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finished.” Breathing loudly, William crouched near Cavanaugh against a wall in the office. “The sniper that fired at you. Now that he missed, maybe he's gone.”
    Cavanaugh inched toward the undamaged eastern window, the one behind his desk, trying to get a glimpse of where the shooter might be hiding on the aspen-covered ridge. He eased closer to the window.
    Its screen bulged inward. Something snapped through the room and struck the leather chair that William had earlier sat in. The glowing object plowed through the chair and hit the wall. Smoke rose.
    Cavanaugh yelled into the walkie-talkie, “The shooter's using incendiaries!”
    Crawling in a direction that didn't make him a target through the window, he reached a closet, tugged at its door, and took out a fire extinguisher. As flames writhed from the chair and the wall, he aimed the nozzle and pulled the trigger. A pungent cloud spewed toward the fire, smothering it.
    “Still nothing.” Angelo's voice crackled from the walkie-talkie.
    “Same here,” Mrs. Patterson's voice said.
    “Nobody,” Jamie's voice reported.
    “He's definitely using a suppressor!” Cavanaugh told them. “I can't place where the shots are coming from!”
    With a snap as from a whip, another tracer tore through the screen, this one shattering a lamp. More smoke rose. Flames wavered. Cavanaugh pressed the extinguisher's trigger, another cloud of retardant gushing over the fire.
    William coughed from the assault to his throat and lungs.
    “Mrs. Patterson,” Cavanaugh said into the walkie-talkie. “There's a fire extinguisher in the kitchen. Get it ready.”
    20

    On the ridge, the sniper worked the bolt on his rifle, chambering another round.
    “Clever,” the spotter said, peering through binoculars at the haze in a ground-level room down there.
    “I'm just getting started. Check the attic window on this side.” The sniper shifted his aim toward the top of the building. With practiced ease, he pulled the trigger and absorbed the recoil as the rifle's sound suppressor made a noise similar to a fist hitting a pillow. Keeping his eye on the powerful scope, he saw a hole appear in the attic window. “Keep handing me ammunition.”
    “Still incendiaries?” the spotter asked.
    “What else? When you were a kid, didn't you like to play with fire?”
    “No, I just tortured animals.”
    “Tortured . . .? That's a joke, right?”
    “Of course.”
    “Man, sometimes you worry me.” The shooter squeezed off another round, then quickly reloaded.
    In an amazingly smooth, fast series, he pumped incendiary bullets through every window on the eastern side of the lodge's second level.
    21

    As the haze from the fire retardant settled, Cavanaugh said, “He's concentrating on this window. I can't take the chance of looking out. Let's go.” He tugged William toward the door.
    Entering the communal room, he saw Jamie crouched next to a screen door at the back, a log wall protecting her as she scanned the meadow and the ridge to the north. He noticed that she now wore her pistol in a holster on her right hip.
    “Even if the horses can't hear the shots, they sense what's going on,” Jamie said.
    “He'd better not hurt them.” Cavanaugh heard them whinnying in alarm. Then he realized that hurting the horses was exactly the right tactic for the shooter to use. Wound, but not kill. Make the horses scream in pain. Make Cavanaugh's rage get the better of him. Force him to do something foolish.
    No . He strained to channel his adrenaline, to make his body do what was necessary, to shut out every thought and emotion that didn't contribute to survival.
    “Come on, William.” Cavanaugh passed the long table and reached the staircase.
    “I'm going to try to get a shot from an upper window,” he told Angelo, who was braced next to the front screen door, staring toward the pine trees to the south.
    “We know the shooter's got friends. William saw them on the monitor,” Angelo said. “Why don't