Savich said again, “Stay put, Chief. Agent Carver and I have it covered from here. I’ll tell you when we move.”

Chief Tumi was pissed, Savich could hear it in the manic breathing pouring out of his radio. “Give us a moment, Chief. A man’s life is on the line here.”

He looked at Dane, whose eyebrows appeared to be dusted with ice chips above the wool scarf tied over his face.

Another gunshot broke the silence, and then the sound of a groan through his directional receiver.

Savich whispered, “That’s it, Dane. We’re moving.” He added into his radio, “Chief Tumi, stay put. Agent Carver and I are going in.”

They ran toward the motel together, their pluming breaths hidden behind black wool scarves tied over their faces, bent over nearly double to the ancient paint-pimpled green stairs that led to the second level of the motel. If they were spotted by either of the kidnappers right now, they were dead. Savich kept his eyes on the thick blinds that hadn’t moved since they’d arrived. A trap, he thought, they were probably running right into a damned trap. Now here they were, in the open.

There was no movement from within room 212. Dane, his SIG in one hand and his ancient and beloved Colt .45 in the other, ran crablike under the single draped window.

Savich knew the room plan—fourteen by fourteen with a mattress-sagging double bed against the far wall, a small nightstand beside it, a thirty-year-old black-and-white TV on top of a three-drawer fake-wood dresser just to the right of the front window. There was another window along the back wall, looking onto the skinny back parking lot that touched the edge of the woods where Sherlock, three other FBI agents, and Chief Tumi and his deputies were hidden. There was a five-foot-square bathroom to the left, and since this was an end unit, there was a single high window off it that a three-year-old couldn’t squeeze through.

Savich prayed they wouldn’t find Pinky lying on the cracked linoleum floor, his head blown apart. What were they doing? There were two of them, they’d killed Pinky, no doubt in Savich’s mind about that, and yet there was dead silence. Not a single muted breath, not a whisper, no old man’s cackling voice.

He held the radio to his mouth and whispered, “Dane and I are going in. When you hear us break down the door, turn on the floodlights. Chief, use your bullhorn to order them to come out, the more noise the better. We know they’re here. They’ve got no place to go.”

Savich hoped the Pumis City police chief would do what he was supposed to and not hotdog it. He nodded to Dane, rose, and bashed his right foot against the doorknob. The door flew inward, slamming against the inside wall.

Dane was behind his left shoulder. He stayed high, Savich went in low.

They quickly canvassed the empty room.

Dane shouted, “Come out of the bathroom. Now!”

“There’s no one here,” Savich said. “No one is here,” he said again more slowly. “I don’t understand—how did they get out?” Then he knew, knew even before he saw the small red light on top of the night table, pointed directly toward the front door. He yelled into his wristband, “There’s a bomb in here! Get down!” He and Dane were out the open door and leaping over the rickety second-floor railing when they felt a tremendous jolt and the whole building shuddered with the force of it.

CHAPTER 3

SAVICH AND DANE landed ten feet away on the cracked concrete parking lot, rolled, and ran all out. A huge ball of flame erupted behind them, bursting outward from the room and through the roof like a volcano blowing. Suddenly the air was hot, a heavy pounding heat, and a noise like hell itself bursting apart. For a second the entire motel seemed to lift off its concrete foundation.

They heard the top floor crashing into the rooms below as they ran, trying to protect themselves from the exploded debris flying outward with the force of missiles. Huge pieces of wood and jagged chunks of glass speared high into the air away from the gushing flames and rained down around them. Savich saw a television set hurtle down to the parking lot and smash into bits on the concrete in front of them.

The heat was so intense Savich felt it searing the back of his thick wool coat, and wondered if he was smoking. Dane looked all right, so maybe not. He wondered if the Kevlar vests they were wearing had made the difference. When they’d dived into an ice-coated ditch some twenty feet beyond the parking lot, Savich yelled into his wristband, “Sherlock, are you all right?”

One second passed—too long—and then her voice came over, panting, “We’re all okay, but it was close, Dillon. The main explosion was in your direction, not ours. We’ve got lots of flying debris—I’m looking at most of a bed, with the sheets still on it—but we’re hunkered down behind an oak tree. Dillon—” He heard the fear in her voice when she swallowed. “You’re okay? Dane?”