thing. I know how easy it is to track and watch someone, how vulnerable these devices are to spyware. Using it, I’ve created a clone of your phone, Lara. I know every text and phone call, every move you make unless—as you sometimes do—you turn off your location services, or the phone itself. So, naturally, I’m distrustful of my own device. If people only knew.
I kneel down and open my pack, retrieve the metal detector I’ve purchased online, and assemble it quickly. I tested it at home. It’s such a cheap piece of made-in-China garbage, I couldn’t believe it would actually work. But it seems to. It’s as light as a drinking straw, emits a low clicking noise when I turn it on.
I walk the clearing. The perimeter, then zigzag across. It isn’t until I’ve almost given up that the light turns red, and the device starts to beep. I look down and see a wooden door in the ground, with a metal latch and padlock. I stare at it a moment.
Huh. Well, how about that? Angel was telling the truth. From my pack, I retrieve a set of bolt cutters. I could try to pick the lock, but the night is growing long, and I have a niggling sense of unease.
I cut the bolt, with effort.
It’s not easy, any of this. The amassing of tools, the research, the recon, the stalking, the physical act of taking a life. You really have to commit.
The lock falls with a clatter, landing loudly on the wood. When I swing the door open, the smell hits me like a fist, knocking me back.
Oh, god.
“What the hell are you doing on my property?”
The voice causes me to spin and I’m standing face-to-face with Tom Walters.
He’s thin and hunched, a kind of strange young-old to his drawn face. Straw for hair, cut badly, clothes ill-fitting. His face clenched in menace. In his hand a mallet of sorts, something that looks like it would hurt a lot if he managed to hit me with it. Which he won’t.
“What’s down there, Mr. Walters?” I say, opting for the direct approach. I square myself off against him, size him up. I estimate that I have about fifty pounds on him.
His expression broadens into surprise. Maybe he expected me to react with fear or retreat. “What the fuck—who are you?”
“Who’s down there?” I repeat.
My pack. In a moment of carelessness, I’ve left it on the far side of the clearing, open after removing the bolt cutters.
He advances, and I hold my ground, bring my left foot forward ready to fight. I almost laugh when I think of all the men, nearly twice his size, that I’ve bested inside the ring and without. He’ll swing high I bet, looking for strength from the shoulder. I see his shoulder twitch, a telegraph. I prepare to block. Instead he roots.
“You’re trespassing. And I’ve called the police,” he says. He glances behind me at the open door. “Best get out of here.”
“I doubt you’ve called the police,” I say. I advance a step; he takes a step back. I intend to relieve him of that mallet.
But the blow, when it comes, comes from behind.
The knock to the back of my head is brutal—the world tilts and my ears start to ring. The pain, it takes a second, but my nerve endings start a siren. I spin to see a woman I recognize as Wendy Walters standing behind me, holding a shovel, which she’s lifted, followed through like a baseball bat swing.
I’m stunned, too stunned to defend myself as Tom Walters moves in with his hammer to deliver a devastating hit to the knee. I hear myself roar. And then the push.
I stumble back into the abyss of that hole, falling and falling, knocking stairs on the way down. Pain and fear delayed, just a horrible twisting disorientation, the knocking of my head, my hip, my knee.
The last thing I’m aware of is the door closing above me with a clang.
THIRTY-EIGHT
“Wear this.”
Hank pushed a rubbery mask at her, covered with feathers.
“Why?” she asked, her voice wobbly.
“Just put it on.”
She obeyed. It stank like chemicals, the plastic rubbing against her skin.
“Pull up your hood, and let’s go.”
After a certain point, the whole thing had taken on the unreality of a nightmare. It was so far out of the realm of anything she had done or would have thought to do. Her life since Kreskey, it hadn’t been easy. But she was on a traditional path—therapy,