“We want what we’ve got. You. We’re going to use you to show people what a mistake you all made by hiring a bunch of killers. We’re here to punish you so what’s left of your town will remember.”

Haymes said, “If you’re from that prison break, then you have nothing more to gain here. You’re out already. You can’t do better than that.”

One of the masked men swung his rifle so the butt pounded against Haymes’s head and knocked him to the floor. “Shut up.” Leah guessed from the man’s size and the light-colored eyelashes she could see in the eyeholes of his mask that he was Tim McKinney.

Lee Wolf said, “Now, people. You’re not getting the point of our visit. We’re not here to have a two-sided evaluation of what we do. The point is to show people around here that trying to harm us is futile, because the only ones who are going to get revenge are the six of us. Not you or your town.”

“Revenge for what?” Mark Stein asked.

“Now that, unlike the others, is a good question. You, or your city, or some do-gooder around here who felt sorry for you, decided to put a contract out on the twelve men who escaped two years ago. So far six of us have been—I hate to use a crude term for it—butchered. Our revenge is for killing those six. We’re also making sure nobody sends anyone after us again. If they do, we can always come back and make you hurt and hurt.”

He strutted along the arc of desks, staring hard at each of the council members as he passed. Leah had been studying him and the other five men quietly, carefully, without moving or catching anyone’s attention. She stood with her knees bent and shoulders hunched to give the impression that she was shorter and weaker than she was.

“We never did any of the things you say,” Nell Hoagland said. “And what do you expect to accomplish here?”

“Well, I heard that one of the attacks your boys made ended with burning down a workshop with two men in it. Whether they were still alive or not isn’t clear, but they weren’t alive after that. The second thing that comes to mind was filling a house where people were sleeping with propane, so there would be a fiery explosion. So, when I think about what would make us feel better, how could it not involve fire?”

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