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They stepped past the woodpile, out from under the overhang of the roof and into the gentle, trembling mist. He glanced back as the screen door slapped shut again, Christopher McQueen following them out. Vic’s dad snapped his lighter and lowered his head to set fire to another cigarette, then looked up and squinted through the smoke at her bike.

“Evel Knievel used to ride Triumphs,” he told them, the last thing any of them said before the cops came out of the woods.

“EFF BEE EYE!” shouted a familiar voice from the tree line. “DON’T MOVE. HANDS IN THE AIR, HANDS IN THE AIR, ALL OF YOU!”

A dull throb of pain shot up the left side of Lou’s neck, a thing he felt in his jaw, in his teeth. It crossed his mind that Vic wasn’t the only one in possession of high explosive—he had a grenade ready to go off in his brain.

Of the three of them, only Lou seemed to think “HANDS IN THE AIR” was more than a suggestion. Lou’s hands began to drift upward, palms out, although he still held the bag of detonators, the plastic strap looped over one thumb. He could see Chris McQueen at the periphery of his vision, over by the woodpile. The guy was perfectly motionless, still hunched in the act of lighting his cigarette, the tip glowing, his lighter in his other hand.

Vic, though. Vic bolted at the first shout, slipping away from Lou and staggering across the yard, her left leg stiff, refusing to bend. Lou dropped his hands and reached for her, but she was already ten feet away. By the time the woman coming out of the woods shouted “ALL OF YOU!” Vic had thrown one leg over the saddle of the Triumph. The other foot was coming down on the kickstart. The motorcycle roared to life in a shattering blast of noise. It was hard to imagine that a bag of ANFO could be any louder.

“NO, VIC, NO, VIC, NO! I WILL HAVE TO SHOOT YOU!” cried Tabitha Hutter.

The little woman was coming through the wet grass in a kind of sideways jog, holding an automatic pistol in both hands, just like cops did on TV shows. She was already close—fifteen, twenty feet away, close enough for Lou to see that her spectacles were dappled with raindrops. She had two others with her: the detective, Daltry, and a state trooper Lou recognized, an Indian woman. Daltry’s trousers were soaked to the crotch, and he had dead leaves sticking to his pant legs, and he looked bad-tempered about it. He had a gun but was holding it out from his body, pointed away and at the ground. Taking them in, Lou recognized—half consciously—that only one of them was an immediate threat. Daltry’s gun was pointing away, and Hutter couldn’t see through her glasses. The Indian woman, though, held her gun on Vic, pointing it at Vic’s center mass, and her eyes had a tragic look to them—her eyes seemed to say, Please, please do not make me do something I don’t want to do.

“I’m going to get Wayne, Tabitha!” Vic shouted. “If you shoot me, you’ll kill him, too. I’m the only way he’s coming home.”

“Wait!” Lou cried. “Wait! No one shoot anyone!”

“STOP MOVING!” Hutter shouted.

Lou didn’t know who the hell she was talking about—Vic was sitting on her bike, and Chris was over at the woodpile, hadn’t taken a single step. It was only when she twitched the barrel of the gun to point it at him that he realized he was the one moving. Without thinking about it, and with his hands up by his head, he had begun to cross the yard, stepping between Vic and the police officers.

By now Hutter was just three long steps away from him. She squinted through her glasses, the barrel of the gun lowered to point at Lou’s vast expanse of belly. She might not be able to see him very well, but he supposed it was like shooting at a barn; the challenge would be in missing him.

Daltry had turned toward Christopher McQueen but in a sign of profound indifference did not bother to even cover him with his gun.

Lou said, “Hang on. No one’s the bad guy here. The bad guy is Charlie Manx.”

“Charlie Manx is dead,” Tabitha Hutter said.

“Tell that to Maggie Leigh,” Vic said. “Charlie just murdered her in Iowa at the Here Public Library. One hour ago. Check it out. I was there.”

“You were—” Hutter started, then shook her head, as if to whisk a mosquito away from her face. “Get off the bike and lie facedown on the ground, Vic.”

In the distance Lou heard other voices shouting, heard branches splintering, people charging through the bush. The sounds came from the other side of the house, which meant they probably had as much as twenty seconds before they were encircled.

Vic said, “I have to ride,” and clunked the motorcycle into first gear.

“I’m going with her,” Lou said.

Hutter continued to approach. The barrel of the gun was almost but not quite close enough to grab.

“Officer Surinam, will you cuff this man?” Hutter said.

Chitra Surinam began to move past and around Hutter. She lowered the barrel of her gun, and her right hand dropped to reach for the cuffs dangling from the side of her utility belt. Lou had always wanted a utility belt, like Batman’s, with a grappling-hook gun on it and a few flash-bang bombs. If he had a utility belt and a flash-bang bomb now, he could throw one and blind the cops, and he and Vic could make their getaway. Instead he was holding a bag of Christmas-light timers from Home Depot.

Lou took a step back, so he was next to the bike, close enough to feel the blazing heat of the shuddering pipes.