Dark Hollow

Briscoe picked up a Night Hawk scope and trained it on Cheerful Chester Nash.

"You see anything unusual about Chester 's coat?" he said.

Nutley moved the camera a little to the left.

"No," he said. "Wait. It looks like it's fifty years old. He doesn't have his hands in his pockets. He's got them in those slits below the breast. Pretty awkward way to keep warm, don't you think."

"Yeah," said Briscoe. "Real awkward."

"Where is she?" said the Cambodian to Paulie Block.

Paulie gestured to the trunk of the car. The Cambodian nodded and handed the briefcase to one of his associates. The case was flicked open and the Cambodian held it, facing forward, so that Paulie and Chester could see what was inside.

Chester whistled. "Shit," he said.

"Shit," said Nutley. "There's a lot of cash in that case."

Briscoe trained the scope on the notes. "Ouch. We're talking maybe two mil."

"Enough to buy Tony Celli out of whatever jam he's in," said Nutley.

"And then some."

"But who's in the trunk?" asked Nutley.

"Well, son, that's what we're here to find out."

The group of five moved carefully over the hard ground, their breath puffing white as they went. Around them, the tips of evergreens scraped the sky and welcomed the flakes with their spread branches. The ground here was rocky, and the new snow had made it slick and dangerous. Ryley had already stumbled once, painfully scraping his shin. In the sky above them, they could hear the sound of the Cessna's engine, one of Currier's planes from Moose head Lake, and could see its spotlight picking out something on the ground ahead of them.

"If this snow keeps up, the plane's going to have to turn back," said Patterson.

"Nearly there," said Ryley. "Another ten minutes and we'll have her."

A gunshot exploded in the darkness ahead of them, then a second. The light on the plane tilted and started to rise. Patterson's radio burst out with an angry blast of speech.

"Hell," said Patterson, with a look of disbelief on his face. "She's shooting at them."

The Cambodian stayed close to Paulie Block as he moved to the rear of the car. Behind them, the younger men pulled back their coats to reveal Uzis hanging from straps on their shoulders. Each kept a hand on the grip, one finger just outside the trigger guard.

"Open it," said the older man.

"You're the boss," said Paulie, as he inserted the key in the lock and prepared to lift the trunk. "Paulie's just here to open the trunk." If the Cambodian had been listening more intently, he would have noticed that Paulie Block said the words very loudly and very distinctly.

"Gun slits," said Briscoe suddenly. "Fucking gun slits, that's what they are."

"Gun slits," repeated Nutley. "Oh, Jesus."

Paulie Block opened the trunk and stepped back. A blast of heat greeted the Cambodian as he moved forward. In the trunk was a blanket, and beneath it was a recognizably human form. The Cambodian leaned in and pulled the blanket back.

Beneath it was a man: a man with a sawed-off shotgun.

"What is this?" said the Cambodian.

"This is good-bye," said Paulie Block, as the barrels roared and the Cambodian jerked with the impact of the shots.

"Fuck," said Briscoe. "Move! Move!" He drew his SIG and ran for the back door, flipping a switch on his handset and calling for the Scarborough backup to move in as he opened the lock and headed into the night in the direction of the two cars.

"What about noninterference?" said Nutley as he followed the older man. This wasn't the way it was supposed to happen. It wasn't supposed to go down like this at all.

Cheerful Chester 's coat flew open, revealing the twin short barrels of a pair of Walther MPK submachine guns. Two of the Cambodians were already raising their Uzis when he pulled the triggers.

"Sayonara," said Chester, his mouth widening into a grin.

The 9mm parabellums ripped into the three men, tearing through the leather of the briefcase, the expensive wool of their coats, the pristine whiteness of their shirts, the thin shells of their skins. They shattered glass, pierced the metal of the car, pockmarked the vinyl of the seats. It took less than four seconds to empty sixty-four rounds into the three men, leaving them wrinkled and slumped, their warm blood melting the thin layer of frost on the ground. The briefcase had landed face down, some of the tightly packed wads scattering as it fell.

Chester and Paulie saw what they had done, and it was good.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" said Paulie. "Let's get the money and get the fuck out of here."

Behind him, the man with the shotgun, whose name was Jimmy Fribb, climbed from the cramped trunk and stretched his legs, his joints creaking. Chester loaded a fresh clip into one of the MPKs and dumped the other in the trunk of the Dodge. He was just leaning down to pick up the fallen money when the two shouts came almost together.

"FBI," said the first voice. "Let me see your hands now."

The other voice was less succinct, and less polite, but probably strangely familiar to Paulie Block.

"Get the fuck away from the money," it said, "or I'll blow your fucking heads off."

The old woman stood in a patch of clear ground, watching the sky. Snow fell on her hair, on her shoulders and on her outstretched arms, the gun clasped in her right hand, her left hand open and empty. Her mouth was gaping and her chest heaved as her aging body tried to cope with its exertions. She seemed not to notice Ryley and the others until they were only thirty feet from her. The nurse hung back behind the others. Ryley, despite Patterson's objections, took the lead.

"Miss Emily," he said softly. "Miss Emily, it's me, Dr. Ryley. We're here to take you home."

The woman looked at him and Ryley suspected, for the first time since they had set out, that Miss Emily was not mad. Her eyes were calm as she watched him, and she almost gri

"I'm not going back," she said.

"Miss Emily, it's cold. You're going to die out here if you don't come with us. We've brought you blankets and warm clothes, and I have a thermos of chicken soup. We'll get you warm and comfortable, then we'll bring you safely back."

The woman actually smiled then, a broad smile with no humor to it, and no trust.

"You can't keep me safe," she said softly. "Not from him."

Ryley frowned. He recalled something about the woman now, an incident with a visitor and a later report from one of the nurses after Miss Emily claimed that someone had tried to climb in her window. They'd dismissed it, of course, although Judd had taken to wearing his gun on duty as a result. These old folks were nervous, fearful of illness, of strangers, of friends and relatives sometimes, fearful of the cold, of the possibility of falling, fearful for their meager possessions, for their photos, for their fading memories.

Fearful of death.

"Please, Miss Emily, put the gun down and come back with us. We can keep you safe from harm. No one's going to hurt you."

She shook her head slowly. Above them, the plane circled, casting a strange white light over her frame, turning her long gray hair to silver fire.

"I'm not going back. I'll face him out here. This is his place, these woods. This is where he'll be."

Her face changed then. Behind Ryley, Patterson thought he had never seen an expression of such abject terror. Her mouth curled down at the edges, her chin and lips trembled and then the rest of her body began to shake, a strange, violent quivering that was almost like an ecstasy. Tears flowed down her cheeks as she began to speak.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"