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.

Val wiped the mud off his face and shook him very gently.

“Daddy…please…”

Henry Guthrie raised his hand just a few inches, all he could manage, and touched her arm.

“Daddy!” Val’s heart leaped and she felt tears break and spill as her father slowly opened his eyes, squinting against the stinging rain.

“Get…get me…my sweater, pumpkin,” he murmured dreamily, “I’m feeling…a chill…”

“Oh, Daddy…”

Guthrie’s eyes opened wider and for a moment clearer lights burned within them. “Val?”

“I’m here, Daddy. I’m here. It’s going to be okay. I’m here.”

In a whisper, he asked, “Where is he?”

Val shook her head. “I think he’s gone. I don’t see him anywhere.”

Guthrie closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. The lights had already dimmed perceptibly. “Val…”

“Yes, Daddy?”

“You’ve got to warn…” he began, but suddenly a terrible coughing fit made him leap and jerk. Blood bubbled out of his nose and he gagged. It took a long time, and a lot of his dwindling supply of strength to speak, and even then it was in a faint whisper, barely audible beneath the roar of the storm. “Val…you’ve got to warn…Mark and…Con….”

Then his mouth lost the words and he slumped limply against Val’s lap. His hand fell away and slapped bonelessly into the mud.

Val screamed. She bent her head to his chest and listened, listened…

It was there, the faintest of beats, a feeble fist beating on the window of a burning building. It beat once, paused long…too long, beat again.

It grew fainter, and she felt her own heart slowing with it, but it kept on beating. Trying to live. Trying.

Val tried to pull him, to drag him to the house, but she was a battered and exhausted woman with a torn shoulder all alone out in a storm. Half a mile from the house. The enormity of it broke her, and she collapsed back down onto her knees.

She held her father for a brief moment—almost more time than she could spare—and then laid his head down, kissing his forehead and cheeks before climbing to her feet. She turned toward the house and as she did so her lips curled back into a snarl of feral hate that had no trace of humanity left in it. Clutching her bad arm to her body, she set out toward the house at a tearing run.

3

Mark Guthrie lay on the floor and strained with every muscle in his body. Sweat burst from his pores and blood was singing in his ears as he fought against the ropes and tape that held him.

As soon as he had heard that single awful gunshot, he’d thrown himself off the couch and had wormed his way across to the ringing phone. It felt as if the effort took twenty years, but he actually made it on the eighth ring, shoving his shoulder against the low table with a dynamic effort. The table toppled neatly over and the phone crashed to the floor. Mark rolled over to it and pressed his ear to the receiver just in time to hear the click as the call was disconnected from the other end.

He bellowed as well as the duct tape would allow.

Connie sat on the couch, watching him with wide, desperate eyes, and he turned to her, trying his best to convey a look of hopeful confidence. He knew it probably looked pitiful, bound and gagged and sweaty as he was.

Since then, he’d tried to hang the phone up by pushing it with his chin. No luck. He did manage to press the plunger down long enough to get a dial tone, but the phone was an old rotary: no way he was going to dial it, not even 911.

Still, he kept trying, using the tip of his nose to try and turn the dial. The labor seemed to take forever, and by the time he would have the dial start to move, the phone would begin signaling that it was off the hook and he would have to push the plunger down again to get a fresh dial tone. It was tedious, frantic, frustrating work.

Karl Ruger made it a pointless exercise as well.

Mark didn’t even know that the man was in the house until he saw the shadow that washed over him. He turned quickly, saw the man standing over him, tall and powerful, soaked from the rain, holding the tiny automatic in one hand.

“Howdy, campers,” Ruger whispered. “Are we having fun yet?”

Mark tried to squirm away, twisting violently like an arthritic snake, but Karl laughed and kept pace with him, continuing to straddle him until Mark thumped against the couch and could go no farther.

Ruger leaned over and picked up the phone’s handset, weighing it thoughtfully in his hand. “You know, when I got up this morning I had no idea how much of a total fuck job this whole day was going to turn out to be. My team gets shot up, we get chased by the cops, crash our car. Tony buys it. Boyd busts his fucking leg. I get stuck here in Green-​fucking-​Acres. And now, you know what’s happened? Should I tell you?” Ruger’s eyes were wide and unblinking, like those of an alligator; Mark’s eyes were wide and staring, the eyes of a trapped rabbit. “Well, first,” Ruger said, tapping Mark on the chest with the phone, “I go to all the trouble to fetch a stretcher for my friend Boyd, lug it all the way out there, and you know what? Do you fucking want to know what?” he demanded, thumping the phone with greater force with each word. “Somehow my busted-​leg friend, my own buddy Boyd, splits with my fucking stash! Isn’t that just fucking precious?”

