"That ought to be fun in this dark." Maggie tightened her seat belt.

A harsh male voice came on the radio. "If that pig following me comes anywhere near, I'll kill this b.i.t.c.h."

A woman yelped in pain.

Garreth's headlights caught a sign with names and distances to various farms. The top name read:Droge.

"Garreth-" Maggie yelped as they hurtled past.

He was already hitting both gas and brake and hauling at the steering wheel to spin the car in a one-eighty turn. He gunned back for the corner, reached it still accelerating, and somehow still made the turn anyway, wheels screaming, gravel from the new road scattering beneath his wheels. Maggie whooped like a banshee.

"572, turning east five miles from last turn."

"Get away from me! I'm warning you!"

Garreth swore. He had not noticed his mileage at the turn. "How are we going to know which corner it is?"

"Relax," Maggie said. "These roads are section lines, remember, exactly one mile apart."

She counted crossing roads; he concentrated on keeping the car on theirs and, when it came, making the turn without piling them into a heavy stone fence post at the corner of the field.

"I see them!" Maggie hissed.

He did, too . . . small ruby points of light far ahead, and two more points half a mile beyond those. The farther lights swerved and vanished.

"572. Turning north-"

Maggie hit the transmit b.u.t.ton on the hand radio. "We have you. 512."

"You've got one last chance to get away from me or this cow dies."

A female voice came on moments later. "Bellamy SO. Fall hack, 512."

The tail lights grew larger and brighter as Garreth gained. He watched them swerve into a turn. He followed, and shortly after that, drew up alongside.

"Roll down the window, Maggie." When she did, Garreth shouted across to the Bellamy officer, "Drop back and mark that corner. I'll follow him from here."

"Orders are-"

"He won't see me, I promise." He shut off his headlights as he pa.s.sed the PD car.

Maggie gasped.

The road stretched before him in a distinct gray ribbon, as though through twilight. On it ahead of him, growing ever brighter, shone the tail lights of the stolen police car.

Maggie clung to the radio. "I can't see a thing. How can you?"

He hesitated only a moment before answering. "I never told you but I'm a werewolf."

"Terrific. I've been dating a fruit loop." The car fishtailed and she swallowed audibly. "How fast are we going?"

"I'm afraid to look."

Her stream of language had to come out of her father's oilfield days.

The lights ahead swerved off onto another road, then another and finally into a lane which consisted of two wheel ruts with a gra.s.s-grown center. Far up the lane, perhaps half a mile, Garreth made out the blocky shapes of buildings, one tilting crazily.

He down-shifted to slow the car, then stopped with the hand brake to keep the brake lights from giving their presence away.

"Maggie, I'll follow on foot from here."

"Onfoot ! Garreth, you can't-"

He climbed out. "Take the car and go back to wait at that last corner for the others. I'll leave my jacket on his fencepost to mark the lane. Get going."

"Do you have a gun?"

"Of course." He patted his ankle holster, and before she could protest further, took the radio from her, peeled off his sport coat, and dropping it over the fencepost beside the gate, sprinted up the lane after the fading lights of the car. His breath swirled thick and white around him in the chilly air.

The lights vanished.

Garreth stretched his stride. Had they gone over a rise? Around a corner? He had almost reached the buildings. He slowed, still looking around for the car. The lane led on past. Could the kidnapper have continued?

No, voices carried on the night wind, whispers so low no normal ears could have heard them . . . a woman's, frightened and weeping, a man's hissing angrily. "Stop whining, you b.i.t.c.h, or you're dead."

Garreth tilted his head, testing for direction of the sound. The house with its multiple doors and windows gaping empty, or in the dark cave of the tilting barn? A car could be hidden from sight in there. The barn, he decided. The wind brought him scents of human blood and sweaty fear mixed with the odor of moldering hay.

Circling behind the house, he climbed through two barb wire fences to the rear of the barn. The windows, empty of gla.s.s, were high and small. The doors had been blocked up some time in the past. Garreth nodded in satisfaction. The kidnapper should feel himself safe from the rear, then. The sealed door gave no protection from a vampire, though.

He pressed against the door. Everything in him wrenched sharply, then he stood inside between disintegrating stacks of hay. A tall, rawboned man with a heavy thatch of dark, wiry hair sat against the bales in a position where he could watch the lane. Beside him huddled the dispatcher, a short, plump woman in her late thirties, held down by an arm twisted behind her back.

