"C'mon," the chief went on. "You put your gun down, I put my gun down, we'll call it drunk and disorderly. You'll get thirty days on the county, watching cable TV and sitting in air-conditioned comfort."

"I don't want no trouble," the man yelled. "Me and my brothers just want what's ours. You hear?" his voice shifted, as if he had turned away from the window and shouted to the people inside. "Yeah, I'm talking to you, girlie! You been holding out on me?"

In the drive, Flynn and MacAuley had taken up positions ranged to either side of the chief. Van Alstyne pointed at Hadley, then toward the back of the house, then at his eyes. See what's around in back. She nodded. She rolled belly down on the ground and crawled knees-and-elbows toward the rear of the house. It reminded her of the funny salamander-style crawling Hudson had used when he was a baby, except he hadn't been saddled with a bulky belt and an increasingly heavy gun.

The chief was going on about the weather and the heat, and-Jesus Christ!-he actually offered the guy a cold one. Hadley crawled out from beneath the maple's shade, the sunlight pressing on her back like a hot iron taking the wrinkles out of her blouse. She paused at the corner of the building, wrestled her gun into a half-assed shooting position, and peeked around the side.

Peeling white clapboards. A wheezing air-conditioning unit dripping water on the ground. Five steps leading up to a narrow roofed porch. A rusty wheel supporting a clothesline bolted next to the back door… the back door that was half open to the room inside.

"Hel-lo, momma," she whispered. If the chief could keep the guy in the front room distracted, she could sneak in and try to get the kids out. There wasn't much cover-the land sloped away from the house, the clothesline running maybe fifty yards over open grass until it connected with a lone birch tree. But if she could get them down the porch steps and around the corner, she could keep them against the foundation, out of the line of fire.