"Hey, Red Cloud!" Trace had caught sight of Carl. "Ray wants you in the CP like yesterday. You better double-time it, soldier."

Carl let the nickname roll off him. He didn't like anyone outside the Marine Corps using it. The local guys only got wind of Red Cloud after discovering an article about marine snipers in Baghdad on the CNN Internet archives. Carl raised his left hand to acknowledge the remark, then headed for the command post.

Unlike the other white deputies, Trace Breen made no effort to conceal his dislike of African-Americans. If Carl pa.s.sed him alone in a corridor, Trace would look pointedly at the ceiling or chuckle softly, as though amused at the idea of a black man in a deputy's uniform. If they met in public, Trace either pretended Carl didn't exist or snickered in the ear of whatever trashy blonde happened to be hanging off his arm. Lately, Carl had heard rumors that Trace might be dabbling in the drug business-specifically crystal meth-a trade he'd apparently worked at as a teenager. Carl had already decided that if he picked up concrete information about this activity, he would follow wherever it led. The sheriff might not want to bust his own deputies, but Carl figured if he made the arrest, Billy Ray Ellis would have no choice but to follow through.

Carl stopped before the trailer door and looked up at the Shields house. If what the dispatcher had told him was true, his mother's soft-spoken physician was barricaded behind the idyllic facade of that house, and he might already have killed someone. If Shields had done that, Carl might well be asked to take the man out, and soon. Before darkness fell, probably. He scanned the northern sky, hoping to see Danny McDavitt's chopper zooming out of the dark clouds gathering there, but he saw nothing.

The trailer door opened suddenly, and Carl stood face-to-face with Ray Breen. Breen wore a dark brown cowboy hat pulled low over his mustached face, but it was the flak jacket that startled Carl. Body armor was SOP for hostage situations, but still. Carl realized then that deep down he had not quite accepted that Dr. Shields had taken anyone hostage.

"Where's your weapon, Deputy?" Breen asked.

"In my Jeep."

Ray frowned. "It ain't gonna do us any good there, is it? Come on, Carl. We don't have a lot of daylight left."

"Eighty minutes," Carl said. "Less, if those clouds come over, which it looks like they will."

Breen gave a tight grin and slapped his shoulder. "I knew you were already thinking. Get your gear, son. This is big."

Carl didn't move. "Could I ask you something, sir?"

The grin vanished. Breen sensed resistance, and he didn't like it. "Go ahead."

"Has anyone talked to Dr. Shields yet?"

"Yeah, me. His wife and daughter are in there, and probably his partner, Dr. Auster. I spoke to the wife and kid, but I think Auster's dead."

"Why?"

"Shields wouldn't let me talk to him. We know there were shots fired, but the kid who got out isn't positive who fired them. He thought he saw a man lying on his back in the hall, but he was on the second-floor landing and didn't get a good look."

Carl wondered if this was the best intel they were going to get.

"We think they're in the main downstairs room now," Breen went on. "What they call the great room. I talked to the architect, and he's bringing a set of plans out here. There's big windows facing the backyard, but they're those fancy ones with the blinds built into them, between two panes of gla.s.s. They pretty much wipe out all visibility."

Carl nodded, surprised to find himself grateful for this obstacle.

"That ain't all," Breen said. "There was a fire at Dr. Shields's office about an hour ago. We don't have many details, but right now it's possible that Shields set that fire himself. A nurse at the hospital also told me there are some state or federal agents in the ER. There might be some kind of investigation going on that we don't know about. Something to do with Dr. Shields."

Carl said nothing. None of this made sense to him, but then he had few facts to work with. For the time being, he'd have to leave the situation in the less-than-masterful hands of Ray Breen and pray that the sheriff got here quick. Even that prospect made him feel only slightly better. The sheriff had been a petroleum land man for much of his life. The only thing that might stop Sheriff Ellis from doing the same thing Ray Breen would do was fear of a negative reaction from the voters in the next election. What gave Carl the most comfort was knowing that Danny McDavitt would be sitting beside the sheriff during any negotiations that might happen in the next few minutes.

"Get your rifle, Carl," Ray said. "The sheriff's still thirty minutes out. The wheels could come off this thing any second."

"Yes, sir," Carl said, starting back toward his Jeep.

He kept looking northward as he walked. More rain was coming; he would have known that with a blindfold on. Carl was a country boy, too.

He could smell rain ten miles away.

Danny crossed the Mississippi River just east of Lake Concordia and dropped out of the rain clouds at five hundred feet. This leg of the Mississippi was dotted with oxbow lakes, and Lake St. John lay just ahead. He flew around the eastern rim of the C-shaped lake, his eyes tracking the well-trimmed lots that bordered the eastern sh.o.r.e. As he neared the midpoint of the seven-mile horseshoe, he saw a cl.u.s.ter of brightly colored pavilion tents beside a large cypress lake house. A group of men had gathered in a muddy cotton field across the road, and they began waving him down when they caught sight of the helicopter.

