A groan was emitted from Tara’s left. It was Tracy. He dropped his head into his waiting hands.

“I’m too late.” He lifted his head. Eyes, already bloodshot, were now laced with emotion. “I’m too late,” he repeated in a strained whisper.

Tara placed a hand on his arm. “What is it, Tracy?”

Everyone was looking at him now.

“The whole line of clues. I figured it out. I figured it out and it doesn’t matter.” An angry left hand smacked the surface of the dining room table. “I figured it out, and it doesn’t matter one damn bit!”

Brent asked anyway. “What does it mean?”

Tracy tried to collect himself. He was losing that battle, but he was still able to explain the meaning of the abbreviations and the acronym.

“Rem. Tran. It means remote transmitter. I figured that out after I determined what ABCS and Arm. Sen. finally meant.

“ABCS is an air bag control sensor. Arm. Sen. is arming sensor.”

Brent took it in. “They’re going to remotely deploy her air bag. She won’t have any chance of controlling the car when she’s impacted by it.”

Both hands came up to Tara’s face, cupping her nose and mouth. Her heart was beating so hard now that she couldn’t possibly be the only one who heard it.

“No,” she sobbed. “No. I won’t let it.” She grabbed her cell phone again and dialed Donna’s number.

“John,” directed Brent quietly, “pull up comscan.net. Let’s hear the traffic. Jenna, Tara… the two of you may want to go into another room.”

Tara looked at him, tears cascading down he cheeks, hardly able to breathe. She shook her head.

Jenna just put her head down on the table and began to weep.

12:44 A.M.

JIM CONNOR SAW the headlights far in the distance and turned the police cruiser’s light bar on, along with the vehicle’s “Wig-Wag” headlights. They would lend credence to Donna McNeill’s perception of an accident scene, and it was Dean McClain’s cue to start his truck’s engine.

It was time.

Connor looked at his watch and back at the approaching car. Impressed with her transit time, he chuckled. Maybe I should give the woman a speeding ticket, first.

His vehicle sat on a rise in the road, about a tenth of a mile past the impact area. He got out and began walking toward the intersection. He had to make sure he was close enough to trigger the air bag.

DONNA ROUNDED A bend and saw the flashing lights about a mile down the road.

“Please, please, please be alive,” she begged her brother.

She accelerated now that it was a straight stretch of road ahead of her. She advanced toward an intersection. A single blinking red light warned her that there was a stop sign that needed to be obeyed. She looked left and right as she continued her approach. There was no other traffic. She wouldn’t stop if she didn’t have to.

A quarter mile away she realized there was only a single emergency vehicle in the road. Even if the accident was on the other side of the rise she should still be able to see the moving glow of other emergency responder lights. Shouldn’t she?

Did they already get him out?

Donna was quickly approaching the intersection. She looked right one more time to…

An explosion of white pummeled her face. The intensity of the pain caused her body to react, attempting a rapid and deep inhalation. The material across her face prevented it.

Utter confusion. No focus.

A simultaneous involuntary reflex occurred; her right foot mashed the accelerator, giving the car a further burst of speed.

Air bag.

It was Donna’s final lucid thought before a massive impact pulverized the driver’s side of her car.

A flitter of realization began to form, but it was gone as quickly as it tickled the cognitive processes of her brain.

Milliseconds later, Donna McNeill’s senses were perfectly clear again. No pain. No car. No light.

She stood peering into blackness. She was someplace else. Someplace she couldn’t identify.

She smelled something.

Now she heard something.

It sounded like… like a blast furnace in the distance; a furnace that was moving closer.

Then there was the heat. Heat that was intensifying!

Donna identified the smell. Sulfur!

She screamed, without hope, into the darkness.

BROOK SHAW AND Chief Connor approached the accident on foot at the same time. The impact couldn’t have been more precisely placed. Her inability to steer the car had caused it to veer left into the intersection and Dean’s dump truck struck the woman’s door with its left corner, creating even more damage than if it had been a perpendicular hit. Both vehicles skidded off of the road and into a shallow ditch right where the two roads intersected.

The truck’s cab door opened. Out of the cab jumped Dean McClain, holding his left shoulder, but looking pretty good, considering the punishment that was just meted out.

The chief walked over to Donna McNeill’s car and peered over the hood and into the cab. Her body was a mangled mess. Blood splatter covered a great deal of the windshield.

He walked back to Brook and Dean. “How are you, McClain?”

“I’m going to feel it in the morning,” he complained. Then he reached up, pulled at the collar of his T-shirt, and looked down at his chest and stomach. “I think that’s going to need looked at. Pretty bad seatbelt burn.”

Brook climbed up into the truck’s cab, turned on the headlights, and pulled two queen-sized pillows from the floor. The truck hadn’t any air bags, so he had been forced to improvise.

“I’ll take these back to the farm,” she said.

“Okay,” said Connor, “you know what to do, McClain. If you can get to it, pull the receiver from the airbag’s control system, then I want you, not Brook, to make the call. I can’t think of a valid reason for her to be out here in proximity to the accident and then not be here when my patrolmen arrive to handle the scene. Brook and I are heading to the farm.”

12:47 A.M.

