Kin

-30-

Elkwood, Alabama

October 2nd, 2004

“Sheriff McKindrey?”

McKindrey jumped, and put a hand to his chest, though the only thing he was likely to suffer today was heartburn after the burritos and refried beans he’d put away not an hour before. Still, the jolt had been enough to remind him that three beers combined with the soft chuckling of the water in the creek had made him drowsy, and persuaded him there was no need to be on his guard. Hell, even if a catfish nibbled on the bait currently floating around out there on the end of his line, he wasn’t going to be fussed, and the slight chill to the breeze hadn’t been enough to penetrate his languor. To him, the act of fishing was simply that: an act. The peace and quiet, the ambience, and of course, the beer, were the real draw. He was seldom bothered by anyone down here, but just as he’d been about to doze off and let the folding chair accept his weight, he’d heard feet crunching upon the dry earth of the bank, and then the voice.

He scratched his head and wondered how it was that a Podunk next-to-dead town like Elkwood always managed to have something somewhere that needed attending to, usually when he was in no mood to do anything other than get drunk.

Annoyed, he sat up in the chair, felt it wobble beneath him and stamped his feet down on the grass to stabilize himself. It wouldn’t do to end up flat on his ass in front of someone who might have urgent business. He craned his neck around and squinted at his visitor.

Quickly, he rose.

“Yes?”

Strangers meant trouble. In all his time in Elkwood, he had yet to see one that wasn’t. Even if they themselves weren’t the source of it, it wasn’t long finding them. And when that happened, McKindrey ended up with stress headaches and high blood pressure, which frequently left him short of breath and sweating like a hog in a heat wave, though Doc Wellman had liked to pin those symptoms on his excess weight. Whatever the culprit, he grew sensitive to sound and his bowels got a mind of their own whenever he found himself forced to weather the scrutiny and interminable questions from severe looking troopers, investigators and officials, all of whom looked at him like he was some dumb yokel who liked to sit around all day chewing chaw and diddling his sister. True, he supposed he wasn’t as well-educated as some of the suits who showed up to throw names like Quantico at him—which McKindrey thought sounded like a college for grease monkeys—but nor was he a fool. He’d had his share of learning, and abided by the belief that most of what he’d kept and valued in the way of education he’d come by out in the world, not sitting in a snug chair listening to some professor waffling on about numbers and theories. But he never said as much to the stern-faced men with their square, clean-shaven jaws, funeral suits, and slick-backed hair. They thought him a buffoon and that suited him just fine. Better that than to have them suspect he knew more than he was telling.

The man standing on the bank appraising him did not look like any official he’d ever seen, and he wanted to believe that was a good thing. But the expression on the guy’s face told him that might be a premature assumption.

“Catch anythin’?” the black man asked. He was tall—very tall; the Sheriff put him at about six-six—and well built. His head was shaved bare, and he wore sunglasses that reflected McKindrey’s perplexed face back at him. He was dressed in blue jeans, a black belt with a silver buckle, and a white shirt, open at the collar. He was smiling, but it didn’t put McKindrey at ease.

“Nothin’ I want,” McKindrey said flatly. “Help you with somethin’?” While he waited for an answer, he mentally reviewed the proximity of his weapon, which he’d taken to removing before he sat down so the weight of it didn’t make the holster chafe his thigh.

“I hope so.”

“How’d you find me?”

“Lady at your office said you’d be down here.” He grinned. “She sure was nice. Pretty too.”

McKindrey made a note to reprimand Stella as soon as he got back, assuming the man wasn’t here to rob or kill him, in which case he wouldn’t be getting back at all, at least not in one piece. That Stella was his wife didn’t make a lick of difference. If anything it meant she should be even more cautious about who she sent after him.

Making his impatience clear, he said: “So, what is it you need?”

“Answers.”

“’Bout what?”

“About a family that lived around here up until a few months back.”

McKindrey remembered where he’d left the gun, and now that he knew what the black man wanted, it suddenly became very important that he retrieve it. He could see it resting on the ground next to his cooler twelve feet or so away, its barrel on the rim of his hat, the handle in the grass.

“Which family would that be?” he asked.

“I think we both know the answer to that,” the man told him. “What you might not know is what’s goin’ to happen to your cracker ass if you try to pick up that gun over there.”

McKindrey did not immediately look away from the gun. Instead he took his time until he had formulated what he felt was an adequate response to the insult he’d just been dealt. Hooking his thumbs into his gun belt, he smiled tightly. “I know you, son?”

“Doubt it. My name’s Beau, though, just so we can officially say we’re acquainted.”

McKindrey reckoned it sounded like a faggot’s name.

“Well, Beau,” he said. “Why don’t you give me one good reason why I shouldn’t drag your black ass to jail for insultin’ an officer of the peace?”

Without hesitation, the man nodded. “I’ll give you two.”

McKindrey felt himself tense as the man reached behind his back and produced a handgun, which he held up for the Sheriff to see as he cocked it. “This is one,” Beau said, then nodded at something over McKindrey’s shoulder, something the Sheriff realized much too late was the sound of more footsteps, coming at him fast. He cursed.

“That’s two,” the black man said, and McKindrey turned. He had the impression of a pale-face looming in his vision before something struck him hard between the eyes and he went down into the darkness.

He awoke with a groan and almost immediately two things dawned on him:

First, his nose was broken and throbbing like a teenager’s pecker at the prom. He tasted blood on his lips. The tops of his cheeks were stiff and unyielding when he tried to gauge the extent of the damage by grimacing.

Secondly, he was no longer at the creek. The absence of sound was his first clue. The smell and the gloom confirmed it. Slaughterhouses had a similar odor, like shit and rotting carcasses. Automatically he tried to wrinkle his nose but the flare of pain stopped him and he spat a wad of blood and phlegm that landed with a smacking sound on the stone floor between his feet. He blinked to coerce his vision into cooperating, and a moment later, the room in which he sat with his hands bound behind him and his feet tied to the legs of the chair came into focus.

A kitchen, dirty and abandoned, the windows caked with dust, the floor littered with trash, broken dishes, and mouse droppings.

The kitchen of the Merrill place. He had never been inside the house before, but the procedures he’d been required to follow had occasionally brought him out this way, and more than once he’d peered in through the grimy glass to see if anyone was inside. Even when the Merrills had lived here, it hadn’t been any tidier than it was now. Hygiene had never been a priority for that clan.

“What am I doin’ here?” he croaked, every word scraping its way out of his raw throat.

A few feet away, the black man—Beau—leaned against the kitchen table eating a bag of Doritos. His gun rested on the table. Standing directly opposite McKindrey was the man he assumed had struck him.

“Nice of you to join us, Sheriff,” he said.

This one was white, his hair coarse and dark above brilliant blue eyes that were almost manic. He was unshaven, a few days worth of stubble framing thin lips in a gaunt, narrow face. He wore a wrinkled black T-shirt and jeans.

“Who are you people?” McKindrey asked, and spat again, the bitter expression on his face intended to let them know the action was only partly out of necessity.

“This is Finch,” Beau said around a mouthful of chips.

“That don’t answer my question,” McKindrey said. “But I hope you boys know the shit you’re wadin’ into by doin’ this.”

Finch appeared to be mulling this over, then he shrugged. “Not a whole lot I’d imagine, considering the way things tend to get forgotten, or breezed over in this town. People vanish all the time in your jurisdiction, don’t they? So why would you assume anyone will miss you?”

“I got a wife,” he told them. “Couple of hours and she’ll have the state police out lookin’ for me.”

“You think?”

McKindrey nodded. “If I was you, I’d cut me loose and get goin’ before you bring more trouble down on yourselves.”

“We’ll take that under advisement,” said Finch, and stepped close to the Sheriff. “First I have a few questions. I suggest you answer them quickly and truthfully or your wife won’t recognize you even if you do make it home, you understand?” While he spoke, he cocked his gun and aimed it at the floor, squinting through the sight. “Because unfortunately for you, we can’t leave without some information, and my gut tells me you have it. So…” He dry-fired the gun, then retrieved a magazine from the table. “The sooner you tell us what we want to know, the sooner you’ll get out of here.” He slammed the clip home and leveled it at the Sheriff. “But for every question you don’t answer, I’m going to shoot you somewhere that will hurt unlike anything you’ve ever felt before, but it won’t kill you. And Beau here makes a killer tourniquet. I could cut off your head and I bet he’d be able to keep you alive long enough to answer our questions.”

“Don’t know about that,” Beau said and upended the Doritos bag. Rust-colored crumbs filled his palm.

Finch smiled at him. It faded when he looked back at McKindrey. “So what’s it to be? Are you gonna be a hard ass and make us get tough with you or what?”

“You boys are fools,” McKindrey replied with a sour grin. “You think this is the way to get someone to cooperate? Y’all can go fuck yourselves way I see it.”

In two steps Finch was up close and shoving his palm against McKindrey’s broken nose. The agony was unbearable and the Sheriff writhed against it, the ropes digging into his hands as he clenched his teeth to keep the scream behind them. Unconsciousness loomed and was denied as Finch slapped him across the face, once, twice, and then a third time. “Listen to me you redneck fuck,” he said, “You pass out and when you wake up there’ll be pieces of you missing, got it?”

McKindrey took a moment to swallow the pain, to steel himself, though it was an enormous undertaking. “Go to hell,” he said when he finally found his voice.

Finch shot him in the left foot. The bang was like a wrecking ball through the kitchen. McKindrey screamed.

“Fuck,” Beau said, rubbing crumbs from the legs of his jeans. The Doritos bag was lying on the floor by his feet. “Warn me when you’re gonna do that shit, all right?”

“How about now?” Finch asked, glaring at the Sheriff. “You sensing the rhythm we have going here?”

“Okay, okay,” McKindrey told him, shutting his eyes as blood filled his boot. “Shit…” He was awash in sweat. “What do you want to know?”

“The Merrills,” Finch said. “I want to know all you know about them. Who they are, where they went, and lastly, how they’ve managed to turn this town into the Bermuda Triangle without anyone taking them to task for it.”

“I don’t know,” McKindrey said, spitting blood onto his shirt. He jumped at a sudden hiss, but it was only the black man, who had twisted the cap off a bottle of Orange Crush. Beau smiled at him as he took a sip.

“Wrong answer,” Finch told him, and stepped back, gun aimed at the man’s right foot this time. He cocked the hammer.

“No,” said the Sheriff. “Wait. What I meant was I don’t know everythin’ you’re askin’.”

Finch didn’t lower the gun. He waited.

McKindrey went on.

“They run this town, not me. That’s the first thing you gotta understand. They run it because they own it. However it were done, whoever they kilt to get it, they own more than sixty-five percent of the land around here, mostly unpopulated, old farms, woods, that kind of thing. But even if they didn’t, people here have learned to coexist with ’em best they can. They stay out of anywhere’s got the Merrill name on the deed. No one interferes with their business, and they don’t interfere with ours. You probably seen what happens when that changes.”

Finch nodded. “Wellman and the farmer.”

“They’ve been around long enough to know better. Should’ve just stayed out of it.”

“And let a girl die.”

McKindrey knew he had to be careful. He did not yet know what connection this man had with the girl that had escaped the Merrills. “That was unfortunate,” he said.

“What was?” Finch asked. “What they did to her, or that she survived?”

The Sheriff shook his head. “Elkwood’s nowhere. Six minutes away from not bein’ on no goddamn map no more. Nobody cares what happens here, ’cept those few who come lookin’ for all that rustic rural bullshit. World’s changin’, ain’t no place left that’s got the feel of the old times to it. So sometimes folks come to Elkwood, lookin’ for God only knows what. But that ain’t what they find, and ain’t no one gonna hunt ’em off. If’n you lived here, you’d understand. Fear can be a great governor.”

“You saying Elkwood’s a town full of cowards?”

McKindrey glared at him. “I’m sayin’ it’s a town full of scared folk, folk who feel bad for what happens here but ain’t about to get kilt for doin’ the right thing.”

Finch smiled bitterly. “And your role is—what? Chief chickenshit?”

“I handle whatever I can. Whatever’s in my power to handle. That’s the job I were given and that’s the job I do. Folks here feel safe because of me. They know nothin’ gonna happen to them as long as they mind their business.”

“So you do nothing, in other words.”

McKindrey felt the strength ebbing from him, despite the awareness that he might need it if an advantage presented itself. He was exhausted and in a great deal of pain. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I want you to tell me why you never called someone up in the dead of night who maybe wasn’t such a spineless weasel and told them to get an army together to eradicate the Merrills. State police, FBI, whoever. There were always options. Why didn’t you take them?”

“That dog don’t hunt. Anyone who ever tried to go up against them ended up in the dirt,” McKindrey told him. “They’re vicious people, Mr. Finch. They’ll stop at nothin’, and there’s no one they won’t kill in the name of their God.”

This gave the man pause, and a curious look passed over Finch’s face. After a moment he asked, “Who is their God?”

McKindrey shrugged. “Same one as ours.”

“Where do we find them?”

“I don’t know.”

Finch uncocked the gun, walked to the table and set it down beside his friend. Any relief the Sheriff might have experienced as a result of this development abated when the man picked up a hunting knife.

“Do you know what they did to the girl?” he asked.

“Yes,” McKindrey admitted.

“Good. Then you might want to reconsider your answer. We’ve already taken your toes, just like the Merrills did to Claire. And in keeping with their methods, your fingers are next. Then your eye.” He looked at his friend. Beau drained the bottle of orange crush, smacked his lips and handed it to him. Finch held it up and looked pointedly at the empty bottle as he spoke.

“They also raped her, Sheriff.”

McKindrey felt cold in the pit of his stomach. He had no doubt that they would do all the things they’d threatened to do if he didn’t give them what they want. So he started talking.

“The Mother,” he said. “She got a brother or a nephew or somethin’ livin’ in Radner County. I don’t know who he is, or whether he’s as crazy as the rest of ’em, but he lives about twenty miles north of the chemical waste plant in Cottonwood. There’s nothin’ out there but dead land, a few abandoned homes. Can’t say for sure that’s where they went, but it’s the only one of their kin I know about, and that’s the God’s honest.”

Finch and his friend exchanged a look. Beau nodded.

“You’ve been a great help, Sheriff,” said Finch.

They started to move, holstering weapons and sheathing knives. McKindrey waited until it was absolutely clear that they were not going to untie him before he started yelling.

“You sonsabitches! Let me go!”

The men had been heading for the door. Now they stopped. Beau muttered something in his friend’s ear, then looked at McKindrey. “Nice knowin’ you,” he said and left, the door clattering shut behind him.

Finch lingered at the door.

“Untie me, I done told you all I know,” McKindrey said.

Finch shook his head. “We’ll get you on the way back,” he said with a grin, and went outside.

In disbelief, McKindrey waited for the sound of their return, certain they were only making him sweat it for a few minutes more. But then came the unmistakable sound of their car starting up and then pulling away.

“You ain’t comin’ back, you hear me?” he screamed. “Mess with them and you ain’t never comin’ back!”

-31-

Papa-In-Gray looked up and smiled as Krall entered the cabin. “Join us in prayer, Jeremiah.”

They were gathered around the table, waiting for him.

Krall looked from face to face. Disgusted, he turned without a word and stalked back outside, slamming the door behind him.

“We have to be patient,” Papa explained, and reached out, palms turned upward, inviting them to join hands. All but Luke obeyed, preoccupied as he was by something over the door only he could see. His mouth was open, his face vacant. Aaron had washed him, but hadn’t expended too much effort on it, as he was not entirely convinced that Luke would not turn on them again. He had yet to see proof that there had been any change at all. As a result, there were still smudges of blood on the boy’s face and neck, and flecks of flesh tangled in his hair. Aaron roughly grabbed his hand and a moment later, Isaac, on the other side of Luke, did the same.

“Your uncle’s grievin’,” Papa continued, “And we know what that can do, no matter how strong your faith. Ain’t we grievin’ ourselves? But we know how to use that for the good, how to turn it into fuel in our fight against the coyotes. Poor Jeremiah has no faith, not yet, so he don’t even have God to hate.”

“So he hates us instead,” Aaron said sourly. Grieving or not, Aaron didn’t much like Uncle Krall. He’d never met the man before, and wasn’t too impressed now that he had. For one, he was not a man of faith, and Aaron had watched his expressions as Papa told them what had to be done, and why. Up until he’d seen Momma, he’d shown contempt, whether for Papa or his beliefs Aaron didn’t know, but in his mind they amounted to the same thing. Papa was a vessel for the Almighty, which made Krall’s disdain akin to blasphemy. His sudden interest in Luke was troubling, as if Luke’s poison might be spreading, infecting him too.

“He only has himself,” Papa said. “He’ll come around.”

“What if he don’t?”

“It’ll come,” said Papa. “Soon as the outsiders set foot on his land and try to claim him, he’ll find his faith.”

Aaron sighed and glanced at Luke, who was still staring vapidly at nothing. “I think Luke’s gone slow,” he said, “He ain’t talked since we took him outta Momma.”

“What you’re seein’ in your brother now,” Papa said, addressing them all, “is the effect of the poison when it’s been purged. It leaves you empty, hurts your mind. Like your uncle, Luke’s return will take time, but return he shall, and he’ll be stronger than us all.”

Aaron remained doubtful. Papa seemed certain that Luke’s rebirth would cure the poison. The twins wanted to believe it. But they hadn’t been the ones to find Momma-In-Bed that night after Luke tried to kill their father. Whatever a medical man would say was the cause of death would be wrong. Fear and heartbreak had taken her from them. Fear of the coyotes that were gathering in the woods, biding their time, drawn by the scent of panic. She would have sensed them out there, knowing long before they went to try and track down the girl that it was already too late, that the end was coming. And maybe, as Luke was turning on them all, angels had come to her and told her what had happened at the Wellman place, what her favorite son had tried to do.

She’d died alone, and screaming.

Aaron had found her with her face paralyzed by terror, her dead eyes bulging from their sockets, her long tongue blue and limp against her flaccid chin. The stink in the room had been terrible, worse than it had ever been while she’d lived, forcing him to try to open the window for the first time in years. But it was stuck firm; some kind of greasy brown sludge had hardened in the gaps, and in the end he was forced to take off his shirt, wrap it around his hand and shatter the glass.

