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“Christ, I hope not. ”
“They can’t have gone far without the car, and they can’t have been gone long if Ruger stopped to do all that. Two men on foot, hauling all the drugs and money Ferro was talking about—they have to still be somewhere close. We have some serious hills around here, not to mention some very thick fields that aren’t easy to wade through. I can’t see how they could have gotten more than a few miles away. ”
“Ain’t much around here,” Gus said thoughtfully. “The road to Dark Hollow’s not far, but there’s nothing back there. And what else? A couple of back roads. Farm roads. ”
“Whose farm is this?”
Gus frowned and peered up and down the road, assessing. “You know, I can’t quite tell if this is the north end of Henry Guthrie’s place, or the south end of Hobie Devlin’s. ” He cupped a hand around his mouth. “Rhoda! Whose farm is this?”
“I think it belongs to Mr. Guthrie. ”
“Yeah, I thought so. ”
Terry tensed. “Guthrie…You’re right. This must be their big field, the one Henry calls the far field, ’cause it’s furthest from the house. ” His eyes snapped wide. “Gus…can you get a unit out to Henry’s house? I mean right now!”
Gus blinked in surprise for a second; then he got it. “Oh, Jesus, you’re right! It’s the only place they could have gone. ” Gus spun around and waddled quickly over to Rhoda and the other officers.
Watching him, Terry felt icy fingers close around his heart. Guthrie’s farm. Val Guthrie was Crow’s ladylove. And Crow was supposed to be going over there after his job at the hayride.
“Dear Jesus…” he breathed.
2
The thunder growled loud enough to wake the storm. Lightning flashed along its belly, burning the
sky, burning the lands below, bursting trees and searing lines into the firmament. The rains came weeping in, angry tears spilled by troubled clouds.
Val Guthrie staggered out of the cornfield amid a crash of thunder that actually shook the dirt beneath her feet. Lightning danced and spun in the air above her, an almost continuous curtain of bright blue white.
She clutched her sprained arm to her body with all her strength, trying to keep it from swinging, but with each step the injured muscles and tendons twitched and spasmed, sending new and sharper spikes of pain. She didn’t know how much more of it she could bear. Nausea washed over her in waves, bubbling up in the back of her throat, dimming her tear-?streaked eyes, stoking the shock-?induced fever burning in her veins.
“Dad!” she cried as she stumbled through a curtain of rain and into the clearing.
The kitchen door lay where she’d dropped it, and the wheelbarrow stood empty, the red paint washed to brightness by the rain.
The madman with the gun was nowhere to be seen.
Val stood there, swaying, uncertain, not even remotely sure of what to do next.
Thunder broke above her so loudly she screamed, thinking the man had crept up behind her and shot her. She spun—but there was no one there.
Then in the flash of lightning, she saw the ragged form that lay crumpled in the lane only a few dozen yards away. The wind fluttered the sodden work clothes as it blew over outstretched legs and arms.
“Dad!”
She ran, shoving the pain down inside her mind, seeing nothing but the battered figure. Skidding, slipping in the mud, she tripped and landed on her knees in the mud and with her one good hand, she reached for her father’s shoulder. He lay on his stomach, his face pressed into the muck. One hand lay stretched out in front of him. In the brightness of the lightning, Val could see the neat round hole burned high in his back, nearly between the shoulder blades, the cloth washed clean of blood by the downpour.
“No!” she screamed and pulled at him.
His big old body resisted her, fighting her with limpness and weight and sopping clothes, but eventually Val found the strength to turn him onto his back. She wasn’t even sure if it was the right thing to do, or the wrong thing, or if she should do anything at all. She was beyond ordinary thinking.
There was no exit wound on his chest, she saw that right away, and in some dim part of her mind, she remembered how small a gun the man had carried.
Oh, please, God! she prayed and she bent her face to her father’s.
“Daddy…Daddy…?”
His face was totally slack, streaked with mud that clumped on his mustache and caught in his bushy eyebrows.
