Dix sat back in his chair when he was sure they were out of hearing and folded his arms over his chest, now dead serious. “Claus couldn’t locate Chigger Chivers, even went out to that fleabag shack he lives in. He’s probably okay; he can be hard to track down sometimes. But I agree with you, Anna, Chigger heard every word you guys said. Don’t know if he understood it all, since his brain’s been pickled for decades from all the moonshine he’s cooked over the years.”

They were distracted when they heard Brewster yipping madly, and heard the boys talking and laughing as the front door closed behind them. Ruth said, “Brewster likes to dance in the snow, catch snowflakes in his mouth. Unfortunately, he never remembers he always sinks like a stone.” She paused and looked at Anna. “We’ll plan something out first thing tomorrow morning, Anna. Are you sure you don’t want to stay here tonight?”

Anna carefully set down her coffee mug with MAESTRO COUGARS written in bold red across it. “Thank you, Ruth, but I’ll be fine with Griffin.” She looked at each of them. “I can’t stand that I’m afraid of those monsters. They can’t do this, guys. Not here, not to us.”

Griffin lightly laid his hand over hers. “We’ll get it done.”

She stood up. “I need to get back to my house and find Monk. Then I’ll follow Griffin to the B&B.”

Griffin rose to stand beside her as she said her good-byes and walked beside her out to her Kia, his hand cupped around her neck.

Yes, Griffin thought, they would get it done. His brain clicked back to the here and now and the casket-black darkness as he watched Anna pull her car into the driveway. He pulled in behind her. It boggled his brain when he realized he’d met her for the first time less than three days ago. He was thinking that over, starting to open his car door, when he realized something wasn’t right.

The streetlight was out.

He sat on his horn, shoved open the car door, and rolled out onto the driveway just as an automatic weapon opened up into his Camry, shredding the metal, shattering the windows, so many so fast the car seemed to lift and sway on the asphalt. He rolled behind the rear tire and was relieved to see Anna on her belly not ten feet from him, one arm covering her head, the other holding her Glock.

His ears were ringing, adrenaline pumping so wildly Griffin felt he could shoot Superman out of the sky, but his training took over, and he focused. He counted three separate weapons, firing at will, grouped in the woods on the driver’s side of the cars.

He saw she was still pressed against the asphalt, waiting. He yelled, “Anna, stay down!”

Then he heard it, a whistling sound, and he jumped to his feet, firing as he ran. He slammed down beside Anna, then pulled her beneath him as his car exploded into flames. He saw the car roof fly into the air. The backseat and the steering wheel crashed to the ground. He covered her head as hot debris fell down around them. One tire rolled into the street, and another was ripped to pieces, flinging scraps of burning rubber everywhere. He grunted when something struck him, and when she looked up at him, he said against her cheek, “We’ve got to move; your car’s next.”

He rolled off her, and together they backed away on their hands and knees as fast as they could, only twenty feet to a row of trees behind them. Bullets sprayed randomly around them, mostly over their heads.

Despite the billowing black smoke, Griffin knew they could be seen because of the mad orange flames firecracking into the sky, light so brilliant the shards of glass from his car’s windshield glittered like slivers of sun.

It happened fast. Two grenades struck Anna’s car, lifting it off the ground. The explosion sucked up the air, the force of it hurling them back. He saw a tire jack fly outward over them like a boomerang, and thick burning smoke clogged their throats. Then they heard a shout, a curse, then more gunfire. It was all around them, a rock splitting apart not a foot from Griffin’s arm, peppering the hard ground, sending frozen clots of earth exploding in the air. Then the spray of bullets moved away, toward the cottage. They were firing blind.

When they pressed behind a pine tree, Griffin knew they had a chance. He grabbed her hand and they raced another thirty feet into the forest. They stopped, panting, sucking in the clean air, and turned toward the light of their burning cars through the trees. They listened as the gunfire slowly died away. They heard men cursing in a mixture of English and Spanish. Someone was moaning.

Griffin said against her ear, “I must have hit one of them when I was laying down fire to get to you.”

They heard another man’s voice. “They’re dead. No way could they survive that.”