As he’d set about cleaning the waste that had flooded from her as her bodily functions quit working, he thought of what his brother had done to Papa, to them all. He recalled Papa’s bravery. Or perhaps it had been the same misguided belief in his son’s faith that he was showing now that had made him stand his ground as Luke tried to run him down. Either way, he had shot Luke in the throat, causing him to jerk the wheel to the right and away from Papa, clipping him with the fender and cracking his knee. Once the full extent of his brother’s corruption had been made clear, Aaron had found himself disappointed to realize the bullet had only grazed Luke’s throat.

It would have been better if it had killed him.

Papa squeezed his and Joshua’s hands in his own. “Now,” he said. “A final prayer before the war.”

Aaron waited until their heads were bowed before he glanced again at Luke. He leaned over so that his lips were touching his brother’s ear. “If’n you ain’t better,” he whispered. “I’ll do to you what I done to that whore sister of ours.”

“Aaron,” Pa chastised and yanked on his hand.

“Yes, Pa.”

They began to pray, and when next Aaron looked, he saw that Luke was no longer staring at the wall, but at him, his eyes empty and soulless.

Almost four hours after leaving Louise to die on the park bench, Pete arrived on Redwood Lane, a long tree-lined street wet from the recent rain. He had missed the turnoff the elderly man he’d approached for directions had told him to look for, and had ended up going almost three miles too far before turning around and going back.

Now he was on the street, but wasn’t sure which of the many houses was Claire’s. He rolled down the window admitting the smell of smoke and damp earth, the breeze winding through the boughs of fire-colored leaves to bring him the scent of autumn. After almost an hour spent driving the half-mile length of Redwood Lane hoping to catch a glimpse of her in one of the yards, or on the street, or perhaps as a pale ghost through one of the large windows at the front of many of the expensive looking houses, he conceded and pulled the truck up a short gravel driveway. The house was painted sky blue with rusty red trim, the lawn neatly clipped. As he got out and walked up the drive, an old man wearing a brown wool sweater and dark brown slacks opened the front door and peered warily out at him.

“Hi,” Pete said, and stopped in his tracks.

The old man stepped out, continued to stare, but nodded. “Evening.”

“My name’s Pete Lowell.”

The man said nothing.

Pete continued. “I’m lookin’ for Claire Lambert.”

A look of distaste passed over the man’s face, but he shut the door behind him and walked slowly toward Pete. “The Lamberts? What do you want with them?”

“I’m a friend.”

“That’s what everyone says who wants to bother them.”

“I don’t want to bother ’em, honest. I’m a friend of Claire’s. I’m from Alabama. From Elkwood, where the bad stuff happened to her. I brought her to the hospital, helped her get home.”

The breeze swept around the old man as he stopped close to Pete and appraised him. He smelled to Pete like pipe smoke and sardines. “You did, huh?”

Pete nodded. “She told me come see her. So I’m here, but I don’t know which house is hers.”

The old man nodded thoughtfully, and nibbled on his lower lip as if weighing the wisdom of telling the boy anything. Then he released a breath that somehow diminished his size, and nodded pointedly to his right. “Missed it by about two houses. That’s it over there. The white one with the SUV parked out front.”

Pete felt relief flood his senses. He had begun to fear he would never find Claire’s house, and had no intention of knocking on every door in the neighborhood until he did. Sooner or later it would make someone even more suspicious than the old man appeared to be, and they might call the police on him.

“Thank you,” Pete said, and smiled. “I’ve come a long way to see her.”

“You’re welcome,” the man said, and turned to go back inside. Then he stopped, and looked over his shoulder. “But if you’re who you say you are you know that they’ve been through Hell. No telling if you’ll be welcome or not. Could be they won’t appreciate the reminder.” He raised his eyebrows. “Something worth thinking about is all.”

Pete watched the old man disappear inside his house. He didn’t need to consider what the old man had said. He had thought about it a hundred times over the past few weeks, and had come to the same conclusion. Claire might not want to see him at all. She might greet his presence on her doorstep with hostility. But it was a chance he would have to take, because he had promised he would come see her, and in all his life, he had never reneged on a promise. He wasn’t about to start now.

He headed to the truck, slid behind the wheel, and started the engine, noticing as he did so the curtain move in the picture window of the old man’s house.

Kara straightened her blouse, checked her makeup in the hallway mirror and grabbed her keys from the kitchen table, where Claire was sitting eating messy spoonfuls of chocolate ice cream and staring at her.

“Can I trust you not to go running off playing Rambo with that maniac Finch while I’m gone?”

“Nope,” Claire said and grinned, her teeth brown. “But you needn’t worry. I’m sure he didn’t hang around waiting for you to fuck up his plans. In fact, knowing him, he’s already down there now, causing all kinds of trouble.”

“Don’t use that language with me, Claire. Please.” There was little vehemence in her tone. She was tired, and though she loved her sister, playing the role of nurturing guardian had proved exhausting and required from her levels of patience she hadn’t known she possessed. Ever since they had come home from the hospital and their mother had retreated into herself rather than face the task of caring for a damaged daughter, Kara had been forced to step up to the plate. She was tired, cranky, and today was her first day back to work. She had too much to worry about. Any more and her head was likely to explode from the stress of it all. She knew leaving Claire alone was not the wisest idea, and that it would not be at all surprising if she stole the SUV and headed off after Finch. But she didn’t think that would happen. The idea had excited her sister for a time, for one dangerous moment when the opportunity had been handed to her to see Finch’s warped sense of justice play out firsthand. But that moment had passed. Claire was right. Finch would already be gone, and God help him. But her sister was here, and Kara had come to realize that she could not stand watch over her forever, nor was it fair to impose such restrictions. A little leeway might mend the broken bridge of trust between them. Maybe sometime soon, counseling would expedite that process.

One thing at a time, she told herself.

The time she had taken off to care for Claire had ended an hour ago. Her boss at the manufacturing company she handled the accounting for would not be thrilled at her tardiness. Of course, he wouldn’t say anything, given the circumstances, but Kara herself loathed being late for anything.

“I have to go,” she said, exasperated and stuffed her wallet into her purse. “How do I look?”

“Flustered,” Claire said, without looking at her.

“I’ll be home at nine.” She leaned over so her face was almost level with her sister’s. “Please be here. Mom needs you.”

“Mom needs to lay off the Vicodin.”

Kara sighed and headed for the door. Hand on the doorknob, she turned and looked back into the kitchen. Claire was licking the spoon.

“A friend of mine from the police will be cruising by every now and then. Just to keep an eye on things.”

Claire lowered the spoon. She had a goatee of chocolate, which she fingered as she watched her sister open the door. Kara could tell that whatever she was going to say was not going to be pleasant, so she decided not to wait to hear it. She stepped outside and closed the door behind her.

The woman who stepped from the house was not Claire, but her sudden appearance had shaken him, and almost propelled him back to the truck. But he told himself to be calm, despite the feeling that the blood in his veins had been replaced with water, his bones turned to jelly. It had been a long hard road to get here, but he was here, and if he ran, he knew he’d regret it for the rest of his days.

The woman stepped off the porch and stopped abruptly as she saw him. Pete clutched his hands to keep them from shaking. The woman was pretty, but severe-looking, as if she spent so much of her time frowning that the lines had permanently etched themselves onto her face. She wore that frown now as she looked him up and down. Her expression was not that much different from her elderly neighbor’s. It was as if the houses had been invaded not so long ago, leaving the residents with a fear of strangers.

“Who are you?” she asked, one hand straying to her purse.

“Pete Lowell,” he said quickly, in case it was a gun she was reaching for.

“What can I do for you Pete Lowell?” She did not sound welcoming. Rather, her tone made him feel as if he had a limited amount of words with which to explain his reason for being here before something bad happened.

“I… I came to see Claire.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

“Oh,” he said, crestfallen.

“She’s not seeing anyone. We recently had an incident that has left her—”

Pete nodded. “I know. I were there.”

The cautious look on the woman’s face deepened to outright suspicion, perhaps even fear, and from her purse, she produced a slim black cylinder with a red trigger.

“You were there?”

“Yes Ma’am. I drove her away from Elkwood. Took her to the hospital.”

He thought she might have relaxed a little at that, but couldn’t be sure. His mind raced, caught between advising him to flee while he still could and standing his ground until he made the woman understand.

“You’re Pete,” the woman said, her tone unchanged.

“Yes Ma’am.”

“She mentioned you. Quite a bit.”

That pleased Pete immensely, and it must have shown on his face, because this time the woman did relax, her shoulders dropping a little, the frown a little less severe. She did not, however, put the small cylinder back into her purse. Instead she lightly thumbed the trigger while she stared at him.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to see her,” she said. “But you should know she’s grateful to you. We all are. You’re a hero, Pete. If not for you…” She trailed off and shook her head. “Maybe in a few months we can arrange a visit, but now…now’s not a great time. I’m sure you understand.”

He nodded, but he didn’t understand. Didn’t want to understand. He was so close. Claire might be just beyond that door, maybe even listening to the woman telling him he couldn’t see her. Maybe any minute now she would come running out to greet him and everything would be okay. “I’m sorry,” he told the woman. “But I’ve come a real long way today. Had to get here on my own, but that’s all right. I just want to see Claire, just for a little bit. I don’t even have to come in. Even if she just comes to the window. That’d be fine too. But I’d like to see her, see how she’s doin’, maybe talk to her for a little bit. If it helps any, I know she don’t like to sing.” He smiled at the memory of Claire’s words. “I don’t neither.”

Finally, the woman dropped the black cylinder back into her purse, slung it over her shoulder and walked to meet him. She returned his smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes, and Pete felt his hope drop another notch.

“Pete…” the woman said. “You’re a sweet boy, but you being here now, today, it isn’t the best idea. Claire’s trying to forget what happened to her down there. I’m sure you can appreciate that. But even though you’re a hero and you saved her, you’re still part of that memory.” She sighed and put a hand on his shoulder. “Seeing you might hurt rather than heal her. It might bring back everything she’s trying so hard to forget.”

When he didn’t move, or give her any indication that he saw the logic in her words, she walked toward him, her hand still on his shoulder, and steered him around until he was facing the truck and walking at her behest. “I promise you,” she said, “When things improve and she’s up to seeing you, we’ll arrange something. Can you leave your contact information?”

When he looked blankly at her, she said, “Somewhere we can reach you.”

He shook his head. “Ain’t nowhere to reach me. They burned down my house, and my second Momma’s gone too.”

The woman’s frown returned, carving a deep groove between her eyes that could hold a dime. “Where do you live then?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know yet.”

At that moment, the sound of the front door opening made them both turn. Pete felt his heart swell, his throat tightening. For one confusing moment he worried he might wet his pants.

“Claire,” the woman said. “Go back inside.”

Pete stepped away from the woman. She’d been blocking his view of the door, but now he could see the frail figure who was standing in the doorway. Every fear and hope he’d entertained since that night in Elkwood when he had put her back onto the road from which she’d strayed came together in a vortex that threatened to suck him into itself and grind him up. His trembling intensified. He swallowed. Couldn’t move.

“Claire…” the woman began, but slumped and sighed heavily. “Goddamn it, I can’t do this now.” Then she walked past him, and a moment later, Pete dimly registered the sound of a car’s engine as she drove away.

Still he stood rooted to the spot as Claire, barely recognizable with her dark hair and the equally dark eyepatch, stepped out into the light. “Pete?” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.

He nodded, felt a thousand words cram into his throat, strangling him.

Claire’s face split into a wide smile. “You came.”

The colors of the world seemed brighter in that moment, as if God had, without anyone noticing, touched them up just for this occasion. And still Pete couldn’t speak. All he could do was nod dumbly.

A moment later, the need for speech was negated as Claire hurried toward him, her gait strange and uneven. She stopped before him, her smile wavering as she wept.

Pete willed himself to speak.

“I promised,” he said, and almost cried out with the fright as she dove into his arms.

-32-

They crossed the line into Radner County at dusk. To Finch it was as if whoever was responsible for the distribution of bucolic beauty had run out of materials to work with and left everything beyond the county line stand as an advertisement for desolation. The road narrowed and quickly disintegrated, pummeled over the years by heavy machinery, logging trucks, perhaps, or semis carrying toxic materials to and from the chemical waste facility that even now appeared as an unsightly block of shadow and a tall thin chimney at the far end of acres of fenced-off land. No one had bothered to repair the road, no more than they had felt compelled to repair the fields the treatment facility had contaminated. The air here seemed denser, the sky a curious shade of purple and red, the horizon tinged with emerald green, as if foretelling of tornadoes. Finch thought such a noxious place appropriate for the quarry they were hunting, a natural miasma to which the corrupt would gravitate.

“You do realize there’s every chance McKindrey was bullshittin’ us, right?”

Finch nodded. “Of course, but if he was, you can’t help but feel respect for a guy who would get his nose smashed and toes shot off and then lie to you.”

“Not sure respect is the word I’d use.”

“Your friend Niles get back to you?” Finch asked, referring to the communications officer Beau had known in the Gulf and whom they had relied upon to track the signal from Claire’s cell phone to Danny’s. “Yeah, and that’s why I’m not too confident about McKindrey’s tip.”

“It didn’t come from down here?”

“Nope. If we were trying to track the signal in a city, it would have been a hell of a trick to get it, but out in the sticks there aren’t as many cell phone users, so fewer towers, which made our boy’s job easier. But Niles was able to triangulate the signal to within a ten mile radius, and Elkwood was sitting smack dab in the middle of it.”

Finch shrugged. “All that means is Danny’s cell phone is still in their house, or somewhere nearby. We didn’t exactly turn the place upside down. It doesn’t mean the Merrills themselves are still there.”

“Hope you’re right.”

While they drove, neither of them commented on the thick, ugly atmosphere that surrounded the car. Dark, stagnant pools resisted the caress of current or breeze and lay still beneath skins of yellow foam. They saw few animals other than an occasional coon or possum lying on its side on the road. Vultures circled overhead, seeking carrion a little more tantalizing, a little less rotten. On all sides of the road, stretched countless miles of boggy, swampy land, all of it seeming to emanate from the plant, a large sandy-colored building fronted by a tall white chimney which coughed billowing black clouds into the sky while ugly liquid vomited forth into a putrid lake from culverts at its base. The many windows in the building’s face were made of reflective glass, as if the laborers within felt more secure in their deeds if they went unseen. A chain link fence sealed off the perimeter. Behind the closed gate at the entrance stood a booth with the same reflective glass as the building’s windows. It was impossible to tell if it was manned.

A place of death, Finch thought, and was struck by the sudden, alarming notion that it might well be the place where he himself would die. It was a notion he resisted with everything in him.

He recalled something Beau had said when it became clear they had left the bustling cities far behind them, the nature-burnt leaves falling away to be replaced by spindly-limbed, skeletal trees, the air darker and less pure: “Know what’s funny?” he’d said, out of the blue. “You keep mentionin’ 9/11 and the World Trade Center, comparin’ this to that. Mostly I haven’t agreed with you, thought you were gettin’ carried away with yourself, to tell the truth, but you got me thinkin’ about it now.”

“And?” Finch had asked, wondering if his friend had finally come around to his way of thinking. It didn’t take long to realize he hadn’t.

“And I think those chickenshits flew planes into those towers and killed themselves because they knew they’d never beat us on our own soil. Like you said, if they’da been on the ground, we’d have messed their shit up. So they stuck to the sky where we couldn’t touch them. What they did though was set a trap, make the whole damn country so mad the president wouldn’t have no choice but to send our troops over there, into their crib, where the bad guys’d have the advantage. It was a trap, and we fell for it.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is, bro, that you and I are doin’ the same goddamn thing. Walkin’ into a place we don’t know, to fight an enemy we know even less. And the advantage is all theirs.”

“It would be,” Finch told him. “If they were expecting us, and if we weren’t armed.”

“You puttin’ too much faith in that shit, man. Way too much. Our boys had plenty of guns in ’Nam too, but they didn’t know where to point ’em. Didn’t know the enemy could burrow like moles and have ’em killed before they could get a shot off. Always gonna be a strike against you if you ain’t familiar with where you’re fightin’.”

As long as he’d known him, Beau had liked to debate about matters of war, and apply his extensive knowledge of it to current events, military-related, or not. His clinically clean apartment was crowded with bookshelves, each one packed full of volumes about various historical conflicts. Ordinarily, listening to Beau ruminate about the Viet Cong, or Napoleon’s folly, or Custer’s ego, didn’t bother him, but it did now, because he had yet to compare their present situation to any battles in which the good guys had emerged victorious.

“This shouldn’t be a revelation to you, man,” he’d said. “You’ve been out of your element before. We both have.”

He was talking about the Gulf, a subject Finch preferred to avoid as much as possible. Unfortunately, given his love for such topics, Beau had no such reservations, but at least he had the tact not to mention the events at Sadr al-Qanat, events which had left Finch, for the first time in his life, contemplating suicide.

Still, in times of despair, when he kept his eyes shut for too long, he saw the woman in the black abaya—the traditional Islamic cloak—hustling toward him, arms held out, imploring. Her expression was one of pleading, of resignation, and of fear, for around her waist she wore an explosives belt. Finch had called a warning, not because he had seen the belt—which he hadn’t, that would come later—but because she wasn’t supposed to approach the soldiers. The previous weeks had seen a number of his comrades blown to pieces by seemingly innocuous locals, and they were now on their guard. Frequently he repainted the woman’s expression, gave it a devilish aspect, a demonic leer, but in reality there had been no such thing. Only fear, incubating beneath a veil of grim acceptance.

He’d punctuated his third warning with a gunshot, and watched as a fine red mist emerged from the back of the woman’s head. She was dead before she hit the ground, and later he had sat in his tent weeping and trembling, and ultimately tried to replicate what he had done to the woman, this time to himself.

Beau had walked in at that moment, a bottle of hooch in his hand, a wide smile on his face that had not lasted long.

“The fuck you doin’, man?” he’d asked, though surely the fact that Finch had a gun in his mouth had made it obvious.

