Wendy, Tim thought but did not say. I guess she’s the acting sheriff now. Or maybe Ronnie Gibson will be when she comes back from vacation. Probably Ronnie. Wendy won’t want the job.

Addie Goolsby and Richard Bilson were now standing with Gutaale, behind Annie and Drummer. Bilson surveyed the main room with dismay—bullet-riddled walls, broken glass, pools of blood on the floor, sprawled bodies—and put a hand to his mouth.

Addie was made of sterner stuff. “Doc’s on his way. Half the town’s out there in the street, most of em armed. What happened here? And who’s that?” She pointed at the skinny boy with the bandage on his ear.

Luke took no notice. He was fixated on the woman in the pant suit. “Stackhouse, sure. Has to be. I need to get in touch with him. How do I do that?”

Mrs. Sigsby only stared at him. Tim knelt beside Luke. What he saw in the pant suit woman’s eyes was pain, disbelief, and hate. He couldn’t be sure which of those predominated, but if forced to guess, he would have said hate. It was always the strongest, at least in the short term.

“Luke—”

Luke paid no attention. All of his attention was focused on the wounded woman. “I need to get in touch with him, Mrs. Sigsby. He’s holding my friends prisoner.”

“They’re not prisoners, they’re property!”

Wendy joined them. “I’m thinking you must have been absent on the day your class learned about Lincoln freeing the slaves, ma’am.”

“Come in here, shooting up our town,” Annie said. “Guess you found out, didn’t you?”

“Hush, Annie,” Wendy said.

“I need to get in touch with him, Mrs. Sigsby. I need to make a deal. Tell me how to do it.”

When she didn’t reply, Luke jammed his thumb into the bullet hole in her red pants. Mrs. Sigsby shrieked. “Don’t, oh don’t, that HURTS!”

“Zap-sticks hurt!” Luke shouted at her. Glass shards rattled across the floor, forming small creeks. Annie stared, eyes wide with fascination. “Injections hurt! Being half-drowned hurts! And having your mind ripped open?” He jammed his thumb against the bullet wound again. The door to the holding area slammed shut, making them all jump. “Having your mind destroyed?? That hurts most of all!”

“Make him stop!” Mrs. Sigsby screamed. “Make him stop hurting me!”

Wendy bent to pull Luke away. Tim shook his head and took her arm. “No.”

“It’s the conspiracy,” Annie whispered to Drummer. Her eyes were huge. “That woman works for the conspiracy. They all do! I knew it all along, I said it, and nobody believed me!”

The ringing in Tim’s ears was starting to fade. He heard no sirens, which didn’t surprise him. He guessed the Staties might not even know there had been a shoot-out in DuPray, at least not yet. And anyone calling 911 would have reached not the South Carolina Highway Patrol but the Fairlee County sheriff—this shambles, in other words. He glanced at his watch and saw with disbelief that the world had been rightside up only five minutes ago. Six, at most.

“Mrs. Sigsby, is it?” he asked, kneeling beside Luke.

She said nothing.

“You are in a great deal of trouble, Mrs. Sigsby. I advise you to tell Luke here what he wants to know.”

“I need medical attention.”

Tim shook his head. “What you need is to do some talking. Then we’ll see about medical attention.”

“Luke was telling the truth,” Wendy said to no one in particular. “About everything.”

“Didn’t I just say that?” Annie almost crowed.

Doc Roper pushed his way into the office. “Holy Jesus on Resurrection Morn,” he said. “Who’s still alive? How badly is that woman hurt? Was it some kind of terrorist thing?”

“They’re torturing me,” Mrs. Sigsby said. “If you are a doctor, as that black bag you’re carrying would seem to suggest, you have an obligation to make them stop.”

Tim said, “The boy you treated was running away from this woman and the raiding party she brought with her, Doc. I don’t know how many are dead out there, but we lost five, including the sheriff, and it was on this woman’s orders.”

“We’ll deal with that later,” Roper said. “Right now I need to take care of her. She’s bleeding. And somebody needs to call a goddam ambulance.”

Mrs. Sigsby looked at Luke, bared her teeth in a smile that said I win, then looked back at Roper. “Thank you, Doctor. Thank you.”