Now what? Garreth plucked at his mustache. As soon as he revealed his presence, the man would open fire. The trick was to make sure he did not shoot his hostage first.

But what would happen if the kidnapper shot and hithim? Theoretically, if a vampire could pa.s.s through a door, an object could pa.s.s through him without harm. Wooden stakes excepted. Theoretically.

There was only one way to learn.Watch the idiot cop put his head in the lion's mouth.

Laying the radio on a hay bale, he stepped forward. "You're under arrest, turkey."

The kidnapper whirled, the muzzle of his gun flashing fire.

He shot well for having only sound to aim at. A small, wrenching pain lanced through Garreth's chest. Reflex brought his hands clutching at the point of pain, but a moment later he realized he felt nothing else, no weakness, no bleeding.

The kidnapper fired again, and once more Garreth felt only that single small pain similar to the one of pa.s.sing through doors.

Good enough. He grinned-"Try again, turkey,"-and charged.

Cursing, the kidnapper tried to empty the gun, but had time for just two more shots before Garreth reached him. Wrenching the gun away, Garreth rapped the b.u.t.t across the side of the kidnapper's head. The man dropped in his tracks.

Beyond him the dispatcher huddled on the floor. She had to be terrified, hearing the gunfire and collapsing body but unable to see who had gone down.

Garreth spoke before touching her. "Emma, it's all right. You're safe. I'm Garreth Mikaelian, Baumen PD." Then he picked her up.

"Mikaelian. You're 407." Burying her head against his shoulder, enveloping him in a smell of blood and terror-sweat, she burst into tears. "What an idiot I am. When he went down in the waiting area, I thought he'd fainted. I didn't even think; I just opened the counter door and ran out. Of course it was a trick. He grabbed me around the neck and dragged me back inside the office. He demanded the keys to the cells, to get his brother out, he said. I pretended to be getting them and hit the b.u.t.ton that rings an alarm at the guard's station up in the jail. I knew Clell Jamison had just brought someone in and was up there, too. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d figured out what I'd done, though, and he dragged me over to the stair door and hit Clell when he came down. Did he kill him?"

"Jamison is fine."

Garreth led her back to where he had left the radio. "Mikaelian to Bellamy S.O. Situation resolved. Hostage unharmed."

In minutes the old farmyard had filled up with cars and flashing light bars, representatives of law enforcement agencies in three counties . . . police, sheriff and deputies, highway patrol.

His ZX was there, too, and Maggie, throwing her arms around him, drowning him in the smell of her blood. "You took him by yourself? Are you all right?"

"Of course." He slid away from her so she would not smell the powder burns on his shirt. "He fired a couple of shots at me but he's a lousy shot in the dark." Luckily the powder burns did not show up on the black turtleneck. "Do you have my coat?"

She handed it over. "Are you sure you're all right? There are holes in your shirt."

"Front and back. Yes, I know. I had to crawl through two barb wire fences." Smiling, he carefully b.u.t.toned his coat across the holes.

13

Pounding woke him. At first he thought it was part of his dream, hammering on the barn being unaccountably built by a swarm of Amish men at the land end of the bridge from Pioneer Park's island. He did wonder when the entire group turned and began shouting in unison: "Mikaelian! Mikaelian, G.o.dd.a.m.n it, wake up!" Amish would surely not curse that way. These could not be real Amish.

Then he noticed that though they stopped pounding when they yelled at him, the pounding noise went on. Their voice sounded familiar, too.

"Mikaelian!"

The voice and pounding were real . . . outside his door. He clawed his way up out of sleep to squint at his clock . . . and then stare in outrage. Eleven-thirty!

The pounding sounded ready to break through the door. "Mikaelian!MIKAELIAN!""I'm coming!" He staggered to the door and opened it half the width of the safety chain.

Through the crack and the glare of light outside he recognized the burly form of Lieutenant Byron Kaufmann filling his porch.

"Helen Schoning and her mother weren't kidding about how sound you sleep," Kaufmann grumbled. "I've been making enough noise to wake the dead."

Garreth leaned his forehead against the crack, sighing. "So you have. What do you want, lieutenant? I just got to sleep."

