“You owe your life to Ms. Nell,” Lou said.

Albritten gave a rusty chuckle. “She owes it to that dog of hers. That sweet Peppy started walking in circles, whining. She knew you were in trouble, but of course I didn’t understand that. I thought she was sensing someone outside my house. So I called the boys, and they set a speed record from that farmhouse of theirs, you’d better believe that.”

She nodded for emphasis. “I still don’t understand how a dog could realize a person was in trouble, but she knew, she knew.”

“We’ve got her up to the farmhouse right now,” Lou said. “She’s happy there with our boy—seems to know you’re okay. We’ll keep her safe until you’re back on your feet.”

It was Nell Albritten who’d phoned Lotty—I’d forgotten leaving Lotty’s name and number in case anything happened to me. By the time Lou and Ed had driven me to the hospital, Lotty was in Lawrence: she’d called in a favor from a wealthy man whose wife’s life she’d saved, and he’d put his private jet at her disposal.

“How did you know I was in the silo?” I asked.

“We suspected the silo,” Ed said, “but we didn’t want to drive out there until we had some definite proof, in case you were in another part of the county altogether. We didn’t know if that colonel had maybe dragged you off to Fort Leavenworth.”

“Went against the grain with us,” Ed said, “but we rode into town, went to Five-Oh, talked to the one man there we knew was reasonably straight.”

“Sergeant Everard,” I said.

“Yep,” Ed agreed.

Everard had defended Sheriff Gisborne to me, but privately the sheriff’s behavior was disturbing him. He knew that the sheriff was monitoring my position through the GPS signal on my phone. Everyone in the judicial center liked Everard; it wasn’t hard for him to get the county dispatcher to share what they were seeing on their tracking software.

When I was using my phone’s flashlight inside the silo, I was forty-five feet underground. For a brief moment, though, early Wednesday morning, a signal came across. When I was holding my arm up the airshaft and weeping with despair because it was too narrow for me, my phone had come online.

“The sarge got his lieutenant to let him mobilize all the Lawrence units, and the looey pushed on a deputy sheriff to override Gisborne and send county deputies out there. I don’t know who called the FBI, but they got there, too.”

“I thought I saw U.S. soldiers?” I said.