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He was doing eighty, but he couldn’t see the truck. He supposed they might have cut their lights. “Penny, can you see the truck?”

“It’s in and out.”

“Emory, pass Penny your Remington so she can try to shoot their tires when I get us close enough. I want these morons alive.” The Remington bolt-action was Emory’s pride and joy, but he didn’t argue since Penny could out-shoot anyone in the department.

In that instant, a bullet slammed into the corner of the windshield, spiderwebbing the glass.

“Son of a bitch!” Emory yelled.

“Penny, pull back in!” Dix shouted as he slowed and swerved.

“Give me the rifle already, Emory. It’s time for some payback!”

“Dammit, Penny, be careful.”

She laughed, and checked that she had five live rounds. Penny was a lioness, Dix thought, no fear at all, and he sped up to get closer. He saw the truck, speeding as well, keeping the distance between them about constant. Penny fired once, twice, all five rounds, quick and controlled, into the dense falling snow.

Dix could barely make out the truck, but in that moment he saw a flash of light, low, near the back left tire.

He yelled to Penny, “I think you hit something, maybe a rear light.”

“Yeah, I think so, too,” Penny said as she jammed five more rounds Emory handed her into the Remington. “Hey, Emory, nice gun. This barrel is heavier than my mother-in-law.”

Claus yelled, “There’s a guy leaning out the passenger window. Watch out, Penny!” Penny had already pulled back in. They heard six rapid rounds, and the sound of two bullets pinging against their right fender and the front grill. Penny hung herself out the window again, fired another five rounds quickly. “We’ve got to get closer, Sheriff. I can’t see well enough to hit a tire.”

He was doing eighty in a near blizzard, and pressed the accelerator to ninety. He heard Claus shouting to Penny and firing his Glock out the driver’s-side rear window to give her cover or at least to distract the guys in the truck.

Penny fired again after Emory fed her more rounds, slowly this time so she wouldn’t drop them with her cold hands.

There was a ferocious roar. The flash he’d seen earlier flared up like a night beacon, a huge circle of blinding white reflected blue in the thick, spearing snow. Dix heard Penny cry out, saw Emory jerk her back in. A bullet had hit her just as the truck blew. The world froze, shrank to a pinpoint in the next second as he watched flames whip up through the thick swirling snow, orange as the prisoner overalls in the Loudoun County lockup, rip twenty, thirty feet into the sky, red and orange, thick black plumes of smoke rising all around them.

Dix was already pressing on the brake when the truck exploded in a deafening roar that sounded like the thunder of drums. They drove right through the fireball with debris flying at them. A slice of black metal scraped along the top of the cruiser, without breaking through the roof. A foot lower and it could have killed all of them.

Dix kept pressing the brake, trying to hold it steady until the cruiser slid into a slow skid. Dix prayed as he lifted his foot off the brake and steered into the skid, and slowly, finally, straightened the cruiser again.

“Sheriff! Ohmigod!”

Dix thought his heart would stop. A flaming tire was rolling toward them at a manic speed. Dix spun the wheel to the right and the tire crashed into their rear end, slammed them forward, then sharply to the left.

“Everyone, hang on!”

They ripped through the guardrail still moving fast and plowed into a field filled with snow. Small bits of ash rained down around them.

The cruiser came to a stop ten feet from the guardrail on fairly level ground, luckily well away from the thick stand of oak trees on the side of the road. A snowbank a good four feet deep stopped them dead.

Penny was slumped in the front seat, Claus’s arms holding her back from the windshield. Her head was bleeding.

Dix felt a moment of dizziness, shook it off. He pulled off Penny’s wool cap and pressed it hard against the wound at the side of her head.