Leah took a second drink, a sip this time. “Not much. New people will probably come to Weldonville after we’re gone. There are good roads and sewers and water lines and electricity. And the prison is already being remodeled by contractors who fooled the government into thinking they’re making it escape-proof this time. But the people who lived in those houses up and down those quiet streets before the prison break are about half gone already—the people I grew up with and their families. A lot of them had jobs in the prison, and a lot more sold things to the prison itself or to the people who worked there, and that’s been choked off for two years. Others left because somebody they loved died and they couldn’t stand to look at the place anymore.”

“If your town is ruined, what are you doing here looking for Viktor Panko?”

“The town I knew is over. It took one night. What I’m doing is not trying to reclaim the place. It’s about who we were, the kind of town our families had built over about six generations. The town didn’t die off, the way some do. These twelve guys just got together and made a plan to kill it. They took something that belonged to all of us that we can’t get back. Your past is your identity, and they took that. I could make you a noble speech that I’m only taking part in the search so they won’t do it to some other little place. But I don’t think they would anyway. It was a onetime thing. I just don’t want them to walk away from it.”

“I understand,” Stella said. “I’ll get on this in the morning. Can I pour you another cup of tea?”

“No,” said Leah. “I’ll be working tonight, so I’d better get going. Thank you for everything, Stella.”

As Leah walked along the street toward her car, she considered her new circumstances. She had never planned to tell anyone who she was or what she was doing. Now she had another cop on her side. Maybe Stella would help, but now Leah had another burden. If she got to Panko, she would have to make his death happen without the body ever being found, or she would have to make it look like self-defense, or Stella would certainly turn her in.

* * *

Leah Hawkins went back to work on the fourteen names that Viktor Panko had placed on his list of people he wanted to be allowed to visit him in prison. He had filled out a form when he entered the system at the federal penitentiary in Beaumont, Texas. He had listed his father, mother, three brothers, and two sisters. The other seven were his defense attorney, three cousins with the surname Halasz, and three cousins with the name Varga.