Winter Prey

guarantee.”
    “Hey, fuck that!” Helper shouted back. “I want a truck up here and I want it in five minutes. I want it parked right here, and I want the guy who drives it to walk away. I won’t touch him. But I don’t want anybody else around it. I’ll be watching from the house. When I come back out with the kid, I’ll have the gun in her ear, and if there’s anybody around the truck, I’ll drop the hammer.”
    As Helper was talking, Lucas slid away to his right, then stood up. Carr shouted, “Duane, if you hurt her, you’ll die one second later.”
    Helper laughed, a wild sound, weirdly sharp in the driving snow. “You’re gonna kill me anyway, don’t shit me, Shelly. If you don’t kill me, you’ll be digging ditches next year instead of being sheriff. So get me the fuckin’ truck.”
    Helper backed toward the house, dragging the girl with him. She hadn’t said a word, and Lucas could see her hair shining oddly yellow in the porch light. He remembered her from the school, the little girl who’d watched him in the hallway, the one with the summer dress and thin shoulders.
    “Duane . . .” Lucas called. He shuffled forward. He knew he must be almost invisible in the darkness, away from the light. “This is Davenport. We got feds out here, we got people from other agencies. We wouldn’t hurt you, Duane, if you let the girl go.”
    Helper turned, peered at him. Lucas lifted his hands over his head, spread them, palms forward, took three more steps.
    “Davenport?”
    “We won’t . . .”
    “Get away from me, man, or I swear to Christ I’ll blow her brains all over the fuckin’ yard, I . . . get away  . . .” His voice rose to a near-hysterical pitch, but the gun never left the yellow-haired girl’s head. Lucas could feel her staring at him, passive, on the edge of death, helpless.
    “All right, all right.” Lucas backed away, backed away. “I’m going, but think about it.”
    “You’ll get the truck,” Carr shouted from the dark. “We got the truck coming in. Duane—for God’s sake don’t hurt the girl.”
    Helper and the girl backed up to the door. The girl reached behind him, found the doorknob, pushed it, and Helper backed through, the pistol shining weakly silver in the porch light.
    The feds, on the radio: Got a beacon on the truck.
    Carr: Get it up here. Get it up here.
    The feds: It’s rolling now.
    Carr: Davenport—what the hell were you doing?
    “I was trying to get him to point the gun at me,” Lucas said. “Gene was holding on his head with the M-16. If he’d taken the muzzle away from the girl, we’d of had him.”
    Good Lord. Where’s that truck?
    On the way.
    The Suburban turned up the driveway, stopped with its headlights reaching toward the mobile home. The truck door slammed, the sound muffled by the snow, then it rolled forward again, its high lights on. It stopped where Helper had indicated, and Shelly Carr crawled down from the driver’s seat, squared his shoulders as if waiting for a bullet, and walked back down the driveway.
    “Idiot,” Climpt said just behind Lucas’ ear.
    “Takes some guts,” Lucas said.
    “And if we get Helper, it sure as shit wraps up the next election. Here they come.”

    The door opened again and Helper pushed through, his arm again wrapped around the squirming girl’s neck. His free hand was bare, holding the revolver, his thumb arched as it would be if the hammer were cocked. The girl was carrying a gas can and what might have been aquarium tubing.
    “What are they doing?” Climpt asked. He had the rifle up, following Helper’s head through the sights.
    The radio: Girl’s got a syphon.
    Helper was talking to her.
    “Keep tracking him,” Lucas said. They couldn’t hear the words, but they could hear the rhythm of them. She unscrewed the gas cap on the truck, dropped it in the snow, stuck the tube in the gas tank, and pushed it down. She put the other end in the open top of the gas can, then squeezed a black bulb on the tube.
    “Taking gas,” Climpt said, and a moment later a vagrant wisp of gasoline odor mixed with the pine scent.
    “He’s going out on the snowmobile,” Lucas said. “He’s getting gas for it.”
    “Without that kid,” Climpt muttered, tracking Helper with the rifle.
    Lucas jabbed the radio: “He’s taking gas out of the truck. I think he’s going to refuel his snowmobile and take off. Gene and I left our sleds back a way, we better go get them.”
    Carr: One of you