Feast of Fools Page 0,59

at Michael. The other two men took up shooting stances.

Claire gasped.

"Out of the way," Detective Hess ordered Shane, with a jerk of his head. Shane didn't argue. He held up his hands and backed away. Michael turned and saw the cops aiming at him, and frowned.

"Let him go, Michael," Travis Lowe said. "Let's do this easy."

"What's going on?"

"One thing at a time. Let the kid up."

Michael removed his foot. Jason scrambled to a standing position and tried to run; Richard Morrell sighed, handed his shotgun to Joe Hess, and took off after him. As fast as Jason was, Richard was faster. He took him down in a flying tackle before he was halfway to the fence. He rolled Jason onto his back and handcuffed him with brutal efficiency, yanked him upright, and marched him back to where the other two policemen held Michael at gunpoint.

"What's going on?" Michael repeated. "He tries to kidnap Claire, and you come after me? Why?"

"Let's just say we're saving you from yourself," Detective Hess said. "You okay? You calm?"

Michael nodded. Hess lowered his gun, and so did Travis Lowe. Richard Morrell put Jason in the backseat of the police car.

"We got a tip," Hess continued, "that you'd gone berserk and were trying to kill your friends. But since I see they're all standing here alive and well, I'm guessing little Jason is the real problem."

Richard came back, wiping his hands on a handkerchief. Clearly, he didn't like touching Jason, either. "Did he break in?"

"No," Shane said. "He pulled a gun on us and grabbed Claire at the back door. He was trying to drive away with her. Michael stopped him."

Michael, Claire realized as her heartbeat started to slow, had also been shot six times in the chest at point-blank range. His loose white shirt had the blackened ragged holes to prove it, each one rimmed with a thin outline of red. She remembered Myrnin swiping the knife carelessly down his arm, laying open veins and arteries and muscles just to get a blood sample.

She couldn't be sure, but it didn't look like there was a mark on Michael's chest under the shirt, and he wasn't moving like a man with bullets buried inside. Not even one in shock.

Wow.

"What did he want?" Detective Hess asked. "Did he say?"

"He said he wanted to talk to me," Claire said. That much was true, but she didn't want to drag Oliver into this. It was enough of a mess already. "I think he really did want to. He just knew he wouldn't be able to do it here. I don't - I don't think he really meant to hurt me." This time.

Shane was looking at her like she'd grown a second head, one with serious brain damage. "It's Jason. Of course he meant to hurt you! Wasn't the gun pointed at your head a clue?"

He was right, of course, but - she'd seen the look in Jason's eyes, and it hadn't been the predatory glee she'd seen before when he was playing his little sadistic games. This had been flat-out desperation. She couldn't explain it, but she believed Jason.

This time.

Shane was still watching her with a frown. So was Michael. "Are you all right?" Shane asked, and folded his arms around her. The warm weight of his body pressed against hers, and she realized just how cold she felt. She was shivering, and her knees felt weak underneath her. I could collapse, she realized. And he'd catch me.

But she stayed on her own two feet, pulled back, and looked him in the eyes.

"I'm fine," she said. She kissed him. "Everything's fine."

Chapter Nine

Eve hadn't said a word, but she'd allowed Michael to take her back inside once the cops had pulled away; she'd taken only one look at her brother as he'd been hauled off in handcuffs, but that had been enough. On top of the shock of her father's death, and the trouble with Michael, Eve didn't seem to have any emotion left to spare.

Through common consent, none of them went to bed. They didn't eat. The four of them crammed onto the couch, grateful for the warmth and the company, and put on a movie. A scary one, as it turned out, but Claire was glad to focus on someone else's problems for a change. Being hunted by a city full of zombies might have seemed like a relief in some ways - at least you knew whom to run from, and whom to run toward. She