Danny descended rapidly toward the group, then flared at the last moment and touched down softly in the newly planted field. A big man wearing a brown uniform and clutching a Stetson to his head ran beneath the spinning rotor blades and opened the door on the Bell's left side. Billy Ray Ellis was a big man, still muscular at fifty-three, with burly forearms covered in black hair. Despite his limited law enforcement experience, he was so popular in the county that he'd beaten the inc.u.mbent sheriff by twenty percentage points. Ellis heaved his bulk into the seat beside Danny, yanked the door shut, pulled on the second headset, and started talking as he fastened his harness.

"Get this baby back in the air, Danny. Push her hard as she'll go. We got a bad situation waiting for us."

Danny pulled pitch and applied power with the collective, then nudged the cyclic. The Bell tilted forward and bit into the sky. "What's happened? The message I got said Code Black. Is it a school shooting or something?"

Ellis shook his big head. "Do you know Dr. Shields? Warren Shields?"

Danny felt as though the bottom had fallen out of the chopper. "Yeah," he managed to choke out. "I taught him to fly last year."

"That's right, I forgot. Well, apparently, Dr. Shields has barricaded himself inside his residence, and he's holding his wife and daughter hostage."

Danny closed his eyes, fighting vertigo. After several moments of composing himself, he opened them again, picked out a landmark on the ground, and said, "How do you know that?"

"Shields's nine-year-old son managed to escape the house and get to a neighbor's place. Jumped off the roof or something. It's the daughter who's still in the house. The boy thinks his daddy shot somebody. We don't know who that was yet, but it could be Shields's partner, Kyle Auster."

"That's unbelievable," breathed Danny, trying to mask his panic.

"I agree. There was also some kind of fire at their medical office a little while ago. Details are sketchy, but some people were hurt bad. It may be that Shields set the fire. I don't know if the man's lost his mind or what. I always liked him myself."

"Who's on the scene now?"

"Ray Breen's a.s.sembling the TRU as they arrive."

s.h.i.t. "Good, good."

"Ray talked to the wife and little girl on the phone-"

Relief flooded through Danny like a narcotic.

"-but Shields wouldn't put Dr. Auster on. Sounds fishy, don't it?"

Danny nodded and pushed the engine to its limit. As soon as the sheriff got distracted, he would take out his clone phone and see whether Laurel had managed to send him any messages.

"Shields sure has a pretty wife," Ellis said thoughtfully. "You know her?"

"She teaches my son."

"Oh," said the sheriff, his voice suddenly grave. "That's right." Ellis was a deacon in the Baptist church, and he tended to a.s.sume the manner of a pastor when discussing anything he saw as a sad circ.u.mstance. An autistic son obviously qualified in his book. "Have you heard any rumors of marital problems?" he asked, changing the subject. "Anything like that?"

Danny stared stone-faced through the windshield. "Nothing. But then I never hear anything like that."

"Me either. But in my experience, when this kind of thing happens, there's marriage trouble at the bottom of it. Does Shields have a hot temper?"

"No. The opposite, in fact."

The departmental radio suddenly crackled to life in Danny's headset.

"Sheriff, this is Ray at the command post. I got a fella down here claiming to be a government agent, and he's causing me all kind of problems."

Ellis picked up the mike and keyed it angrily. "What kind of government agent? An FBI man or what?"

"One ID says he's a special investigator for the attorney general, and another says he's with the state Medicaid office. Name's Paul Biegler. Says he's down here investigatin' Dr. Shields and Dr. Auster for some sort of fraud."

The sheriff knit his heavy brows in puzzlement. "Is he standing right there, Ray?"

"No, sir. I got him waitin' outside the trailer. He claims he was in that fire over at Dr. Auster's office. Claims one of the employees tried to blow the place up. He's got bandages on his face, and he says he was wounded by shrapnel or something. He's got two other boys with him, and he's trying to take over the d.a.m.n scene."

"What? Repeat that."

"I said, Biegler says he's got federal warrants for Dr. Shields and Dr. Auster, and that makes this a federal case. He says if we don't give him tactical command, he's going to call the FBI down from Jackson to take over."

Danny saw the sheriff's knuckles go white. "Bulls.h.i.t he's going take over our scene. You keep that son of a b.i.t.c.h on ice until I get there, you hear?"

"Yes, sir. A big ten-four on that."

"How far out are we, Danny?"

Danny scanned the river for landmarks, then checked his airspeed. "Twenty minutes, tops."

"Tell him I'm almost there now, Ray. And put a man on him. Let me know if he makes any calls to Jackson."

"You got it, Sheriff."

"Out."

Ellis turned to Danny. "What in the Sam Hill is going on? Sounds like our good doctors have got themselves into serious trouble. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Kyle Auster was up to no good. But Dr. Shields? I just can't see that one."

"Me, either," Danny agreed. "He's a straight arrow."

"I got to think about this. You remember what happened with that engineer on Milburn Street? Blew hisself all over me without so much as a by-your-leave. And he was alone in the house. If Dr. Shields really has his wife and daughter in there, and if he's really shot his partner, I might have to send the TRU in there hard."

