“Whoa,” Shane says, the word as much a gasp as it is anything. “Atlanta, what are you doing?”

“Finishing what he started.”

“You don’t have to do this.”

She swallows a hard knot. “I reckon I do.”

“Atlanta—”

“The recording is gone. He broke the iPod. We don’t have a dang thing.”

“The cloud,” Shane says. And she’s not sure what he means so she darts her gaze up—no clouds tonight, the sky is dappled with stars. But then he says it again: “The cloud! It’s saved on the cloud. I set that app to back up all recordings—off the device.”

Petry’s eyes narrow.

“So we have it?” she asks, a flutter of something eager and insane inside her gut.

Shane nods. “I checked. Yeah.”

“Oh. Oh.” She eyes Petry. Small dark man in dark clothes. A human stain. A hunk of coal ruining a puddle of ink. “You. Lie down. Chin against the dirt.”

The wind kicks up. The corn hisses and murmurs. As if it’s alive.

“Atlanta,” Shane says, not understanding. That’s okay. He will.

She tells Shane, “The shotgun. Load it.”

“It’s broken.”

“Just the stock. The important part still works.”

He fumbles with the action—eventually breaking the barrel and clumsily thumbing a shell into the chamber.

“Close it,” she says.

“Atlanta—”

“I said, close it.” She hears her own voice and it’s too dark, too ragged. She adds: “Please.”

The click of the gun snapping shut.

“Let’s trade.” She hands Shane the cop’s pistol, and gingerly he hands her the Winchester.

The wind dies down. The humid air comes back—hot, damp, choking. The gun is lighter in her hands—the stock now broken off a couple inches past the trigger guard at its narrowest point. Now just the jagged teeth of splintered wood. She thumbs the hammer back. It makes a satisfying click.

“This is how it’s going to work,” she tells Petry. “We’ve got you on record saying some very bad things. Things that would get you into some deep and awful shit. Maybe the way we did it wasn’t legal, but you and I both know that doesn’t matter one whit. It’ll still put eyes on you. Eyes you don’t want. And when those eyes look at you they’ll start to look at Orly Erickson, and then the ghost of Hitler himself couldn’t save you from what’s coming.” She draws a deep breath, blows it out through flared nostrils. “So you’re going to leave. You’re going to pack up your stuff and disappear from this town, this world, this life. I don’t care where you go. I don’t care what you do. Long as you’re nowhere near here. Because that recording? It’s gonna get out. And you don’t want to be here when it does.”

Petry lies there, face-down against the dirt.