Silken Prey

dazzling light like a frog on a tenth-grader’s dissection tray. Unlike those frogs . . .
    Jenkins shouted, “Freeze, freeze or we’ll shoot.”
    . . . Unlike those frogs, Dannon leaped sideways back into the swamp reeds and then, scrambling on his hands and knees, still clinging to his pistol, began running mindlessly through the brush.
    The cops all turned on their lights and played them through the brush, and caught flashes of Dannon, the movement of the swamp weeds and brush as he tore through them, and Lucas shouted, “Jenkins, Shrake, Del, go after him, take care, take care . . .”
    Lucas turned and in the light of his own flash, ran back up the dirt track toward the gravel road, pulled his handset and said, “Sarah, Jane, he’s coming right at you. Watch out, watch out, he’s on foot, I think he’s coming for the road. . . .”
    •   •   •
    N OTHING AT ALL WENT through Dannon’s head. He’d had some escape and evasion classes, and one of the basics was simply to put distance between yourself and your pursuer. Distance was always good; distance gave you options. He didn’t think about it, though, he just ran, fast and as hard as he could, and he was in good shape.
    Good shape or not, he fell three or four times—he wasn’t counting—and the small shrub and grasses tore at him and tried to catch his feet; he went knee-deep into a watery hole, pulled free, and ran on, looking back once. He was out of the light, now, he was gaining on them, he was almost there . . .
    And he broke free into the road. He couldn’t see it, except as a kind of dark channel in front of him. The lights were now a hundred yards back, but still coming, and he ran down the dark channel. When he got far enough out front, he’d cut across country again, and then maybe turn down toward the river. . . .
    He ran a hundred yards down the channel, heedless of the sounds of his footfalls, breathing hard. . . .
    •   •   •
    L UCAS WAS ON THE ROAD, moving faster than Dannon, but at the wrong angle—Dannon, though in the swamp, was cutting diagonally across the right angle of the gravel road and the dirt track. Lucas could tell more or less where he was because of the brilliant lights of the cops behind him, and the sound of Dannon’s thrashing in the brush. Then the thrashing stopped, and Lucas stopped, trying to figure out where he’d gone.
    •   •   •
    B RADLEY AND S TACK HEARD him coming. Stack whispered, “I’m going to hit the car lights.”
    “Okay.”
    Stack reached to the light switch, to the left of the steering wheel, and waited, waited, trying to judge the distance, and when it seemed that he might be close enough,
    Flipped the switch.
    And Dannon was there, covered with mud, clothes hanging wet from his body, a bloody patch on his head, mouth hanging open. He had a gun in his hand and as Stack stepped to the left of Bradley, he brought it up and Bradley screamed, “Drop the gun,” and he didn’t, he brought it higher . . .
    The women shot him.
    Later, it would turn out that they’d each fired four times, though neither was counting, and of the eight shots, had hit him five times.
    Two of the shots would have been wounding; two of the shots would have killed him in seconds or minutes; one of them went through his throat and severed his spinal cord, and Dannon went down like Raggedy Andy.

CHAPTER 27
    L ucas not only heard the gunfire, but saw it. He was at right angles to the confrontation, running back to the cars, saw the lights go on, and then behind the lights, the sound of the gunfire and the flicker of the muzzle flashes. The women were both shooting 9mm weapons, and the flashes were small, even in the dark night. He shouted, “Davenport coming in . . .”
    Running as hard as he could, he was there in fifteen seconds. The two women were still by the cars, guns pointed at Dannon’s body. Lucas came up, and Bradley said, her voice cool, “He had a gun, he pointed it at us.”
    Lucas nodded once, said into his handset, “You guys get to the closest road, he’s down.”
    He did that as he stepped over to Dannon’s body and checked it. He was on his side; blood pooling around him, his gun still gripped in his hand.
    Lucas backed away, and Jenkins ran up and looked at the body.
    He said, “Who . . . ?”
    Bradley said, “We did.”
    “Jesus,” Jenkins said.
    Del and Shrake came up and stopped beside Jenkins; all three of them were covered