“Thanks,” Tess said. “You’ve helped a lot.”

“That’s good. Just being the Good Samaritan.”

Tess drove down to the Credo gate. She didn’t have a key to the padlock, but it was easy to slip through the four-strand wire farther down.

She walked to the cabin where George Hanley had been killed and then continued on down to the creek and the oak. The oak scattered deep shade on the mosaic of white stones and riverbed. There was a fork in the oak low down, and another place where more branches diverged. She spotted a small patch of duct tape hanging from the higher crook in the tree.

Fingerprints, maybe.

To get a job in law enforcement, you had to be fingerprinted. Wade Poole had been a homicide cop. His fingerprints would be on AFIS. She always carried latex gloves and evidence bags in a case in the back of the Tahoe. She went back to the Tahoe, donned gloves, and brought one of the larger bags. She also carried a knife. Back at the oak, Tess photographed the duct tape, then carefully peeled it off. Gingerly, she dropped the duct tape into the evidence bag, and back at the truck, she marked it.

Any luck, it would come back to Wade Poole.

Jaimie drove out on Harshaw Road, which led south toward the Mexican border. It was a graded road early on but then started to wind and get narrower. She was looking for a sign for the ghost town of Mowry. On her right, she passed the graveyard of another ghost town, Harshaw, for which the road was named. A lot of colorful fake flowers, whitewashed stones and crosses, and piled rocks to keep the coyotes away, although the people buried there were from the early part of the twentieth century and long past edibility.

She tried to occupy her mind with stuff like that, but her heart was beating hard and all she could think of was what that thing—Helium Man—said he’d do to Adele.

The road started going up higher, and the trees became thicker—mostly oak.

She was driving into a tight curve when suddenly a white truck pulled out right in front of her. She slammed on the brakes and wrestled with the wheel of her big Dodge Ram, skidding across the narrow road down into the ravine on the other side.

The truck came to rest upright. She took stock: banged up a little but her seat belt saved her. And whoever that asshole was who clipped her—

Someone yanked open the truck door. Somebody coming to rescue her? She was okay, she needed to tell them that, but suddenly her belt was unlatched, a big man leaning over her, crushing her against the airbag that had whopped her in the chest and, she realized, broken her wrist, and he pulled her out by the shoulder and shoved her up against the side of the truck. “Police!” he yelled, and grabbed her arm and wrenched it around behind her back—agony. The next thing she knew, her hands were cuffed behind her back.

She screamed.

The man kicked her legs apart and patted her down, then grabbed her by the arm and pulled her up the embankment and over to his own truck, shoved her inside. “You move, and you’re going to jail,” he yelled, his red face right in hers. “Got it?”

She nodded mutely. She couldn’t think of anything except for the excruciating pain in her wrist. And that she wet her pants.

He drove her truck back out on the road, parked and locked it. Then he came back and got his truck and took off with a slew of dirt, up a two-lane track into the woods.

Jaimie was confused. This guy was dressed like her friends in the ranching community. He drove with one hand on the wheel, slewing along the road, and one hand holding a gun trained on her. She had no doubt he would use it. But another part of her insisted that he was a cop. He treated her as a cop would. With authority.

Cops wouldn’t kill unarmed citizens—and that was what she would hold on to.

Her own revolver sat in a zippered bag inside her truck.

Her wrist was screaming. She realized she was screaming too when he took his gun butt and smacked her mouth. “Shut up. Do it now. You are in deep enough trouble already.”

They headed up a steep four-wheel-drive road, little more than a trail, up into the hills.

They came to a camping spot screened by trees. In the truck, he duct taped her mouth and tied a rope around her neck. He jerked at the rope and told her to follow him. She scrambled to keep up, terrified of being literally hanged—her air cut off. She saw the remains of an adobe building among the trees, roofless, just two walls meeting in a corner, the adobe bricks slumping like a melting candy barn. There was a stake there, driven deep into the ground, and a chain. He replaced the rope with a choke chain and hooked it to the chain. She could only sit in one way, because she was snubbed up pretty close to the stake—about two and a half to three feet.

I’m going to die.

She was sure of that. She also knew he would rape her first, and probably torture her.

He was no cop.

How had she been so stupid? He had her ten thousand dollars and he had her. She could feel the chain links cold and hard against her neck. Could feel her airway close, suffocating her. Realized that wasn’t really happening, but she felt it anyway. Panic exploded upward. Her gorge rose. Tears spilled down her cheeks.

The man sat down across from her, cross-legged. His broad face all smiles.

“Please don’t kill me!” she said through the duct tape. “I’ll do anything you want—anything. Just…don’t kill me.”

He reached over and tugged on the chain. The choke chain pinched her throat.

Suddenly, she had to throw up. She could choke to death.

He ripped the duct tape off just before she vomited.

He watched her like she was some bug crawling along the ground. Fascinated.

“Sorry,” he said. “I had to establish the ground rules. You need to speak only when spoken to. Okay?”

She nodded.

He pulled a blade of grass out of the ground and stuck it between his teeth. It was hard to believe this was happening. He had such merry blue eyes. Hard to believe, looking at him, that he wasn’t a nice man. Maybe he would just have sex with her, take the money, and let her live.

It was like a tender shoot of a plant inside her, reaching for the sun. Just a slim hope.

“Okay, here are the ground rules,” he said at last. “You are my hostage. If you cooperate, you will go back to your family. Got that?”

She nodded. She nodded as hard as she could.

“Okay, where’s your phone?”

She nodded to the back pocket of her jeans.

He got up and came to her, bent and slid out her phone. “We’re gonna need this for later. The cash is in your truck, I take it?”

She nodded furiously, tried again to speak through the duct tape. Tried to please him. There was hope. She was a hostage. That was okay. Hostages were kept alive.

“Okay, I’ll be right back. Don’t you move. If you do, you might just end up hanging yourself and you’ll be no use to me and none to yourself, neither.”

He ran down the hill. She could hear him beating his way through the tree branches and bushes.

She waited. A fly zoomed around and lighted on her nose. She swatted at it with her manacled hands, but it kept coming back. She was in a twisted position, one shoulder high, her head stretched in the direction of the stake. She tried to get her legs under her so she could release the tension in her shoulders, neck, back, and hip. It was easiest just to lie down on her side.

He returned, sounding like an elk stomping through the brush. Smiling.