Beau had talked him down that night, his “we were put here to do things that ain’t always pretty” speech penetrating the caul of misery and terror that had, without him sensing it, overwhelmed Finch. Beau had war stories of his own, tales of men and women murdered in the name of war. Few of them were pretty, but all, Beau contended, had been absolutely necessary.

“I see her every time I blink,” he told Beau. “She’s haunting me. Her eyes haunt me. I see them gleaming from the shadows, and I can’t make it stop. I see her from the corner of my eye, sitting in the dark.”

“Bury it,” Beau had told him. “Stick it in a box and study it later. It’s the only thing you can do.”

Finch had, but the crawling sensation, the darkness inside had never left him. It felt like a parasite, feeding off the negative energy, and every time he was called upon to kill, it grew bigger, until it had its hooks in his mind, forcing him to question what kind of creature he was and what kind of future might possibly exist for such a thing. Before, he’d thought the enemy an almost mystical thing, an entity whose very nature meant they would not look remotely human, would be faceless, and therefore easy to destroy.

The eyes of the woman had changed his mind.

And then he’d been called upon to kill again and again, and despite what he’d been told, he had remembered every one of the faces, every glint in the eyes of those who’d fallen before his gun.

Why then, had he thought this would be any different?

“You scared six shades of shit out of that Sheriff,” Beau said. “Me too, by the time you were done.”

Scared myself too, Finch thought. Everything he’d done to the Sheriff had been governed by the same automatic impulse that had driven him in Iraq after the death of the woman, the knowledge that—as Beau had said—though it would not always be pretty he was fighting for more than his own survival. They’d needed McKindrey’s knowledge to have any hope of seeing the operation through and he had switched on a dangerous part of himself to ensure they got what they came for. But perhaps “switched on” wasn’t the right way of saying it because it suggested control, and that was something he most certainly did not have over the more frightening aspects of his character. Often, it came unbidden.

Tonight, he knew it would come again.

He looked out the windshield at the dark shadow of a mountain a few miles ahead of them. In the fading light, it looked crimson, alien, something from a Martian landscape.

“Hood Mountain, I assume” Beau said and unfolded a map, his finger tracing a line from Columbus all the way down to Alabama and further, to where a thin thread turned away from highway and entered a geographically barren area.

He looked at Finch. “Looks like we found ’em.”

When he stepped inside and Claire had the door shut behind him, her demeanor changed completely. Gone was the weak weepy girl who had hugged him, kissed him right on the lips, and sobbed her delight at the sight of him outside. Now her face was serious, her eyes intense as she shoved him aside, moved to the small narrow window beside the front door and peeked out. After a moment, she let the curtain fall and offered him an apologetic smile.

“Sorry about that. I wanted to make sure she was gone.”

“Who?”

“My sister. The woman you met. Her name is Kara.”

“She seemed nice,” he lied.

“Yeah, she usually does. Then you get to know her.”

She turned and walked ahead of him to the kitchen. Helplessly he stood, awaiting instructions on what to do next. The abrupt change in her manner confused him, and now he wasn’t so sure she really was all that glad to see him.

In the kitchen doorway, she turned. “C’mon.”

He followed. “I’m glad to see you,” he said, with an uncertain smile.

She had moved to the sink and was filling a glass with water from the faucet. She nodded, tossed back a pair of white pills and noisily drained the glass. Afterward she closed her eyes and sighed.

Pete still stood at the threshold to the room, feeling awkward.

“Why did you come?” she asked him in a coarse tone.

“I said I would, ’member?”

“Not really.”

Pete’s smile faded. He wondered what had happened between the driveway and the house to bring such a sudden change upon her. “The night I drove you to the hospital,” he explained. “We was talkin’ about singin’.”

“I don’t like to sing,” she said.

Encouraged, Pete stepped further into the room. “That’s right! You said that, then you told me come see you soon’s you was better.”

“Then you’re early,” she said.

He wasn’t sure what that meant, and so said nothing, just watched as she set the glass down and turned, leaning against the edge of the sink, her arms folded as she appraised him. “Pete.”

“Yes Ma’am?”

“Why did you come?”

“I said I would. I promised.”

“You already told me that. I want to know why else you came.”

“To see how you was. To see if you was all right.”

“And?”

“What?”

“And how am I? How do I look?”

“Tired, I guess,” he said truthfully. “And different.”

“Different how?”

“Your hair,” he said. “And the patch.”

Absently, she fingered a lock of her dyed hair. “Do you like them?”

“I dunno,” he said. “I like the patch I guess. Makes you look like a pirate.”

She gave him a slight smile. “You want something to drink?”

“That’d be nice.”

“What do you want?”

“Coke’s fine, or hot chocolate.”

“Haven’t got hot chocolate.” She jerked open the refrigerator hard enough to send some of the myriad magnets on the door flying. Wide-eyed, Pete followed their trajectory, then looked back to Claire.

“Are you mad at me for comin’?”

“Nope,” she said and withdrew a liter of Coke from the fridge. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Only slightly relieved, he said, “Okay.”

“Because,” she continued, unscrewing the cap from the bottle, “You’re going to drive me to Elkwood.”

She slammed the bottle down on the table, and didn’t offer him a glass.

“Drink fast,” she said.

-33-

Thunder grumbled over the city. Kara parked the car and looked out at the drab gray building in which she worked. The clock on the dashboard told her she was already an hour and fifteen minutes late, but she couldn’t care less. Her mind raced with thoughts about the boy who’d showed up at their door. He’d wanted to see Claire, and it was clear by her sister’s reaction that the visit had been a welcome one, eliciting more emotion from her than Kara had seen in months. So, though she’d been against the idea, maybe it would work out to be a positive thing in the end.

You don’t really buy that, do you?

She couldn’t help but grin at her own pessimism, but it was true. She didn’t buy it. The kid’s connection to the events that had chewed Claire up and spit her out would only justify her dwelling on them for another while, and that was counter-productive to their cause.

Cause. What cause? she asked herself. Naturally she wanted Claire to recover, and soon. But how much of that was for Claire’s benefit, and not her own? How much of it was simply a selfish desire to be as free of her sister and all her emotional baggage as Claire wanted to be of her? Kara felt cruel even thinking it, but no reassuring mental voice hurried to debate the theory.

Kara had a life. Granted, not much of one, and even Claire couldn’t be blamed for the worst of its deficiencies, but the idea of being her sister’s keeper forever made her chest tighten. It couldn’t happen. It wasn’t fair to either of them. And what good was she really doing anyway? Trying to curb her sister’s self-destructive impulses of late seemed to be having the opposite effect. Claire appeared to be waiting for the opportunity, the right moment before she took that final step over the precipice into the abyss where the demons she had escaped would welcome her back and rend her asunder.

Kara had just lit a cigarette. Now she froze, smoke streaming out around the filter, and thought of the boy. More specifically, she thought of his truck.

She’s waiting for an opportunity.

Their mother was at the doctor’s office.

Kara was here.

You just gave her one.

“Damn it.” As if by some miracle he might sense it, Kara cast a brief apologetic glance up at her boss’s window on the fifth floor, then started the engine and reversed out of the parking lot fast enough to force the driver of an oncoming car to jam on his brakes and slam on the horn.

Tires screeching, she headed home.

She estimated she’d been gone from the house less than forty minutes, but it could have been a day for all the difference it made.

After only a few minutes, she quit searching the house. The silence that had greeted her should have been enough to confirm what she already suspected. The boy’s truck was gone. So was the boy, and with him, Claire.

“Shit,” Kara growled, struggling to keep the panic out of her voice because to hear it only worsened the fear that was trying to paralyze her. Calm down, she commanded herself. They could be gone anywhere.

But they weren’t, and she knew it.

Quickly, she made her way into the kitchen, and picked up the phone. She had already dialed 911 when she spotted the single piece of notepaper on the kitchen table. She did not hang up, but reached out and snatched up the page, reading as the call went through.

Dear Kara, it said. You know where I’m going. What you don’t know, and probably wouldn’t understand even if I broke it down for you, is why I’m going there. Pete, in his simple way, does. Together we’re going to do this because we have to. There’s no other way. I’m guessing you’re gonna call the police on us. That would be you all over. But do me a favor. Give it a few hours. Give us a head start. If you don’t, I promise you we’ll find a way around it. We’re young, not stupid. So do this for me. You’ve been trying to help, and I appreciate it even if you’re a pain in the ass 90% of the time. Now’s your chance to really do something for me. You never know. This might have a happy ending. Love, Claire.

Kara shook her head and crumpled up the note. The breath had evaporated from her lungs. She stared in shock around the kitchen.

I did this, she thought. This is my fault.

Already she saw what it would do to her mother.

She pictured them standing over Claire’s grave, the sky cold and gray, rain speckling the polished oak of the coffin.

“911. What is your emergency?” said a voice in her ear.

She’s going to die down there, and I let it happen.

“Hello?” said the dispatcher.

“I’m sorry,” Kara said into the phone and ran a trembling hand through her hair. “I need the police.”

Joshua was tired, and cold. Night was coming and the soft breeze had gathered strength, become a sharp chill wind that scoured the peak of the mountain, blowing red dust in his face.

He kept moving to keep the worst of the cold at bay, his eyes continuously scanning the flat plains that stretched out around the mountain. It was getting harder to see anything out there, and he didn’t think whoever was coming would be dumb enough to have their lights on, so it seemed silly that he was up here at all. The thought took hold until it began to let suspicion creep in. What if Papa had posted him as lookout just to keep him out of the way? What if he was slowly beginning to wonder if all his children might be turning against him like Luke and Susanna had? He’d been a baby when his sister had been killed so didn’t remember a whole lot about it, but from what Aaron told him, she hadn’t gone quietly and so the end, for her, had been messy. Joshua wished he’d been there though because he couldn’t imagine it being any different from the other people they’d killed and yet when Aaron spoke of murdering their sister, the gleam that entered his eyes told him it had been very special indeed. Perhaps she had been so corrupted she had changed, revealed her true hellish form before he’d stilled her heart. He’d never know because his brother only spoke about it when the mood came upon him, and never answered questions about it. But it didn’t matter. She’d been poisoned and Papa had ordered her death. Luke had been poisoned too, and Joshua couldn’t imagine what it must have felt like to spend so much time wrapped up in Momma’s dead body. He shuddered at the thought of it, but knew if offered a choice between what Papa had done to Luke and what Aaron had done to Susanna, the former would be the obvious choice. Luke had been granted mercy, the chance at rebirth only because he’d been Momma’s favorite. They all knew that. But Joshua was nobody’s favorite and so he didn’t much like the idea that he’d only been given the job of lookout because his usefulness to the clan was in question.

He stamped his feet and wondered if it would be wise to desert his post, just for a little while, long enough to find Papa and swear an oath that he hadn’t been poisoned, that he would serve God until He chose to pluck him from the earth and make him an angel.

He shook his head and frowned, deeply troubled by the direction his thoughts had taken. He was sure he hadn’t given Papa cause to doubt his devotion, but now the worry nagged at him.

Then a sound stopped his pacing and his thoughts at the same time.

He was facing out over the west side of the mountain, where a thin ribbon of dirt road threaded through the trees and twisted itself around for miles before coiling around the chemical waste facility and out into the world. From here the road was little more than a pale snake in the gloom, but from somewhere, he was sure he’d heard the distant drone of an engine. Such a thing might have gone unnoticed in a place where traffic was expected, and normal. But this was not such a place and so it registered immediately. For what seemed like hours Joshua stood frozen, ears strained, his heart thumping slowly in his chest.

Then, out there in the growing dark, a muted light pulsed briefly and was gone so fast Joshua wasn’t sure he’d seen it at all. It had been as if a giant hand had passed in front of a lantern. He waited another few moments, breath held, the cold forgotten, eyes struggling to bring whatever was out there into focus, but it didn’t come again. The trees were thick at the borders of the clearing, so it was possible he’d imagined it, that it had been little more than the effect of staring too long into the dark. But he didn’t think so, and if he was wrong and ignored it, they might all pay with their lives.

Joshua allowed himself a smile, and turned to run down the rough path to the cabin. The urge to shriek the news was hard to restrain, but he was wiser than that and kept his mouth shut. It wouldn’t take long before he could tell Papa what the old man had been waiting to hear.

He’d been right.

The angels hadn’t misled him.

The coyotes had come.

But then he found the way obstructed by what seemed to be darkness itself and felt his muscles tense, a startled cry forming at the base of his throat as, in one fluid move, the man reached down to Joshua’s belt and disarmed him, brandishing the handmade knife before shoving the boy to the ground.

Joshua struggled to keep his balance, his arms pinwheeling, feet digging into the ground. Luck was not with him, and he went down hard, his back thudding against the rocks, knocking the wind from him.

“Stay down, kid, and this’ll go a lot easier for you,” a voice commanded.

Breathless, Joshua rolled over onto his side. Only one, he thought. There ain’t but one voice. Bolstered, he reached out, making it seem to his attacker that he was simply trying to find purchase in the uneven terrain. His hand found a rock, heavy and sharp.

The darkness swooped down on him as if to vomit its poison into him, or breathe the foul air from its lungs into Joshua’s own, and he struck out, swinging his arm out, the sharp edge of the sandstone rock aimed at where he judged the side of the man’s head to be. At the last second, a vice locked on his arm, halting the arc, and dismayed, the boy felt the rock slip from his grip and fall.

He opened his mouth to scream a warning.

The man straddled him, forcing the air out of him again, and pinning his arms to the ground.

He wheezed, struggled against the man’s weight, sucked in a breath.

“Don’t,” his adversary told him.

The breath caught. Joshua tried to scream.

The man punched him in the mouth.

It felt as if the attacker had picked up the rock and rammed it into his face, and for a moment Joshua saw stars, felt teeth come loose and lodge in his throat. He coughed. His lungs burned. He tasted blood. His lips stung. And still he struggled, thrashing beneath the man who was sitting on his legs, kneeling on his wrists, his monstrous face barely visible in the dark, as if they were one and the same.

No, he thought, panicked. This can’t happen. He’ll corrupt me. He’s too close. Papa will—

Abruptly, the pressure left one of his arms as the man tore something with his teeth. In a moment of startling horror such as he had never in his life felt before, Joshua feared it was his flesh. It made a zipping sound as it came away from bone. But no, he knew the sounds of a flaying, and it never sounded like this. Most likely it was tape to bind him or keep him quiet. A second thought followed quickly on the heels of the relief: His arm was free.

He clenched his fist, dug the other hand into the stony earth and with all his strength, bucked his hips in an attempt to knock the man off balance. Success. The pressure vanished from his second arm as the man wobbled atop him. In one swift move, Joshua brought his left hand up and threw a fistful of stones and dirt in the man’s face. With the other, he punched wildly, hoping to connect, but the blow glanced off the man’s cheek. Adrenaline enhanced Joshua’s efforts and he planted his palms on the ground, using them to lever his body out from under his assailant.

“Stop,” the man said, but his words only made Joshua’s struggles more frenzied. He flailed his fists, and the man caught one of them, squeezing until Joshua feared the bones were going to snap like kindling. It didn’t deter him. He swung the other, his legs still pinned, an animal-like grunting low in his throat.

The man’s free hand shot forward and Joshua saw the silvery sheen of a roll of duct tape before it crashed into his nose. He reeled back, his fist suddenly free, and the attacker’s hands clamped around his throat, jerking him back and slamming him to the ground.

Dazed, Joshua wondered if it might be better to just concede defeat rather than return to Papa poisoned. The attack would seem like nothing if his father decided he needed to be cleansed. But instinct prevailed and he willed his head to clear, to enable him to see the man he was bound to rend asunder with his bare hands, as he had been taught. But his head wasn’t clearing because the man was leaning into him, increasing the pressure around his throat, refusing him the air he needed and forcing the blood to thunder inside his head.

Possum, he thought suddenly, and looked up at the man whose face was pure night, as featureless as the dark side of the moon. Possum. It was a trick. And he used it now.

His face contorted. He began to cry as much as he could without the air required to power it.

For a moment the man’s grip did not loosen or the pressure ease, but he could tell by the stiffening of his body that he was affected.

“God…help…me…” Joshua croaked, gagging as the tears trickled down the sides of his face into the dirt. “For…give me…”

As he wept, Joshua recalled the instances in which he’d lain on the road or on the forest floor sobbing while at the same time listening to the approach of strangers, their voices high with concern—“Son, are you all right? You hurt?”—only to find themselves surrounded while Joshua stood and brushed himself off, his hand moving to the knife tucked in his belt.

The knife.

If only he could remember what the man had done with his knife after taking it from him.

His attacker’s grip was slackening. Joshua scarcely dared believe it. Now, though drawing breath was still hard and burned his throat, it was progress, the first step toward turning the tables on the coyote.

The knife.

The man had stuffed it in his belt. He was almost certain. Joshua let his eyes drift down, imagined he could see the pale handle. He intensified his sobbing. “Please…I’m sorry…” and miraculously one of the man’s hands moved away from his throat. One remained, but the grip was loosening, merely holding him down and no longer strangling him. Once again, Joshua’s eyes found the spot where he imagined, knew, the knife to be. There was nothing keeping his hands pinned this time, and gradually, in excruciatingly slow movements, he allowed them to creep toward the man’s belt.

“Sorry…” he whimpered, fingers like spiders creeping down his own legs toward his attacker’s thighs.

Then the man’s arm came back around, and though there was insufficient light to see what the black shape in his hand was, there was no mistaking the sound of a hammer being cocked.

“I am too,” the coyote said.

The gunshot echoing about the valley was as good as a declaration of war, and Aaron flinched. In battle he imagined it would have been the signal for troops to start charging, but nothing so dramatic would happen here. Holding his position, he slowly turned his head away from the trunk of the pine tree. In the woods around the clearing, the darkness was thickest and that suited him, but he knew better than to make any sudden movements. The sound of a twig breaking or a sharp breath could be enough to bring about his doom. His eyes strayed to the source of the shot, where he saw a tall shadow, visible only as a darker shade of night against the backdrop of the stars, rising for one brief moment before vanishing down the other side of the mountain.

