"Keep it," he said. "I don't need it."
"Eli."
"I'll come back for it."
She closed her eyes.
A tear slid down her cheek and froze halfway.
"Come back for it," she whispered. "Please."
He stood.
His legs were not legs anymore.
They were columns of ice that he commanded by force of will.
He took one step.
Then another.
Then he was walking out of the alley.
The cold without the parka was something he could not describe and would never try to describe to anyone for the rest of his life.
He walked the three blocks to the diner.
He pushed open the door.
The waitress behind the counter dropped the coffee pot she was carrying when she saw him.
"There's a woman," he said.
His voice sounded as if it were coming from very far away.
"Alley by the auto-parts store. Fifth and Main. Shot. Cold. Send help."
He turned and walked out before she could speak.
He did not go far.
He could not.
He made it across the street and into the doorway of a closed pawn shop.
There he sank into the shadows.
He watched.
Twelve minutes later, he heard sirens.
He watched the ambulance arrive.
He watched two paramedics run into the alley with a stretcher.
He watched them come out with Maggie strapped down, an oxygen mask over her face, his old canvas parka still tucked around her body.
He watched the doors close.
He watched the ambulance pull away, its lights painting the snow red and white.
Only then did he let himself collapse.
The pawn-shop doorway was deep enough that the wind could not reach him.
He pulled his knees to his chest.
He wrapped his arms around them.
He lowered his head.
The last thing he thought before the dark took him was that he hoped she would live because she had a husband named Beau who loved her.
And because somewhere in this terrible city there was a woman who had looked into his face and called him honey.
Forty miles to the west, in the fortified compound of the Detroit clubhouse, Beau Whitlock had not moved from the window for six hours.
He had called Maggie's cell at midnight.
Voicemail.
He called again at 12:15.
Voicemail.
At 12:30, he called the clinic.
At 12:40, he sent two prospects in a four-wheel-drive vehicle to search the route between the clinic and the house.
They reported back at 1:15.
No sedan.
No tracks visible beneath the new snow.
No sign of her.
At 1:30, Beau put on his cut and his coat.
He told Cyrus Boyd, in a voice that did not raise itself, that he wanted three search teams out before two.
He wanted them to start at the clinic and work west.
Every overpass.
Every ditch along the route.
He stood at the window of the clubhouse after that.
He watched the snow fall.
And he thought about something he had not thought about in a long time.
He had been a paramedic once.
A long time ago.
Before the cut.
Before Detroit.
Before any of it.
A different life in Lexington, Kentucky.
Twenty-two years old.
Working from a station house on the south side of town.
Riding with an older man named Dale who had taught him how to read a body.
Beau had been good at it.