She still hung on to her gun. She was drenched and freezing. Shivers wracked her body.

She ducked under the arms of a huge spruce and crept through fallen branches that snapped under her feet. Just ahead of her was a low, square building of white cinder block, an abandoned dairy she passed on her beat every week. From the other side of the stone building she heard a strangled cry. With both hands, Kasey pointed the way with her gun and followed their trail behind the rear wall of the dairy. The stonework was cracked, the white paint peeling. The windows were shattered and covered over with chicken wire. She passed a rusting propane tank.

Carefully, she eased around the corner to the open field of grass behind the building.

They were there. Both of them. Wet to the bone. The man tightened a metal wire around the woman's neck, biting into the bloody line he had made there earlier. She struggled, but faintly, her limbs twitching. When the man saw Kasey, he jerked the woman's body in front of him as a shield. All that was visible was one of his dark eyes, shining brightly.

Kasey extended her gun. Her cold, tired arms trembled. 'Let her go.'

They faced each other across twenty feet of mist and darkness. Kasey knew she barely had a shot. She focused on what she could see of his body. Half of his head. The meat of his shoulder. His right leg. He was taller than the woman in his grasp, but his knees were bent as he crouched behind her.

'Let her go now,' Kasey repeated. 'Run if you want.'

'Drop the gun, and I'll let her go.'

'I'm going to take the shot.'

'And risk killing her? Not a chance.'

Kasey took a step closer. The man backed up, dragging the woman with him, her feet scraping the ground. 'I already told you. Run.'