They hit the tree line, and blew through it in a boil of gravel and dust. “Kudravetz, let him up.”

Jason got off the floorboards, and held on for dear life. Too much car and not enough traction. When they reached the state road, Ripley pumped the brakes and turned left, rear end drifting until the tires caught pavement. Then it was forty miles an hour, racing fast to sixty-five and ninety. The car looked old, but had the goods where it counted: rock steady on the shocks, engine still eager as they broke a hundred, and reached out for one-ten. Kudravetz was watching him closely, and so was Jordan, both of them wary and ready for anything. Jason thought, Pagans, payback, Darius Simms. Simms was the kind to want his payback in person, to look Jason in the eyes, and say something stupid like, You shot me twice, motherfucker, and nobody does that to Darius Simms …

“How about now you tell me where we’re going?”

Ripley’s eyes flashed in the rearview. “A farmhouse. Not far.”

Wind poured through open windows, and Jason watched the dark fields and distant woods. More places to disappear a man. He ran scenarios, but none looked good. The speedometer was pegged at one-ten, and Ripley still carried that .38.

“Ten minutes.” Ripley’s eyes, again in the mirror. “Please don’t do anything stupid.”

Nothing marked the turn but a battered mailbox with catseye reflectors that glowed yellow from a hundred yards out. Ripley slowed the car, and turned onto a dirt road in an abandoned field. A hundred feet in, two four-wheel-drive vehicles were angled in to block the drive. “Take it easy, people. No surprises here.”

Where the vehicles blocked the road, two men stood on the hard, red dirt, M16s carried at the low-ready. Maybe ex-military, definitely trained. When Ripley stopped the car, one maintained his position center road as the other came to the driver’s-side window, and shone a light into the car. “Names?”

Ripley shielded his eyes, pointing in turn. “Ripley. Jordan. Kudravetz. That’s Jason French behind me.”

The light stayed on Ripley’s face for five full seconds, then swept the other faces a second time. “Any weapons in the vehicle?”

Ripley handed over the .38.

Slowly, Jason noted.

“Wait for us to move the vehicles, then proceed to the house at no more than fifteen miles an hour.” He straightened, and keyed his radio. “One car, inbound. Four men.”

He got into a Bronco, and the second man got into a Jeep, rocking the vehicles through the ditch line and off the road. Ripley drove them through the gap, and the vehicles rolled back out of the fields, blocking the drive behind them.

Not Pagans, Jason thought.

Not unless they contracted out top-dollar private security.