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  In his black-and-white, Cam turned the volume down on the radio so that he could hear the pebbles catching in the tires as he patrolled his town. He didn't have to worry about missing a call; his code leaped out at him no matter how low the dispatcher's voice was. He drove by his house for the third time that night, seeing the lights on in the dining room and the glow of the television through a picture window.

  Thanksgiving wasn't a bad one. Christmas got depressing; all those old folks setting fires in their kitchens or locking themselves out of their houses so they'd have someone to talk to, even if it was only a police officer. That was what he hated most about his job: he could not pretend, like the other citizens of Wheelock, that it was a quiet little New England town. He knew who abused his children, who beat his wife, who pushed drugs in front of the middle school, and who was most likely to be drunk at ten a.m. on a Wednesday. He knew his town like a mother knows her child.

  When he got tired of prowling Main Street, Cam pulled into the lot of the Wheelock Inn and turned on his radar. He thought of Mia and wondered if she was upstairs, if she was with Kafka, if she was doing anything special for the holiday.

  If she was thinking of him.

  When the radio crackled, he automatically set the car into drive. The sound of static translated into a coded language he understood effortlessly. A robbery, in progress, at the minimart.

  It didn't become any easier with time. Cam floored the gas pedal and went speeding down Main to the gas station on the edge of town, wondering if he'd catch the bastards before they lit out. The problem was, these were always the assholes who shot first and thought about it later.

  He'd responded silently for obvious reasons, and shut off his reds as he came within a mile of the minimart. Through the plate glass Cam could see Gordo Stuckey, the teenager who worked there most afternoons, prone on the floor, his hands jerking spasmodically with his sobs.

  Where the hell was his backup? C.J. was on, somewhere, and Wheelock wasn't that big a town.

  Pulling his Smith and Wesson from its leather casing, he held it arm's length in front of him and slunk along the front of the building. There were two men inside, one overweight and eating a Twinkie while he pinned Gordo to the floor with his gun, the other shoveling money out of the cash register into a Friends of the Wheelock Library tote bag.

  Pointing his gun at the guy standing over Gordo, Cam eased his way in through the door. There are two of them, some voice in his head said. There are two of them, but you don't know if the second one has a gun, and C.J. is coming.

  "Put down your weapon," Cam said.

  The man laughed. "I don't fucking think so."

  As Cam took a step forward, the man who had been emptying the register raised another pistol and leveled it at Cam's head. "Maybe you should listen to him, no?"

  Cam raised his hands as the one at the register came forward to relieve him of his own weapon. Fuck fuck fuck, he thought. And then a non sequitur: But it's Thanksgiving.

  The man walked around the counter, past the coffee machine with the Styrofoam cups and lids and the milk decanter that always leaked onto Cam's regulation black boots. He slipped and landed on his back, and the gun went sailing under the metal shelving that held the rolls and bread.

  "Drop it," Cam yelled, pointing his gun at the second man. On the floor, Gordo was whimpering.

  He felt, rather than saw, the moment when the man went to pull the trigger. There was a displacement of the air around him, then an alteration of pressure that compressed his chest and burst upon his eardrums.

  His own shot landed in the man's shoulder and sent the robber's bullet wild, shattering the tempered glass window of the minimart into a conflagration of spiderwebs. "Don't move," Cam shouted, as the accomplice inched toward the rolls.

  By the time CJ. arrived, Cam had them sitting back to back, cuffed to the newspaper rack. "Shit," C.J. said. He looked Cam up and down. "Shit," he said again.

  "There's a gun under the bread aisle." Cam wearily rubbed the back of his neck. "Ambulance is on its way." He nodded to the back storeroom. "I'll impound the car. Gordo Stuckey'll come down to the station to give a report after he changes."

  "Pissed himself?"

  Cam nodded. C.J. walked toward the two prisoners. "I'll take them to the lockup." He knelt in front of the wounded man, who spat. Then he looked up at Cam. "Were you aiming for the shoulder, or did you miss?"

  Cam snorted and walked out to the black-and-white. It had been all of seven minutes.

  He was still dazed as he pulled into the station. He had to file a report, he had to account for the discharge of his gun, he had a million and one things to do now that these two lowlifes had decided to infiltrate his town on Thanksgiving. But instead, he called into the dispatcher and announced that he was going home, that C.J. would be back with the prisoners shortly. He suggested calling one of the part-time cops in for the rest of the night, just in case these guys had friends.

  Then Cam walked out to his car, which was parked behind the station. He sat down and gripped his hands to the wheel as his entire body started to shake. His vision bobbed and his shoulders grew rigid. He briefly thought of his house, overrun with people he had no desire to see, bright and holiday-happy. With great care, he drove less than fifteen miles an hour down the road to the Wheelock Inn.

  Mia opened the door and the cat slipped from her arms. As she reached across the threshold to grab Kafka back, she noticed that Cam was trembling, a violent, frantic shaking that she had never seen before on a grown man.

  She dropped the cat, who ran down the hall toward the ice machine. "What happened?" she asked, drawing Cam into the room. She was expecting the worst: My mother died. I have cancer. Allie knows.

  Cam sank down on the bed and Mia crawled behind him, cradling him as best she could in spite of his size. He told her about the dispatcher's call, about how he'd been sitting in the parking lot just below her window, about the robber with the braided tail of hair and the way Gordo had shivered on the floor and the spill of milk which had ruined his shoes and now had saved his life.

  When there were no more words, Cam opened his eyes. Mia was lying on the bed facing him, curled into a fetal position just as he was. Her arms were tangled with his, her feet were caught behind his ankles. He was reminded of those Chinese ring puzzles that you would work on for hours to pull free. Just try, he thought. You just try.

  With the fear gone, his body seemed too big for his skin. He was bursting. He rolled Mia onto her back and kissed her, crushing himself against her and driving his tongue into her mouth. It was not the gentle lovemaking he was used to with her; it was the quickness and fury he'd always had with Allie, and somewhere in the back of his mind he noticed how easily, in certain dangers, the lines could be crossed.

  He never took off his shirt. Mia tightened herself around him, stroking his hair and squirreling closer until the rhythm became a slow rock. At the last moment, he pulled out of her, spilling across the neat white sheets of the bed.

  "I'm sorry," he said.

  Mia smiled at him. "Imagine. A cop who's just no good at protection."

  He brushed her curls off her face. "I missed you." He leaned down to kiss her neck, and shifted slightly away from her. His finger reached down to trace an angry mark over her breast, a welt left by the badge that had been on his shirt, digging into her skin.

  Mia curled her way off the bed and walked into the bathroom. She stared at the welt. "It doesn't hurt," she assured him. "It'll go away." But it remained livid and red for the three hours Cam stayed in her room, through the second time they made love and a long, hot soak in the tub. In the end, before he left, she pulled on her thick, gray sweatshirt again; as if that might hide it, as if either of them might forget that she had been branded his.

  THIRTEEN

  It had taken Graham MacPhee over ten minutes to get up the nerve to call the Chief of Police. Ten minutes of rubbing his palms against his expensive trousers and getting Hannah's voice on