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“Not so all powerful as he thinks,” the sheriff said. “Let’s tell him so. Say, ‘I am not Mad Dog.’”

  Mrs. Kraus did it, and this time the character didn’t respond. It just stood there, breathing deeply, occasionally rolling broad shoulders.

  “That stopped him in his tracks,” Mrs. Kraus said.

  A bright pink message appeared at the bottom of their screen. “I guess you can’t sleep any better without me than I can without you. Unless you’re about to log off, I’ll come help you run some quests.”

  The message was from a character named Pamdora.

  “That pink,” Mrs. Kraus said. “That’s a whisper. Supposed to be a way for one character to talk to another without anyone else in the game knowing.”

  “You suppose that’s Pam Epperson?” Pam was a young lady from Benteen County who’d left Kansas to play in a piano bar in Las Vegas, but not before starting an unlikely romance with the sheriff’s brother.

  “Makes sense,” Mrs. Kraus said, “since she gave Mad Dog the game and got him started playing it.”

  “You can whisper back, right?”

  Mrs. Kraus nodded.

  “Just warn her then, ‘trouble with Fig Zit.’ Maybe she already knows about this guy.”

  Mrs. Kraus sent the reply, but just as she did, Fig Zit spoke again.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Kraus,” the creature said. “And Englishman, too, I presume.”

  ***

  Heather peeked out the front window of Ms. Jardine’s living room. The uniformed TPD officer who had followed them back to the house was still out there, parked in the driveway immediately behind Ms. Jardine’s Prius. They might not be prisoners, but the police weren’t planning to let them come and go without knowing about it.

  Deputy Heather had called her dad and reported the circumstances. Live with it and get some sleep, her father said. Tomorrow might get hectic and he was working some angles back in Kansas. He’d keep her posted if anything important happened.

  Ms. Jardine offered Heather a drink. Something to calm her down and help her get that sleep. Heather declined. Her host poured a glass of cabernet sauvignon for herself and curled up on one of her sofas. Heather was a little surprised not to be offered a hit on the bong that sat in front of the fireplace, but apparently it was there for decorative rather than functional reasons. It certainly fit the décor, which Heather decided was best described as delayed flower child. Paisleys and beaded curtains predominated.

  Ms. Jardine lived just east of the university in a trendy neighborhood she laughingly referred to as Barrio Volvo. On the less desirable fringes, actually, where student rentals had become as common as owner-occupied properties. Parking was such a problem near the university, that Ms. Jardine had been forced to provide Heather with a guest permit to put in the front window of her rental car. That vehicle was right out front, not twenty feet from the police car. Getting out of the house wouldn’t be a problem. It had a back door. A gate led to an alley behind. But Heather wasn’t going to find another car in which she could go chasing after her uncle, not at this time of night. The only ones available to her were Jardine’s Prius and her rental Kia. Both under the watchful eye of the officer parked in the driveway.

  “You really should try to get some rest,” Ms. Jardine said.

  Heather wasn’t interested. Not with Mad Dog the object of a citywide manhunt.

  “I’ve got to go look for him,” she insisted. Mad Dog was out there somewhere, on his own in a strange city. And a killer was on the loose. Worse yet, Captain Matus seemed convinced Mad Dog and the killer were one and the same. The Captain had seemed angry enough to bring in Mad Dog conveniently dead so all the troublesome problems of proving his guilt wouldn’t be necessary.

  Ms. Jardine listened sympathetically as Heather shared her worries. “I don’t know how you expect to find him,” she said. But, in the end, she agreed to help Heather slip TPD’s surveillance.

  A few minutes later, Heather exited the back door, used one wall of the house to block the policeman’s view, and waited at the edge of the front yard for Ms. Jardine’s grand performance. It came right on schedule. The front door flew open and Jardine ran down the driveway in a convincing state of hysterics. The cop leaped out of the car and she threw herself into his arms.

  “Please help,” Ms. Jardine cried. “Heather, she’s gone.”

  “What?” the officer said. “How?”

  “Out the back and down the alley. Come. Help me stop her. It’s not safe for a young girl out there.” Jardine dragged the cop up the driveway toward the back yard. The man resisted for a second, looking around as if deciding what to do.