They got Joshua, Aaron thought, fire in his chest that made him want to tear strips of bark from the tree with his nails and scream aloud his plans for the Men of the World. But instead he did nothing, and this was well advised, for not thirty feet away stood one of them, hunkered down in the tall grass just inside the protective circle of the trees, a gun in his hand, a pair of binoculars held to his eyes. It was torture resisting the urge to run at him like one of the old Indian warriors Momma-In-Bed had liked to tell him about, but he knew well the folly of such a rash move. The coyote would cut him down before he made it clear of the trees. So he waited, as still as the trees, and watched.

Soon the man would move, and when he did, Aaron would be ready.

-34-

Pete stared out at the night, afraid to look at Claire for too long in case she snapped at him as she had already done more than once during the long drive. The journey had taken them nine hours, but it felt like an eternity, each one of those miles chipping away another part of the illusion he had held in his head for so long about the girl he thought he loved. He was at a loss to understand what had happened to her. Had she been like this since the hospital, or had she reserved her hostility only for him? If so, he couldn’t imagine what he had done to deserve it.

“Slow down,” she told him, and immediately he eased his foot off the gas.

Outside, there was nothing but endless fields to see, but Pete knew them better than he knew anyplace in the world. He had driven these roads a thousand times, and suspected the reason Claire wanted to stop now was because she recognized it too.

Surreptitiously, he watched her. She had rolled the window down and was leaning out, her hair blowing crazily around her face. The night breeze was cold around her, and Pete shivered.

She looked back at him. “Stop,” she said and he did.

“This is where Pa and me found you,” he said quietly.

“Yeah, I know.” She opened the door and stepped out. He waited for his cue to follow, but it didn’t come. Instead she just stood staring at the barbed wire that separated the field of cotton from the road. At length, she turned. “Do you have a flashlight?”

He nodded slowly. For Claire, he knew it was a simple request, but the small slim object, no bigger than a pencil, that he slid free of his jeans pocket came with a story she hadn’t given him the opportunity to share.

He had driven a shard of glass into the eye of its previous owner, and couldn’t remember taking it before he and Louise had left the apartment, but as soon as he’d sat down on the park bench, he’d felt it digging into his thigh and realized that at some point, despite the circumstances, his curiosity had gotten the better of him.

Afraid Claire might be able to read the story from the lines of guilt on his face the longer he withheld it, he gave it to her and looked away, studying the road, where his father had made a decision to save a life and end his own.

Maybe it was a mistake, Pete thought, and was startled by the venom that accompanied it. Then he decided that it was justified. Saving Claire had cost Pa his life and turned Pete’s upside-down, and for what? He glanced back at the girl, who was now leaning on the barbed wire, lowering it so she could climb over. He knew he should help, but staying where he was made him feel better. She was not the girl they’d rescued. Not the girl Pa and Doc Wellman, even Louise, had been willing to die for. She was a stranger, and perhaps he was the fool at the back of it all. Who was to say this wasn’t the real Claire? He hadn’t known her before the men tried to kill her and yet he’d invested his hope and his weak heart in her before they’d ever exchanged a word. Why should he be surprised that she was like all the other girls he’d fallen for over the years? He’d first seen her as a battered broken thing and his empathy had quickly become desire. She would wake, he’d believed, and she would need him.

But it was clear now that she needed no one. He suspected if he hadn’t agreed to take her to Elkwood with him, she’d have hurt him and taken the truck herself.

Well, you got her here, he told himself. Nothin’ to stop you drivin’ away now. She looks well enough to fight if she runs into trouble.

But that wasn’t true, and though he was angry, he made no move toward the keys, just slumped over the wheel, his hands resting atop it, eyes watching the road for lights or any sign that trouble was bearing down on them.

The simple elemental fact of it was that no matter how cold or dismissive she was, she was all he had left in the world, and he still loved her. Had to. If he gave up on her, the loneliness would crush him.

The cotton whispered against Claire’s legs, the thorny twigs on which they seemed merely suspended scratching the material of her jeans as she stood motionless, surveying the field for a glimpse of what she knew was there. When it failed to resolve itself from the dark, she began to walk, the flashlight in hand but not yet switched on. For now, she preferred to rely on her memories of this place to lead her. The ground was uneven beneath the cotton, making traversing it treacherous, and the last thing she needed was to fall and twist an ankle, so she carefully made her way along them. A bird rose from the field and took off, flying low. Night creatures scurried away from the unwelcome intrusion of her feet.

At last, she stopped, out of breath from the exertion, damp with sweat despite the chill. It had been a long time since she had pushed herself, or in truth, tried exercise of any kind, and it proved only how out of shape and unhealthy she was. But that didn’t matter. She looked ahead and up, at the spindly branches of a tree so large it blocked out the stars, and turned on the flashlight.

A twisted, bone white trunk rose before her, its surface gnarled and ancient and rotten in places where industrious insects had attended to it. Some of the roots were above ground, tangled together in a chaotic jumble that seemed to Claire to symbolize confusion and anguish, their inability to find the earth from which they wished to draw nourishment, prevented from doing so by nothing more sinister than their own brethren.

She raised the flashlight, aimed the beam upward.

Shadows fled. An explosion of limbs radiated out from the tapering trunk, the branches themselves seemingly heavy enough to force the tree to bend toward her, like a Victorian woman bowing beneath her umbrella, or a jellyfish pushing upward, the weight of the sea forcing its tentacles down and around itself.

Tentatively, she reached out to touch the trunk, almost expecting to feel an electrical charge or a rush of memory as she did so. But when her fingers brushed the dried wood, she felt nothing. Whatever the tree had represented on the day she had stood bloodied and bruised staring at it, eluded her now.

With a sigh, she reached into the pocket of her jeans and retrieved a small penknife, then slowly, painfully got down on her knees and dug the point of the blade into the bark. It sounded hollow, as if she were carving into the last layer of its protective skin before the elements and the insects ground it to dust, erasing it from existence forever.

In the trunk, she etched out:

And underneath:

Then she stood and studied her dead friends’ initials, each one filled with shadow thicker than oil as the breeze made the branches tremble, the wood creaking as the tree swayed.

She turned her back on it, felt as hollow as the tree and wished she could recall why it had meant so much to her. For one fleeting moment it had seemed like the only thing in the world to her, a savior.

I was out of my mind, she thought. In shock.

The breeze grew stronger.

She stopped.

All around her flecks of cotton rose from the field like fireflies, caught in the beam of her flashlight as it carved a channel in the dark. Her hair fluttered around her face, her senses filled with the smell of earth and smoke, and without knowing why, she smiled as the million specks of cotton rose ever upward like souls released to the Heavens to join the stars. It was over in a moment, and to anyone else, it might have seemed a perfectly ordinary thing, something visible on any day of the week.

But to Claire, the significance she’d sought from the tree was there in the cotton, and with it, came the answer to the riddle of what she’d thought she’d seen in the field that day.

There is something else, she thought. Something afterward. Life ends and something follows. In all her years, she had never been asked about her faith, nor had her family ever assumed a denomination. If forced, however, they would have claimed agnosticism as the closest representation. But with that lack of faith came a great fear of death. Without proof of an afterlife, they were intimately aware of their mortality and the limitations of it. The passing of her father and what Claire had endured here eleven weeks ago only reinforced that fear. Nothing follows, they’d thought. You die and you turn to dust.

Standing naked and wounded on the road outside this field, she had known she was going to die. Not of old age, not of some unforeseen event waiting to claim her in a few decades time, but right there and then, bleed to death from wounds inflicted on her by maniacs. The terror had been as potent as the pain and she had looked to the tree, looked to anything that could, to her shocked mind, be compared to a figure of salvation. And she had seen her mother. The tree had held out its arms, beckoning to her, promising a reprieve from the pain in its maternal embrace, and she had tried, wept as the barbed-wire kept her at bay like the restrictions imposed on her by her own lack of faith.

She began to walk. There is something afterward, she repeated in her head. Katy, Daniel and Stu are somewhere else, at peace. It was not yet a conviction, and barring proof of some kind beyond what she had seen here tonight, she doubted she would ever fully believe it. But it was a start, a step forward from pessimism. All that remained was for her to find the same succor.

“What the hell did you do?” Stella asked her husband, daubing the cuts around his broken nose with antiseptic that made him feel as if she were applying it with a heated needle.

“Already told you,” McKindrey said. “I weren’t catchin’ nothin’ down at the creek so I headed up to the far side where the river’s wider. Tried to climb up that steep edge where those Pike boys got themselves drowned few summer’s back, and I fell. Did a real job on my foot.”

“How come you ain’t scratched no place else? That place is full of thorn bushes and stickers.”

McKindrey shook his head, irritated. Not only was Stella being a pain in the ass with her questions, but she was also blocking his view of the TV, so he couldn’t even have that as a distraction. She had bandaged up his foot so heavily he couldn’t fit his boot over it, so instead he’d had her wrap strips of an old shirt around it. It would do for a while and at least he wouldn’t have to be stuck in the house listening to her for God knows how long. He took a long draw of whiskey, felt it numb him and fill his nose with fumes that took the edge off the pain. He was mad as hell, but had reined it in for now. Wouldn’t do to be trying to explain to Stella why he was filled with murderous rage over his own stupidity.

“Oh, damn it to hell anyway,” Stella said now and backed away from him as if afraid he was going to hit her.

He took another sip of whiskey, winced and looked at her. “What’s the matter?”

“You got a call while you was out.”

“So?”

“It were the state police guy from Mason City. Marshall Todd.”

“What did he want?”

“Said he got a call from the sister of that poor girl got herself in trouble down here few months back.”

With great effort, McKindrey sat up, his bandaged foot resting on an old ottoman. “And?”

“And she told him the girl’s on her way back down here. Should already be here as a matter of fact if she’s comin’ at all. Asked if you’d keep an eye out, and bring her in if you can. They’ll have someone here in the mornin’ to help you out. But I can call him and let him know—”

He raised a hand. “No. I’ll take care of it.” And thought, It’s gettin’ to be a good time to retire from this shit.

“How you gonna drive with that foot?”

“Very goddamn carefully,” he said.

-35-

It seemed grimly ironic to Finch that Beau, after practically interrogating him about his willingness to kill children, had been the one to do it first. He watched his friend reach the foot of the mountain, saw through the night vision binoculars the eerie green shape of him raising a hand in the air and signaling that he was going to proceed toward the house. It was also Finch’s cue to head for the tree line and approach from the left side of the valley so they would be coming at the cabin in a pincer movement.

“Last chance,” Beau had said. “If you want to turn back, now’s the time to say it.”

“No,” Finch told him, without pause for thought.

“That kid looked to be about twelve.”

“So what?”

“So are you gonna be able to shoot him if he draws down on you?”

“Beau, he might be a kid, but he’s also a killer. They kill indiscriminately. We’re going to do the same.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I am, and if you’re in this with me, you need to be sure too or you’re the one needs to turn back.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

Up ahead, the cabin looked abandoned. Oddly, at some point a poor attempt had been made to put a slate roof atop it. Now most of the slates were gone. There was one window in the front, but the dirty yellow curtains were drawn, denying them a peek inside.Feeble light showed through cracks in the wooden door.

Finch was surprised that the shot hadn’t drawn the family out of the cabin, or from wherever they were hiding. He’d fully expected to see dark shadows springing up and screaming, armed with axes or knives as they charged at Beau, intent on taking him down for killing one of their kin.

But there was no sign of anyone, and now even Beau had disappeared.

Reminding himself that time was not a luxury he could afford to squander, he kept low and darted to the left, toward the thick crowd of pines, his eyes flitting from one imagined shape to the next, waiting for one of them to break free and come at him. But he made it into the thick of them unchallenged, and paused to catch his breath, the Glock raised in front of him, his body pressed against the trunk of a pine sticky with sap. His breathing sounded like a bellows, and he imagined at any second someone would hear it and come find him. His heart pounded so hard in his chest his whole body vibrated. Let them come, he thought. He shut his mouth, drew short breaths through his nose, felt his limbs quiver with adrenaline. He estimated the distance to the cabin was less than a hundred yards from where he stood, but it would take him longer as he would have to approach it slowly, and with as little noise as possible. The darkness in the field had been nothing compared to the cloying, impenetrable blackness in the woods. He told himself that such poor visibility worked both for and against him. On the one hand, he couldn’t see a damn thing, but then it was unlikely anyone else could either, and he at least had the NV binoculars so he could watch them from a distance if it came to it. It didn’t, however, help at close quarters, and he cursed himself for not instructing Beau to buy night vision goggles. It was an oversight he feared they would pay for. Spotting the child on the mountain had been sheer luck. If he’d stayed down, they’d have missed him, but just as Finch was scanning the peak, he rose, and Beau was off and running.

Too late now, he thought, and said a silent prayer that the luck that had reduced the number of their enemies by one would hold out for a little while longer.

Counting to three in his head, he steeled himself.

Stepped out from behind the tree.

And his legs were torn from under him. He went down fast and hard, twigs and pine needles puncturing his skin, the hand holding the gun bruised by something unyielding beneath the leaves, the other pinned beneath him. Struggling to find his breath, he desperately tried to turn, knowing he would not be able to see his attacker, but willing to take the chance that the shot would find its target.

The darkness changed.

Someone hurried away.

Quickly sitting up and scooting back, Finch leveled the weapon at the unmoving dark, waited a heartbeat, his finger tensing on the trigger…

…And felt a punch in his left shoulder. At first he assumed he’d been struck by a fist, or someone’s boot, but when he raised his free hand to probe the area, he found a long smooth object protruding from just below his collarbone. Raging pain followed and he winced, aware he did not have the time to spend assessing the damage, but unable to stop himself. The smooth aluminum-like shaft ended in hard feathers. An arrow. Someone had shot an arrow into him, and despite the pain, his skin prickled, every nerve waiting to protest the invasion of another one into his flesh. Abruptly, he felt surrounded, imagined bows being drawn taut, arrow-points aimed at his throat, his heart, his face, and dove behind the nearest trunk, drawing his knees up and pulling at the arrow. It budged only slightly and the pain that came as a result was enough to force him to trap a scream behind his teeth.

“Shit.”

He heard footsteps. Whoever had shot him had apparently decided that the time for stealth was over and was now coming back to finish him off.

Finch grabbed the arrow again and yanked on it. His palms were slippery with sweat and slid harmlessly off the shaft, but not without causing him pain. His vision whirled. He closed his eyes. Grabbed the hem of his T-shirt and brought it up, using it to improve his grip as he grabbed the arrow one last time and pulled with all the strength he had in him. With excruciating slowness, it began to slide free. Trembling, he had barely managed to clear the arrow of the wound when the footsteps registered to his right—too close—and he sensed the presence of someone rounding the tree.

Panicked, slick with blood, Finch dropped the arrow, quickly brought the gun around and loosed off a shot as soon as he detected the presence beside him. The flash from the muzzle blinded him, left the impression of a pale, hollow-eyed face contorted with fury floating before him and then it was gone, the darkness flooding back in, thicker than before. The absence of even a grunt of pain discouraged Finch and he quickly fired again. The bullet whined as it struck the tree opposite. Bark flew.

A low hum in his ear made Finch turn and duck, but it was not another arrow bound for his skull, only a mosquito drawn by the blood.

Heart palpitating madly, he frantically searched the night for the shape he’d seen, the malevolent presence that had just a split-second before been right there in front of him. The roaring of his own blood in his ears had deafened him to the man’s retreat, if indeed that’s what he’d done and was not instead standing on the other side of the same tree Finch was using for protection. He moved, peering around the trunk, his wounded arm hanging uselessly at his side. His left hand felt swollen with blood to the point of bursting. Even as he flexed his fingers and tightened his grip on the Glock, he heard a whistle and ducked back an instant before an arrow sheared through the bark next to his head and impaled the earth by his feet. Finch glanced at it, aware how close he had just come to having his skull ventilated. Then he noticed something. He could see the shaft of the arrow clearly. It was gleaming, reflecting burgeoning silver light. Almost afraid to hope, he raised his head.

Free of the dark clouds, the moon shone through the thick canopies, limning the branches with silver, and turning the forest floor into a patchwork of light and shadow. Moths rose from the carpet of needles and mounds of deadfall, summoned by the celestial glow. Flies became silver lures calling to larger prey. Finch risked a glance around the tree, ready to withdraw at the sound of another arrow being nocked, and glimpsed a figure ducking behind a trunk not twenty feet away.

A moment later, he heard a voice. “You ain’t walkin’ out of here, coyote. More of us than there are’ve you. Might as well just step right on out and get it over with.”

Finch got to his feet, ensuring the tree was still shielding his body as he rose and extended his arm close to the trunk, aiming his gun in the direction of the voice.

They now shared the advantage the moon bestowed on them. If either of them moved, the other would see, so for now it was stalemate.

But stalemate wasted time.

Finch aimed a shot at the tree, hoping to see the man flinch, or better yet expose enough of himself to give him a clean shot. It didn’t happen. His arm like a lead weight hanging from his shoulder, Finch pressed his back to the tree, aware that Beau was out there somewhere, in the cabin most likely, alone or worse, surrounded. The fact that no shot had come from that direction in the last few minutes worried him. But he couldn’t move. There was nowhere to go. The man with the bow and arrow was blocking the route back to the vehicle and out of the clearing. If he headed out into the tall grass where there was no cover, he was as good as dead. That left moving toward the cabin and deeper into the trees as his only option and this too would expose him. He realized his relief at the moonlight had been premature. In darkness, he’d have had a better chance of making his way unseen.

He closed his eyes, and abruptly saw an image of his mother, sitting in her chair watching the news and seeing his face on the screen, the phone ringing incessantly but going ignored as she popped her pills and wept into her vodka. Or maybe she would see the story and feel nothing, secure in the oblivion she had sought out after Danny’s death. At that moment he envied that oblivion, thought that perhaps he should have taken a cue from her and found his own instead of seeking an end to the burning hatred that seethed within him for everything. A fire that could never be extinguished as long as he was alive but perhaps could have been tempered and controlled by drugs and alcohol. Too much time spent among the dead instead of the living…

An arrow slammed into the tree, startling him.