KAREN, TARA, AND Jenna…

Brent, John, and Tracy.

The six listened. Waiting for the words that they all knew were coming. Each squawk that came through the Internet police scanner on John’s laptop caused hearts to nearly seize. So far, though, it had only been chatter; just a little bit of late-night back and forth between two patrol officers that John knew.

Brent stood in front of the whiteboard, willing himself to do something other than wait. He scribbled the most recent answers onto the white surface.

Th. a.m. A.C. = Thursday morning, Appeasement Ceremony

• “AEA”: D.M. Rem. Tran. – ABCS & Arm. Sen. – Approx 1:00 a.m. -50

Donna McNeill - Remote Transmitter, airbag control sensor & arming sensor - 10-50 = accident w/fatality

• A.C.: S.O. BB/Cad. Pch. = Appeasement Ceremony: body bag/cadaver pouch

• Est. Ali. = Establish alibi?

-18! = MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

Brent realized that everything on the list had been discovered, with the exception of ‘AEA’ and ‘S.O.’

“Tara?” he said quietly.

She looked up at him, but he could tell that she didn’t really see him. The night was taking a brutal emotional toll on her. She looked awful; eyes glassy, red and puffy, her nose red. She had pushed her hair back with her hands so many times that it had begun to stand up in front like a cowlick.

“S.O.,” he said. “They have to be initials, too.”

Tara looked blankly at the board, then back at the table.

She wasn’t focusing.

“Tara,” he said more firmly. “I need you.”

Her eyes seemed to clear and she looked back at him again.

“Hmm?”

“S.O. They’re initials, too.”

She looked at the board again. Her lips began to part as her eyes focused on the two letters and realization struck.

Tara swallowed hard. She struggled to swallow again. Bolting from her chair, she rounded the table and ran out of the kitchen. Entering the living room, she rushed for the bathroom to the right along the wall that divided the living room from the kitchen.

All five of them listened as she expelled whatever contents had been in her stomach. That was all the confirmation that Brent needed.

“Gang, the second person on the list is Stephanie O’Leary.”

“The Picti woman?” asked Tracy, a shocked look on his face.

Before Brent could answer, he heard Karen’s voice yell through the computer.

“Get to her, Brent! You have to get to her!”

“John, you need to make the call. Call county and state. Officer needs assistance. Alert them to known criminal activity taking place at the Baird farm. Report it as an abduction, with intent to harm or kill.” He grabbed a piece of paper from near his laptop and handed it to Eldredge. “Here’s the address. Who is second in command in Pittston?”

“Lieutenant Given.”

“Have his number?”

“I can get it from dispatch.”

“Call him. I think he’s going to want to be there when Pittston’s policing authority drops into his lap.”

An anger, this time righteous, rose and burned at his core. “Connor is going down tonight.”

Knowing that he couldn’t be fired twice for the same offense, Brent decided not to remove his Millsville Police uniform. He walked to the front door and picked up his utility and gun belt, his .45 ACP semi-automatic still in the holster.

“Tracy, you don’t have to come, but if you do, you’re going to want to ask Eldredge if he wants assistance. I think he’s now going to have the leeway to grant you a ‘Jurisdiction Grantor’ via our cities’ mutual-aid agreement.”

Brent grabbed his M.P.D. duffel and riffled through it for a flashlight and tactical light. “Wish we had some body armor,” he mumbled out loud. He didn’t know that Jenna had moved into the living room behind him until he heard desperation play out in her voice.

“Body armor?” Her breath caught. She finally forced out, “Dad, no!”

Tara was out of the bathroom and tracking toward him. “Brent, don’t go alone.”

“I’m not going to be alo—”

That’s when they heard the words. The ones no one had wanted to hear, but all were expecting. Everyone’s attention traveled back into the dining room where a loud and clear voice emitted from John’s laptop speakers.

“All available units in the vicinity of Abrams Rd. and Rural Route 81, 10-50, multiple MVA. Roll EMS and Fire to location. Code 3.”

Brent could see Tara waver. He reached for her and caught her as she collapsed.

Jenna screamed, falling to her knees beside her. “Mom!”

Brent had the presence of mind to quiet his daughter. “Jenna, she’s okay. She’s o-k. She just passed out.” He looked over to the couch. “Honey, move your laptop for me.”

As Jenna got up and rounded the coffee table, Brent lifted his wife into his arms. From the kitchen, he could hear Karen’s voice calling out. “What’s going on? Someone tell me!”

Tracy moved in front of Tara’s laptop and quietly began the explanation.

Brent carefully placed Tara on the couch.

Turning to his daughter, Brent gave full, measured instructions so that Jenna didn’t have to think things through on her own in her current emotional state. “Jenna, go get a clean dishrag … and soak it … in cold water from the faucet.”

Less than a minute passed before Jenna was back. Brent folded the cloth and placed it on his wife’s forehead. Tara’s eyes fluttered open.

Blinking a couple of times and orienting herself, she finally whispered, “Brent, you’ve got to go. Go save Stephanie. Don’t let her die.” Tears were already streaming down the sides of her face.

He nodded, gave her a kiss, and stood up.

“Guys! We’ve got to roll!”