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He got her number and told her he’d call her with the where and when.

Dave didn’t know why Jerry had asked him to go looking for a woman and a girl. Jerry was always scheming over something, and Dave figured anything that could hurt Max was fine with him. When he brought Max back— if he could bring Max back—he’d get the whole story later tonight.

Revenge was a dish best served cold.

And so he waited for Max. After all, he was Max’s buddy, his wingman, the guy who could always be counted on to look the other way while his best friend boffed his wife.

UP AHEAD MAX saw an old gas station by the side of the road. The pumps had been torn out. The place was now an antiques and curios store. Just beyond it was a ramp up to the freeway. The building had a colorful sign that said “Jeepers Creepers.” All sorts of weird stuff had been stuck to the outside wall: dolls, farming implements, serapes, small appliances. Max walked with the cop, only because he didn’t know what else to do. He was an American. He was innocent. He hadn’t killed anybody—except for the boy. (And that was an accident.) He could take off and hitch his way out of here, but then what would he do?

He would be a fugitive.

He had to think about this.

When he’d escaped the Desert Oasis, he’d wanted to be a sort of everyman. Live out of the spotlight, do a good day’s work. Be normal. But what was normal? Because he knew that even though he lived in America, even if he was innocent, there were plenty of people on death row all over this country who were innocent. Plenty who had been executed. He’d been on the mailing list to save Cameron Todd Willingham in Texas. And look what happened there.

No, he didn’t want to be everyman. Everyman had the odds stacked against him. Max had power. He had fame. He had influence. All the things he’d disdained recently.

Now he needed them.

So he would go with the female cop. He would act like an innocent man because he was an innocent man. And he would get the best fucking defense lawyer in the business .

Once Gordon fixed him.

And so he walked with her, an innocent man, and relied on her strength, her presence. Her straight back, the way she moved.

He knew and she knew that he had a gun. He could take her any time. But of course he wouldn’t. Because he was innocent.

But she didn’t seem to mind that the man who’d held a gun on her before was now walking alongside. Maybe because of his condition.

He looked back at the truck again. Dim in the dark and the lashing rain. Smaller and smaller. The truck didn’t move. Nothing moved. Maybe the woman was dead.

He hoped so.

They were on the porch of Jeepers Creepers. The old door rattled in its frame as the cop knocked on the door. The clock in the door was turned to 5:00 p.m. He glanced at his watch. It was going on five-thirty.

It was good to be out of the rain.

I killed that kid.

He couldn’t get away from it. It kept coming back. In the culvert he’d wanted to kill the kid, and now he had. And here he was in the gloom and the rain coming down like a waterfall around them, completely untethered from the world, everything still going in slow motion, and his only thread to reality was the cop.

TESS TOLD HIM to stay on the porch. There was a house out back. She said she didn’t know the people well, but knew their names and whatever she’d picked up from driving around the county. So she went looking for the Olsens.

Max stared down the highway. He could barely see the truck. It was far away.

Max was shivering. He rubbed his arms to warm himself and looked at the artifacts stuck to the wall.

Then he heard it. A howl.

And everything he’d just thought went out the window.

TESS HEARD IT too. The house behind Jeepers Creepers was dark. There was no vehicle in the carport, which surprised her. She knew they had come from Wisconsin in 1984, that they owned a 2009 Ford-350 truck with a matching camper shell and a “Choose Life” license plate on the back bumper (she knew the plate number too, of course). She knew they had an Australian sheepdog named Pearl with one blue eye and one brown. She knew they kept to themselves except for their regular attendance at the Streams of the Desert Pentecostal Church in Paradox. She assumed they did their shopping in one of the suburbs north of Phoenix. She’d been 99-percent certain that the Olsens would be home.

But she was wrong.

The car was gone.

The dog looked out at her through the curtains.

No help here. But they were close to the on-ramp to the freeway, so they could go up there and flag someone down…

Then, the unearthly cry. It wasn’t a wolf. It wasn’t a coyote. It was human, but there was something feral about it too. Like she imagined the damned in hell would sound.

The hairs on the back of her neck rose.

The howling went on and on. It gave her goose bumps.

She looked in the direction of the howl. A light arrowed along the road, then flared. Headlights passed over the store in front. She heard the car slow, stop. The woman? Had the woman been able to start up the truck? It didn’t sound like a big truck, though. She started back around the house and headed for the porch of the antiques/general store.

She heard a car door slam, and the sound of a car accelerating.

She reached the porch.

Max Conroy was gone.

She watched the taillights wink as the car turned onto the on-ramp to the freeway.

Max had hitched himself a ride. Should’ve known he would take off.

The howl again. She looked down the road and saw a figure in the darkness. The figure held something in its arms. As Tess’s eyes adjusted to the light, she saw it was the woman who had chased them. The woman held the boy, lifeless, against her chest. And she howled.

Max had not been lying when he’d told her about the woman and the boy. Tess sensed that if the woman saw her, it would be all over. She could feel the woman’s anger, the hatred. It scared her. Tess had been a cop for a long time. She was very rarely scared, even a little. Adrenaline would come to her aid, and she would act. But the screaming of this woman, and the sight of the woman herself , made Tess want to slink away. To shrink into the shadows and become anonymous.

This was a mother bear who had lost her cub. There was despair, but overriding it was rage. It was palpable in the air, in the rain, and there was a raw edge that seemed to pry into Tess’s internal organs. Danger. High-voltage danger.

And so Tess did slink. She hid. She hid because she could not stand the raw grief of the woman who had killed at least five people.

Tess waited.

The howling stopped.

The rain continued. Incessant, but softer now, whispering.

She heard a truck start up—a big engine. She heard it accelerate. Saw the pinpoint lights coming. Saw the truck flash by, slow, and turn with a squeal of tires onto the on-ramp, headed north.

She’d seen the truck. Only a glimpse, but it was huge, gargantuan. She’d seen the damaged front end. And the light was dim but she thought she saw two figures. One taller, on the driver’s side. And one smallish, slumped against the seat.

The woman and the boy.

The rain lessened. Tess could smell alfalfa hay, creosote bushes, and ozone. It was full dark now. She needed to flag down someone and reach dispatch.

Chapter Thirty-Three

MAX LET THE older couple drive him through Cottonwood as far as the turnoff for Clarkdale. There, he told the man to pull over on the side of the road. He regretted hijacking the car, regretted letting them see the gun stuck in the waistband of his pants. He could see the interview now. “He seemed like a nice enough guy, but then he told me to pull over and turned us out of our own car.”