The Night Crew

'Christ.' Harper.

'You hurt?'

'Yeah, I'm shot in the hip,' he groaned. 'Not bad, but it hurts like a sonofabitch.'

'Where is he? Outside?'

'Yeah, I heard the door. He's gone.'

'How about Pam?'

'I don't know. I don't know if he had her.'

'I believed him.'

'Well, if he had her, he didn't take her with him, because he went out of here in a hurry. Christ, we were six feet apart, I just couldn't get the gun around.'

There was light coming into the room from the back, from the room they'd just rushed through. A

And at that moment, someone groaned from the other side of the room. The groan was hurt enough, harsh enough, that the hair stood up on A

Harper whispered, 'Pam.'

A

Yes. A body, not a shadow. A

Glass muttered something unintelligible. A

'How bad?' Harper whispered.

'I don't know. We need light.'

'Pull that desk around.'

A

Pam Glass had been terribly beaten: her nose was broken, her teeth were broken, one cheekbone was wrong, her lips were twice as big as they should be, and the color of fresh liver.

'Aw, Jesus,' A

'Not much blood,' she whispered.

'Yeah, I don't think it's too bad, but Jesus, my leg just doesn't want to work,' he said.

'I'm go

'Yeah. Turn off the light, first. And we gotta try the phones.'

'Daly first.'

A

But the woman was dead: A

'Alive?' Harper whispered, as they pulled back.

'No. I don't think so.'

A

'Let's get back to Pam.'

'Let's get the phone.'

Glass's breath was short, harsh, irregular. As A

Harper was already crawling across the office. He groped on top of the desk, found a phone, pulled it down, listened, said 'Shit.'

'What?'

'Dead. He must've pulled wires somewhere. Probably outside the house.'

'We've got to get her out of here,' A

Chapter 30

They sat for a moment, huddled over Glass, watching her breathe. Thinking. A

'I don't know.' Harper looked around, found a blind spot where he couldn't be seen, pushed himself up on the wall, tested the leg and nearly collapsed.

'Maybebut not very far. I could hop pretty fast.'

'Forget it,' A

'A

'Can you think of anything else?'

He looked down at the linoleum, thinking. A few seconds later he said, 'If we can figure out where the phone goes out, and where he is, if they're different, I might be able to patch the wires.'

'Do you know anything about telephones?'

'No, but if he's just cut the wires.'

'I don't know if you can just put them back together,' A

'Christ.' He ran his hand through his hair, moved, groaned.

'And if we mess with the wires, and the phones still don't work, we'll have lost the timeand we don't have any time.' She touched Pam, looking across her at Harper.

Harper broke his eyes away for a moment, then shook his head, gri

'Okay.'

'Let me get my back against the wall with Pam. If he tries to come in, I'll light the motherfucker up.'

A

A

Nothing.

Jake had moved to the hallway between the back room and the office. He called softly, 'Nothing here.'

'Steve,' A

The voice, not far away: 'I'm still here.'

And a second later, a shot: not the pistol any more, a loud crack, and plaster flew from the wall overhead.

'Shit,' Harper yelped. 'He's got a rifle. A big one.'

'Always gotta be killing something around here, putting them out of their misery,' the voice shouted.

He was over toward the garage, or maybe the barn, A

'What do you want?'

'I want you dead,' the voice answered. 'But I want to mess with you for a while.'

Another shot, this time into the office.

A

A

'What do you think now, about messing with my head? What do you think now?' Judge screamed, still from the direction of the garage.

'We weren't messing with you,' Harper shouted back. 'How were we messing with you?'