And then the woman is standing beside the truck that should have crushed her to death. She looks healthy and vital in the fractured halo of the one headlight that’s still illuminated. That’s when Marjorie wonders if she’s dead and if this is how death plays out for everyone—you pick up from where you left but in a realm where all things are suddenly possible.

The woman’s footsteps splash through the water as she approaches. Her expression is rageful. If this is death, if angels are real, then the young woman standing over her might be an angel of judgment.

“Who are you?”

It’s a stupid, useless question. Marjorie knows it’s the woman on the phone, the woman who broke Cyrus.

She crouches down, gazing into Marjorie’s eyes.

“I am your mother, returned from the storm,” she answers.

And that’s when Marjorie breaks the promise she just made to herself.

She screams.

“How many?” Charlotte asks.

The woman’s old age, her pathetic sobs, her mangled broken state; none of these things inspire pity or sympathy, and Charlotte wonders if she’s gradually losing those emotions altogether or if she’s heard and seen enough on this long, terrible night to keep her focused on what this woman truly is.

“How many bodies are on your ranch?” Charlotte asks.

When the woman doesn’t answer, Charlotte gently rests one hand atop her throat. The woman’s eyes go wide, but her sobs don’t stop.

“I will make you hurt a lot worse than you do now unless you tell me where to find every body of every woman you killed.”

“I didn’t kill anyone—”

“You did. You’re a murderer just like your boys.”

“I made them . . .”

“What? You made them what?”

“Better. Once a year. They . . . they only had to do it once a year because of me. That was the rule . . . I gave them rules.”

“You found them when they were teenagers. Cyrus had only killed animals. You made it easy for him. You taught him how to kill people.”

Women like your mother, she wants to add, but it’s possible this vile woman really does believe Charlotte is her mother reborn and that’s why she’s so talkative. Charlotte’s not going to steal the illusion from her. Yet. And it looks like the old woman isn’t hearing what Charlotte does: the low approach of a large helicopter, massive rotary blades chopping air.

“The barn,” the woman whispers. “They’re in the barn. Under it. Planted. Silenced. Where they belong.”

“How many?”

The old woman stares into her eyes with a coldness and a focus that seem to laser through whatever physical pain she’s in.

“Not enough,” she says.

Before Charlotte realizes what she’s done, the woman’s head is twisted to one side; her right ear where her face just was, her glassy eyes staring at the slope the truck went over. It was a slap, that’s all. Just a reflexive, sudden slap, the kind someone might unleash in the heat of the moment and either atone for or regret for the rest of their lives. But this one snapped the old woman’s neck like a doll’s, the force of it leaving her right cheek misshapen.

The helicopter’s closer now; it’s probably the Black Hawk. But there’s another sound, softer. Footsteps. Halting, slow.

After the truck had landed and once it was clear the woman she’d tried to protect hadn’t broken any bones, Charlotte told her to flee out the back of the cargo area. She didn’t want her to see what Charlotte might have to do to the people in the cab. But the woman obviously wasn’t content to wait. Maybe she sensed a life being snuffed out in the blink of an eye.

It’s too dark for Charlotte to make out her expression, so there’s no telling if the woman saw her kill Marjorie Payne.

“Are you for real?” the woman finally asks.

“Yes.”

“Well . . . shit.”

She’s in shock, Charlotte can tell.

Slowly, Charlotte moves to her, fully expecting her to scream and run. How else would anyone respond after everything she’s been through, after everything she’s seen Charlotte do? But instead the woman stays put, swaying slightly, backlit by the truck’s headlight.

“What’s your name?” Charlotte asks.

They’re a few feet apart now.

The woman doesn’t look like she’s about to bolt, but now that they’re close, Charlotte can see her trembling lips and her flaring nostrils, her failing attempt to fight tears. Despite the terrible jostling she endured when the truck went off the road, her long mane of raven hair is still matted in the shape left by the gag’s hood and the gurney. And once Charlotte’s close enough to see her big, tear-filled brown eyes, she’s overwhelmed by the pain in them. Hours and hours of degradation bubbling up inside of her. And Charlotte knows it’s shortsighted, but it suddenly feels as if the goal of saving this woman was a selfish thing, because now the woman will have to endure the pain of being a survivor.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

All the usual responses seem unbearably inappropriate. You’re welcome. Don’t mention it. None of those will suffice, not in this moment.

Before she can pause to consider all she’s revealed to this woman and the potential consequences, she offers her something else. “My name’s Charlotte. Charlotte Rowe.”

“Zoey,” she answers through the first sob, as if saying her name out loud again after all she’s been through is a brave and defiant act, her first move to begin collecting all her abductors tried to take from her.

When Zoey starts to sob, Charlotte offers comfort with the same hands she just used for murder.

41

In the first light of dawn, the Black Hawk looks wildly out of place where it landed not far from the barn in the middle of the isolated and desolate property that from the air looks like a patchwork of desert. If you were flying overhead and didn’t have any idea of the events that had led up to this moment, you would think the chopper had made an emergency landing here while on its way to take part in some elaborate military exercise.

But as his own helicopter—an Airbus H155 with a leather-padded passenger compartment housing him, Noah, and Scott Durham—swoops low over the property, Cole spots the other evidence of the small battle that took place here.

The pilot lands them close to the barn’s entrance.

They’ve already given him a rough list of the dead—the owner of the property, Marjorie Payne, dead. Jonah Polk, one of the other drivers, dead, remains collected from inside the cab of his truck. Wally Shore, killed by a botched attempt to escape from the getaway truck.

But still, the response team’s refusing to provide a total body count. “Not until you see the barn, sir,” was their response when Cole asked why. As for his super-secret ground team, he ordered them to fall back as soon as the Black Hawk caught up with the getaway truck. So for now, Charley and Luke have no idea armed mercenaries were waiting to assist once they pinpointed Cyrus Mattingly’s intended destination. When the stand-down order came, the ground team had been closing in on Marjorie Payne’s ranch as Luke cased the place by himself. As soon as Cole can clear Charley and Luke out of here, he’ll have the ground team enter the scene to help with the cleanup. Which sounds like it’s going to be a nightmare.