“Come on out,” the other man called. “Ain’t no sense in hidin’.”

Finch took a breath, held it, and released it slowly. His upper body felt strangely numb, as if the cold from the arrow that had been embedded in his flesh was spreading.

There was only one way this was going to end. Any minute now more of them might show up and he’d be surrounded, or dead with an arrow through his heart before he even heard them coming.

He stepped out, gun pointed at the tree, and started—

—shooting into daylight.

The ground shifted beneath his feet and he almost went down, a hot gust of air blowing into his face, carrying with it grains of sand to blind him. He blinked and the action took far too long, the gap between darkness and light taking forever. He slowed his pace, looked up in confusion at the searing watery orb of the sun. It seemed very close, the burning eye of a god inspecting him. He was aware that there were other men with him, aware that he was far too hot, wearing far too much clothing for the heat, when someone cried out his name and on impulse he raised his rifle—rifle?—and leveled it at the woman kneeling on the ground before him. Finch’s eyes widened; sweat trickled down between his shoulder blades. His knees were shaking. The eyes of the woman in the black abaya were impossibly large as she rose up, the pupils huge and ringed with gold like solar eclipses as she reached out with one quivering, bloodstained hand. Tears carved tracks in the dirt on her cheeks, her face contorted with grief and still she was coming, still she was rushing him and Finch shouted a warning only he could hear because it was inside his head, not meant for her but for himself—stop, oh GodJesus please stop—and now her other hand was falling, falling—no don’t no please—to her belt. Except, of course, there was no belt, no explosives, only her hand gripping the material to raise it above her feet to keep her from tripping as she ran, ran, ran to ask him in words he would never understand but would forever read in those eyes that were the whole world, why he had shot her baby boy.

Finch pulled the trigger. The woman’s head snapped back. The breeze spirited away the blood. She crumpled, fell backward. The silence roared. He lowered his gun. “You all right, man?” someone asked. He didn’t answer, and they didn’t wait for one. People were screaming, running away. His eyes moved to the boy, bleeding from the throat but dead, flies crossing the frozen lakes of his eyes. He’d thrown a rock, just a rock, but it had caught Finch by surprise and his rifle had replied. He could feel a burning now where that rock had hit him, a blazing hole in the center of his chest as he jerked abruptly.

Daylight faded.

The moonlight returned.

Finch tasted fresh blood.

“Gotcha,” said the boy.

-36-

“They ain’t here,” Pete said. “Ain’t nobody here.”

Claire ignored him, but knew he was right. Had she expected anything different? Finch had told her the Merrill clan would have moved, so why then was she surprised to find the place abandoned? There were no lights on in the house that squatted crookedly in the dark before her, the weeds weaving sinuously around its base like snakes caught under its weight. Nearby, Spanish moss hung from the palsied limbs of a silver birch, veiling the roof. The sheds, so terribly familiar to her, were empty, the doors hanging open, as if to invite her inside, back into the heart of the nightmare she had come here to put to rest.

She headed toward them.

“Wait,” said Pete.

She didn’t, kept walking until she was at the mouth of one of the sheds, the same one in which she had been tied to a wooden post, raped and tortured, the same one in which she had taken the life of a man, driven by panic and rage and self-preservation. And how shocked would the world be to know that killing that rotten fuck haunted her more than outliving her friends? But it was true. He’d deserved to die, had forced her to take his life, and yet the guilt that haunted her every waking moment was not alleviated by that truth. The realization of what she’d done, when it dawned on her in the days that followed, stunned her, shoved her over the edge of a precipice into a dark place where even the specters of those she’d lost could not reach her.

She stepped inside.

It smelled like dirt, sweat, and human waste.

The moonlight cast her shadow on the floor, a frail twisted thing trapped in an oblong of cold blue light.

She flicked on the flashlight.

Chains hung from the roof like roots in a subterranean cave. They clinked together in the breeze, the rusted hooks clamped to their tails appearing to move toward her, but she was not afraid. There was no further pain to be drawn from her by those hooks or anything else.

A shelf lined one end of the room. Atop it were canisters full of nails, and Mason jars with some kind of amber liquid inside. Next to these was a jelly jar filled with different kinds of feathers. Claire recognized the iridescent plumage of a bluejay, and maybe the tail feathers of a cardinal. The jars were book-ended by an identical pair of small, cheap looking plastic statues depicting Jesus in prayer, His lifeless blue eyes turned upward as if He was in the throes of death, his shadow reaching up from his skull to claw at the ceiling. A speckling of red paint or old blood colored the right cheek of the statue on the left. There were a few old suitcases and a garish-colored leather purse tossed on the dirt floor. Various work tools hung from nails on the wall. Here was an old two-handed saw with some of its teeth missing. Here, hoes of all sizes pinned to the wall by their throats. There, a row of sickles, some of them missing the upper part of the blade. A single sheet of bloodstained plastic was bunched in the corner beneath a three-legged chair that had been propped against the wall.

By her left shoulder was the stake, a rough-cut oaken log that had been wedged between floor and ceiling. The wood was stained in places with all that remained of the dead. Claire shook her head and reached out a hand. Again, she anticipated flashes of memory on contact with the stake, an assault of visions reminding her that once it had been her body pressed against the wood, her blood and sweat permeating its surface, her fear saturating it. But there was nothing, only the feel of rough bark against her fingertips. It was just a hunk of wood. Lifeless.

Behind it, the six-foot high cord of wood, stacked unevenly against the wall, long shards poking out here and there, intended to make the prisoner even more uncomfortable as they prodded into their flesh.

“Claire,” Pete said, from outside.

“What?” she muttered, her eyes drawn to the floor where once she had watched a man’s lifeblood soak into the dirt. There was nothing there now but old boot prints.

She had asked Pete to bring her here, knowing full well she wouldn’t find the Merrill family. They were long gone, and even now Finch and his friend were tracking them. Perhaps they would succeed in exterminating her tormentors, perhaps not. But such a vigil no longer seemed so pressing, or urgent.

They were alone here, tourists at the site of an atrocity, and it evoked little feeling from her.

“Claire,” Pete said again, and when she turned to look, the beam of her flashlight showed his brown eyes filled with alarm. “Someone’s comin’.”

Claire stepped outside and killed the flashlight.

Pete turned, looking toward the road.

She joined him.

A car was meandering its way toward them, flashers blinking red and blue, but soundlessly, shadows dancing in circles around the dark bulk of the vehicle.

A cop.

Claire shook her head. Goddamn you, Kara.

She looked from Pete to the brooding house behind him, then began to make her way toward it.

“Wait,” said Pete. “What are you doin’?”

“Stall him for me,” she called back, and broke into a trot. “I need to find something.”

The cruiser crested the hill, pinning Pete in its headlights.

Claire disappeared into the house.

With a sigh that sounded almost like relief, Finch dropped to his knees. He felt little pain other than the dull burning ache in the center of his chest from the second arrow the man—or rather boy, as he saw now—had shot into him.

“Ain’t feelin’ much yet,” said the figure standing before him. He could see that the boy was no more than eighteen or nineteen, but tall, his face in the moonglow possessed of a ferocity that was startling. Rarely, even in war, had Finch been afforded such a glimpse of concentrated malevolence. The boy was breathing hard, the adrenaline making his limbs jerk and twitch, his hands trembling as he held the bow up, an arrow nocked, the string drawn back, waiting to deliver the fatal shot. “Reckon if I let you you’ll start feelin’ somethin’ soon though,” the boy continued. “Papa had us put some stuff from the doctor’s house on our arrows. Said it makes your mind go funny, numbs you fer a while, makes you no more dangerous than a stunned possum. We even tried it on Luke, and he ain’t lifted a finger since.”

Finch was dying. He could feel it, the heat in his chest unable to compete with the rapidly encroaching waves of cold. His mouth was dry, his throat raw with the struggle to draw air.

“Maybe I’ll just wait and see if it wears off,” said the boy. “So maybe you can feel what I do to you next. But you might as well toss that gun now, as you ain’t got no more use for it.”

Finch lowered his head, icy sweat dripping down his face. He had almost forgotten that the gun was still in his hand. Now he looked at it, moved it so the moonlight glanced off the barrel, and slowly brought it up.

“I’m warnin’ you.”

“Shut up,” Finch hissed, and raised the gun.

We’re not doing this your way, he vowed, as he swiveled the barrel toward the boy even as the third arrow was released and cleaved the air between them.

He pulled the trigger. Light flared. The boy staggered back, darkness blossoming in his shoulder.

A split-second before the arrow found him, Finch saw another shadow detach itself from the trees behind the boy. He might have cheered, might have cried to realize that it was his friend come to save him. But the chance for salvation for men of their kind was long gone, and would never be found here, or anywhere else.

Stunned, Aaron fell backward, his momentum halted by what he assumed was a tree until it moved, large hands grabbing fistfuls of his hair and jerking him off his feet. He fell, the gunshot wound burning in his shoulder.

“You son of a bitch,” his assailant cursed, and then was upon him like a ravenous animal, punching him in the face, ramming his meaty knuckles into the flesh, cracking bone. Aaron did not struggle. He simply lay there, enduring the battering, one hand silently and slowly straying to his belt and the knife nestled there, the handle hard against his exposed belly.

“Where are the rest of them?” the man asked and abruptly rose, dragging Aaron to his feet. The boy let the strength leave him so that the man was burdened with his weight and would have to struggle to keep his own balance. “I said where the fuck are they?” Spittle flew from his lips and Aaron had to restrain a cry as it found his eyes. He’s poisoned me, he thought desperately. His venom’s in me. Oh Jesus…

Driven by fear of a kind previously unknown to him, he grabbed the knife and swung it up and out in a short arc. His attacker moved away, but not quickly enough. The blade slashed his chest, and he grunted in pain. Aaron did not wait for him to recover. He moved in low and fast, dodging the man’s fists, and jammed the blade up to the hilt in his belly and kept it there even as those large hands found the sides of his face like a lover about to impart a secret, and squeezed.

Aaron moaned.

“Fucker,” the man said, and began to turn Aaron’s face away from him. The boy tried to jerk the knife upward but his hand no longer felt under his command, refusing to obey his instructions to keep traveling up until the coyote was split wide open. Agony seared his throat as his neck muscles began to protest the angle at which his head was being forced to turn. His vision wobbled, dimmed.

“Stop,” he whimpered, his voice sounding muffled and very far away.

The man merely grunted, his trembling hands clamped like a vice against the sides of the boy’s head.

“Stop,” Aaron said once more as his muscles became ropes of fire, bones cracked and split, and he was suddenly facing in the opposite direction, all feeling gone but for a momentary incredible starburst of pain that buzzed through his brain before the lights went out.

On the bank of a sluggishly moving river almost a half-mile to the north of Krall’s cabin, Papa-In-Gray knelt down in the reeds, joined his hands and prayed. Beside him, thrumming with anxiety, stood Isaac, who had come to deliver the word that Aaron and Joshua had fallen to the Men of the World, but not, he’d said with obvious pride, without taking their attackers with them.

When Papa was done with his requests that his boys be sainted, and fairly recognized in the Kingdom of Heaven, he rose with a grimace of pain and put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “We move on,” he said. “No place they’ve touched can be used again. They’ll have turned this place to poison, and it will spread.” He shook his head in sadness. “Your brothers were brave,” he said, gazing down into Isaac’s eyes, in which he saw no grief, only anger and impatience. “As were you. But we must take our mission elsewhere.” He sighed, and crossed his arms. “Where is Luke?”

Isaac shrugged.

“Did they take him?”

The boy shook his head.

“If he’s alive, he’ll find us. Your Uncle Krall knows where we’ll be, assuming that fool has come to his senses and ain’t so much raw meat scattered by the coyotes.”

Together they walked the bank, following the moon, until they found a spot where the river was shallow and hardly moving at all, a tangle of broken branches and other detritus forming a natural dam, so that the water was only a few feet deep. As quietly as they could, they waded across the freezing water, both of them keeping a vigilant watch on the trees ahead, as well as those behind. Isaac had said two men had fallen, but there might yet be more of them, and if they let themselves relax without being sure, it could be the end of them. Every shadow was a coyote in hiding, every snap of a twig a footfall, every rustle one of them shifting their weight in preparation for ambush.

They reached the riverbank on the opposite side, and gingerly ascended through the reeds and cattails. Isaac’s breath was a low steady hiss, and Papa knew he was eager to have his taste of war with the Men of the World, that he envied the glorious deaths of his brothers. They had fought the fight of angels, felling the demons that had come to corrupt their hearts and souls, and it must have been a magnificent sight to behold. But he would get his chance sooner or later, because on the heels of the coyotes would come others seeking vengeance, seeking an end to Papa and his kind.

Papa was tired. As he paused a moment to catch his breath, his knee aching, he looked up at the stars above, their glow lessened by the great light of the moon, and felt a pang of sadness at all he had lost. Matthew, Joshua and Aaron were gone, murdered by the Men of the World, and Mama-In-Bed too, killed by her fear of them, and from the heartbreak at seeing Luke contaminated. Luke’s own allegiances remained to be seen, though Papa had faith. He had no choice. Alone he was defenseless against the awesome forces which existed to oppose him, and Isaac was young, an efficient killer but naïve, and not strong enough to be of much use if their nemeses came again. He needed Luke now to stand with him.

Isaac radiated impatience, his dark eyes twinkling in the gloom, and Papa nodded, waved a hand for him to proceed into the dark woods ahead. He watched as the young boy, limbs rigid with tension, hurried into the trees. After a moment, he followed, stowing that sadness, for it was not an emotion that could be used. It was a weakness, and for as long as he’d walked the earth, it had been a flaw easily exploited. He had encouraged his boys to shun it and they had learned to do so. That it should come back now, after all this time, unsettled him, tempted him to question the wisdom of proceeding any further.

No, he decided, angry at himself. We must.

He had doubted before and God had punished him.

He would not doubt again.

Teeth clenched, he ignored the nagging pain in his leg and willed himself forward into the woods.

-37-

The cruiser crept so close that Pete thought for a moment it was going to run him down. With great effort he stood his ground and the vehicle halted, the headlights on either side of him, the grille almost touching his knees. Dust swept out from under the tires, momentarily blinding him. He swallowed, and wiped a hand over his face. He was hungry, tired and dirty, in need of a bath, and he was afraid, though it felt odd to be afraid of Sheriff McKindrey, who had always been decent to him and had treated him with sympathy and kindness once it had been revealed what had happened to his Pa. But back then, Pete hadn’t been on the run, had done nothing to give the police reason to track him down. They sure had a reason now, and more than one.

For a moment, after the car stopped, nothing happened. The engine made the sound of a clock ticking away the seconds as it cooled. The lights were still on, so Pete could only see the vague shape of the man inside the vehicle. It unnerved him further, made him think of running and to hell with the consequences. But he was not alone, and to run would put more than himself at risk. Claire needed him, as she had needed him from the moment he’d first set eyes on her, and nothing she would ever say or do would convince him he was wrong. She was hurt, angry, confused. He knew that now, and realized he should have recognized it before, having felt those same exact emotions in the days after his father’s death.

He loved her, and so would do as she had asked.

The cruiser door opened and above the lights, Pete saw McKindrey wince and lean on the door for a moment as he put his hat on and tugged the brim down so that it cast a shadow over his eyes. A wide white bandage was taped over his nose and deep bruises ringed his eyes.

“Pete,” he said by way of acknowledgment.

“Hi Sheriff,” Pete said.

McKindrey rested his elbows on the door and looked around. “What brings you all the way out here? Last I heard, you’d split town.”

“I come back,” Pete told him. “Wanted to see if I could find whoever hurt my Pa.”

McKindrey nodded his understanding. “But we got the man did that, son.”

“No.”

“No?”

Pete shook his head. “Weren’t that doctor did this. He were a decent man. He wouldn’ta hurted no one. He tried to help.”

“That so?”

“Sure is.”

“They say he was out of his mind. Went crazy after his wife passed.”

“People say whatever they like. I knew him. Saw him that night and he looked fine to me.”

McKindrey nodded at the house behind Pete. “So what was it you was plannin’ to do if you found them out here?”

Pete shrugged. It was an easy question to answer because he hadn’t really known from the moment he’d set his sights on the Merrills what he’d hoped to achieve if he ever found himself face to face with them. He wanted them all dead, that was for sure, but it wasn’t likely he’d ever be able to do that on his own, and now, they weren’t even here and he was probably going to end up in jail just for thinking about it. “Dunno,” he said.

“Well,” McKindrey said, finally moving away from the car door and shutting it behind him. He moved only a foot or so before he grimaced and leaned against the hood. “Shit.”

“You all right?”

“Yep. Busted myself up pretty good down by the creek.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

McKindrey nodded. “My own damn fault. I gotta learn to keep my eyes open.” He folded his arms. “Pete…you know you shouldn’t be out here.”

“Yes sir.”

“And you know I told you I’d find out all I could about what happened to your daddy and try to put this whole thing to rest, didn’t I?”

“Yes sir.”

“Well, you should’ve listened to me. Have I ever lied to you?”

“No sir.”

“Right. Then why do you want to go causin’ trouble for me?”

“I didn’t think about it, to tell the truth. I just wanted to come back here and try to teach these people a lesson. They shouldn’t be let to kill people like they do, Sheriff.”

McKindrey’s gaze was hard. “Well now, that’s a mighty big accusation to be puttin’ on folks unless you’ve got proof of some kind. Do you?”

Pete thought about this, was about to admit that he hadn’t any proof other than the memory of waking up to find the Merrill family in his house that night years ago, when he remembered Claire.

“I reckon I do,” he said, and smiled. “The girl who escaped ’em is with me. She knows the doctor didn’t do nothin’. She knows who did.”

McKindrey nodded, as if he knew all along that Pete wasn’t alone. “Where’s she at?”

“Inside,” Pete replied. “But she wants to be let alone for a while. I reckon she’s tryin’ to find whatever’s left of her friends’ belongin’s.”

“Trespassin’s what she’s doin’, Pete,” McKindrey said, but to the boy’s relief, didn’t make a move. “Now I been sent out here to get her by her sister, who wants her home. She’s been through enough without makin’ it worse for herself and worryin’ everybody else.”

