She almost sobs, but a hard surge of hot anger burns away the tears before they fall. “Wrong. I have proof you hurt Chris. Proof you and Orly been killing off Mexicans and gay kids and anybody else who gets in your way.” She’s stringing one lie after the other now. “All your neo-Nazi bully white-power bullshit. The money. The guns. Everything.”

Petry doesn’t say anything at first. She hears a faint scrape of a shoe—is he moving? Oh, Lord, where is he?

Then he says, “I don’t speak on most of those files. They can’t prove anything. Besides, I didn’t have anything to do with any of the other gay kids. That wasn’t me.”

“Chris was you.”

“You already know that.”

Keep talking keep talking keep talking.

“And the Mexican kids?”

“I do as I’m told. Mr. Erickson has a very clear vision for the future of this town, and any outsiders are not a part of that. That includes you, by the way.”

And suddenly there he is. Standing at her feet between the couch and the coffee table, gun up—

But she’s got a gun up, too. Shotgun up and out from under the couch. Shell loaded. Hammer back.

Boom.

The shotgun goes off, and a framed photo—her seventh-grade photo, gawky Atlanta with big braces and tangle of red hair even meaner and wilder than it is now—drops off the wall as Petry darts left.

And then silence again. He’s somewhere on the other side of the couch. Single-barrel shotgun means she’s just used her one shot. Atlanta rests the iPod on her chest and breaks the barrel, fishing in her pocket for a shell—

All the shells leap free of their pocket prison and roll across the floor. Just out of reach. Her hand flails to find some, one, any.

“Just admit you don’t have the audio files,” Petry says from the far side of the room somewhere. The floor groans. He’s on the move again. Her hands feel for shells—but they’ve rolled past the coffee table and she can’t get any without moving and making herself vulnerable. “You can’t prove I killed any of them.”

“But you did.”

“Some of them. Others I just watched.”

“Fine. You’re right,” she says, voice so haggard and worn to the nub she barely recognizes it as her own. “I don’t have audio files, plural. I have one audio file. I thought this would go a little different, but it doesn’t change the fact—I’ve been recording this, you sonofabitch.” It feels good to say that. She imagines the look on his face—cracking that stony veneer, a kidney stone burned to dust by a surgical laser.

He says nothing in response.

She needs ammo.

She needs it now.

She stretches—muscles burning—fingers touching one of the green crimped shells—