And she was stuck back here.

  Her teeth ground together and she had trouble reminding herself that being a cop was being a part of a team. Maybe Santana was right, maybe she should quit. She didn’t need this shit.

  But she loved it.

  Flowers called again. “Where in the fuck are you guys? Something’s going on. You gotta get up here. Drake is ready to move.”

  She reined in her frustration and tried to be rational. The important thing was to take down Drake.

  “The troops are on the way in, on foot,” she said into the phone. “They’re five hundred yards down the road. They’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “Can you call them?”

  “I can.”

  Virgil said, “Tell them that. Hey, what the hell is he doing, Johnson? What? Sorry, talking to Johnson. What? Fuck. Look, Drake is up to something. He’s loading up the Jeep, if a Jeep comes down the road, that’ll be him.”

  “I’ll pass it on,” Regan said. “Hang tight, they’re coming.”

  VIRGIL AND JOHNSON WERE ON the far side of the shallow river, up on the bluff, looking down at Drake’s cabin. They saw him throw what looked like a couple of large duffel bags into the Jeep, along with a rifle. Dusk crept through the trees and crawled across the land.

  Drake was moving fast, jogging from the house to the studio cabin, where he spent a minute or two, then back to the house and then to the garage. He was carrying something bulky, but they didn’t have binoculars and couldn’t really tell what it was.

  “He’s carrying it like suitcases, but they look too small to be suitcases,” Virgil said to Johnson. “I think we’ve got to work in closer.”

  “He could see us. The slope’s mostly rock, not much cover. The feds are just down the road. I kinda like this cop shit, as long as I don’t have to look at bodies. Maybe I oughta get deputized when I get back home.”

  “You have no qualifications, except possibly some insight into the criminal mind,” he said.

  “Don’t need any qualifications to get deputized,” Johnson said. “I’d say about two hundred dollars ought to get me a badge.”

  “Where in the fuck are the feds?” Virgil asked, getting a bad feeling about this.

  Drake jogged back to the house from the garage, no longer carrying the suitcases. They could see him through the front windows of the houses, apparently waving another set of the squatty suitcases around.

  “Ah, Jesus,” he said squinting. “Those aren’t suitcases. Those are gas cans. He’s getting ready to torch the place.”

  “And the feds don’t know it.”

  He speed-dialed Pescoli.

  She picked up on the first ring.

  “He’s gonna torch the place,” he warned. “You got no time, tell the feds, they got no time. He’s gonna torch the place right now.”

  “I’m calling them.”

  And she was gone.

  Down below, Drake hurried out of the house with a handful of what might be paper or rags, ran to the garage, lit whatever it was with a lighter, then threw the flaming ball into the garage. With a whoosh, the building exploded into flames.

  “Damn,” Virgil whispered as the building was engulfed.

  Drake had apparently doused the BMW, which began burning with enthusiasm. The conflagration crackled to the sky, smoke and flames spiraling upward.

  “Where the hell are they?” He searched beyond the inferno, looking for the SWAT team. “Where the fuck are they? I gotta do something.”

  “You heard Burch,” Johnson reminded him.

  Drake’s next stop was the studio.

  Johnson said to Virgil, “Gimme my gun. Maybe I can make him dodge around until the cops get here.”

  He didn’t stop to think about it and handed the gun over. The range was ridiculous for Johnson’s concealed-carry, short-nosed nine. But Johnson opened fire, and Drake froze for a moment, then threw a handful of burning whatever into the studio. The building exploded just as the garage had, flames twisting and hissing. Johnson fired fifteen times, but Drake ignored it, ran to the house, threw in the last ball of fire, and the house, obviously doused in gasoline as the other buildings went up quick, flames reaching skyward, lighting the area.

  Virgil hit speed dial to Pescoli. “He’s on the move.”

  “Where?” she asked, her own voice rising. “What the hell is happening?”

  “He did it, he burned the place. Where is the team?”

  “It’s there. It should be there.”