Mark stared up at Ruger, afraid to even breathe. Stale air burned in his lungs.

Ruger sighed and considered the phone. “Some days just blow…” he murmured. “To top it all off, your shit-​head old man decides to get all cute and ballsy. Decides he wants to run out on ol’ Karl. Now, don’t you think that’s rude?”

Mark just stared, dreading what Ruger was saying, remembering the gunshot.

“And your broke-​nose sister lit out, too. Fast little bitch. Never could catch her. Pity. I’d have liked to show her some city manners.” Ruger smiled and winked. “I’m sure you know what I mean.” He squatted on his haunches, still straddling Mark’s bound legs, still jiggling the phone lightly in his hand. “But old Dad…well, he can’t run for shit, can he? No, sirree. Can’t run worth shit.”

Mark’s heart was pounding so loud he wanted to scream.

“So, ol’Karl just reaches out and…” Ruger extended the pistol and touched Mark’s cheek with it. “Poof! No more dad.”

Mark tried to scream. The shriek tore its way up from his gut, ripping the flesh of his soul, rending his hammering heart. Even the muffling gag couldn’t stop all of it.

Ruger laughed. His appetite fed on just that kind of exquisite pain; it was a far, far better drug than any cocaine or heroin, and after the way things had been spiraling downward all night, he needed a fix to set his mind, to get back onto the edge.

Mark thrashed and bucked and howled. Tears burned in his eyes and then broke and spilled down his cheeks.

Connie whimpered, and Ruger suddenly glanced at her. His smile changed. Something shifted and squirmed behind his dark eyes and his lips seemed to writhe like wriggling worms.

“Well, well,” he said softly, “at least I won’t come away empty-​handed. Hell, I ought to have something for my troubles. Only right, wouldn’t you say? Hardly seems fair else.”

Shrieking, Mark rolled back and kicked up with both bound ankles, catching Ruger in the rump, dislodging him, but Ruger twisted and caught his balance and as Mark raised his legs for a second kick, he bent forward and jammed the pistol into Mark’s shoulder. Mark froze and the world froze around him.

Ruger just smiled again and shook his head.

“Oh no, m’man. Not that easy. No, I ain’t gonna pop you. Not yet, anyway. You, m’man, are going to get a front-​row seat for my little R and R with Donna Reed here.”

Mark began cocking his legs for the kick, but Ruger was much, much faster. With that terrible speed of his he lashed out with the phone handset and cracked Mark across the cheek. It was a hard blow, but not a killing one, not even a crippling one. He didn’t want Mark unconscious. That would spoil the fun. It was just enough of a blow to send Mark reeling and twisting over onto his face so hard he struck his head against the hardwood. Fresh tears sprang into his eyes and he could taste blood in his mouth, gagging him.

Ruger stood up, tossing the handset onto the floor. He bent down and set his pistol carefully on the coffee table, his black eyes fixing on Connie as his smile grew and grew.

4

“Oh, Daddy…” Val whispered, but only the wind could hear her.

The rain beat down on her, and as best she could with a useless arm and a broken heart, she tried to shelter her father from the storm. She had done her best to patch the bullet hole in his back, but there was so much blood pooled between his shirt and coveralls. So much. Too much.

The lightning never stopped, and the thunder bellowed insanely. A freak eddy of wind brought a sound to her, rolling in muted echoes across the tops of the corn. The high, lonely wail of a police siren.

Val raised her head, listened to the sound, straining to understand it, to locate it, but the wind whipped it away again. Still, she thought she could tell where it was coming from. The farm road. The one that connected A-32 with their front yard.

A police siren. Cops! Coming this way. Far away, but definitely coming this way.

“Oh, God, please help us!” she cried and staggered to her feet. She looked down at her father. “Daddy, I have to leave you. Just for a little bit. I’ll get help and come back. Please…wait for me, Daddy.” Her eyes were jumpy with madness. “Don’t you dare go away, Daddy. You just wait here.”

She turned and ran back toward the house.