Danny closed his eyes in silent prayer. Most of Ellis's deputies had only moderate training, and their practical law enforcement experience was limited. Worse, the TRU was commanded by a deputy with juvenile delusions of heroism. The possibility that those men might make an a.s.sault into Laurel's house with grenades and automatic weapons nauseated him with fear. He could not allow that to happen.

When Sheriff Ellis settled back in his seat with his thoughts, Danny let go of the collective and pulled his cell phone out of his pants pocket. No new messages. Nevertheless, he flipped open the phone and began keying a message with his left hand. The first he sent read, On my way there wi sheriff. u or Bth hurt? Auster alive? If yes, condition? He started to put the phone away, then sent an immediate follow-up: No one knows we have this link. Tell me all u safely can. How W armed? He intend imminent harm? As Danny slid the phone beneath his left leg for easy access, Sheriff Ellis spoke again.

"Must be pretty important messages to slow us down for."

Danny gritted his teeth. "We're not going any slower. This is like taking your hand off the wheel in a car, but leaving your foot on the gas. I increased friction on the collective, so it stays in place."

Ellis's eyes were still on the cell phone.

"Problems with taking care of my boy," Danny lied. "My wife didn't come home to let the babysitter go on time."

"You can't just call her?"

"We don't talk so much these days."

Ellis grunted. "That's a shame. Marriage ain't easy, but you got to stick with it."

Thanks a million, Dr. Phil.

"You don't go to church, do you, Dan?"

Oh, boy. "Not much, Sheriff. Not for a while now. I'm not much for group worship. I get my quiet time in the woods. And in the air."

"I hear you, brother. But it's not the same, you know. You ought to come see us at First Baptist. I think you'd be surprised."

Not if this is any indication. "I may give it a try."

"At least talk to Reverend Cyrus about your marital problems."

Danny cleared his throat and spoke as diffidently as he could. "Sheriff, could I offer a little input on the hostage situation?"

"Absolutely. This is one of those situations where there's ten tragic things that could happen, and only one good thing."

"You're right. Sheriff, I would think long and hard before I considered sending Ray Breen and his boys into that house. Even the people who do that kind of thing for a living-I'm talking about Delta and the SEALs-they're hesitant to go into a situation with innocent friendlies in a confined s.p.a.ce. I'm not saying anything against Ray, but if you turn insufficiently trained men loose in a house with automatic weapons, G.o.d only knows who'll wind up dead. The wife, the little girl, some of our own guys maybe. I'd sure hate to see that, and I know you would, too."

Ellis was nodding as though in agreement. "You said a mouthful there. A standoff's a tricky thing. On the other hand, I've got a responsibility to that wife and little girl, not to mention this community. How would it look if we just stood by while Dr. Shields executed his wife, his daughter, and his partner? That wouldn't say much for my department, would it?"

Danny tried to hide his true feelings. Ellis was already as focused on how the drama would play out before the voters as he was on the safety of the people inside the house. "No, you're in a tough position, that's a fact. And I wouldn't presume to tell you what to do."

"But...?" Ellis prompted.

"If it comes down to having to take Dr. Shields out, I'd have Carl Sims do the shooting."

"From long range, you mean."

"Yes, sir. I've seen that boy shoot, and he's as good as the snipers in the Secret Service. He could take out Shields with zero collateral damage, even if the doctor was holding his little girl in his arms."

"He could," said the sheriff. "But will he? That's what's on my mind."

Danny cringed inside. Six months ago, Sheriff Ellis had given Carl Sims authorization to shoot a young black man who had taken a hostage while robbing a local bank. In Ellis's mind, he had given a clear order to kill, effective as soon as Sims had a clean shot. But Carl interpreted the order differently and blasted the robber's gun hand into pulp instead. Danny heard that the sheriff had nearly had a stroke over this, and only the media praise he'd gotten afterward for his "restraint" had saved Carl Sims's job. Instead of getting a pink slip, Carl got a medal, one that probably didn't mean much after the hatful he'd received from the Marine Corps.

It's all f.u.c.king politics, Danny thought. Even the life-or-death calls.

He wanted to beg Ellis to at least consult with the FBI in Jackson, but he knew the sheriff would reflexively reject this idea. Why? Because the FBI could have a SWAT team at the Shields house in three hours, even if they had to come by road. If they used a chopper, they could be fully deployed in two. And unlike the Sheriff's Department, the Bureau had strict rules of engagement for hostage situations, written in the wake of Waco and Ruby Ridge. They would only a.s.sault the Shields house as a last resort, after all other means of resolution had been exhausted. Billy Ray Ellis wanted no such constraints on his decision-making. Short of a written order from the governor, he would not hand over tactical command of the scene to a federal agency, not in his county. Some men might see a federal a.s.sumption of authority as the ultimate out, an ideal way to cover their a.s.s, but ex-football stars didn't think that way. Danny kept his mouth shut, figuring he could accomplish more from inside the tent than out of it.

"Are you pedal to the metal, Danny?" Ellis asked tersely.

"We're at the VNE now, sir."

"The what?"

Danny pointed at a small gauge in front of the sheriff. "Velocity never exceeded. She can't do another knot without burning up the engine."

"Okay, then. Just keep her at the redline."