  “Oh, crap. Drake’s gone for the Jeep,” he said, watching as Drake hopped into the rig and tore out, spraying gravel and speeding away, not toward the main road and into the SWAT team.

  “He’s in the Jeep, heading away from the main road. Driving toward the dead end. Where is he going?”

  He watched the vehicle stop at the Weekses’ place, though with the coming darkness and trees, his sight line wasn’t clear. He heard shouting and within seconds flames shot skyward.

  “He just blew up the Weekses’ mobile home.”

  “Where is he? Still there?” she asked, her voice tense.

  “I can’t see. Call Burch. Tell him.”

  She hung up and Virgil said to Johnson, “Bet we find a body in Weekses’ place.”

  “No bet,” Johnson said.

  Below them, they spied the headlights of what had to be Drake’s Jeep, heading due west, away from the main road, toward the dead end.

  “Where the fuck is he going?”

  Virgil had a sinking feeling. He called Pescoli and when she picked up, said, “Is there some kind of timber road at the end of the dead end? A logging or mining road? Something that no one uses?”

  He heard the yelling of the SWAT team now.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” There was dread in her voice. “Yes. The Long Mining company had some access road here, been closed for years.”

  “Why else take off in the Jeep? Why torch the BMW? The faster vehicle.”

  “I’ll call Burch.”

  Again she rang off.

  “You’re probably right,” Johnson, who’d overheard his part of the conversation, said.

  “Here come the feds.”

  Below them the SWAT team streamed up the road toward the burning buildings, in good military order.

  One minute too late.

  REGAN WAS WAITING IN HER Jeep when flowers called again. He gave it to her in a nutshell. The burning buildings, the stranded SWAT team, his belief that there might be a back way out.

  “And he’s got a rifle. I think he couldn’t let the rifle burn, because we’d still be able to check it, and he doesn’t know we never found a slug when Cain was shot.”

  “I’m going,” she said. “No way is he getting out of here.”

  “Careful,” Flowers said. He made no effort to talk her out of it, though she’d be one-on-one with Drake. “Don’t forget the rifle. He’s armed.”

  She didn’t know of a back road out but knew if there was one, Drake couldn’t go east because of the river and the bluff on the far side. He’d have to go west, sooner or later, to cut the highway, and it probably wouldn’t be far.

  She cranked up the Jeep and wrestled it around onto the road, tromped on the accelerator, and sped off. By the time she burned past the dude ranch she was doing sixty. She hit the highway and turned right, skidding around the corner, not caring, then rolled to the top of the nearest ridge, and waited.

  She thought about the implications of all that fire. No fingerprints, no DNA, no knotty pine. Thoughts swirled. Adrenaline pumped.

  To hell with the feds.

  Again, she thought of the innocent kids, of the pictures she’d seen, the images she could never erase from her mind. Then her own kids, the older two when they were in elementary school, the baby.

  Her back teeth ground together and she heard a rushing in her ears, her own blood pumping through her veins. For a second, everything went dark with the insidiousness of it all.

  She blinked again. Focused. Amped up.

  No way would she let that sick fuck get away.

  She had her window down, listening for the sound of an engine. She squinted and smelled smoke. Although the sky was bright, the woods were getting darker, and Drake had to turn on his headlights to plow out of the timber road. She saw him coming when he was still fifty feet back, and then he bounced out of the trees, down through the roadside ditch and up on the highway. He turned right, as she had, and sped away from her. She followed, staying back for a minute, then hit her flashers and dropped the hammer. She knew these roads, that was her advantage, that and a bigger engine in her Jeep.

  Drake made a run for it.

  Speeding through the ever-closing night, his taillights burning bright.

  She drove faster, feeling the tires hum and her heart pound as images of those innocent kids played through her mind.

  On a straightaway, heading to a sharp corner, she roared up behind the older, overmatched Jeep until she was no more than six feet behind him. At the corner he swung wide, hit gravel on the far shoulder, a tire catching on the edge of the asphalt. As she slowed she watched his Jeep spin back across the road, headlights arcing, cutting through the night.

