“You have to understand.” My voice echoes to the old rafters, and something startles. A bird. I can’t see what kind, though. “We’re not the heroes here. We’re the enemy.”

“Oh, good.” Joe smirks. “The villains always get better outfits. Let’s get to work.” When he claps, the bird alights and swoops down over our heads, beating its way out the open door. Flora screeches.

“It’s just a crow,” I say. And then, because I can’t help it, “Crows have amazing memories. They can distinguish between human faces, too. They’re like elephants. They never forget.”

“No wonder they always look so angry,” Joe adds, and when I look up at him he’s lifting an eyebrow at Raj. Yeah, they’re fucking.

—

I claim the empty desk and busy myself sorting through the notes that Gallagher left us: detailed notations, almost hieroglyphic, of changes to the soil pH, unfamiliar bacterial blight, unexplained crop failure.

One thing leaps out at me right away: Gallagher provided a statement from a woman named Dawes who claims that her kid has been getting rashes. But if they’ve been using a private well, as most families do in Barrens, it’s bad news for us. If the contamination is in the groundwater it will be much harder to tie to a single source. And there’s always the possibility the whole case is fluff to begin with, that some locals might be sniffing around for a payout like Kaycee and her friends tried to ten years ago.

For the rest of the team, this is just another case. For me, it’s a chance to finally take on the demons. To root out the ugly secrets. I wish I could say I was here to get justice for the voiceless, for those who have no power, just like I once had no power. I wish I could even say I want the bad guys to suffer.

But I just want to know—for sure, for good, forever. For a decade the same questions have been knocking around, over and over, in my head. Only the truth can shut them up.

Chapter Three

At six o’clock I call it: type on the page has begun to collapse before my eyes. Joe packs up when I do, and watching him shove papers into a leather carryall, I wonder what he thinks of this place. I’ve tried to explain to him where I’m from before, in minor detail and broad generalities. Rural, sticks, wide-open spaces, twenty minutes to get a loaf of bread…I wonder if he sees me differently now amid the faint smell of manure and hay and the acres and acres of unpopulated land.

Gallagher’s dogs are working overtime, and start up again as soon as Joe and I step outside to lock the place up. Several hundred yards away, the furnace behind the farmhouse feeds the smell of charcoal into the evening air. Gallagher must be home.

“I could use a drink. Any bad sing-along karaoke around here?” Joe gives me a nudge, and I know he’s trying to make up for forcing my little confession that I’m from here earlier. That’s one of the things you have to love about Joe—off the clock, he always feels guilty for being great at his job. “You can give me the tour of the ol’ stomping grounds.”