The blindfold’s pulled from her eyes.

Relief floods her before she can think better of it.

A woman’s backing away from her, a stout woman with deep lines in her face and sensitive-looking blue eyes complementing a patient expression. Her gray ponytail is long and thick and pulled forward over one shoulder as if she wants the world to see how much time it took her to braid it. Zoey sags against the giant wooden post they’ve tied her to in a cruel parody of a romantic embrace. The words pour from her; she can’t stop them. She’s explaining the whole thing like a hyperactive child trying to recount her first day of kindergarten to her parents. Only there’s no kindness and excitement in the tale, just misery and pain and degradation, and she needs someone else to know about it. She’s not sure why that’s her instinct in this moment, but it is. Because if this woman’s here to rescue her, Zoey should tell her everything because she’s a woman and a woman will under—

Zoey’s forehead explodes with pain. The woman’s done it, grabbed the back of Zoey’s neck and knocked her head against the wooden post in a precise and effective blow that seems practiced.

“My boy says you spit in his face,” the woman says. “That true?”

Mother, she realizes. This is the mother he mentioned in the truck, and here I was hoping for a skeleton in a dress.

Dread so total moves through Zoey’s body that her sob comes out more like a wail. She feels cold all over, realizes it’s the wooden post she’s tied to. She thought she was already hugging the thing, but apparently she’d been resisting her confines more than she realized, and now the leveling effect of realizing this woman is not her rescuer has drained every last bit of energy from her body.

“Screaming fight in the mall, then you spit in my boy’s face. What’s wrong with you, girl? Go ahead and answer. I won’t hit you if you answer truthful.”

Zoey didn’t say anything about her fight with Jerald in the mall. Her abductor must have told this woman, and hearing it mentioned now makes her dizzy. It seems like a moment from a previous life, and the idea that anything might bridge the two other than her memory makes this place all the more horrible.

“Why?” Zoey asks.

“Why what?”

“Why did he . . . why is he doing this?”

“Oh, well isn’t that a damn fool question. You draw all kinds of attention to yourself and then you cry when someone answers the call? That’s rich, girlie. Let me guess. You were expecting a knight in shining armor? Well, he’d turn into a monster, too, after having to listen to your screams.”

“Why are you doing this?”

The woman grabs the back of Zoey’s head, gathering her hair in her fist, hard enough to pull at the roots. “Because women like you make me ashamed, that’s why. Ashamed of your ignorance and your selfishness. You refuse to see what you do with your careless words. And if I can’t wipe women like you from the earth, maybe I can teach you a lesson before you go. Maybe you’ll come back smarter. In a new life. Because you’re not keeping this one, little girl. All you can do is decide how you want to leave it.”

“A fight . . .”

“What?”

Zoey’s scanning their surroundings, trying to look dazed and confused so the woman doesn’t realize what she’s doing. She wants to keep her talking, but she’s having trouble forming questions.

“He picked me because I had a fight with my boyfriend?”

Dirt walls, at least ten feet high. A patch of lofty ceiling high above the opening to this narrow pit. Maybe a barn or some other type structure. Could someone of Zoey’s size climb the surrounding walls, or would the dirt start to come lose under her clawing hands and feet? It looks dry, but clumpy. This hideous Mother took a ladder down, but no doubt they’ll pull it up as soon as she climbs out. If the woman climbs out.

If I live to see her climb out.

“He could hear what’s inside of you,” she whispers. “He could hear the destruction in it. And that’s how he knew you were another foul, warped woman who tries to break men down into something she can keep in a drawer like jewelry. Because you don’t understand them and you don’t deserve them. The world loses everything they could be because of women like you. Because you bully and assault them with your hysteria and your abuse of your voice. And no one protects them. No one. Except for me. I can’t save them all. Just my boys. But I can sure as hell get rid of you.”

Zoey Long has never been this close to death. She’s never been in a bad car accident; never come close to drowning in a swimming pool; never gone home with a guy who tried to prevent her from leaving the moment she wanted to. For every hour that she spent in that psycho’s truck, the prospect of death was pushed a little further away. But now it’s here, pressing in all around her on the dirt walls of this pit, riding each of this insane woman’s hate-filled words.

Her new captor smiles faintly, and Zoey thinks she must be pleased by whatever expression despair and defeat have brought to Zoey’s face.

“There you go,” the woman whispers, “you’re getting it. Silence is your friend. Silence is your strength.”

Some people might call what Zoey does next a scream. Zoey wants it to be a roar, a monstrous, deafening roar that comes from deep inside of her, from a place uncovered by the knowledge that she won’t escape this. That she won’t live to see another dawn. She takes a few deep breaths, then unleashes another so loud the woman stumbles backward and actually grabs the dirt wall behind her with one hand to steady herself. It’s not high pitched or piercing, the sounds Zoey is making in this moment; it’s a symphony of anger and rage.

Her throat burning, she runs out of breath and feels the threat of sobs. Releasing all her anger has left her with nothing to fight her despair. In this moment, at least.

“Save your breath,” the woman says. “You’re going to need it if you want to decide how you’re going to die.”

The woman climbs the ladder. When she reaches the top, the killer who drove Zoey here helps her up by one arm before pulling the ladder out of the pit.

Her abductor and his crazy mother vanish from sight. Then a second later, some sort of plastic tube is placed right at the edge of the pit’s opening, inspiring memories of rats and snakes and the terrifying prospect of what this pit might soon be filled with.

36

From this distance, downtown Amarillo looks like it has about two substantial high-rises in its skyline. There’s a lit-up logo atop the tallest one. Charlotte thinks it’s for Chase Bank, but she’s too far away to be sure. Still, anyone familiar with the city should be able to recognize its familiar profile from this view, so Luke and Charley wheel Mattingly’s gurney through the divider, then turn it sideways so he can see through the open cargo area door and across the empty field toward the small, sparkling city on the dark horizon.

With one hand, Luke turns Mattingly’s head, trying to give him a better look. But the leather strap across their captive’s forehead pulls back hard. Charley would help, but although Cole has remotely injected her with a dose of Zypraxon, she’s not triggered yet and doesn’t want to disabuse Mattingly of the notion that her hands are always strong enough to break rocks.