“We didn’t want to make it worse,” Pete told him. “We just had to come back. Couldn’t just let things die the way they did. Nobody knows the truth and I reckon they need to know. And I figure Claire’s come back to close the door on some of that bad stuff. I guess once we’re done, you probably won’t never see her again.”

“That would suit me,” McKindrey said. “Goddamn town has enough trouble without folks who was lucky enough to get free of it comin’ back to stir up more.” He glanced briefly down at his foot, which was wrapped in bandages and shreds of an old shirt, and shook his head. “Now you know I’m real sorry about what happened to your Pa, but you’ve gotta accept the fact that he weren’t a happy man. He took his own life, son, and that’s the truth of it right there. Whatever happened with those kids and that doctor, or whoever done it to them, it doesn’t involve you and you shouldn’t be stuck in the middle of it.”

“But Claire said—”

McKindrey raised a hand. “It don’t concern me what Claire said. Whatever happened to her messed her up real bad and I reckon, between you and me, that she probably ain’t been right since. Probably convinced herself that some family she saw passin’ by her on the road were the ones that did this to her. It happens, you know. Mind has a funny way of makin’ up for lost memory. Happened to my own stepbrother Willard. He went out harvestin’ corn, got drunk and fell over, hit his head on a rock. Swore up and down it was the scarecrow had thumped him upside the head. Still believes it too.”

“It ain’t like that, Sheriff.”

The Sheriff frowned. “How the hell do you know what it is or ain’t, son? Were you there when whatever happened to that girl happened?”

“No,” Pete admitted.

“So how do you know who done what?”

“She told me.”

“Don’t matter what she told you if her mind’s half-gone now does it?”

Pete shrugged.

“Hell boy, if I told you a bear chewed on my foot would you believe it?”

“I guess so.”

“Why?”

“Because… you’re the Sheriff.”

“And you figure I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“Sure.”

“You believe everythin’ that girl tells you because maybe you got your eye on her, am I right?”

Pete felt his cheeks grow warm. “I dunno.”

“Yeah,” McKindrey said with a grin. “That’s it all right. She could tell you the sky’s green and the grass’s blue and you’d believe it if you thought she were gonna let you into that sweet pink paradise of hers.”

“What does that mean?”

“Never mind. It don’t matter. What does matter, son, is somethin’ you may not be aware of.”

“What?”

“Her sister thinks you kidnapped Claire.”

Pete’s mouth dropped open. “No… She asked me to take her here, I swear it!”

McKindrey hushed him. “I believe you. I do. But a whole lotta folks won’t, and the longer you stay down here foolin’ around, the deeper the shit you’re in’s gonna get.”

“I wouldn’t kidnap no one.”

“Course you wouldn’t, but folks’ll suspect you’re sweet on that girl, and they’ll know she ain’t right in the head, so they’ll reckon you told her to come down here so you could have her to yourself.”

“That ain’t how it is.”

“But that’s what they’ll say. They’ll ask themselves why a rich white Northern gal like that would come all the way down here with a poor young buck like you, and they’ll come up with all sorts of awful notions. Then you’ll be the bad guy.”

“Claire’ll—”

McKindrey limped away from the car and put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. Like a lame dog, he kept his wounded foot slightly raised. “Listen,” he said in a quiet voice. “Claire won’t do shit for you when you need it. You need to forget about her before she hangs you out to dry. See, the folks who done this to her are long gone, way out of her reach, so she needs to punish someone. That’s why she’s here. She can’t stand the fact that no one’s gonna swing for what they did to her, so she’ll maybe lead you inside that house, let you fuck her, then she’ll cry rape and claim you tried to kill her just like you did before.”

Alarmed, Pete shook his head. “Sheriff…I took care of her. I drove her to the hospital.”

“Sure you did. And she’ll say you did it out of guilt for what you did to her after killin’ her friends and havin’ your way with her. She’ll say she was confused, thought someone else did it, but when she saw you at her house it all came back to her. Then she’ll say you dragged her into your truck and brought her back here.” He shook his head in sadness. “And who’s gonna say otherwise? Wellman might have backed you up, but he’s dead. Your Pa too. Who else is gonna prove what you say is the truth?”

No, Pete told himself. You don’t know Claire. She wouldn’t do that to me. But as he had already realized earlier, though he had committed himself to the task of protecting her, at the back of it all, he didn’t know her at all, and hadn’t liked what he seen since arriving at her house. She was cold, and weren’t cold people capable of the kinds of things McKindrey was suggesting now? Nevertheless it seemed impossible that he could be so completely wrong about someone. But why would McKindrey lie?

His head hurt from the strain of trying to make sense of it. He was torn between the desire to stay and look after Claire, all in the hope that she would show her appreciation for his efforts, and heeding the Sheriff’s advice to avoid the kind of nightmare the man had detailed for him as the most likely reward for his loyalty.

“What do I do?” he asked.

McKindrey nodded as if Pete had answered a math problem correctly. “You get goin’,” he said. “They’re only interested in the girl, not you, unless you give them reason to be. Head back into town and wait for me in my office. Stella’s there, she’ll make you a nice cup of somethin’.”

“What are you goin’ to do?”

The Sheriff sighed and put his hands on his hips. “Talk to her, I expect. See if I can get her to come with me without makin’ things hard. We need to get her back to her people.”

“Why can’t I wait and get a ride from you?”

“Because I don’t want you around if she decides to make up another one of her stories. Least if you’re with Stella, she can vouch for you, you know?”

Pete shook his head.

“She can say you were there and not here,” McKindrey explained.

“You ain’t gonna hurt her, are you?”

“No,” McKindrey told him. “Not even a little bit.”

Breath trapped in her throat, a hand over her nose to keep the foul stench away, Claire stood by the grime-encrusted window, listening. She hadn’t been able to make out what the Sheriff had said to Pete, but whatever it was, it proved enough to convince him that he was better off leaving her. She watched, incredulous, as the boy cast one final longing glance back at the house and started down the path toward the road, and the truck. McKindrey, looking like every hillbilly sheriff she’d ever seen on TV, stood with his hat tipped back away from his forehead, fists clenched on his hips, monitoring the boy’s progress. All he was short was some chaw. She could clearly imagine him leaning over and spitting a great gob of tobacco juice into the dirt.

She didn’t know the Sheriff, but now she was alone with him and he could only be here for one reason: to take her back home. She did not wait for him to turn and start toward the house. Instead, she quickly moved away from the window, her eyes watering at the smell of death that seemed to seep through her skin to get at her. In the small beam from the flashlight, she could see what looked like an ornate bed, the cast iron rusted and stained. The filthy mattress in the middle had sunken so low into the frame it was almost folded in two, springs and wires poking out here and there and coated with what looked like dried skin and coarse dark hair. Opposite the bed was a haphazard mound of clothes of every conceivable kind: T-shirts, shorts, underwear, jackets, hats, raincoats, shoes, socks. Fighting the urge to gag, she reached down and began to feel her way through the clothes.

What are you doing? This is insane!

She had thought all along that she had come here to confront her attackers, the murderers of her friends. But they weren’t here and yet she wasn’t leaving. Even with the means of her departure stalking toward the house, she was still ransacking through old clothing, looking for…

Looking for—what?

For them, she realized. For their clothes, for things that belonged to them and were never meant to belong to anyone else. Things that still carry their blood, the scent of their sweat, their perfume, cologne. Their private things. The things that were pieces of them. The things I need to take with me so I won’t dare forget.

With her tears came a desperate, frantic search through the last few items heaped on the floor. She found wallets, purses, a soiled wig, a toothbrush, a pocket mirror and some makeup, but nothing she recognized as anything her friends had once owned.

She fell to her knees, removed her hand from her mouth.

The noxious smell invaded her. She gagged, reached for something, anything with which to cover her mouth. Dug a hand into her pocket. And found the phone.

What if he answered? The memory of that night came back to her and she tore the phone free of her pocket, hit the menu button and raised it up in front of her face. The green glow aided her in locating Danny’s number. The phone was here, she thought. He was here. I want it back. I want him back.

Sobbing, hands trembling so hard she feared she might not be able to keep the phone from slipping from her grip and smashing against the floor, she dialed the number.

Time spun away from her, the bilious stench forgotten, the bedsprings groaning for a moment as if a ghost had rested its weight there to watch her. Startled, she looked up.

His phone should be dead by now. Or turned off. But even the promise of his recorded voice thrilled her. A little piece of him she could always keep. The only part of her he’d given her.

The call went through.

Danny’s phone began to ring.

It was here. Afraid to believe, she slowly rose, and lowered her phone, obviating the distraction so she could use both ears to guide her toward the sound.

She stepped out of the room into a narrow corridor carpeted by dust and debris. She turned her head, closed her eyes and listened.

The phone was not in the house.

The sheds then, maybe.

She stepped back into the room she had just left and peered out through the window, straining to see through the grime. Annoyed, she scrubbed a rough circle clear with her sleeve. Looked out again. Scanned the yard, but saw nothing, not even the Sheriff.

Then finally, she located the source of the sound.

Her heart skipped a beat.

Cold filled her.

Danny’s phone was out there, ringing, and now she could see it too. It was on its back, display facing up, the violet glow granting an eerie luminescence to the inside of the Sheriff’s car.

-38-

“Hell of a way to go,” Beau said as he lowered himself to the ground, one bloody hand pressed against his belly.

Finch was breathing, but only just. Every inhalation felt like he was drawing boiling water into his lungs; every exhalation felt like waves of ice. He couldn’t move, and didn’t try. The mere idea of it made him want to throw up.

Beau sat back against the tree. “Kids,” he said. “Who’d have believed it.”

“You would,” Finch said hoarsely, and tried to smile. He was on his back, the ground cold beneath him. The shaft of the final arrow protruded from his stomach. Blood ran freely. “You could probably have told me how this was going to go right down to the last detail.”

Beau said nothing, and for a moment Finch assumed he had died, but then he spoke softly. “I could, but it wasn’t what you wanted to hear.”

Finch’s smile faded.

“Was it?” Beau asked.

“No.”

“You find what you were lookin’ for down here?”

“I think it found me.”

“Deep,” Beau said and chuckled. It quickly turned to a fit of coughing. “Shit…Any time you’d like to call 911 is fine by me. I’m not dyin’ here or nothin’. Unless you want me to do the honors.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Start with: We’re dyin’. They’ll probably take the ball and run with it after that.”

“Then what?”

“Then wh—? Shit, now I get why people in movies tell dyin’ folks not to talk. They talk shit is why. They’ll send someone to patch us up.”

“So we’ll be in full health in prison. Two dead kids lying out here, Beau.”

Beau started to respond, then thought better of it.

“I’m sorry,” Finch said. “I fucked this all right to hell.”

“It was pretty much the only way it could go, right?”

“Guess so. But I’m sorry for bringing you down here.”

“Hey,” Beau told him. “You don’t owe me no apologies. I knew what I was doin’.”

“I didn’t,” Finch said and smiled.

“Yeah, no shit. So now what?”

“I think,” Finch told him. “I’m just going to lay real still and rest for a while.”

Beau shifted and moaned in pain. “You always was a lazy sonofabitch. I’m gonna try and get my ass to that cabin. Maybe they got a first aid kit or somethin’ so I can sew my stuffin’ back in. Hell, maybe they even got a phone.”

They hadn’t seen any telephone poles on the way in, but Finch didn’t bother pointing that out. Beau already knew, but talking and thinking was better than dying any day of the week.

“Maybe they’ve got a mini-bar,” he continued. “And a Jacuzzi. Hell, I bet these boys got their own game room. Didn’t see any, but that don’t mean they ain’t there.”

“Turntables and a karaoke machine,” Finch added.

“Yeah, and a waterbed, with pink cushions and silk sheets.”

Finch laughed despite the pain. “Heart-shaped.”

Beau snorted. It looked like it hurt. “Barry White on Dolby surround.”

Though the pain was unbearable, Finch couldn’t stem the mirth that rippled through him. “I can’t feel my legs.”

“Why would you want to?” Beau asked. “They’re not much to look at.”

“Aw shit,” Finch said, and his voice cracked. “We failed, man.”

“We thinned the herd,” Beau told him. “It’s all we’ve ever done. Tried to reduce the threat, just like in the desert. Certain things just are, you know. Bad things. And nothin’ will ever stop them. Even if we’d wiped these fuckers off the planet, there are a million others just like them out there, preyin’ on people whenever the mood takes them. We weren’t gonna make a difference down here, Finch. No matter what we did.”

“It might have made a difference to us.”

“To you,” Beau said. “Not me. This was never my fight. It’s like that friend you have when you’re in high school whose younger brother gets jumped. The friend organizes a lynch mob and without a second thought you agree to go kick the livin’ shit out of a bunch of strangers. You do it because it’s important to someone, and because maybe the violence appeals to you on some level you prefer to keep hidden, even from yourself.”

“That why you’re here?”

“I’m here because I’m the cheerful type.”

“The hell does that mean?”

“Means everythin’ about me’s bullshit. A front. I saw what you did in the desert, and I fed you…some speech about it being par for the course in wartime. Well, that may be so but it don’t make it right. And I wasn’t lecturin’ you. I was tryin’ to make myself…believe it.”

With great effort, Finch turned his head to look at him. Pine needles pricked his cheek. Beau’s eyes were closed.

“What did you do over there?”

Beau might have shrugged, or it might have been the shadows around him deepening as the moon slid behind a cloud. “Tried to stay alive. Same as everyone else.”

“You know what’s funny?”

“Do tell.”

“For as long as I can remember I’ve been pissed off. Only time it got even a little better was when I was with Kara. And still, I pushed her away, let some of that anger rub off on her. Then she broke up with me and I accused her of being cold.”

“That’s not funny,” Beau said. “Gotta work on your comic timin’.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m bleedin’ like a stuck pig,” Beau told him. “If I’m gonna get us help, I’d better get my ass up.”

Finch pondered this, and when next he spoke, to tell Beau that for a guy in a hurry, he sure wasn’t getting very far, he didn’t receive an answer, only the insects in the brush and the birds high in the trees. He listened to them for what seemed like eternity, before he let his eyes drift shut. Peace washed over him, alien and new and he embraced it.

Kara’s face materialized in the dark. He thought about calling her, but realized he didn’t have the breath left to power the words, and maybe that was for the best. He had nothing to tell her that she didn’t already know.

Claire considered hiding, or running, or seeking a back exit, but indecision kept her rooted to the spot. She stood in the room with the monstrous bed, her back to the window, watching as the Sheriff stepped into the hall and made his way toward her. Opposite the window was a door leading outside and she could easily have taken this route while the Sheriff was looking for her, but a chain had been looped around the simple bolt, and a rusted padlock hung from the links. She had already tested it, and it had opened barely enough for her to get her arm through.

“There you are, Missy,” the Sheriff said cheerfully. So cheerfully in fact, that she was struck with sudden doubt. Maybe he found the phone on the road, or at Pete’s house, or the Doctor’s place? There were any number of ways in which he could have come by it, so why had she immediately assumed the most malevolent one? Still, she refused to let herself relax too much. The last time she’d seen that phone, it had been in Danny’s shirt pocket. Now Danny was dead, and the phone was in a Sheriff’s car when there was no reason for him to have it. He should have returned it to Danny’s mother. And what about the call? The sense she’d had of someone listening?

Hidden behind her back was a length of wire she had snapped off the bed. It was coiled, but ended in a kinked, three-inch piece that would serve as an adequate weapon with which to buy her time, if it became necessary for her to do so.

The Sheriff was limping, she noted. This too might give her an advantage if it came to a chase. The gun in his holster, however, kept the odds firmly in his favor, and abruptly, she wished Pete hadn’t abandoned her. Not that she blamed him. She had hardly given him a reason to stay.

“My name’s Sheriff McKindrey. I assume you’re Claire?”

“You assume right.”

McKindrey continued to pick his way along the debris-filled hallway, occasionally glancing with distaste at something on the floor. The flickering cruiser lights made his shadow large and jittery on the hallway wall.

“Your sister sent me to fetch you,” he told her. “She’s awful worried.”

“I’ll bet she is.”

Back in the car, Danny’s phone stopped ringing as she snapped her own cell phone shut and slid it into her pocket.

“Why do you have my boyfriend’s phone?” she asked him as he cleared the hall and with visible relief, stepped into the gloomy room.

“What?”

“My boyfriend. The people who lived here killed him. I was looking for his phone so I called it. It rang in your car.”

“Of course it did,” McKindrey said, with a wide smile, which showed a slight gap between his front teeth. “Papa-In-Gray gave it to me.”

Claire frowned. “Who?”

“Papa-In-Gray.” He nodded his understanding. “Of course, you probably don’t even know their names.”

Claire felt her chest tighten. “Names?”

“The names of the people who hurt you and killed your friends.” He stepped closer, but it took work, as he gingerly set the bandaged foot down to gauge how much it was going to hurt to put his weight on it. “Papa-In-Gray’s the daddy. Momma-In-Bed’s the Momma,” he said, indicating the bed. “She’s dead now, good riddance to the ’ol bitch. Gave me more than a few nightmares. And of course you met the kids, Isaac and Joshua and Aaron. Matt’s the one you killed. Luke’s the oldest. They’ve had a bit of trouble with him. Said he’s got notions. Seems more like good sense to me.”

“So you know what they did?”

“Of course. Papa gave me your wallets and jewelry and phones and such after it was all done.”

Claire couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Why?”

“Call it a tip for keepin’ my big ’ol mouth shut.” He grinned. “Hell, the one question folks keep puttin’ to me is why I stick around here when there ain’t nothin’ to stick around for. Usually I just shrug and say ‘everyplace needs the law’ but that’s bullshit. Truth is, and this is between you and me, I stay for the watches, rings, billfolds, gold teeth, radios, all of which is pretty easy to offload if you know who’s buyin’. But the best money comes from cars. Oh yeah. They give me a bunch of those. I send them to my stepbrother Willard in Arkansas. He’s a bit slow, you understand, but he can move a vehicle in record time. I give him a percentage and enjoy the rest. Makes workin’ here quite a treat when you know all those goddamn suits are lookin’ at you like you ain’t got nothin’ when in fact you could buy and sell ’em if you was of a mind to. Been buildin’ up quite a nest egg, and while I hadn’t figured on retirin’ for another few years yet, you getting’ away has forced me to rethink things. Kinda annoyed about that to tell the truth, but I know it ain’t your fault.”

