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out there?"
    "I don't know." Lizzie noticed the cow break into a run away from the trees. "We should hurry."
    Keira pointed in the same direction. "There."
    Lizzie had no time to answer. A man--compact, wearing a black ski cap--burst out into the open and charged through the gap in the circle.
    "He's after you," Lizzie said. "Run, Keira. Run!"
    "I can't leave you--"
    "I can fight. Go. Please."
    The man lunged for Keira, but she darted away from him, diving behind one of the standing stones.
    He swore and pivoted after her. He had an assault knife in his right hand. Lizzie leaped into his path and swung her backpackhard against the knife blade, using her own momentum to add force to the blow. With a grunt of surprise, he lost his balance and stumbled backward over a protruding rock. Before he could regain his footing, she hit his knife again with her pack, following up with a sharp, low side kick to his left knee.
    He yelped in pain and dropped the knife. Lizzie knew she had to press her advantage and quickly got in another low kick, scraping her foot down his shin. She stomped on his instep, not thinking, relying on her instincts and training. She'd practiced these moves a thousand times.
    The attacker went down onto his back, writhing in the mud, manure and wet grass. Lizzie snatched up his knife before he could get to it and dropped onto her knees, putting the blade to his throat as he rolled onto his side and tried to get up.
    "Keep your hands where I can see them," she said, "and don't move."
    He complied immediately, his breathing shallow, as if he were afraid she'd cut him with the knife if he gulped or panted. One side of his face was pressed into the mud.
    Lizzie turned the edge of the blade so that he could feel it against the thin skin over his carotid artery. "Do as I say or you're dead. Do you understand?"
    "Aye. I understand."
    He spoke with an Irish accent. A local hire, maybe. He could be faking the accent. Lizzie could manage a decent Irish brogue herself, and she was born in Boston. He was in his early to mid-thirties, with a jagged scar along his outer jaw that looked as if he'd earned it in a previous knife fight gone bad.
    "You've broken my damn knee," he said.
    "I doubt that."
    Despite his pain, he spoke without fear, as if he knew it wasonly a matter of time before he'd get his knife back and complete his assignment.
    Kill Keira Sullivan.
    Lizzie had never killed anyone herself and hoped she never had to, but she knew how to do it. Her father had seen to that.
    "I'll check him for more weapons," Keira said.
    Lizzie nodded, breathing hard.
    Keira knelt in the muck and patted the man down from head to toe with a steadiness and efficiency that didn't surprise Lizzie. Keira's uncle was a homicide detective in Boston, and Keira herself had stood up to a killer in June.
    She produced another assault knife in her search but no other weapons.
    Lizzie controlled her reaction even as her thoughts raced. Norman wasn't waiting. He was acting now. Had he specified what he wanted done to the woman Simon loved? How he wanted her killed?
    Undoubtedly, Lizzie thought. Norman would relish such details and control.
    Was he going after Simon in Boston? John March?
    Who else?
    She maintained her grip on the knife. "The man who hired you isn't just after Keira. Who's next?"
    He hardly breathed. "I don't know anything."
    "My friend, you need to be straight with me." She paused before asking again, "Who's next?"
    He tried to swallow against the sharp edge of the knife. "It doesn't matter. You're too late. I can't stop what's going to happen. Neither can you."
    "That's not what I asked."
    He carefully spat bits of grass and dirt from his mouth. "Go to hell. I'll not answer a single question you put to me."
    He was calling her bluff. Lizzie didn't know if she should cut him--if it would do any good in getting him to talk.
    She heard a dog growl just outside the stone circle, a low, fierce sound that wasn't from Eddie's springer