She pointed the remote control at the windshield, pressed the button, and jubilantly 
said, “Yes,” when the gate began to swing inward.
  She let up on the accelerator and tapped the brake pedal, giving the heavy barrier time 
to come all the way open before she got close enough to obstruct it. The gate moved 
ponderously.
  Fear beat through her, like the frantic wings of a dark bird, and she was suddenly sure 
that Vess was going to pull his car into the end of the driveway, blocking them, just as 
the gate finished opening.
  But she drove between the posts to a two-lane blacktop highway that led left and right. 
No car was visible in either direction.
  To the north, left, the highway climbed into a forested night, toward ragged 
moon-frosted clouds and stars, as if it were a ramp that would carry them right off the 
planet and up into deepest space.
  To the south, the lanes descended, curving out of sight through fields and woods. In 
the distance, perhaps five or six miles away, a faint golden radiance lay against the 
night, like a Japanese fan on black velvet, as if a small town waited in that direction.
  Chyna turned south, leaving Edgler Vess's gate wide open. She accelerated. Twenty miles 
an hour. Thirty. She held the motor home at forty miles an hour, but she found it easy to 
imagine that she was going faster than any jet plane. Flying, free.
  Although she was suffering uncounted pains and was plagued by a degree of bone-deep 
exhaustion that she'd never before experienced, her spirit soared. “Chyna Shepherd, 
untouched and alive,” she said, not as a prayer but as a report to God.
  They were in a rural stretch of countryside, with no houses or businesses to either the 
east or the west of the road, no lights except the glow in the distance, but Chyna felt 
batbed in light.
  Ariel continued to clutch her head, and her sweet face remained tormented.
  “Ariel, untouched and alive,” Chyna told her. “Untouched and alive. Alive. It's okay, 
honey. Everything's going to be okay.” 
  She checked the odometer. “It's three miles behind us and getting farther behind every 
minute, every second."
  They crested a low hill, and Chyna squinted in the sudden flare of oncoming headlights. 
A single car was approaching uphill in the northbound lane.
  She tensed, because it might be Vess. The clock showed three minutes to midnight. Even 
if it was Vess, and though he would be certain to recognize his own vehicle, Chyna felt 
secure. The motor home was a lot bigger than his car, so he wouldn't be able to run her 
off the highway. In fact, she'd be able to smash the hell out of him, if it came to that, 
and she wouldn't hesitate to use the motor home as a battering ram if she couldn't outrun 
him.
  But it wasn't Vess. As the car drew nearer, she saw something on the roof, first 
thought that it was a ski rack, but then realized that it was an array of unlit emergency 
beacons and a siren-bullhom. Last night, as she had followed Vess north on Highway ioi 
toward redwood country, she had hoped to encounter a police car-and now she had found one.
  She pounded the hom, flashed the headlights, and braked the motor home. “Cops!” she 
told Ariel. “Honey, see, everything's going to be all right. We found ourselves some 
cops!"
  The girl huddled forward, snared in her harness.
  AL in response to her horn and the flashing lights, the police officer switched on his 
emergency beacons, although he didn't use his siren.
  Chyna pulled to the side of the road and stopped. “They can get Vess before he 
discovers we're gone and tries to run."
  The cruiser had already passed her. She had glimpsed the words SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT in 
the crest on the driver's door, and they were the two most glorious words in the English 
language.
  In the sideview mirror, she watched the car as it hung a wide U-turn in the middle of 
the road. It came past her in the southbound lane now, and it coasted to a stop thirty 
feet ahead, on the graveled shoulder.
  Relieved and exhilarated, Chyna opened her door and jumped down from the driver's seat. 
She headed toward the cruiser.
  She could see that only one officer was in the car. He was wearing a trooper's hat with 
a wide brim. He didn't seem to be in any hurry to get out.
  The revolving emergency beacons cast off gouts of red light that streamed across the 
moonlit pavement, and splashes of blue light as in a turbulent dream, while the tall 
trees by the side of the road appeared to leap close and then away, close and then away. 
A wind came out of nowhere to harry dead leaves and clouds of grit across the blacktop 
as though the strobing beacons themselves had disturbed the stillness.
  Almost halfway to the car, where the policeman still sat behind the steering wheel, 
Chyna remembered the files in Vess's study, and suddenly they meant something far 
different from what they had meant before, as did the handcuffs.
  She stopped. “Oh, Jesus.” She knew. Chyna spun away from the black-and-white and 
sprinted back to the motor home. In the flashing blue and red light, weighed down by the 
fat moon, she felt as if she were running slow motion in a dream, through air as thick as 
custard.
  When she reached the open door she glanced toward the patrol car. The cop was getting 
out.
  Gasping, Chyna climbed up into the driver's seat, pulling the door shut behind her.
  The officer had gotten out of the cruiser. Edgler Vess. Chyna released the emergency 
brake. Vess opened fire.
  Sheriff Edgler Foreman Vess, youngest sheriff in the county's history, watches the side 
mirror as Chyna Shepherd hurries along the shoulder of the highway toward his patrol car, 
and he wonders if this woman is, after all, his blown tire, the destroyer of his bright 
future. When she abruptly stops, whips around, and races back through the flashing lights 
toward the motor home, Mr. Vess's alarm increases.
  At the same time, he is enormously taken with her and is not entirely sorry that they 
met. 
  He says aloud, “What a clever bitch you are.
  Getting out of the black-and-white, he draws his revolver, intending to put a round in 
one of her legs. He still has some hope of salvaLyinLy the situation. If he can disable 
her and get her into the motor home before another motorist comes along, all will be 
well. What fim he will have when he wraps her in chains again. Ariel won't lift a hand to 
help this woman, and if she tries, he'll pistol-whip the little bitch into submission; 
that will spoil the plans he has for her, but he's been looking at her beautiful face for 
a year, wanting to smash it, and the smashing will b,* enormously satisfying even in 
these circumstances.
  Although Vess is quick getting out of the car, Chyna is faster. By the time he raises 
the revolver, she is behind the wheel of the motor home, drawing the door shut.
  He can't take any chances now, can't risk merely wounding her to have fan with her 
later. She has to be wasted. He pumps six rounds through the windshield.
  When Chyna saw the gun coming up, she shouted, “Get down!”
  She pushed Ariel's head below the windshield, throwing herself sideways, half out of 
her seat, across the open console. She covered the girl as best she could, squeezing her