrett raged at him. “On your face!”

“You killed him, you killed him,” Ned muttered.

“Now!”

Ned did as he was told, tears running down his tanned cheeks.

“Jesse!” Lucy Kerr’s voice called from nearby. “Where are you? Who’s shooting?”

“No, no, no …” Sachs moaned. Watching an astonishing amount of blood pour from the dead deputy’s shattered skull.

Garrett Hanlon glanced at Jesse’s body. Then past it— toward the sound of approaching feet. He put his arm around Sachs. “We have to go.”

When she didn’t answer, when she simply stared, completely numb, at the scene in front of her—the end of the deputy’s life, and the end of her own—Garrett her helped her to her feet then took her hand and pulled her after him. They vanished into the woods.

IV
Hornets’ Nest

… chapter thirty-four

What was happening now? a frantic Lincoln Rhyme wondered.