Blaze

Blaze dreaded leaving him, especially after the accident of the night before, but it was vital. His instincts told him so. He laid Joe down on one of the blankets, put the other over him, and anchored the top blanket with big rocks. He thought — hoped — that if Joe awoke while he was gone, he could turn over but not crawl out. It would have to be good enough.

Blaze backed out of the cave, then started back the way he’d come, following his tracks. They were already starting to drift in. He hurried, and when the ground opened out, he began to run. It was quarter past seven in the morning.

While Blaze prepared to feed the baby, Sterling was in the arrest-and-recovery operation’s command vehicle, a 4X4. He sat in the shotgun seat. A State Trooper was driving. With his big flat hat off, the Statie looked like a Marine recruit after his first haircut. To Sterling, most Staties looked like Marine recruits. And most FBI agents looked like lawyers or accountants, which was perfectly fitting, since —

He caught his flying thoughts and pulled them back down to ground level. “Can’t you push this thing a little faster?”

“Sure,” the Statie said. “Then we can spend the rest of the morning picking our teeth out of a snowbank.”

“There’s no need to take that tone, is there?”

“This weather makes me nervous,” the Statie said. “This is a shitstorm. Slippery as hell underneath.”

“All right.” Sterling looked at his watch. “How far to Cumberland?”

“Fifteen miles.”

“How long?”

The Trooper shrugged. “Twenty-five minutes?”

Sterling grunted. This was a “cooperative venture” between the Bureau and the Maine State Police, and the only thing he hated more than “cooperative ventures” were root canals. The possibility of clusterfucks grew when you brought in state law enforcement. Of course it jumped to a probability when the Bureau was forced into the dreaded “cooperative venture” with local law enforcement, but this was bad enough: running point with a fake Marine who was afraid to push it past fifty.

He shifted in the seat and the butt of his pistol dug into the small of his back. But it was where he always wore it. Sterling trusted his gun, his Bureau, and his nose. He had a nose like a good bird dog. A good bird dog could do more than smell a partridge or a turkey in the bushes; a good bird dog could smell its fear, and which way its fear would cause it to break, and when. It knew when the bird’s need to fly was going to overmaster its need to stay still, in its hide.

Blaisdell was in a hide, probably this defunct orphan home. That was all very well, but Blaisdell was going to break. Sterling’s nose told him so. And although the asshole had no wings, he had legs and he could run.

Sterling was also becoming sure that Blaisdell was in it alone. If there was someone else — the brains of the operation Sterling and Granger had taken for granted at first — they would have heard from him by now, if for no other reason than that Blaisdell was dumb as a stump. No, he was probably in it alone, and probably hunkered down in that old orphanage (like a half-assed homing pigeon, Sterling thought), certain no one would look for him there. No reason to believe they wouldn’t find him squatting like a scared quail behind a bush.

Except Blaisdell had his wind up. Sterling knew it.

He looked at his watch. It was just past 6:30.

The net would drop over a triangular area: along Route 9 to the west, a secondary road called Loon Cut on the north, and an old logging road to the southeast. When everyone was in position the net would begin to close, collapsing on Hetton House. The snow was a pain in the ass now, but it would give them cover when they moved in.

It sounded good, but —

“Can’t you roll this thing a little faster?” Sterling asked. He knew it was wrong to ask, wrong to push the guy, but he couldn’t help it.

The Trooper looked at the man sitting beside him. At Sterling’s small, pinched face and hot eyes. And he thought: This Type A fuck means to kill him, I think.

“Fasten your seatbelt, Agent Sterling,” he said.

“It is,” Sterling said. He thumbed it out like a vest.

The Statie sighed and stepped down a little harder on the gas.

Sterling gave the order at seven AM, and the assembled forces moved in. The snow was very deep — four feet in places — but the men floundered and came on, staying in radio contact with each other. No one complained. A child’s life was at stake. The falling snow gave everything a heightened, surreal urgency. They looked like figures in an old silent movie, a sepia melodrama where there was no doubt about who the villain was.

Sterling ran the operation like a good quarterback, staying on top of things by walkie-talkie. The men coming from the east had the easiest going, so he slowed them down to keep them in sync with those coming in from SR 9 and down Loon Hill from Loon Cut. Sterling wanted Hetton House surrounded, but he wanted more. He wanted every bush and grove of trees beaten for his bird on the way in.

“Sterling, this is Tanner. You copy?”