  “Hurry. I think we can still catch her.”

  That did it. The officer followed Jardine around the other side of the house and Heather slipped out of hiding and rushed to her rental. She fumbled with the unfamiliar lock and then slid behind the wheel. Ms. Jardine and the officer were still behind the house as she guided the car into the street and aimed it toward the nearest exit from the neighborhood.

  Ms. Jardine had said Tucson covered something like two-hundred square miles. That was at least a thousand less than the jurisdiction she was used to working back in Kansas. Two-hundred square miles was hardly worth mentioning, she told herself. She didn’t believe it, but at least she was out here. She had a chance.

  ***

  How can Fig Zit know who we are?” Englishman asked.

  Mrs. Kraus had an answer. “He’s a hacker. The security on this game’s pretty high, but I get people whispering to me about how I can buy gold or high-level equipment for cash all the time. This guy’s just at another level.”

  “You’re saying he’s gotten into your account with War of Worldcraft?”

  “Has to be.”

  “But how? You’re not even playing your own character.”

  Mrs. Kraus threw her hands up in exasperation. “Hell, I’m no geek. I don’t understand how this thing works. But Mad Dog and I turned out to be on the same server. It’s not like Fig Zit had to sort through all the millions of people who play this game around the world. Or maybe he did. I don’t know. But somehow he got into WOW’s files and used some kind of program to find me. After that, guessing you’re here would be easy.”

  “Only if he knows Benteen County,” Englishman said.

  “This has been interesting,” Fig Zit said, “but I’ve wasted too much time on you little people. Prepare to die.”

  A pink message appeared in the bottom of the county’s monitor. “Pam the Appalling, to the rescue—with dragons. Hurry back from the graveyard and help me kill him as he respawns.”

  “What do we do?” Englishman asked.

  “Prepare to die, like he said,” Mrs. Kraus said, typing madly. “Looks like Pam’s rescue effort will fry us just as sure as Fig Zit’s thunderbolts.”

  “Vampire wizards suck!” Mrs. Kraus’ message appeared in a little bubble over Madwulf’s head.

  Fig Zit laughed. “Very funny, Mrs. Kraus. You are a…how does your generation put it? Oh yes, a caution. You almost make me hate to do this.” The creature began rubbing his hands together, a sure sign he was about to cast a spell that would finish them.

  “Here we go,” Mrs. Kraus said. But she wasn’t talking about the fate Fig Zit had in mind for them. She was pointing over the monster’s shoulder at a figure astride a winged horse, and, just behind her, a host of monstrous flying lizards belching smoke and flames.

  “Lordy,” she said, “I think Pam’s managed to bring Puff the Magic Dragon’s Elite Reptilian Air Force.”

  Fig Zit hurled a flaming snowball and Madwulf’s health all but disappeared. Not quite dead yet, Mrs. Kraus struck the monster with a double-bladed ax and smiled as Pam sailed by. It didn’t stop Fig Zit from slamming them again, but, as Madwulf toppled, Puff and his army peeled off from their pursuit of Pam and began bathing the Vampire Wizard with their fiery breaths and rending him with scalpel-sharp teeth and claws.

  “Watch,” Mrs. Kraus said, p
ausing before sending Madwulf to the local graveyard again.

  Fig Zit surprised her by killing five dragons and seriously damaging the last two before his corpse toppled and lay beside their own.

  She hit the button and they were back at the cemetery, their spirit resurrected by the angel-like creature that resided there. They hadn’t taken a dozen steps when Fig Zit’s voice boomed out of the speakers once again.

  “Damn you, Pamela Epperson. You should have minded your own business and had a good night’s sleep in Las Vegas. Now I’m going to have to revenge myself on you, as well as some meddlesome folks in Benteen County. No more fun and games, little people. This ends now.”

  And, suddenly, they weren’t in the magical forest of towering waterfall trees anymore. Their screen had flashed back to the log-in page where a message declared, “Server Down!”

  “I think we pissed him off,” Englishman said.