  “Die, you bastard,” she said, hitting the brakes.

  Drake’s Jeep slid off the side of the road, the front-right headlight smashing against a pine, the hood crumpling with a groan, an axle breaking.

  Her vehicle slid to a stop on the shoulder.

  Service weapon in her hand, she stepped onto the asphalt and screamed at his vehicle.

  “Get out. I want to see your hands, and I want you out.”

  He didn’t move.

  “Now! Get out.”

  She advanced, crouching, wishing she was wearing a vest.

  He kicked open his door, then slowly, hands over his head, he emerged from the Jeep. He was dressed in black from head to toe. Black dress shirt, black slacks, black shoes.

  “What’s this about?” he called out. “You nearly killed me. You some kind of psycho cop?”

  “It’s about all those children,” she said, her throat raw. “Keep your hands over your head, and back away. I want you out in the headlights, or, I swear to God, I’ll shoot you.”

  “I don’t know anything about any children,” he called to her, but did as he was instructed, and backed away. “I got a bad fire up there, my phone doesn’t work, I was going to get the volunteer fire department. Could you call them for me?”

  “Shut up,” she said.

  She was at the back of his Jeep and saw through the plastic window the rifle stacked up between the two front seats, ready to use.

  “You were going to shoot your way out, if you didn’t get clear, weren’t you?”

  So why hadn’t he tried to shoot her? Something wasn’t computing.

  “I wasn’t going to shoot anybody,” Drake said, hands still over his head. “I’ve never committed a crime in my life. The worst thing I’ve ever done is let that fire get out of control, and I don’t even have insurance. I think that goddamn Weeks started it, I found out he was doing something in my cabin while I wasn’t here.”

  “That’s not what Phillip Weeks told me,” she said.

  She pushed the Jeep’s door open, switched hands on her pistol, and used her right hand to fish the rifle out of the Jeep.

  “Phillip Weeks is a crazy, drug-addled boy,” Drake shouted. “His old man has fed him opiates since he was ten years old. Nobody’s going to believe a doper like him.”

  She looked at him and said, “You’ve almost got me convinced. You might walk.”

  “Might, bullshit. I’ve got the best attorneys in California. You’re going to be lucky to have your job when they’re finished with you. The best thing you could do right now is forget all this.”

  She looked down at the rifle.

  Large-caliber bolt action, like the gun that had killed Cain. She pulled the bolt back an inch, then shut it, seeing the brassy flash of the cartridge going back into the chamber.

  “You know, you killed the wrong guy down in the river. The guy who saw the girl in the RV. He’s still back there.”

  In a split second Drake reached behind his back and pulled out a pistol.

  She fired.

  He went down, his handgun flying from his grasp.

  The rush in her ears was overpowering, the anger flooding through her veins nearly blinding her. Without thinking, she turned and using one hand, brought the rifle up and fired a single shot through the windshield of her Jeep.

  Glass shattered.

  “What are you—” Drake began, sputtering as he watched, white-faced, bleeding. “No. Wait. I didn’t do anything.”

  She wiped down the stock and trigger with the bottom of her shirt.

  “Wait,” Drake said as the sound of sirens cut through the night. “Those kids. They were better off with me. They wanted to do it. I gave them a place to live and food and made them movie stars. They lived like kings and queens.”

  Rage swelled.

  Blackness pulled at her vision.

  Her finger curled over the trigger of her service weapon.

  “For Christ’s sake.” Drake scrambled for his gun.

  She shot him twice in the chest.

  VIRGIL SHOUTED DOWN AT THE Feds, “He’s gone up the gravel road, away from the county road.”

  The SWAT team, in the light of the fires, started jogging up the road toward Weeks’s cabin.

  “He’s not there anymore,” Johnson muttered.

  He and Johnson crashed through the brush on the bluff, waded the shallow river, and ran down the road to the dude ranch, where everybody staying at the ranch, Katy, her siblings, and her parents, were all standing on the edge of the golf course, looking at the fire in the sky.