“There’s a biddy with sand in her craw,” Annie said, and not without admiration. “Fella I shot in the foot, maybe not so much. I’d go see him, were I you. I think he’d sell his own grammaw into white slavery for a shot of morphine.”

Mrs. Sigsby’s eyes widened in alarm. “Leave him alone. I forbid you to talk to him.”

Tim got to his feet. “Forbid and be damned. I don’t know who you work for, lady, but I believe your days of kidnapping children are over. Luke, Wendy, come with me.”

38

House lights had come on all over town, and DuPray’s main street was full of milling people. The bodies of the dead were being covered by whatever came to hand. Someone had taken Orphan Annie’s sleeping bag out of the alley and draped it over Robin Lecks.

Dr. Evans had been completely forgotten. He could conceivably have limped his way to one of the parked mom vans and gotten away, but had made no effort to do so. Tim, Wendy, and Luke found him sitting on the curb in front of the Gem. His cheeks gleamed with tears. He had managed to work his shoe off, and was now staring at a bloody sock covering what looked like a badly deformed foot. How much of that was bone damage and how much swelling that would eventually go down, Tim neither knew nor cared.

“What is your name, sir?” Tim asked.

“Never mind my name. I want a lawyer. And I want a doctor. A woman shot me. I want her arrested.”

“His name is James Evans,” Luke said. “And he’s a doctor. Just like Josef Mengele was.”

Evans seemed to notice Luke for the first time. He pointed at the boy with a trembling finger. “This is all your fault.”

Luke lunged at Evans, but this time Tim held him back and pushed him gently but firmly to Wendy, who took him by the shoulders.

Tim squatted on his hunkers so he could look the pallid, frightened man dead in the eye. “Listen to me, Dr. Evans. Listen closely. You and your friends came high-riding into town to get this boy and killed five people. All police officers. Now, you might not know it, but South Carolina has the death penalty, and if you think they won’t use it, and double-quick, for killing a county sheriff and four deputies—”

“I had nothing to do with it!” Evans squawked. “I was here under protest! I—”

“Shut up!” Wendy said. She still had the late Tag Faraday’s Glock, and now she pointed it at the foot that was still shod. “Those officers were also my friends. If you think I’m going to read you your rights or something, you’re out your goddam mind. What I’m going to do if you don’t tell Luke what he wants is put a bullet in your other—”

“All right! All right! Yes!” Evans reached down and put protective hands over his good foot, which almost made Tim feel sorry for him. Almost. “What is it? What do you want to know?”

“I need to talk to Stackhouse,” Luke said. “How do I do that?”

“Her phone,” Evans said. “She has a special phone. She called him before they attempted . . . you know . . . the extraction. I saw her put it in her coat pocket.”

“I’ll get it,” Wendy said, and turned back toward the sheriff’s station.

“Don’t just bring the phone,” Luke said. “Bring her.”

“Luke . . . she’s been shot.”

“We might need her,” Luke said. His eyes were stony.

“Why?”

Because it was chess now, and in chess you never lived in the move you were about to make, or even the next one. Three moves ahead, that was the rule. And three alternates to each of those, depending on what your opponent did.

She looked at Tim, who nodded. “Bring her. Cuff her if you need to. You’re the law, after all.”

“Jesus, what a thought,” she said, and left.

Now, at last, Tim heard a siren. Maybe even two of them. Still faint, though.

Luke grabbed his wrist. Tim thought the boy looked totally focused, totally aware, and also tired to death. “I can’t get caught in this. They have my friends. They’re trapped and there’s nobody to help them but me.”

“Trapped in this Institute.”

“Yes. You believe me now, don’t you.”

“It’d be hard not to after what was on the flash drive, and all this. What about that drive? Do you still have it?”

Luke patted his pocket.

“Mrs. Sigsby and the people she works with mean to do something to these friends of yours so they end up like the kids in that ward?”

“They were already doing it, but then they got out. Mostly because of Avery, and Avery was there because he helped me get out. I guess you’d call that irony. But I’m pretty sure they’re trapped again. I’m afraid Stackhouse will kill them if I can’t make a deal.”