I nod. "There's somebody waiting to hear from me. If they don't, people are going to find out what you did."

"You have no proof," he says. "Hearsay. You say you saw a web search from years ago."

"Maybe that's all I've got. Maybe."

"The medical examiner confirmed your mother died of a stroke. He then retired. I think if you pursue this, you'll find it's a dead end."

"Maybe," I say, softly. "Maybe that's not all this person's been instructed to do. Maybe this person's a certified marksman and there's a .338 Lapua slug with your name on it. You're not the only one with friends. Dad."

He swallows, his throat bobbing, red spreading on his face.

Stare him down, Hawk. Sell the bluff.

"I don't give a f.u.c.k who the mayor of this town is," I say, very softly. "You want to win, fine. I came back here to make sure Alex is safe. You touch her, you're a dead man. You put me down, you're a dead man."

With his free hand he opens a desk drawer, and then he lays the pistol inside it and slides it closed. He takes a handkerchief from his desk and blots his forehead, and sits back.

"We're at an impa.s.se."

"Nah, you think you've won. You think you took Alex away from me forever."

He says nothing, as still as a statue.

"That means I have nothing to lose," I tell him. "I'd best go get my suit."

I turn and walk out of the office, close the door behind me, and walk upstairs.

May pokes her head out of her room and stares at me.

"Not now," I whisper.

She grabs my arm and instead of shaking loose, I step into her room. She runs over and closes the heater vent on the floor and puts a book on it.

Her room looks like somebody put a bomb in her clothes hamper.

"You need to police this up," I whisper.

"Not now. Jesus, Hawk, I heard everything. He killed your mom?"

f.u.c.k. May didn't know.

"Yeah." I whisper. No point in hiding it now. "He put an illegal pesticide in her coffee. It looked like a stroke."

May clutches her throat, and goes pale.

"Relax. If he poisoned you with it, you'd know by now."

"Jesus Christ," she whispers. "Holy Jesus Howard Christ. Uh, sorry."

"Right."

She paces the room and looks at me. "All that stuff about some guy shooting him and telling everybody..."

"Yeah," I confess. "I wish I'd thought of that before I left."

"Alex didn't tell me what happened last night."

I fold my arms over my chest.

"Jesus you're huge," she whispers.

May's lip trembles. "I wanted you to come back," she whimpers, scrubbing at her cheeks as she starts to cry. "Alexis won't stop trying to do whatever and get your dad in trouble. He's crazy, Hawk. If he finds out she's been spying on him and stuff he'll... he'll hurt her."

"She's in trouble."

May hugs herself and sobs. "I want it to be like before. I want you to be her boyfriend again. I missed you so much. Your brother is a creepy perv and he's been eyeballing me for years."

"What?"

"Lance," she hisses. "He's always looking at me. One time he walked into the bathroom while I was taking a shower and he wouldn't leave until I yelled and Alex came and-"

"Has he touched you?"

"No."

"Stay away from him. If he won't leave you alone, come get me."

She nods. "Okay."

"If he hurts you, I swear I'll kill him."

May nods softly, still shaking. I put my hands on her shoulders.

"You're Alexis' sister. That makes you my sister, too."

A weak smile quivers on her lips and she nods.

"I'm glad you're back."

"Listen to me. We might need to go, at any time. Can you get a bag ready? Stuff you can just grab?"

She nods. "Yeah."

"Good. Do that, keep it somewhere no one will see it, but you can get to it in a hurry. Only pack important things. One bag you can carry easily. Understood?"

"Yes. Sir!"

I roll my eyes. "Right. I have to go. Put my number in your phone."

After she has my number, I duck out into the hallway, shower, change.

By mid-afternoon, I'm in my truck, on my way to get a suit picked out.

I stop at a red light, about to turn and cross the bridge, and it hits me.

Why would he send me some place two hours away?

I start across, mulling it over, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel. It's not rush hour, so fairly quiet on the bridge. From there it's a fairly straight run to pick up the interstate and then down to Philadelphia.

Two hours away.

The outskirts of Paradise Falls slide past me. Motels, strip malls, trailer parks, the barnacles of un-suburban sprawl that cling to the edges of any town of sufficient size out here in the sticks.

Behind me, a pair of motorcycles pulls out and cruises along, about three or four car lengths back. Big guys on Harleys. Tats, bandanas, the works. At the next intersection, a pickup pulls out behind them. All black, the chrome on the b.u.mpers painted over black, the whole shebang. Even the wheels are black. There's two guys in the cab, two more in the bed, and they're all dressed in suspenders and high collared shirts. The driver is wearing a straw hat.

You have got to be f.u.c.king kidding me.

I stop at the next red light. The bikers pull up behind me, their rides rumbling. The Amish...Mennonites... whatever pull up behind them and all four of them eyeball me pretty hard, especially the guys in the back.

It's not far to the on ramp and the highway, maybe five miles. I can see it in the distance through the summer haze, the overpa.s.s rising over the road before the interstate cuts through a hill and disappears. Big windmills turn in the fields, giants that remind me of alien war walkers from a cheesy movie. I hate those things.

The light changes and I ease on the gas. The truck pulls into the right lane and speeds up, and the four Amish guys watch me with heads on a swivel as they pa.s.s. I speed up, and they keep pace along side me. The bikers rev their engines and draw closer.

Uh.

