Dark Rivers of the Heart

watched.
        The stuttering thunder of the chopper grew louder. judging by the sound, it was up and out of the front parking lot, starting across the roof.
        South of the supermarket, the first business was a dry cleaner. A small sign bearin the name of the shop was posted on the employee entrance.
        Locked.
        The sky was full of apocalyptic sound.
        Beyond the dry cleaner was a Hallmark card shop. The service door was unlocked. Ellie yanked it open.
        Roy Miro leaned through the cockpit door to watch as the other chopper rose higher than the building, hovered for a moment, then angled across the roof toward the back of the supermarket.
        Pointing to a clear area of blacktop just south of the market, for the benefit of his own pilot, Roy said, "There, smack in front of Hallmark, put us down right there."
        As the pilot took them down the last twenty feet and maneuvered to the desired landing point, Roy joined the four agents at the door in the passenger cabin. Breathing deeply. Peach in. Green out.
        He pulled the Beretta from his shoulder holster. The silencer was still fitted to the weapon. He removed it and dropped it in an inside jacket pocket. This wasn't a clandestine operation that required silencers, not with all the attention they were attracting. And the pistol would allow more accuracy without the trajectory distortion caused by a silencer.
        They touched down.
        One of the strike team agents slid the door out of the way, and they exited rapidly, one after the other, into the battering downdraft from the rotor blades.
        As Spencer followed Ellie and Rocky through the door into the back room of the card shop, he glanced up into cannonades of sound.
        Silhouetted against the icy-blue sky, straight overhead, the outer edges of the rotors appeared first, chopping through the dry Utah air.
        Then the glide-slope antenna on the nose of the craft eased into view.
        As the leading edge of the downdraft hit him, he stepped inside and pulled the door shut, barely in time to avoid being seen.
        The deadbolt had a brass thumb turn on the inside of the door.
        Although the hit squad would focus first on the back of the market, Spencer engaged the lock.
        They were in a narrow, windowless storeroom that smelled of rose-scented air freshener. Ellie opened the next door before Spencer had closed the first. Beyond the storeroom was a small office with overhead fluorescents. Two desks. A computer. Files.
        Two more doors led out of there. One stood half open to a tiny bathroom: toilet and sink. The other connected the office to the shop itself.
        The long, narrow store was crowded with pyramidal island displays of cards, carousels of more cards, giftwrap, puzzles, stuffed toys, decorative candles, and novelties. The current promotion was for Valentine's Day, and there was an abundance of overhead banners and decorative wall hangings, all hearts and flowers.
        The festiveness of the place was an unsettling reminder that regardless of what happened to him and Ellie and Rocky in the next few minutes, the world would spin on, unheeding. If they were shot dead in Hallmark, their bodies would be hauled away, the blood would be expunged from the carpet, a rose-scented air freshener would be employed in generous sprays, a few more potpourri might be set out for sale, and the stream of lovers coming in to buy cards would continue all but unabated.
        Two women, evidently employees, were at the glass storefront, backs turned. They stared out at the activity in the parking lot.
        Ellie started toward them.
        Following her, Spencer suddenly wondered if she intended to take hostages. He didn't like that idea. Not at all. Jesus, no. These agency people, as she had described them and as he had seen them in action, wouldn't hesitate to blow away a hostage, even a woman or a child, to get at their target-especially not early in an operation, when witnesses were the most confused and no reporters were yet on the scene with cameras.
        He didn't want innocent blood on his hands.
        Of course, they couldn't merely wait in Hallmark until the agency went away. When they weren't found in the supermarket, the search would surely spread to adjacent stores.
        Their best chance to escape was to slip out the front door of the card shop while the hit team's attention