Gregg Hurwitz: The Program

TD spun away from them, his hand sliding between the dark sheets. Tim crossed the room like a projectile, seizing him with two fistfuls of robe and hurling him. He hit the wall-mounted stereo at eye level, the sound cutting off in time to accent his crash to the floor.

He'd come out of his robe, his bruised, naked body rendering a frisk unnecessary, but Tim kept the MP5 trained on him, his finger firm against the trigger.

With a forearm, TD swiped blood from his split nose. Bear flipped back the sheets, revealing the stereo remote TD had been reaching for.

The crying girl looked up at them. It took a moment for Tim to register her face as Shanna's. Freed picked her discarded T-shirt off the floor and handed it to her. Quivering, she pulled it on.

TD was blinking hard, sucking air, his face warring between disbelief and burgeoning outrage. For months he hadn't so much as been bumped into, and now he lay sucking floor dust like a bitch-slapped socialite.

"Get up." Tim tugged the arrest warrant from his pocket. "You're under arrest for destruction of the United States mails."

Betters rolled to a sitting position, making no effort to cover himself. "Is that all?"

"Where's Leah?"

"Leah, Leah, Leah." TD shook his head. "Can't quite place the name."

"If you hurt her…"

"Well, I'm certain of one thing. If she was hurt, it certainly wouldn't have been me who did it." His eyes flicked from Tim's face to the MP5 pointed at his head. "Tempted to shoot me?"

Tim's boots knocked twice against the wooden floor. TD looked up at him with something like amusement. Tim drove the blade edge of his hand into TD's upper lip, the pressure making him shriek and rise to his feet. Tim straight-armed him into the wall, freeing the metal handcuffs from his belt. They were loose on TD's girlish wrists, so Tim interlocked them to pick up the slack.

"Tempted?" Tim said. "Not for a second. Not with where you're going."

Bear threw the silk robe over TD's shoulders. "Maybe we book you in like this, see how they dig your Prince getup in the tank."

"Actually, I hear mail offenders are greatly feared on the inside."

Frisk's voice sputtered from the primary channel – "Fucking computer in here's got more levels of security than I've ever seen."

TD grinned. "Good luck there, Neos."

A howl sounded from deep in the woods.

The first hint of unease crossed TD's face as he took in their expressions. "What? What?"

Their portables all sputtered at the same time, and Danner's voice crackled through. "Cosmo just alerted on a fresh female cadaver. Looks like the rain washed away part of the grave. I've got visual on an exposed head and upper torso.

A deep red bloomed beneath TD's cheeks, making his freckles disappear.

"Does the name Nancy Kramer ring a bell?" Tim said.

"Never heard it. We get trespassers – I order them removed. I don't keep track of the Protectors' recreational activities. They could be dumping nuclear waste out there for all I know. You'll have to do better than that." TD cocked his head, studying Tim. "I'd never kill someone. I don't have to. You think I seek control from people? Not nearly as much as people want to give up control to me. That's why you'll never get me. I've never done anything to anyone they didn't want done to them." His eyes locked on Tim's. "Including you."

Danner's voice cut in. "Hang on. We've got another body here."

Tim felt his stomach drop out of his body. He thought of Will down at the staging point, no doubt privy to the same radio transmission. He thought of Ginny on the coroner's table, cold and firm, the wisp of hair in her mouth.

Bear said, "Go make the ID. I got him."

Tim shot past Guerrera and Zimmer at the door, shouting into the radio for Danner to give him his bearings.

"- northeast about a half mile, just past a low run of granite."

Tim crossed the clearing at a dead sprint, crashing into the woods.

The Racal coughed out the updates as the rest of the operation wrapped up.

Denley in the mod – "We can't access the corresponding Dead Link computer files. The folders are useless on their own -"

Tannino shouting, "Can you make a positive ID on the body as Leah Henning?"

"- the face is messy with mud -"

His right leg throbbing, Tim stumbled between trees, over rises. Behind him he heard Bear, Thomas, and Freed spreading out in the woods, shouting to one another.

A gunshot came at him in surround sound – echoing through the trees and amplified on the portable – and then a flurry of barks and snarls.

Bear's voice issued from the portable. "We're on the way."

Tim accelerated, trying to ignore the screeching pain through his leg, radio pressed to his lips. "Danner. Danner. Danner."

He'd just hit the granite hump when he heard the double whistle -Skate's release command. Before he could raise the MP5, a Doberman flew through the brush at him. He got an arm up in the jaws before he went down, and he rolled to a stop at a broad pair of boots, looking up past the slobbering jaws at the bore of a Sig Sauer and Skate's face.

Skate's fingers snapped, and the dog released Tim's arm and sat. At the sloped root of an oak, Cosmo squared off over Danner's body, snarling at the other Doberman. Danner's hand, gripping his shoulder near the base of his neck, was slick with blood. He was breathing but weakly.

Part of the hillside had slid away under the weight of the rain. Just past the oak, a half-exhumed corpse thrust up from the earth like a vomited secret. The female form was sticky with sheets of mud, like a tar-mired seagull. Ten feet to its left, a gnarled hand reached from the earth like a B-movie effect.

The image of Leah carrying her own shovel to this spot made Tim cringe with grief. He flashed on a crime-scene photo of Ginny, the snow-angel imprint her torso had left in the muddy creek bank where it had been found.

Skate stripped him of his weapons and said, "Git up."

Tim found his feet. The sounds of the other deputies grew fainter – deputy marshals in the woods was like the start of a bad joke.

Skate nodded at Cosmo. "A person, sure, but I couldn't shoot no dog."

One of the Dobermans lunged for Danner, but Cosmo repelled him. Skate put his dogs on a sit-stay, his index finger pointing to the mud. They froze, black-marble eyes on Cosmo, licking their chops, the scent of Danner's blood driving them wild.

Skate's cheeks were heavy, almost mournful. "You had to come poking around in paradise, didn't cha?"

Tim held his hands up, loose, a feigned "keep cool" posture that kept them ready. The semiauto was double-action; Skate would want to cock it for a smoother pull.

Skate took a step forward, a tear beading on the brink of his eyelid. The gun bucked slightly in his hand when he thumbed the hammer. Tim lunged for him, catching the barrel in the rising fork of his right thumb and index finger, his left hand chopping Skate's elbow, bending the arm. The gun snapped up and fired just below Skate's chin, sending off a mist of blood as it blew off his face.

Skate staggered back, the Sig plunking into the mud, his dogs watching the flat sheet of his face with their heads cocked inquisitively. He let out a pained grunt, and his breath bubbled through his former mouth, emitting a faint double whistle.

The release command.

The Dobermans fell on him, snapping and tearing.

Tim tugged the pepper spray from his belt and directed two blasts into the dogs' snouts and eyes. They whimpered and dropped, pawing their faces. Skate no longer moved. Tim could barely look at what was left of him.

He shouted for Bear and tried to get at Danner, but Cosmo lowered her head and growled at him, driving him back. He was radioing Miller by the time Bear, Thomas, and Freed stumbled over the granite crest. Letting them take over, he ran to the first corpse, sliding on his knees through the sludge. His hands scrabbled over the bloated face, bending the mud-slick hair aside.