She was still looking through the screen door to the left where the road curved into the woods, and then they all heard it and saw it at the same time: a battered white pickup roaring around the curve and into the town, zigzagging crazily, steam pouring out of the grill, the shredded rubber of its tires slapping the tar while sparks flew from the undercarriage.
Grace flung out an arm, saying, "Back! Back!" and pushing Annie and Sharon away from the door and the big front windows, her first fear being that the truck would veer into the cafe, shattering the glass.
Instead, the roaring sound ended abruptly with the sudden death of its engine, and the truck came to a wheezing stop in the middle of the street directly in front of the cafe, its windows shattered, its side peppered with what had to be bullet holes.
In the next heartbeat, a jeep came careening around the curve and screeched to a halt inches behind the crippled truck, and Grace and Sharon both started to raise their guns. But then two soldiers jumped out, automatic rifles leveled at the truck, both of them red-faced and screaming, "Get out! Get out! Get out!" and for the very first time in more than a decade, Grace was holding a gun in her hand and wasn't certain what to do with it. Pulling her gun at the sound of automatic weapon fire had seemed perfectly sensible, but when the fire was coming from men in uniform, it changed everything. She caught a glimpse of Sharon's gun in her peripheral vision, frozen at half-mast as hers was.
The soldiers were yelling, the damaged passenger door screamed as it was flung open, and then there was silence so deep that Grace could hear the bright tinkling of shattered glass tumbling to the asphalt. A pretty blonde woman in a print dress stepped down from the truck and would have collapsed, had she not been supported by the strong hands of the man who climbed down behind her. Grace had a millisecond to see the flash of a gold wedding band on the man's left hand and a skim of white slip showing below the hem of the young woman's dress before the soldiers opened fire.
The man fell first, a red blossom erupting on the blue of his denim shirt. And then new red flowers bloomed all over the woman's dress and she began to sink to the ground.
For an instant, Grace, Sharon, and Annie were frozen in place like mannequins on display-three women with their breath caught in their throats, standing ten feet behind a plate-glass window in plain view of anyone who happened to look.
But the guns kept firing, and when the man and the woman fell, that single heartbeat of immobility was over. The three women dove to the floor as one, below the sight line of the windows, and started scrambling on hands and knees toward the cafe's back door. They slipped outside with the guns still firing behind them, bolted across the narrow strip of grass between the cafe and the frame house, then into the woods.
That was the great thing about women, Grace thought. Forget the female reputation for endless speculation and discussion-when things went south, women didn't stop to analyze. Even women with guns in their hands deferred to instincts honed by centuries. Warning. Danger. Run. Hide.
A FEW YARDS into the trees, the relative darkness of the forest closed around the three women, giving the illusion, if not the reality, of safety.
And then the shooting stopped.
It was deathly still again-quiet enough to hear the muffled voices of the soldiers in the street in front of the cafe, even with the buildings and trees between them-quiet enough for the soldiers to hear them if they made too much noise.
The three women froze, moving again only when new noises broke the silence-another vehicle arriving in front of the cafe, then more voices that sounded like mad dogs barking.
More soldiers,Grace thought.But how many more, where are they coming from, and why the hell did they shoot those people down?
She remembered last October, when the entire city of Minneapolis knew that a killer would be at the Mall of America looking for the next anonymous victim; and she remembered how many people went to the mall anyway, blinded by that ingrained belief that bail things happened to other people, not to them. Grace had never thought that way- If there was a bad thing in the neighborhood, it was surely coming for her next, and the very first thing you did was try to get the hell out of there.
Her eyes searched the trees until she caught a glimpse of the old logging road, and when she started to move toward it, Annie and Sharon followed. Apparently all of them had the same thought in mind: getting back to the Range Rover, to the highway they'd come in on, away from whatever nightmare was happening in this town.
The going was easier on the old overgrown logging road. They moved quickly and silently past lacy banks of ferns so tall and thick that they brushed against their hands as they passed. Grace stayed in the lead, stopping every few yards to listen, long after the sounds from the street in front of the cafe had faded into the distance.
When they came to the place where the path angled left, Grace stopped again, but this time she went so still and rigid that Annie and Sharon both stopped in mid-step behind her, eyes wide to pierce the gloom, finally focusing on what Grace had seen before them. None of them breathed.
Several yards ahead, nearly obscured by the drooping arms of a big white pine, a soldier leaned casually against the tree, looking directly at them.
Sharon's fingers twitched ever so slightly.
Don't do that. Don't reach for the gun. You should have had it in hand anyway, you idiot, because now you don't dare move a muscle, you don't dare unsnap the holster because a tiny noise like that could get us all filled. And what the hell do you think, you're going to do with it anyway? You've never shot anyone in your life, even that one time you should have, and now you're planning to start with a man in uniform? Jesus God, you don't even know what's going on here, you don't know who the bad guys are,
and what if those people in the truck were terrorists planning to blow up the country and you shoot the brave soldier risking his life to defend his country just because he has a gun bigger than yours and you're scared? Think, goddamnit. Think like a cop, not like a woman.
She eased a quiet breath into her lungs and expelled it slowly, silently, her eyes on the soldier, trying to figure out if he was really looking right at them or if it only appeared that way.
After an endless, heart-stopping moment, he turned his head to the side and said, "Pearson, you got a cigarette?" and then all three women looked in the direction he had turned and saw things that hadn't been readily visible before: another soldier standing a few yards to the right of the first, filtered sunlight glancing off the metal barrel of a gun, and farther away still, the distinctive shapes of other heads and shoulders, shifting slightly to relieve stiff muscles.
"They didn't say we could smoke out here."
"Yeah, well, they didn't say we could take a piss, either, and you didn't let that stop you."
"All right, all right, just a sec."
As the two men moved together and dipped their heads to share a light, Grace sidestepped ever so slowly off the path, into the trees, and ducked into the lush cover of a thick stand of the giant ferns. She kept her head above the level of the greenery until Annie and Sharon were settled on their bellies beside her. When she was sure she couldn't see either one of them, even this close, she eased all the way down, closed her eyes, and listened to the pounding of her heart. It seemed terribly loud, and yet the rest of the woods was so quiet that she could hear the soldiers' conversation over it quite clearly.
"We're too tight here, Durham. We should spread out more."
"Tight on the funnel points, Pearson. Perimeter 101."
"You ask me, it's a waste of time. If we pulled everyone in off the perimeter, we could be out of here a hell of a lot sooner."