Page 160 of Cold, Cold Bones

More clicks.

“Remember. No Lone Ranger shit. There could be a kid in there.” Deep breath, then, “Let’s get this pussbag.”

The cruisers roared downhill, followed by the SWAT team intheir tricked-out Humvee. We brought up the rear, rocking so hard I had to brace with both hands.

As Slidell threw the SUV into park, the doors on the other vehicles flew open. The members of the SWAT team scuttled to their positions, Colt M4 carbines trained on the bus pit. Ryan and Slidell ran, hunched low, Glocks at the ready.

As before, an advance team rushed into the buses first while, simultaneously, a cop drew his weapon and blasted the front security cameras. Gunfire told me the same was happening in the rear. I wondered why the cameras had been left intact last time. Had the search warrant required a nondestructive entry? Did the possibility of Olivia’s presence now make property damage acceptable? There was no one to ask.

Slidell, Ryan, and two uniforms convened by the stairs, bodies tense as barbed wire. Ryan laid a hand on the hood of the Ford, testing for heat. Shook his head.

Time seemed to freeze.

At last, two words spat from the device in my lap. “Premises secure.”

Slidell and the others thundered down the stairs.

Minutes crawled by.

Eyeballing the Ford, I thought about Andrea-Louisa Soto. Was it the car that ran her down at SWI?

I thought about Charlie Hunt. Frank Boldonado. Were we about to encounter their killer?

I thought about the first time I’d cooled my heels like this. I’d been goading Slidell today, but what if Ididsee someone trying to escape? Easy. I had the radio now. Besides, Skinny’s directive or not, I wouldn’t repeat my idiotic behavior.

Again and again, I checked my watch and worried my thumbnail raw.

My mind circled back to the figure I’d seen on that first trip. Was it Kramden I’d chased into the woods? If not Bobby Karl, then who?

I tried recalling details. Came up with little. Pumping legs. A hoodie. BO.

Twitchy with impatience, I scanned the woods rimming the valley. I could trace the figure’s path toward the trees and identify the stretch into which it had vanished. But where had it appeared? I closed my eyes to envision the scene.

My lids opened wide.

Yes!

Suddenly, I wasen fuegoto talk to Slidell and Ryan. I tried the radio. Got no response.

It took a lifetime until one of the uniforms emerged to signal me forward. Mae Pitluck. I’d worked with Mae before. Liked everything about her but the cloying smell of her cologne.

I sprinted to the stairs. Took them two at a time.

Slidell and Ryan were in the first bus, both flushed and breathing hard. Pitluck was off to one side. Skinny was letting the world know his level of unhappiness.

“—little snake slithered into some goddam pit. His piece-of-shit car’s sitting outside.”

“Maybe he went off with a friend?” Pitluck ventured.

“Kramden look like Mr. Popularity to you?” Slidell’s inability to control events had him light-years past polite.

“I have an idea.”

Three heads swiveled my way.

“I’ve been thinking about the day I chased the guy in the hoodie—”

“One of your more spectacularly stupid moves.”