“Jesus Christ… they kill people,” Claire said, backing further into the room.

“Exactly. They kill people. I don’t.”

“But you’re gonna kill me.”

McKindrey stopped in the middle of the room. He looked genuinely offended. “Look here, Missy. I ain’t never killed nobody and I don’t aim to neither.” He brightened as he took another small step in her direction. “Take a look at this…” He rolled up his sleeve and held out his right wrist. “What do you make of that?”

It was Stu’s wristwatch, a Rolex his father bought him for his graduation. Claire clearly recalled him showing it off, turning the back of it up to the light so they could read the inscription on the back: To my boy. There’s no stopping you now, kiddo. Love Dad.

“That isn’t yours,” she said, choked with sorrow.

“Hell, the owner don’t need it. Better on my wrist here than in a hole or stuck on some dusty shelf somewhere.”

“You have no right to do this.”

“Probably, but that’s the way the world turns, ain’t it? No such thing as fair anymore. But hell, you’re actin’ like I did the killin’ myself and I ain’t no killer,” he said around a smile. “I’m a collector.”

Claire moved back until she was pressed against the wall, her shirt stuck to her skin with sweat. Dust rained down around her, turned to fireflies in the beam from her flashlight. “You’re a fucking psycho, just like the rest of them. You might as well be the one cutting people up.”

McKindrey raised his hands in a gesture of placation. “Look, all I’m goin’ to do is take you for a ride that’s all.”

“A ride where?”

“Into Mason City, to the state police. They’ll make sure you get home.”

“You expect me to believe that you’re going to hand me over to the police after just telling me you’ve been profiting from the murders of all these people over the years?”

McKindrey shrugged, his smile wide.

“If you touch me,” Claire said. “I’ll kill you.”

“Oh c’mon, Missy. I’m the one with the gun.” As he spoke he unclipped his holster, pulled out his weapon and drew back the hammer. “Now it’s been an unpleasant enough day for me already. Don’t make it worse. My foot’s killin’ me, my nose feels like it’s full of fire ants, and all I want is to get home and get drunk, all right? So you’ll be doin’ me a nice favor if you just come along.”

There was less than six feet between them.

She didn’t move.

He leveled the gun at her.

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“Well, if you don’t, someone else’s just gonna come by and be a lot less pleasant about it.”

“Like your friends, those killing fucks you’re working for?”

“Honey,” he said sweetly, and closed the distance between them. “I’m done talkin’. Now you’re gonna move, and that’s all there is to it.”

“What did they do with them?”

“With who?”

“My friends.”

“You know that well as I do. Scattered ’em around the doctor’s place.”

“What did they do with the rest of them?”

McKindrey sighed. “Buried ’em.”

“Where?”

“Different places. Some parts here, some in the woods, some out in that field with the dead tree.”

That gave Claire pause and for the briefest of moments she experienced a blissful absence of any kind of feeling at all. Sound itself seemed muted, the room blurring as an image of the field with the wisps of cotton floating upward in the breeze superimposed itself over the present.

Everything isn’t dead, she thought then. Only gone.

-39-

Finch was dead.

Beau knew it as soon as he woke and put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. The man’s skin was icy cold to the touch, and a search for a pulse yielded nothing. Beau shook his head and expelled a ragged breath. He had let Finch down, though of course Finch would never have seen it that way. To a man like that, culpability would always be directed inward and everything that happened in his life would be a result of his own failings. Finch had existed to suffer, driven by a burning rage he had never understood, a cold engine that drove him toward his own inexorable death without ever revealing its motives. It was like this for some people, but not for Beau, though he considered himself equally directionless. Born into a poor but nurturing family, he had depended on his instincts to survive on the cruel streets, and his fists had seen him through. He was a walking cliché—kid born in the ghetto made strong by necessary violence, and yet he shared none of the characteristics of his brothers, who walked with an attitude, their shoulders low, eyes frosty and darting from face to face as if searching for one that required punishment. Anger had never been a driving force in Beau’s life, only sorrow, but the origin of that sorrow was as much a mystery as Finch’s rage. It had felt as if he were grieving for people who had died long before he’d come into the world, and had found himself forever unfulfilled, as if he’d been born without some vital component necessary for total happiness. He’d drifted, seeking people more emotionally deficient than himself, for in them he found a kinship. The shared unhappiness did not cancel either out, but neither did it exacerbate it, and this was how he lived. In Finch he found a carnival mirror, a distorted reflection of himself that bound him to the man.

It had led him here, to the dark and the cold, with a gash in his stomach that was bleeding profusely and playing with his consciousness. Beside him, Finch had found peace, and for a moment Beau envied him so much that his eyes started to close, and he quickly shook his head, braced a hand on the ground and raised himself up. He cried out and stopped, but did not abandon the progress he’d made. With one hand clamped over his belly, he drew his legs beneath him, relying on their strength to help him up, and they did. He stood, shoulder pressed to the tree, gasping, his knees trembling, the front of his jeans soaked with blood. Beau was weak from blood loss, but he was not yet dead, and that was something. He took a moment to steady himself and looked down at Finch, who was little more than a long shadow with a pale smudge for a face. Beau made a silent promise that he would do everything he could to make sure Finch wasn’t left here to rot or be picked apart by animals, even if it meant burying him himself. “No man left behind” was the motto for fallen soldiers on the battlefield, but Beau wasn’t sure he’d ever really understood it. What lay at his feet was no longer anyone he knew. Whatever happened next would hardly bother Finch. He was gone. Only the body remained. Desecration, he thought. We leave no one behind to be desecrated by the enemy. Still, he wondered why it made such a difference to anyone. It was the soul and the spirit people mourned, not the body, so why should it matter what became of it?

He realized such musings were simply a way to stall, to avoid moving when he knew it was going to be agony to do so. It was also a means of trying to disseminate the guilt he already felt at the thought of leaving Finch here alone. But if he didn’t, he too would die.

He pushed himself away from the tree and stumbled through the woods toward the cabin. He had been mistaken about the agony, he realized. There was no agony in his belly. It was utter torture.

The moonlight faded, and for one panicked moment, Beau thought it was unconsciousness coming to claim him and he stopped, leaned against a tree until the light silvered the woods once more. Breath pluming in the air before him, he focused on the murky yellow light from the cabin window up ahead and hurried on, the blood sticky between his fingers.

Keep goin’, he told himself. Not far. Get there and you can sit and figure out what happens next. But keep movin’.

The light in the cabin window was a beacon, drawing his wounded form toward it. In his waistband, the gun, cold against his skin. In his pocket, the reassuring weight of his cell phone. He prayed there was a signal. There was only one call worth making now and he would do it even if his injury conspired to leave him dead on the forest floor. One call, and perhaps everything they’d done wouldn’t have been in vain after all.

Keep m…

He was within hailing distance of the cabin when the world abruptly swept up and away and nausea gripped him.

The darkness came again.

This time it was not the moon.

Despite his injury, McKindrey’s approach had up until this moment been confident, as if he knew without a doubt how this was going to play out. But now, with Claire backed up against the wall, he stopped and licked his lips. In the light through the windows, she could see perspiration beading his sallow skin. He did not look nervous, but wary, the gun pointed at her chest. His eyebrows were knitted, as if he’d suddenly forgotten the finer points of hostage taking.

“Just take ’er easy now,” he mumbled, as if advising himself.

With no room to move, her hand bent behind her, Claire felt the wire she’d taken from the bedsprings poking her between the shoulder blades. She told herself to relax, that panic would get her nowhere, but then realized that was a lie. Stark panic had freed her the first time she’d found herself a captive in this charnel house. But would it do so again? And even if it did, did she really want to give herself over to such impulses a second time when she was still haunted by the guilt of the first?

“Don’t do this,” she said. “If you let me go, I won’t say anything.”

“Why not?” McKindrey asked.

There was no response to that. She shook her head dumbly.

“I would think it’d be the first thing you’d do, mad as you are at me.”

“I’m not mad at you,” Claire lied. “I’m mad that my friends are gone and I can’t bring them back.”

“But I had a hand in that.”

“Not the worst one.”

He smiled unevenly, appraised her anew, but the gun was steady in his hand. “You’re a clever girl. I’m real sorry you’re stuck in this, though I expect you won’t believe that.”

She closed her eye. “If you are sorry, then you might as well do me a favor and end it.” The wisdom of the request eluded her, but whatever had motivated it, it suddenly felt absolutely right. With it came a calm similar to the one she had felt when McKindrey had mentioned the field with the dead tree. An end was coming, and though she did not know the form it would ultimately take, she welcomed the peace it promised.

“End it how?”

“Pull the trigger,” she told him. “You’ve helped put a whole lot of people in their graves. Might as well help one more.”

In the darkness, she relied only on her senses and the small voice that drifted up from somewhere deep inside her that whispered, There’s no way out except his way. You fight and even if you escape him all you’ll ever do is fight. Why not end it right here, right now? What do you even have that’s worth fighting for?

She heard the raspy sound of his breathing.

The jingle of the keys on his belt.

The creak of leather.

But the sound she expected, feared, hoped for…didn’t come.

She looked.

He was still standing there, still staring at her, the cruiser lights flickering behind him, the headlights painting one side of his face, the other mired in shadow. Frustrated, she asked, “What are you waiting for? You have me. I’m giving you what you want.”

He nodded once. “So I see. Why?”

The void dissolved. Anger and the anguish that had plagued her since the day she’d fled this place coalesced inside her, surged upward on the crest of a red tide that made her whole body tremble.

“What difference does it make? You suddenly give a shit? Pull the fucking trigger, you hick bastard.”

The uncertainty that had come over him did not evaporate under the brunt of her insult. Instead he stiffened, seemed to consider what she’d said and then looked down at the gun. To her disbelief, he gave a rueful shake of his head. “Real sorry for what they done to you. Better dead than be left—”

Before she knew she was going to do it, she rushed him, expecting the surprise of it to make his trigger finger spasm and send a bolt of hot fire into her chest, but instead he staggered backward, away from her, his mouth open in a dark circle. His wounded foot betrayed him and he stumbled, fell heavily to the left and landed on his side. Claire was on him. He quickly brought the gun up, even as she brought the wire down like a tribal Indian spearing a fish.

An odd roar accompanied the downward arc of the wire and the upward swing of the gun. The light through the windows changed, brightened, became the sun on a new morning though it was far too early.

As a cry of primeval rage burst from Claire’s mouth, the wire found its target, piercing the side of Sheriff McKindrey’s throat, his eyes widening in surprise. Dark blood spurted from the wound. Cursing, one hand flying to his neck, he pulled the trigger but the gun was now aimed upward and though the shot deafened her, the bullet plowed harmlessly into the ceiling.

Dust and splinters rained down.

Claire withdrew the wire and stabbed again. All she could hear now was a distant rumble and a low whistle in her ears, which worsened as McKindrey scrambled, his feet scrabbling against the bare wood as she straddled him, the wire held overhead in a two-hand grip. He flailed at her, the cold metal barrel of the gun smashing into her right temple once and again. She persisted despite the nauseating tilt of the world through her good eye, gouging his arms, his face, his chest with the rusted wire. She smelled old death and decay, new blood and sudden fear. It inspired her, and she doubled her assault on the man who was three times her weight and twice her height, empowered by rage to keep him down. Panic did not fuel her. There was no name for the impulse that pounded through her now.

McKindrey bucked. She held on, her free hand planted on his chest, the other incessantly perforating his bulk with the wire. He cried out as she punctured his jaw, punched his broken nose.

Then the wall and windows seemed to detonate as the light exploded into the room and they were enveloped in a storm of flying wood and glimmering glass.

Beau came to on a hard flat surface. Immediately he realized that he was no longer in the woods.

He was also bare-chested.

And he was not alone.

Instinctively he reached out a hand for his gun, driven by the unreasonable hope that whoever had brought him here had left it close by. Unsurprisingly, his trembling fingers found nothing but air.

Sudden scalding pain in his belly made him roar and ram his knuckles into his mouth, biting down to keep from chewing on his tongue, and he raised his head to identify the source of the agony through the tears in his eyes. He blinked furiously, struggling to clear his vision, but already he knew what he would see. The pain could not suffocate the dread that came at the thought of it.

They had him.

Leaning over Beau, who was lying on what he now realized was the kitchen table he’d seen earlier on his inspection of the cabin, was a giant, blocking out the strained light from a naked bulb, which reduced him to a wild-haired silhouette.

“Aw God,” Beau moaned as another round of fierce pain blasted through him from his wound. He convulsed, began to scream and did not stop, even when the man’s large hand covered his mouth and he tasted blood and dirt.

-40-

Claire lay on her stomach and waited.

She felt weight on her feet and wondered if she’d lost them, or at the very least broken them and tangled the nerves. But there was no pain, only heat. Beneath her face, the surface of the floor was rough like sandpaper, but she didn’t move. Wasn’t sure she was able. Any moment now McKindrey might rise up, shake off his discomfort and pump her body full of bullets. Even if he had been short on reasons to hurt her before, which he hadn’t, she’d given him ample motive to hurt her now. She had attacked him like an animal, and though she did not mourn the passing of that peculiar, frightening impulse, nor did she regret it. It had served its purpose and again, though the dangerous resignation with which she was growing grimly familiar had swept her up in its calming embrace, she had fought for her life. The absence of reasons for it to continue had not been enough to drain whatever resolve existed in that untouchable, unseen reservoir inside her.

“Claire?”

She did not raise her head. Gradually, small campfires of pain registered across the dark landscape of her body. Cuts, lacerations, bruises. She didn’t care. Superficial, the doctors would say, just as they had said at the hospital in Mason City and she had sneered at them. Nothing about what had been done to her had been superficial. Every incision they’d made with their dirty blades had branded her with the memory of the faces and intent of those who’d made them.

“Claire?”

She opened her eye. The room was filled with fog. The air was thick with dust. Nearby, through the haze she glimpsed an empty shoe. McKindrey’s. A few feet away, a foot without a sock, the leg bent over the cast iron frame of the overturned bed. Three rivulets of blood ran down the ankle. Dark against pale.

Hands found her and she flinched, felt new pain erupt but dismissed it. She squinted up at the lithe shadow bent over her, thought for a moment she saw the sun behind it as she lay on the road in the heat of the day, but it lasted only a moment.

“Pete?” she asked, then coughed.

He knelt down next to her. “McKindrey’s dead. Looks like he busted his neck. You all right?”

“I’m alive,” she told him. “That’s a start.”

He helped her turn over and put a hand on her back as she sat up. She dabbed at blood on her face, probed a tender spot at the side of her skull and winced.

“I’m sorry,” Pete said.

“You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” she said, and blinked. Took in the chaos in the room. The wall with the padlocked door was gone, only splintered beams hanging like crooked teeth in a gaping mouth, the tongue a vehicle with its front end parked inside the room atop a mound of rubble, one light glaring up at the far wall, the other shattered on impact. The fender was gone, the hood buckled so she couldn’t see the windshield. After taking out the wall, the car had plowed through the room, striking McKindrey. How it had missed Claire, who had been sitting astride him when the car had come through, was a mystery. Or maybe not. She recalled, in those now surreal and hazy seconds before the car plowed through the wall, McKindrey’s hands on her chest, crushing her breasts, forcing her away. Perhaps it had only been self-defense. Perhaps he had simply been trying to get her off him so he could scamper out of the way himself. She didn’t know, and never would, and thus found it easy to reject the repulsive notion that he had, in the final moments of his life, tried to save her.

“I was almost gone,” Pete said as he assisted her in standing. Her ankle hurt and there was a nasty gash in her right thigh, but she thought of these as nothing more than reminders that she was not dead.

“I know.”

“He lied to me,” he continued. “Told me all sorts of awful things, none of ’em true.” He guided her around the rubble, one hand braced on the buckled hood. “I believed him.”

“You didn’t have a reason not to.”

He nodded, but looked troubled as she wrapped an arm around his shoulders for support. “I know, but I would’ve left if it hadn’t come to me what he said. He kept sayin’ the Doc kilt your friends, but before I left, he said ‘the folks who done this to her are long gone.’ Didn’t realize it then because I guess I ain’t too quick, but soon as I sat in the truck and thought it over, I knew he was lyin’ and he said he ain’t never lied to me. But he did, and I had to come back.”

“It’s all right, Pete,” she said as they emerged into the cool night air. Above them, the stars shone bright and clear. Claire took a deep draw of the crisp air and felt it catch in her throat as the dust rolled around in her lungs. She coughed violently, then wiped her mouth and sighed. “Thank you for coming back.”

He shrugged.

“I mean it, Pete. Thank you for saving me.” She reached out a hand and touched his face, felt a slight peppering of stubble. “Again,” she added, and smiled.

He started to say something then, but she drew him close, slowly, mindful of the pain in every joint, and kissed him softly on the lips. When it was over, he said nothing, though he seemed desperate to find the words. She didn’t wait. Instead she leaned against him and let him put his arm around her this time.

“We need to burn it down,” she said.

“Hush now, else they’ll hear you,” the giant advised him, and at first Beau assumed that meant anyone who might come to his rescue—Shut up, or you’ll doom your friends too—but then he looked down at himself and realized the agony had come as a result of whiskey that had been splashed over the wound. Confused, he withheld further complaint until the man stomped off and returned a few moments later with an old-looking needle in one huge hand, a fistful of catgut in the other.

“What are you doin’?” Beau asked him.

“Puttin’ your stuffin’ back in,” the giant said in a low gravelly voice. He pulled a chair up to the table and sat, then gently threaded the fishing line through the eye of the needle, which was as big as a pencil. He started to bend down close to the wound, eyes narrowed as if he was poor-sighted, but then stopped and glanced askance at Beau, the point of the needle raised. “’Less you prefer it hangin’ out?”