  ***

  The professional wasn’t supposed to kill this one. Just make an impression, scare her. That didn’t rule out a bit of maiming, he decided. Lopping off a few fingers with the hatchet, for instance, should accomplish his assigned task while sending the client a little message.

  The back door opened on a dark utility room. Just beyond, he found a kitchen—clean, nearly scent free. It hadn’t been cooked in lately. Next was a small dining room, and on its right, a living room that was more functional than ornamental. Not your run-of-the-mill woman living alone, he decided.

  The living room was lit. A folded blue blazer lay on the arm of a wingback chair near the front door. A purse sat on the cushion and a cell phone was plugged in for recharging on an adjacent end table.

  At the far end of the long narrow living room was an arch, like the one he’d passed through as he left the dining area. Opening on a hallway to bedrooms and baths, he decided. And someone was moving around back there. He could hear her coming his way. Her shadow appeared a moment before the light went out behind her. He launched himself toward where she was about to be—where she suddenly was.

  She was handsome in a kind of formal manner, but not pretty. Her slacks had rigid starched pleats down the front of each leg. Her blouse was equally perfect and without wrinkles. But what caught his attention and stopped him in his tracks was the badge that was clipped to her belt, and the holstered pistol just behind it. His employer really should have told him she was a cop.

  It was too far to cross the living room and get to her before she could draw her weapon. Maybe he could get back out through the dining room before she pulled it and fired. It would be close. Too close. That left one possibility.

  “Mad Dog?” she whispered. At least the makeup had been effective and she wasn’t going for the gun yet.

  He smiled, half turned from her, and then came around with the hatchet. He threw it at the center of her chest. Getting away trumped fulfilling the terms of his contract. He wouldn’t mind if his aim proved true, but he didn’t stay to see the results. He had thrown axes before, but it wasn’t one of his primary skills. Instead, he used the throwing motion to pivot and dive back across the dining room toward the exit. When a bullet whined by his ear and took a chip out of the trim around a kitchen cabinet, he knew the ax had missed.

  ***

  The ax missed Parker’s left hand by inches. By then, her right was full of SIG-Sauer. A nine mm slug tore into the elaborate woodwork just inside her kitchen but, like the ax, failed to hit its target. She followed him, moving fast, but not so fast as to go through that kitchen door without being sure he wasn’t waiting just inside it, counting on her lack of caution.

  The back door slammed. She went through the kitchen and the utility room and kicked the back door open. He was across the yard, swinging over her jagged fence top on the branch of an overhanging tree. She had a shot—one she would normally have taken—but behind him was a neighbor’s house. The bedroom of a pair of pre-teen girls was just the other side of the spot where he landed. And then, as if he realized what was preventing her from firing, he was sprinting straight toward that home until a pair of garbage bins and an adobe wall gave him a chance to change directions and disappear from view.

  “I thought you wanted to surrender to me,” she called. A mockingbird was the only one to answer. She couldn’t even hear his retreating footsteps.

  Parker went back inside and grabbed a phone and paused at nine-one, not adding the final digit. Something bothered her. Something was wrong and she wasn’t quite sure what.

  She put the phone back in its cradle and returned to the living room. The ax had hit the wall head first and left a hole in her plaster, but it hadn’t stuck. It lay on the floor and she went to it, knelt, and examined it without touching it.

  Here was the problem, she realized. In the few times she’d seen Mad Dog decked out in his Cheyenne paraphernalia, he’d never been armed. No knife, no bow and arrow, certainly no ax. Nor had she ever heard of him carrying such things.

  She bent, looked closer. Sighed.

  She didn’t know who had just tried to kill her, but it wasn’t Harvey Edward Mad Dog. Of that, she was sure. This hatchet had a Wal-Mart price tag on the butt of the handle. Wal-Marts had doomed many small towns in rural America. She’d heard Mad Dog’s rant on that subject often enough to know there was no way he’d use one of their products.

  ***

  The fuck you doin’?”

  Mad Dog thought the pretty black woman in the long t-shirt might calm down if she could have some malt liquor like the rest of them. He offered her his can but she didn’t want it.

  “And what’s this crazy motherfucker with the black paint on his face doin’ in my living room in the middle of the night?”

