She harries the girl to her feet, out of the closet door, into the master bedroom, and shoves her toward the door to the upstairs hallway.

A girl such as this has a bottomless capacity for treachery, which she proves again when, shuffling past her mother’s dresser, she grabs for the scissors that she left there earlier.

Janis anticipates this rebellion. As her captive reaches for the weapon, she boots her in the backside.

The foolish girl staggers forward and, trammeled by the zip-ties, trips herself and falls to her knees.

Janis sweeps the silver brush-and-comb set off the dresser, onto the floor, and then the silver tray with the three small Lalique perfume bottles. She picks up one of the porcelain geishas with its colorful kimono and throws it at the girl. Then the second. The third. She snatches up the scissors.

“Get up, you little sleaze. Get up, get up! I’m not going to be injected because of you. I won’t be made a slave. Get up or I’ll Taser you until you swallow your tongue and choke to death on it.”

20

HAVING LOCKED the employees in stable 2 with only Alejandro Lobo to look after them, the other three Austin agents step out of the darkness into the searchlight, bringing the number at the front line of the confrontation to eight, making a show of force that might dissuade the armed posse from pushing this too far.

Chris Roberts hopes that one of the three has had the wit to call for additional backup. Even if more Arcadians are en route, however, the odds are they won’t get here in time to stop these rednecks from doing something stupid.

Sally Jones, thus far the only spokesperson for the government in this matter, understands the need to appear equal to the threat of the crowd. She shouts at the restive mob for quiet. “Eight more of us inside the house, four in the stables,” she lies. “We came here in serious numbers because this damn well is an urgent matter of national security, whether you want to believe us or not. The future of our country is at stake. I know you’re all patriots here. I know you want to do the right thing. Think before you do something you’ll regret. Many of you probably have children at home. Think about them. You don’t want to do anything that leaves those kids without a family. They need you.”

“Is that a threat?” shouts a man in the mob. “You mean to shoot us down like we’re animals?”

Sally raises both hands in a gesture of placation. “No, no, no. I’m saying we’re engaged in legitimate law enforcement here. Anyone who interferes with us will have to be charged according to their offenses and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. There’s no way around that. To the full extent of the law. Your babies back home will be without you for a long time. Doing prison, you’ll stain yourself and them, your family name, their reputation. All for what? All because you’ve been misinformed.”

A man who previously identified himself as Linwood Haney, and who seems to be the leader of this rabble, speaks up. “Bring Chase and Alexis out here, them and their three girls, so we can ask ’em is all this righteous police work like you say.”

“We can’t do that,” Sally says. “You don’t understand. Chase and Alexis have agreed to cooperate with us in return for immunity. They’re in the middle of giving depositions, under oath. It would compromise the integrity of the deposition process to interrupt the continuity of the recording, and that would jeopardize Chase and Alexis’s immunity, which is the last thing they would want, believe me, the last thing.”

Chris winces at this response to Haney. Sally talks down to the crowd, as though she thinks their kind are as ignorant and clueless as the stereotypical hayseeds with which some in the media believe “flyover country” is entirely populated.

Sure enough, a woman shouts an objection. “You sayin’ their lawyer is in there with them at this ungodly hour? Hell’s bells, woman, their lawyer is Rolly Capshaw. Old Rolly goes to bed eight-thirty every night, sure as the flag has stars and stripes. He won’t stay up till three in the mornin’ like this even if he knows for a fact it’s the night Jesus is comin’ back.”

Among the crowd, there is considerable agreement with this assessment, and Linwood Haney says, “There won’t be a damn thing righteous about any deposition taken without they’re allowed a lawyer.”

21

THE CLATTER OF THE HELICOPTER is more muffled in the upstairs hallway than it had been in the attic. But as the deceitful little whore pretends that her fettered ankles require slow progress on the front stairs and as Janis prods her to move faster toward the foyer below, the rhythmic pounding of the blades grows louder again.

The sound echoes inside Janis’s skull, and a headache grows, and the shells of her ears burn as if abused by the clapping hands of her vicious sister, and though she’s standing up, she feels the weight of her long-ago tormentor on her chest.

In the foyer, she jerks the girl around to face her and is satisfied to see stark fear instead of arrogance. “You listen to me, you worthless little slut. Damn if I’m going to have my brain spun up in a control web because of you. I’d as soon kill you as spit on you, so the time for trickery is over. It’s over. I’m going to cut the zip-ties, and I’m taking you out there on the porch, and you’re gonna tell these stupid shitkickers you were wrong to call them. Tell them you didn’t understand what was really happening here. You’re going to give the performance of a lifetime, and don’t tell me you can’t, because I know your kind. You’re just like her. Deceit is woven through your bones. Your tongue is a filthy, licking lie machine. You can be as bratty as you want and get away with it because of what you do for your daddy, like what she did for ours, the sleazy little whore. I know the truth, I saw them that one time, and I know you. You’re going to stand close to me, lean against me, like you feel safe with me and I’m your best friend ever, stay close so no one can see I’m holding you by the back of your belt. You’re going to smile and charm and lie your ass off. You’re going to send these shitkickers home, or I swear I’ll draw my gun and shoot you in the head, right there on the porch, blow your rotten whore brains all over the damn porch.”

22

CHRIS ROBERTS DOESN’T REALIZE that Janis has come out of the house with the girl, Laurie, until the helicopter copilot sweeps the bright beam away from the line of agents and splashes light across the front veranda.

Disaster.

Whatever the hell Janis thinks she’s doing, it’s going to end in disaster.

Something’s wrong with her. She’s always ardent, intense, edgy, but this is not that Janis. This Janis is a human grenade with her pin half pulled. Her shoulders are drawn up, head turtled down. Her alluring body is shorn of curves, by tension shaped into the crossed staves of a scarecrow. Her eyes appear sprung in their sockets like those of some goggle-eyed jack-in-the-box. Her smile is a ghastly slash, and if her face contains any color, the searchlight bleaches it to the pallor of a corpse.

The child beside Janis stares out from among wild tangles of disarranged hair. She stands with hands fisted at her sides. Her posture is that of a shocked ledge walker who missteps and is supported for a microsecond by thin air, who stands in the splinter of an instant between the end of the ledge and the beginning of the plunge.

As one, every member of the crowd falls silent, and there is just the beating of the chopper’s blades, like the tolling of a lead bell.

Janis raises her voice. “Laurie Longrin wants to apologize.” She punctuates her announcement with a smile like a sickle.

23

FUDDA-FUDDA-FUDDA-FUDDA-FUDDA …

With her left hand, Janis Dern grips the little whore’s belt, preventing her from making a break for the crowd. The thumb of her other hand is hooked on her own belt, at her right side, so that in an instant she can push her sport coat out of the way and draw the pistol from her hip holster.