Convinced now that he was delirious and imagining it all, Beau shook his head. “Naw. You go right ahead, as long as you’re not fixin’ to tie the wrong parts together.”

The giant frowned, as if he didn’t understand what that was supposed to mean, and went about his work, carefully easing the needle through Beau’s flesh.

“Shiiiit.” Beau bared his teeth, clenched his fists, but the pain, though it was severe, didn’t last long. In what seemed like minutes, the worst of it was over, and this time when the wound was soaked with alcohol, Beau felt the burning, but considerably less agony. Afterward, he lay in silence for a long time, watching as the man lumbered about the cabin looking ill at ease, like a man unsure what to do next. Beau wanted to think of him as his savior, but other than the rudimentary stitch-job and the fact that he was still alive when he’d given the giant ample opportunity to kill him, it was too much of a stretch for the moment. He was, after all, still in enemy territory.

“Why’d you do this?” he asked, wondering if perhaps he’d been fixed just so he’d be in better shape when they tortured him.

For a long time, the man didn’t answer. Then he stalked across the room, grabbed the whiskey bottle from the table and shoved it at Beau, who took it with a half-hearted nod of gratitude and, eyes never leaving the giant’s face, drank deeply.

“You ain’t never done nothin’ to me,” the man said.

Beau waited, the whiskey burning a path straight through him, hewing a route to the pain. When it was clear that was as much of an explanation as he was going to get, he asked, “They won’t like that you did this, you know.”

The man sat, easing his great frame into a chair that seemed unlikely to be able to hold him. It creaked loudly as he settled himself and put a hand out for the bottle. Beau gave it to him.

“I don’t much care for ’em,” he said, and took a draw from the bottle. “Never did. They kilt my sister. She were all I had left in the world. But she didn’t never listen to me when I tried to tell her what she were gettin’ into, and now she’s dead. All because of them crazies. ’Sides, I ain’t scairt of ’em, and after tonight, I don’t reckon I’ll be hearin’ from ’em again.”

“I’m sorry about your sister,” Beau said, because it seemed, for now, about the only appropriate thing to say. They made an odd tableau, the two of them—a wounded black man lying on a table, overseen by a wild-haired giant. But gradually, Beau felt the tension and anxiety ebb from him. If it turned out to be a trap, there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it anyway, so he figured it was best to just see where things went and hope for the best.

For the next ten minutes, they shared the bottle in silence. Though feeling a little better, Beau was exhausted. His eyes were drifting shut again when the screech of the chair legs against the floor jarred him back to alertness. In panic, he looked furtively around the room, half-expecting to find that the giant was standing there with a knife or a hatchet or a rifle getting ready to finish him off. But the man had simply pulled his chair closer to the table and was looking intently at Beau.

“I killed a buck one time that was damn near big as myself,” he said.

Beau stared back at him for a long time. Then he raised his eyebrows. “That’s one big motherfuckin’ deer, man. Venison for a year.”

Krall nodded, and the faintest trace of a smile began to creep through the undergrowth of his beard.

-41-

Standing in the flameless epicenter of an inferno as the buildings burned around her, Claire heard the cell phone chirp over the splintering crack of the Merrill House caving in on itself. During the melee inside the room with the sagging bed, the phone’s display had cracked and now showed nothing but inky blotches against the gray screen, veined with milky fissures. She couldn’t see the caller I.D, but answered and held the phone to her ear.

“Hello?”

“Claire?”

“Who’s this?”

“My name’s Beau. I’m…I was a friend of Finch’s.”

“Was? Is he…?”

“Yeah. They got him. But he went down fightin’. Took out a couple of ’em on the way too.”

Tears welled in Claire’s eyes. Pete approached and stopped before her, head tilted questioningly. She swallowed and tried to offer him a smile. “Are they dead?”

“Yes,” Beau told her. “They’re all dead. It’s over.”

The tears came freely, sobs pummeling her chest as she shut the phone and let Pete embrace her.

It’s over.

The acrid smell of the smoke and the heat from the flames soon forced them out of the ring of fire, toward the road, where the truck was waiting.

As quietly as the woods would allow, Isaac led Papa-In-Gray through the night. The moon was high in the sky and Papa frequently raised his face to it, as if it was nothing short of God’s light, drawing them to their destiny. The need for a sign was great within him now that he had lost so many of his kin, but he resisted the urge to beg. Once they were clear of the killing ground, clear of their hunters, he would have endless time to disseminate the events that had set them running. Was this truly what God had intended for them? That his children should be sacrificed? He shook his head, forcing away the questions. The pain in his knee was making it difficult to walk and he slowed, watching as Isaac pulled ahead.

It weren’t ever supposed to be this hard.

“Son,” he said, breathlessly, and the boy stopped, glanced back. “We should rest up some.” With great effort, he sat himself down on a rough moss-covered rock that protruded from the forest floor like a boil.

The look on Isaac’s face made it clear he did not think this was wise, but he acquiesced, pacing restlessly and jerking his head toward the small clearing they could see through the pine trees ahead. His knife was out and while he stalked, he jabbed at the air and twisted the blade, his young face bejeweled with sweat.

He senses the injustice of it too, Papa thought. The failure. He ain’t satisfied to leave this unfinished. Nor was Papa, but their options were limited. Without knowing the extent of the threat, only a fool would go back. McKindrey had told them there were only two men on their trail, but who knew how many were elsewhere, waiting for the call to arms? That the Sheriff hadn’t seen them did not mean they were not there. It was best to err on the side of caution. There was time. In the coming days, months, however long it took, they would regroup, and plan a strategy. Over time, they would rebuild their ranks. He would find a woman, spiritually vacant, awaiting his love and his knowledge, awaiting God, and she would have sons and daughters he could lead. They would rise again. And perhaps in their new town, the local law would be just as sympathetic to their cause as McKindrey had been. Such minions were hard to find, and McKindrey had proven invaluable. The call Papa had made to him from a payphone on their way here had confirmed that the Men of the World were on their way, allowing them the time to prepare. It had also allowed Papa to perpetuate the belief that he held congress with the angels, bolstering his children’s faith in him. With a smile, he nodded and turned to Isaac, who might be sated, however briefly, by Papa’s new resolve.

The boy was no longer pacing. Now he was standing still and facing the clearing, his body rigid, the hand holding the knife trembling violently.

“Isaac,” Papa whispered, slowly rising from the rock. “What is it?”

Isaac was silent, but something held him in thrall.

Papa limped toward him. “What do you hear?”

Since Papa had taken the child’s tongue for some violation he could hardly recall, the boy had not spoken except for cluttered mumbles, and even these were rare. He employed them now however as his stump of a tongue tried to tell Papa something.

As he came abreast of him, Isaac reached out a finger, pointing in the direction of the clearing. Then, he turned his body sideways, which Papa knew was done to make himself less of a target, just as he had taught all his children. Despite not seeing or hearing whatever had alarmed the boy, he started to do the same himself, at the same time reaching into the lining of his coat for Doctor Wellman’s gun.

“It’s all right,” he whispered. “We’ll get ’em.”

A swishing sound reached their ears, and instinctively, Papa stepped back, dropping to a crouch that made his leg feel as if the jaws of a bear trap had snapped shut on it. Grimacing, he scanned the trees ahead. The moonlight revealed nothing, but the strange swishing sound continued.

Isaac started to head for the clearing, the twigs snapping underfoot, his urgency forcing him to betray his location.

For whoever was watching them, it was enough.

A rope sailed out into the dark toward them, the end coiled into a noose that moved through the air like a bubble, the loop wobbling.

“Isaac,” Papa yelled, and the boy raised his head, then his arms, hands splayed as the noose came down and was jerked tight, the rope cinching around the boy’s wrists instead of his neck.

Papa rose and hobbled toward Isaac. “No!”

The boy was jerked off his feet so fast and hard his head snapped back and his legs kicked straight out behind him as he was pulled with impossible speed into the trees.

Cursing, Papa was momentarily paralyzed by indecision. Follow and try to save the boy, or seek cover? It was a trap, he knew. Going after Isaac was just what the coyotes wanted. They would draw him in among them where he would be outnumbered and they would kill him.

From the trees, a muffled moan.

“Isaac,” he whispered.

He had to hide.

He heard a dull thumping sound that changed as he listened, became wet, like someone smacking a rubber glove against a fencepost. Slowly, Papa began to back away, stopping when the sound did. He removed the gun from his coat and readied it, his ears attuned to the slightest of movements from the trees.

The cessation of that sound told him that Isaac was lost. He was alone now, except for Krall and Luke, neither of whom had been seen since the coyotes showed up. For all Papa knew, they might have fallen.

He had to get away from here. The corrupted were encroaching on him from every side. He could sense them now, thought that he could even see them as fleeting shadows between the trees. And he could smell them, the musky putrid scent of poisoned flesh. It was growing stronger and now he turned full circle, catching faint glimpses of their burning ember eyes watching him in amusement from wherever the dark was deepest.

He had to get away, but there was nowhere to go.

“Papa,” a voice said, and startled, he spun, aiming the gun at the trees. A shadow detached from the phalanx of pines. “It’s me.”

“Luke?”

“Yes.”

Papa did not lower the gun. “Where’s your brother?”

“They’re dead, Papa. All of ’em. The coyotes got ’em. Isaac too. I was hidin’ up there on the far side of the clearin’, waitin’ for you. I saw ’em take him. But I got the son of a bitch. He’s trussed up in there, ready for you.”

Papa didn’t move. He wanted to believe what Luke was saying, but the history between them suggested the enemy he should be fearing was not a coyote at all, but his own son, who should have been reborn, but had resisted, as he had resisted Papa all his young life.

“You lyin’ to me boy?” he said, as he thumbed back the hammer and pointed the gun at Luke.

“Why would I lie?”

“’Cuz you’ve changed. Bein’ inside your Momma changed you, but I suspect not the way we all wanted, not the way she wanted.”

“I’m changed all right,” Luke told him and stepped back into the trees. “I seen the light.”

“Well,” Papa said, licking his lips. “That’s good, ain’t it?”

“I reckon it is. I’m just mad I didn’t see it sooner.”

“They did this to us, Luke. This is all their doin’, and there’s only us left standin’ to stop it.”

“The corruption,” Luke said. “The poison.”

“That’s right.”

“Thing is,” said Luke. “The light I seen told me somethin’ different.”

“Oh?” Come out you little shit, Papa thought. Face me like the man I taught you to be.

“Yeah. Angels told me you’re the poison, and always have been. Said you used God as an excuse to hurt people, includin’ your own kin.”

Papa sneered. “Then it weren’t angels you was hearin’ boy.”

Quiet settled in the woods. Papa listened, eyes narrowed, trying to discern Luke’s form from the dark, but he could no longer make him out. Of course, Papa himself had taught the boys how to make use of the night. He’d taught them well. Too well.

“Why don’t you come out here and we can talk face to face? There ain’t no cause for you to be lurkin’ around in the dark. I’m your father. Whatever you need to discuss with me, we can discuss it right here in the open. I won’t hurt you.”

Nothing.

“Luke, I know you got questions, and I know you ain’t yourself. But like it or not, I’m all you got left, and you’re all I got. Time for both of us to make a clean break, son.”

Leaves rustled as something scurried over them, but there was nothing to suggest he wasn’t alone.

Breathing fast, he scanned the trees.

“Son?” Luke said suddenly, coldly, close to Papa’s ear, and with a startled grunt, the old man turned. He had time only to register that Luke was holding a machete before it was buried in his shoulder, all but severing the arm holding the gun. His hand spasmed. The gun fell to the ground, and he staggered back screaming as Luke, bearing a face far too malevolent to ever be that of a mere devil, yanked the long blade free with a spurt of blood. The world dimmed and Papa clenched his teeth, animal panic paralyzing him. “Stop Luke…stop…for God’s sake…” He raised his good hand, palm out. “Please, just… listen…”

With a short swing, Luke severed the hand. It tumbled into the leaves.

Papa screamed a second time, a hoarse guttural sound of horror and disbelief, the echo of it caught and sent back by the trees and the hills beyond. He dropped to his knees, unable to cradle the severed limb due to the unimaginable agony in the other.

“Stop it,” he told Luke. “Listen…you have to stop. They…they poisoned you—”

“You poisoned me,” Luke said tonelessly.

“No. No, there’s only us. Only us, Luke,” Papa babbled. “Me and you. Ain’t too late. Not yet it ain’t. Only us, Luke.”

He looked up, tears streaming down his face.

Luke, bare-chested and blood-spattered, stood with his body lit by the moonlight, his face a patchwork of shadow. He was breathing calmly, his eyes like black ice.

“There ain’t no us no more,” he said, drawing back the machete like a baseball player aiming for a home run. “Only me.”

The swing took Papa’s head clean off at the shoulders.

For a moment, the old man’s body stayed kneeling, the neck spurting blood upward like an offering to whatever God might thirst for such corrupted wine, then it dropped heavily to the ground.

Afterward, Luke tossed the machete into the brush and set about making a fire, being careful to ring the shallow pit he’d dug with stones to avoid burning down the woods. Then he stripped the old man’s body naked, cut off the genitals and cooked them over the fire.

Under the stars, the eyes of his father still watching, the dead face given the impression of life by the flames, Luke sat alone, lost in thought.

He ate in silence.

-41-

“I guess I gotta go,” Pete said, looking longingly at the house in which Claire had said she expected a minor kind of Hell was awaiting her in the form of Kara’s histrionics. Although he didn’t say it, Pete would have considered such a greeting a fine one if it meant there was a house and people in it who loved him enough to care what became of him. Back in Elkwood, there was nothing but questions and the memory of violence he wasn’t sure he’d been given the right to commit, if a right indeed even existed for such terrible acts. On the surface he’d done what he’d had to do to protect Claire, just as he had blinded a stranger to protect Louise, but when it came time for judgment, whether by man or by God, would those reasons be enough to save him?

“You don’t have to,” Claire said. Since leaving Elkwood, she had not let go of his hand, and he cherished the contact, the feel of her skin warm against his own. He knew he would wed her right then and there if he thought for one second she’d agree to it, but it was a preposterous idea. He could hope until the stars burned out and it wouldn’t change the fact that they were two people from completely different worlds. For a time they’d walked the same road, but ultimately they were bound for different poles. It saddened him to think of leaving her, but staying would only mean more hurt.

“I do,” he told her, meeting her watery gaze. “I don’t belong here and I reckon over the next few weeks you’re gonna have your hands full all over again.” He sighed heavily. “Me too, I expect.”

Around the truck the sky was vermilion, the clouds bruised violet. Morning birds awoke and began the opening strains of their day’s symphony. The world was waking. To Pete, it signaled the end of their shared nightmare, but also the end of their association. He knew they would promise to stay in touch, but wouldn’t as time forced them to grow back into their own routines.

“You did nothing wrong,” Claire said, the sentence dropping in pitch as she glanced toward the house. Pete followed her gaze and noticed that a light had come on. “You were there for me.”

“We’re friends,” Pete said with a shrug, wishing he had the courage to say more. We’re friends and that’s all we’ll ever be, but I love you, Claire. And right now, you’re all I got in the world.

“That sounds so simple,” Claire replied. “And wrong.”

With another wary glance at the house, she leaned over, cupped a hand behind his head and drew him close. During the drive here, he had rationalized the kiss at the Merrill House as one of relief or gratitude, particularly considering the iciness she had shown him prior to that moment, but there was no mistaking the motive behind the kiss she gave him now. It was soft and wet, and prolonged. As soon as she broke contact, she quickly initiated it again, her tongue briefly touching his own until he felt like he’d been electrocuted.

Finally she drew away. “We will see each other again,” she said, and smiled. Then her face darkened. “Shit,” and she opened the door and got out. He started to say something but instead watched as she hurried into the street. Her sister, Kara, was doing the same, coming from the opposite direction, dressed in a robe, her hair tousled, face grim, eyes dark with anger. Pete’s hand moved to the keys, waiting for the moment when he would know without question that it was time for him to get moving.

The women met in the street and immediately began to argue, Kara’s eyes roving over her sister, registering every cut and bruise as she gesticulated madly. Claire had her hands in her hair and was shaking her head with a pained expression. Then they stopped, and Kara looked directly at Pete.

He glanced away. The look had been his cue, and yet he couldn’t turn the keys. His fingers gripped them tightly, his eyes on the road, his heart pounding, but he couldn’t start the engine. He didn’t want to, aware that as soon as he did, he would not just be leaving a quiet street in the rearview.

A tap on the glass made him jump. He looked and was surprised, and more than a little dismayed to see Claire’s sister looking in at him. He cleared his throat, watched as she made a circular motion with her index finger.

He rolled down the window, the word Sorry already on his tongue.

“You got a call,” she said, and that made him swallow the word. It had been the last thing he’d expected to hear.

“A call?”

Kara ran a hand through her hair. She looked tired. Dark bags hung under eyes made shallow with worry. “Yeah. A cop in Detroit.”

Pete swallowed, felt himself stiffen with panic. “What…?” he started to say, then shook his head.

“They said they want to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“About a woman up there. Louise something.”

The mention of her name made him ache inside. In all that had happened, his mind had not been able to entertain more than one sorrow at a time, but he realized now, in the days ahead, he would have nothing but time to ponder them.

“She’s dead,” he said. “She got hurt.”

Kara frowned at him. “She’s not dead.”

He gaped at her, sure he hadn’t heard her correctly. “What?”

“She’s in the hospital, but she’s not dead. She asked for you. Told the cop you were her only living kin, so they want you to come up. Wanted you to know she got hurt, but apparently that’s not news to you.”

Stunned, he smiled at her and shook his head.

Kara did not look like she shared his joy. “Seems like trouble just draws you to it, doesn’t it?”

“Thank you,” he told her with genuine warmth. She could stick her arms in and throttle him, or curse him to high Heaven and it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference now because Louise was alive. He was almost afraid to believe it. “Thank you, Ma’am,” he said again and glanced at Claire, who’d been listening. She was smiling at him, a light in her eyes anyone else might have said was simply a reflection of the sun as it crept over the horizon, but he knew better.