  Jim Waller called to them as they passed, “Is that the Drake place? What’s going on up there?”

  They didn’t bother to answer, but piled into Johnson’s Cadillac and headed out to the highway.

  “Gotta be a right turn,” Johnson said.

  A mile up the road, they found Pescoli sitting next to the right front wheel of her Jeep. She was holding a tissue next to her eye, showing a little blood. Up the road, they could see Drake, spread-eagled in the headlights of his Jeep.

  He and Johnson jumped out of the Cadillac and they hurried up to her. She was white faced, her eyes a little glassy, but she answered.

  “I’m not bad. I shot him twice, maybe three times. He thought we had him. He had nothing to lose by trying to take me out.”

  Her hand was shaking a little.

  “He was right about that,” Virgil said and saw the smashed-up Jeep and the body lying in the grass near the shoulder. “You check him?”

  “Enough to know we don’t need an ambulance,” she said, chalk white, her voice distant, almost disembodied. She cleared her throat and focused on Virgil, as if seeing him for the first time. “I wish we could have taken him alive. I wish we could have gotten him in court.”

  “Probably better this way,” Johnson said, avoiding looking at the corpse. “What if he’d gotten off? If what everybody says is true, the cocksucker deserves to be dead.”

  He and Regan both gave Johnson a look, and he muttered, “Okay. Sorry about that ‘cocksucker.’ ”

  Virgil stood up from checking the body and looked at Regan and Johnson.

  “But you’re right. He deserves to be dead. And now he is.”

  LARA ADRIAN AND CHRISTOPHER RICE

  THRILLERS COME IN ALL FORMS. The number of subgenres is staggering, and this story is representative of one of the most popular.

  Paranormal.

  Lara Adrian has made a name for herself in this world where her books are huge bestsellers. True to his namesake (as the son of Anne Rice), Christopher Rice cut his teeth on dark suspense, before shifting to romance. Teaming these two together seemed like an exciting idea, but it also posed a few challenges. The timeline of Lara’s long-running Midnight Breed series spans twenty-five years in the future. Chris sets his stories and characters in the present. So, right away, the clock had to be turned back to a time when Lara’s vampires were unknown inside her imagined world.

  But that played right into their hands.

  Chris’s initial idea was to have his Desire Exchange series character, Lilliane, attacked by someone on her home turf of New Orleans where Lara’s character, Lucan Thorne, could witness both the altercation and Lilliane’s extraordinary powers.

  From there, everything fell right into place.

  Lara wrote the first draft, then Chris rewrote and edited. The title is a bit of an inside thing. Midnight from Lara’s long-running series. Flame from the candles that symbolically form a huge part of Chris’s fictional world.

  The result is a gem.

  Midnight Flame.

  MIDNIGHT FLAME

  THUNDER SHOOK THE TINY FRENCH quarter bookshop as Lucan Thorne handed his cash to the young woman behind the register. Rain had been hammering New Orleans since he arrived from Boston a couple of days ago. As the evening crept toward midnight, the deluge showed no signs of letting up anytime soon either. He didn’t mind getting wet. Besides, this last-minute stop for a special gift before returning home would be worth the trouble and then some.

  The perky blond clerk made change for him and handed it over along with his purchase. “You sure picked a bad night to be out shopping. The city’s a lot more fun when the weather’s nice and everyone’s out having a good time.” When he reached for the paper gift bag, she brushed her fingers over his. “You gonna be in town for a while? I’d love to show you what I mean.”

  Under the fall of his damp black hair, Lucan smiled, baring just the tips of his fangs. “I’m not really a people person.”

  The human sucked in a sharp breath.

  She let go of the bag as if it burned her fingers, blinking fast, her mortal brain no doubt struggling to process what she imagined she’d just seen.

  “Thanks for your help, Krystal,” he said, his fangs now retracted as he slipped the bag into a large inside pocket under his black trench coat.

  “Uh, sure.”

  She gave him a befuddled wave as he left the store.