The old man laughed. “Listen to me, girl, you’re all wrong about this. Weldon couldn’t kill a roach if it crawled over his bare feet and started gnawing on his toe. He’s a coward.”

“Sir, please be quiet.” She adjusted her aim with the SIG just a bit and said to Weldon, “I want you to lie on your stomach on the floor. Now.” It was aimed right at his chest.

“No,” he said. “I can’t. I haven’t killed anyone. Don’t you see? It’s this filthy old man who’s the monster. You can’t believe the havoc he’s wrought. This is justice, dammit.”

“What are you talking about?”

Captain DeLoach laughed. “Yeah, tell her, Weldon. Tell her why you want to murder your dear old dad.”

“No, she doesn’t need to know. Listen, I’ve got no bloody choice. Believe me, sister, this crazy old man richly deserves it.”

“Why does he deserve to die?”

Captain DeLoach started laughing again, spittle pooling in the corners of his mouth, flecked with blood.

Nick said, “Come on, Weldon, what on earth are you talking about?”

In that moment, Weldon grabbed the arms of Captain DeLoach’s wheelchair and shoved hard. Nick had only an instant. As the chair rammed into her, she fired. The shot went wide, shattering the TV screen. Captain DeLoach’s arm flew up to gain balance, and he struck her wrist. The SIG flew out of her hand and skidded across the floor to land just beneath Captain DeLoach’s bed.

Nick froze, expecting Weldon to pull out his own gun and shoot both of them. There’d already been one shot, why not more? But he didn’t have much time. Nursing home staff would burst in there in just a couple of seconds. She had to protect the old man. She raced around in front of Captain DeLoach’s wheelchair.

But Weldon didn’t try to shove her aside, didn’t draw a gun to kill her. He just ran out through the glass doors, yelling back at her, “You’ve made the worst mistake you’ll ever make in your life!”

Seconds later, Nurse Carla, a cop behind her, burst in to see Nick Jones racing out the glass sliding doors, a gun in her hand.

Captain DeLoach was sitting in his chair. He was smiling, looked happy as a clam, singing “Eleanor Rigby.”

Nick saw Weldon racing toward a small black car, Japanese, she thought, maybe a Toyota, but she couldn’t be sure. Where was that cop who was supposedly out here smoking a cigarette? She didn’t see anyone. She yelled, “Stop, Weldon! Or I’ll shoot, I mean it!”

But he didn’t. Nick raised the gun, then realized she didn’t need to fire at him. She aimed at the tires of the black car just as he flung open the driver’s-side door and threw himself in.

She fired, hitting both back tires just as he gunned the engine and roared out of the parking spot, rubber and smoke spewing out of the tires. Soon he’d be driving on the rims and that wouldn’t last long.

Weldon was keeping his head down, afraid she’d shoot him. She saw the instant he knew she’d hit his tires. The car swerved madly to the left. As the rubber was finally stripped away, the god-awful screeching of steel against concrete filled the air.

Nick kept firing until she’d shot ten of the fifteen rounds in the SIG. She stopped, to save the remaining bullets. She’d hit the two back tires; that had to at least slow him. She started running. She wanted more than anything to pull him out of that car.

The car swerved wildly from side to side. The tires were smoking, grinding, the steel beneath raw on the concrete, tearing it up. The stench of burning rubber filled her nostrils.

She watched him suddenly jerk the car to the right and head it directly into the pine woods that began about forty yards from the east side of the rest home. He crashed it into a pine tree. Smoke billowed up, black and thick, and then it was quiet.

She saw him dragging winter clothes out of the car and running into the woods.

“Stop!”

Nick headed after him, the SIG still in her right hand. She realized then she wasn’t wearing warm clothes. She’d run out of Captain DeLoach’s room with nothing but her V-necked red sweater over a white blouse, jeans, and boots.

She didn’t care. She wasn’t going to fail now, she couldn’t. This madness had to stop and she was the only one there who could stop it. She heard him crashing through the undergrowth ahead of her. How far? Twenty feet?

She saw Father Michael Joseph’s face in her mind’s eye, a beautiful face, open, rich with intelligence and humor. He was laughing at something he’d just told her about King Edward. And now, because of Weldon DeLoach, no one would ever see that smile again or hear that laugh. So like Dane, and so different, but not in the ways that counted. Both put themselves on the line for others, both had a core of honor. She realized in that instant that she didn’t want to let Dane out of her life, ever.