I tromp on the gas. One of the Amish guys in the bed of the truck swings a double-barreled shotgun up, takes aim, and pulls both triggers as I swerve and stomp on the brake. I turn into the oncoming lane and stand on the brake as the bikers flash past me, and it's only then that I realize the back window of my truck has been blown out and I'm covered with tiny cubes of safety gla.s.s. I grab at the back of my neck, wondering how I'm still alive. Gray rings of exposed primer surround holes in the bed and window pillar of my truck.

Only a couple of pellets must have hit the window, enough to shatter it. I'm outgunned here. I throw the truck into reverse, back around, and floor it towards town. If I make it back into Paradise Falls, they're not going to follow me and keep shooting at me. I hope.

I hear a pop and my rear-view mirror explodes, leaving a broken plastic stump and a spider-webbed hole in my windshield. They're f.u.c.king shooting at me. I weave back and forth, into the oncoming lane and back again, and hear more pops. A strange calm settles over my mind. I grip the wheel. I work the pedals. I drive the truck.

You never hear the one that gets you. As long as I keep hearing them I'm going to be fine. The bikers are speeding up. The Amish guys in the truck are having a hard time catching up with me. One of the pair of motorcyclists comes up on my back fender, aiming at me left handed. I nose the truck over and he jams on his brakes, narrowly avoiding my b.u.mper tapping his front wheel to send him flying into the ditch along the side of the road. He swerves and slows, and his friend races past him, sweeping out into the oncoming lane.

I'm in a battered '89 pickup and he's on a motorcycle, there's no way I can outrace him. He pops off a shot and it goes right over my shoulder, so close I can feel it pa.s.s before I hear the shot, and it punches another hole in my windshield. I can't f.u.c.king see. If I lean out the window, he'll blow my brains out.

I can hear the engine of the bike coming up alongside me.

f.u.c.k it.

I swerve over. Now I see him. He veers off but not in time, and the a.s.s end of my pickup clips his back fender. The bike wobbles, he tries to correct, swerves, and then he's pavement surfing, the bike sc.r.a.ping along on its side in front of him. I turn back and see the Amish guys racing at me in their all-black pickup, and floor it. No choice now, I lean out my window to steer as the speedometer pa.s.ses eighty miles an hour.

One of the Amish guys is standing up in the bed of the truck, leaning over the roof, aiming his shotgun at me. I split my attention between the road ahead and the end of the shotgun barrels bouncing up and down, bobbing left and right. Once he has that lined up he's going to give me both barrels and this time I don't think he's going to miss. It won't matter how fast I'm going, I'm not going to outrun buckshot.

They're getting closer. I have the pedal to the floor and I'm not going any faster, she's topping out at about eighty-five. The G.o.dd.a.m.n Amish truck is catching up.

So, I pull on my seat belt and slam on the brakes.

The driver swerves and dumps the gunman in the bed as his tires squeal and his brakes lock. The thing about playing chicken is knowing when to flinch.

I don't. I keep my foot on the brake until I leave a set of smoking tracks of rubber behind me and the front end of the black pickup crashes into the back corner of my pickup's bed with a solid jolt that sends me snapping forward against the seatbelt. The world goes wild as the truck spins around and me with it, until the force feels like it's going to rip my stomach out through my nose.

Dazed, I blink a few times and realize I'm sitting in the opposing lane facing the side of the road, the back wheels of my truck in the ditch. My engine is still running. I hit the gas and my tires spin. She'll still drive, but I'm not going anywhere. The Amish truck is flipped over on its side and it's laying in the ditch, the underbelly facing me.

The f.u.c.king driver is climbing out of the window. His door is bent shut but he's kicked out the gla.s.s and he's climbing out.

Are you s.h.i.tting me?

He drops down to the ground and limps around the side of the truck, lifting his right foot. His leg must be broken.

Doesn't matter. He grabs the shotgun by the barrels and tugs it loose. The b.u.t.tstock is snapped off but it doesn't matter, it'll still work. He snaps it open and closed again, checking that it's loaded, and raises it.

I throw the truck into reverse and slam the gas pedal. The whole thing lurches backwards, the tires bite, and I slam it into drive and floor it, swerving around, and duck.

I hear the shot. When I sit up again I hear the flub-flub-flub of a flattening tire, but the Amish guy with the shotgun is receding behind me, even if I'm going about thirty-five and the back wheel is starting to spark and burn.

f.u.c.kers.

I text Alex.

Can you talk?

With my luck, she's back in my father's office.

Not five seconds later, my phone is ringing.

"Hawk?"

"Yeah. Listen-"

"Are you okay? I'm in the car, I had to go... it doesn't matter. What's wrong?"

"A bunch of Amish guys just tried to kill me. My truck is f.u.c.ked up to no end. Can you call you friends for me? Tell them where I am?"

"Yeah, yeah I can do that. Where are you?"

I give her a rough location.

"Hawk, are you okay?"

"I'm not hurt. I'm fine, Alex."

"Okay. Call me when they pick you up."

For the next half hour my truck, which I f.u.c.king bought three days ago, limps back towards town, until a little Toyota pulls up alongside me and I see Jennifer motioning for me to pull over.

Wearily, I muscle the beast off the road and into the soft shoulder. It's not going anywhere now. I step out, and realize I'm stiff all over. I feel like I've been run through a giant clothes dryer.

"What the h.e.l.l happened to you?"