"Sorry, but I'm supposed to bring you down at the station."

"Atthis time of day?" While he unchained and opened the door, Garreth's mind raced, hunting serious transgressions.

"Relax." Kaufmann strolled in past him. "There are just some reporters waiting for you."

"Reporters?" Garreth's gut knotted. He shoved the door closed. "s.h.i.t."

"Jesus it's dark in here."

Garreth switched on a lamp. "Why do they want to talk to me?"

Kaufmann grinned at him. "Don't you realize who you collared last night? Frank Danner."

The name sounded vaguely familiar. Garreth had shaved before he identified it, though. Then he stared at Kaufmann. "One of the bank robbers who killed that Nevada trooper? They're in Kansas?"

Kaufmann rolled his eyes. "Don't you read your briefing notes?"

"I've been off for two days."

"Don't you watch the news? Two days ago Frank and his brother Lyle shot a Colorado trooper. Every cop in the country wants them. And you nailed Frank without a scratch to you or his hostage. Danzig says wear something professional looking."

Garreth reluctantly put on a suit and tie, and after a moment of hesitation went to the refrigerator. Instead of filling a gla.s.s, though, he drank directly from the thermos, freshly refilled from the Gehrt Ranch herd after taking Maggie home last night.

They never had talked.

Kaufmann eyed him. "That's health food stuff I suppose."

"Liquid protein and additives." Perfectly true. He added sodium citrate to keep it from clotting. But let Kaufmann think he meant vitamins and brewers yeast. Despite the knots in his stomach, Garreth could not resist adding slyly, "Try some?" He held out the open thermos. "It's very healthy. Makes you live forever."

As he hoped, Kaufmann refused with a shudder and he returned the thermos to the refrigerator.

They trotted down to the patrol car in the driveway. "Why don't I just follow you in my car?" Garreth asked.

"Danzig remembers how camera shy you were after our round with the bow-and-arrow cop killer. He wanted to make sure you showed up. I'm also supposed to brief you on the way."

Why became obvious as Kaufmann filled him in. The Bellamy PD had arrested Lyle Danner without realizing who they had.

Early in the evening he had tried to rob a liquor store, only the owner had been in the back room when Danner pulled a gun on the clerk, and the owner had called the police from an extension then sneaked out to jam a shotgun in Danner's back and hold him until the police arrived. Danner gave the name William Dane when he was booked, which came back negative when checked through the National Criminal Information Center in Washington.

"So the arresting officer tossed Danner in a cell to wait for the fingerprint check and his court appearance and thought nothing more about him," Kaufmann said. "But when Pfeifer and Chief Oldenburg saw 'Dane' and the guy you collared together in jail, their descriptions clicked. Someone woke up the editor of theBellamy Globe to tell him what had gone down and in nothing flat he had it on the wire and people to collect more details. A whole group of reporters complete with minicam showed up at our office half an hour ago asking to talk to you."

Minicam. Garreth slunk down in the seat.d.a.m.n. "Does the chief want me to say something in particular?"

"Just avoid making us sound like hick cops who stumbled over these fugitives in spite of ourselves."

There should be nothing to this interview, Garreth told himself. With all the ma.s.s murderers, serial killers, and terrorists in the news, no one cared about a couple of men who had only robbed a bank and killed two law enforcement officers, let alone had any interest in a small-town cop who happened to be part of capturing one of them. At most this would be something for the local news out of KAYS in Hays. Still, he felt like a prisoner marching to execution.

At City Hall Danzig charged out of his office, a big man still built for the football he had obviously played in school, still impressive despite his waistline trying to match the width of his shoulders. "What the h.e.l.l took so long? I have them waiting in the city commission meeting room." He led the way through the door connecting the office to the rest of City Hall and down the corridor.

To Garreth's relief, the group consisted of only five, and he already knew Jeanne Reiss from theBaumen Telegraph. The others were from theBellamy Globe, the Hays paper, and KAYS.

"Would you mind removing your sungla.s.ses so we can see your face better?" asked the TV cameraman.

And record the flare of his eyes if he tilted his head wrong? Garreth left on the gla.s.ses. "I work a night shift. My eyes aren't photogenic at this time of day. Just why do you want to talk to me anyway? Frank Danner's capture resulted from a coordinated effort of several law enforcement agencies. I was just one of many officers involved."