  “He’s not crazy,” one of Mad Dog’s new friends told her, neglecting the other epithet. “He’s leading us in a kind of ceremony to help us get right with the spirits and shit.”

  “You already right with all the spirits you need,” she said, “way you slurring your words.”

  “I’m sorry we woke you.” Mad Dog thought he really should have argued against group drumming, but their host had that African drum right there in the living room.

  “Aw, honey,” the man said. “Calm down now. What we’re doing here’s important. This man, he’s a shaman and he’s got himself some trouble. If we help him, maybe we can help ourselves, too.”

  “I’ll shaman your ass, you don’t get these no-goods out of my house this very minute.”

  “We don’t really need the drum,” Mad Dog said. “We could just sit in a circle and be quiet and focus on the spirit world.”

  The woman stalked across the room and bent over and put her face inches from Mad Dog’s.

  “What part of ‘out’ don’t you understand, Mr. Shaman?”

  “I guess we should go,” Cherokee said.

  The circle of friends stood, none too steady, and reached out to help Mad Dog to his feet.

  “Is gettin’ kinda late,” one said.

  “My wife will be on me like black on rice, I don’t get my ownself home,” another agreed.

  The group found themselves on the front porch, the door slammed behind them almost before they knew it.

  “You need a ride?” Cherokee asked Mad Dog.

  “Yeah,” he said, “only I don’t know where.”

  “That’s okay,” Cherokee said. “I’m probably too drunk to find it, anyway. And I sure don’t need to be getting no DUI.” He handed Mad Dog his keys. “That red Chevy over there. You drive and we’ll take a couple of these drunk brothers home.”

  “I don’t know,” Mad Dog said. He was a little woozy himself, though he’d just begun his second can of malt.

  “You’ll be fine,” Cherokee said. “Besides, after what you told us, if the man stops us, he ain’t gonna breathalize you. Hell, cop killer like you—they’ll shoot you dead before you can get outta the car.”

  ***

  Both lines to the Benteen County Sheriff’s office rang simultaneously. The sheriff nodded to Mr
s. Kraus. “Looks like we’re on duty early today,” he said. He maneuvered his walker over to his desk while Mrs. Kraus got the first line. He picked up the second and said, “Sheriff English.”

  “Hi, Daddy.” It was Heather. “Guess what I did?”

  He didn’t feel like guessing and didn’t get the chance when Mrs. Kraus held up her phone and told him, “Tucson Police Department for you.”

  “Can you hang on, honey?” he asked. “I’ve got an official call on the other line.”

  “I may know what that’s about,” she said, “but go ahead and take it. It might save me some explaining.”

  He didn’t like the sound of that, but he put her on hold and punched the button for the other line.

  “I thought we had an agreement to cooperate on this investigation,” a voice said. He didn’t recognize it. It wasn’t one of the detectives he’d talked to before. Nor was it that Sewa Police captain.

  He’d opened his end of the conversation the same way he’d answered his daughter’s call. “I identified myself. Perhaps you could extend me the same courtesy.”

  “This is Deputy Chief Dempsey, Tucson Police Department. Acting chief at the moment, until the regular chief gets back from a conference. I’m told we had an agreement. You’d do what you could to talk your brother into surrendering and we wouldn’t hold your daughter if she’d stay with the Jardine woman.”

  “That’s correct.” The sheriff thought he knew why Heather was calling now.

  “That doesn’t seem to be working on this end. Your daughter made a run for it and got away.”

  “Do you plan to charge her?”

  “Not yet. But we can change that, put out a warrant if she doesn’t turn herself back in, and damn soon.”

  The sheriff nodded. “I see.”

  “Then there’s another matter,” Dempsey said. “You suggested your brother might be willing to surrender to our Sergeant Parker.”

  “I intend to suggest it to him when he calls back. He hasn’t done that yet.”

  Dempsey’s tone made it clear he didn’t believe the sheriff. “Sergeant Parker had a visitor a few minutes ago. A man covered in black body paint with white lightning bolts on his arms, legs and face. He broke into her house and tried to kill her with a hatchet.”