She rolled onto her back. Garrett looked up, smiling from the sensation of the animal on his skin, curious about what she was doing. And Lydia lashed out as hard as she could with both feet. She had strong legs, used to carrying her big frame for eight-hour shifts at the hospital, and the kick sent him tumbling backward. He hit his head against the wall with a dull thud and rolled to the floor, stunned. Then he cried out, a raw scream, and grabbed his arm; the millipede must have bit him.

Yes! Lydia thought triumphantly as she rolled upright. She struggled to her feet and ran blindly toward the grinding room at the end of the corridor.

… chapter twelve

According to Jesse Corn’s reckoning they were almost to the quarry.

“About five minutes ahead,” he told Sachs. Then he glanced at her twice and after some tacit debate said, “You know, I was going to ask you…. When you drew your weapon, when that turkey came outa the brush. Well, and at Blackwater Landing too when Rich Culbeau surprised us…. That was … well, that was something. You know how to drive a nail, looks like.”

She knew, from Roland Bell, the Southern expression meant “to shoot.”

“One of my hobbies,” she said.

“No foolin’!”

“Easier than running,” she said. “Cheaper than joining a health club.”

“You in competition?”

Sachs nodded. “North Shore Pistol Club on Long Island.”

“How ’bout that,” he said with a daunting enthusiasm. “NRA Bullseye matches?”

“Right.”

“That’s my sport too! Well, skeet and trap, course. But sidearms’re my specialty.”

Hers too but she thought it best not to find too much in common with adoring Jesse Corn.

“You reload your own ammo?” he asked.

“Uh-huh. Well, the .38s and .45s. Not the rimfire, of course. Getting the bubbles out of slugs—that’s the big problem.”

“Whoa, you’re not telling me you cast your own bullets?”

“I do,” she admitted, recalling that when everyone else’s apartment in her building smelled of waffles and bacon on Sunday morning hers often was redolent of the unique aroma of molten lead.

“I don’t do that,” he said apologetically. “I buy match rounds.”

They walked for another few minutes in silence, all eyes on the ground, looking for more deadfall traps.

“So,” Jesse Corn said, offering a coy grin, swiping his blond hair off his damp forehead. “I’ll show you mine….” Sachs looked at him quizzically and he continued. “I mean, what’s your best score? On the Bullseye circuit?” When she hesitated he encouraged: “Come on, you can tell me. It’s only a sport…. And, hey, I’ve been competing for ten years. I got a little edge on you.”

“Twenty-seven hundred,” Sachs said.

Jesse nodded. “Right, that’s the match I mean—the three-pistol rotation, nine hundred points max for each gun. What’s your best?”