Page 60 of The Burning

The muzzle slides from my mouth. I turn my head and hawk spit.

Effortlessly, he rises. Bending to me, he uses the cuff encircling my wrist to pull me to my feet.

“Who are you?” I ask.

Eyes on mine, he puts his index finger to his mouth. “Shhh.”

“I’m a cop,” I tell him. “You can’t—”

I lunge, but he’s ready and muscles me over to the barbed-wire fence. There, he swings me around and throws me to the ground. I land on my knees.

“You can’t get away with this,” I snarl.

“Maybe I will.” Bending, he snaps the unused cuff around the wire, trapping me. “Time will tell.”

“You murdered Milan Swanz,” I say.

Black jacket.

Black trousers.

Giving me only part of his attention, he snaps open the cylinder of my .38, empties the ammo into his palm, and flings all of it into the woods. He drops the .38 into the snow.

“Tell me why,” I say.

He gives me a final look, his expression inscrutable, and then he turns away and walks to the sedan.

Blue BMW.

Four-door.

Gray interior.

“Stop!” I yank at the handcuff. “Stop!”

The wire holds. Though the fence is old and rusty, it’ll take wire cutters to get me free.

Damn it.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him slide into the sedan.

“Who are you?” I call out. “Why did you kill Swanz?”

Without looking at me, he starts the engine and pulls onto the road.

No matter how vigorously you train, or adhere to the policies and procedures set forth by your department, no matter how fervently you exercise your God-given good judgment, if you’re a cop, there will come a time when you encounter a situation that goes south. Tonight is a case in point.

It’s midnight. I’m handcuffed to a barbed-wire fence on a little-traveled rural road. My radio, service weapon, and cell phone are out of reach. I’m freezing my ass off. And there’s not a damn thing I can do about any of it. It was over an hour ago that I informed my dispatcher I’d “arrived on scene.” I didn’t, however, follow up with an “assignment completed” call. My best hope is that she’ll notice and dispatch my graveyard-shift officer.

The ambush replays in my mind’s eye for the hundredth time as I work the handcuff against the barbed wire, back and forth, in an effort to snap it.

Milan Swanz was a deviant.

He walked in step with the devil.

My attacker spoke with an accent that wasn’t Holmes County Amish, but similar. His words contained an undeniable religious element that I recognized. An old Amish saying tickles the back of my mind.

Walk in step with the devil, and you’ll hear the flap of his wings.