Blaze

“No,” George said. “You forgot the bread. You never got any goddam bread.” Blaze thought maybe George was talking about the swag and he started to say he had it, when George said: “And the salami.” He was beginning to breathe very rapidly. “I got that book, you know.”

“George!”

“That book with the picture of —” But then George began to choke on his own blood. Blaze turned him over and whammed him on the back. It was all he could think of to do. But when he turned George over again, George was dead.

Blaze laid him on the boards outside the warehouse. He backed away. Then he crept forward again and closed George’s eyes. He backed away a second time, then crept forward again and knelt. “George?”

No answer.

“You dead, George?”

No answer.

Blaze ran all the way to the car and got in and threw himself behind the wheel. He screamed away, peeling rubber for twenty feet.

“Slow down,” George said from the back seat.

“George?”

“Slow down, goddammit!”

Blaze slowed down. “George! Come on up front! Climb over! Wait, I’ll pull over.”

“No,” George said. “I like it back here.”

“George?”

“What?”

“What are we going to do now?”

“Snatch the kid,” George said. “Just like we planned.”

Chapter 23

WHEN BLAZE BLUNDERED out of the little cave and got his feet under him, he had no idea how many men were out there. Dozens, he supposed. It didn’t matter. George’s pistol fell out of the waistband of his pants and that didn’t matter, either. He trod it deep into the snow as he charged the first guy he saw. The guy was lying in the snow a little distance away, resting on his elbows and holding a gun in both hands.

“Hands up, Blaisdell! Stay still!” Granger shouted.

Blaze leaped at him.

Granger had time to fire twice. The first shot creased Blaze’s forearm. The second plugged nothing but snowstorm. Then Blaze crashed all two hundred and seventy pounds into the guy who had hurt Joe, and Granger’s weapon went flying. Granger screamed as the bones of his broken leg grated together.

“You hit the kid!” Blaze yelled into Granger’s terrified face. His fingers found Granger’s throat. “You hit the kid, you stupid sonofabitch, you hit the kid, you hit the kid, you hit the kid!”

Granger’s head was flopping and nodding now, as if to say he understood, he was getting the message. His face had gone purple. His eyes bulged from their sockets.

They’re coming.

Blaze stopped choking the guy and looked around. No one in sight. The woods were silent except for the wind and the faint hissing noise the snow made as it fell.

No, there was another sound. There was Joe.

Blaze ran back up the embankment to the cave. Joe was rolling around, wailing and clutching at the air. The flying chip of rock had done more damage than the fall from the cradle; his cheek was covered in blood.

“God damn it!” Blaze cried.

He picked Joe up, wiped his cheek, slipped him into the envelope of blankets again, and stuck his cap back over the baby’s head. Joe whooped and screamed.

“We gotta run now, George,” Blaze said. “Full-out run. Right?”

No answer.

Blaze backed out of the cave holding the baby to his chest, turned into the wind, and fled toward the logging road.

“Where did Corliss leave him?” Sterling panted at Franklin. The men had paused at the edge of the woods, breathing hard.

Franklin pointed. “Down there. I can find it.”

Sterling turned to Bradley. “Call your people. And the Cumberland County Sheriff. I wanted that logging road plugged at both ends. What’s past it if he slips through?”

Bradley barked a laugh. “Nothing but the Royal River. Like to see him ford that.”

“Is it iced over?”

“Sure, but not enough to walk on.”

“All right. Let us press on. Franklin, take point. Short point. This guy is very dangerous.”

They moved down the first slope. Fifty yards into the woods, Sterling made out a blue-gray figure slumped against a tree.

Franklin got there first. “Corliss,” he said.

“Dead?” Sterling asked, joining him.

“Oh yeah.” Franklin pointed to tracks that were now little more than vague dips.

“Let’s go,” Sterling said. This time he took point.

They found Granger five minutes later. The marks on his throat were at least an inch deep.

“Guy must be a brute,” someone said.

Sterling pointed into the snow. “That’s a cave up there. I’m almost positive. Maybe he left the kid.”

Two State Troopers scrambled up toward the triangular patch of shadow. One of them paused, bent, picked something out of the snow. He held it up. “A gun!” he yelled.

As if the rest of us are blind, Sterling thought. “Never mind the frigging gun, see about the kid! And be careful!”

One of them knelt, used his flashlight, then crawled after the beam. The other bent forward, hands on knees, listened, then turned back to Sterling and Franklin. “Not here!”

They spotted tracks leading from the cave toward the logging road even before the Trooper who had gone into the cave was out again. They were little more than vague humps in the fast-falling snow.