The backhoe popped again.

Gears rattled.

The engine groaned, then cut off.

A small beam shot down from the lip of the sinkhole. Was joined by another. The small ovals danced the water, the muddy banks, finally settled on me.

“She’s here.”

“Sonofafrigginbitch.”

Slidell’s voice had never sounded so sweet.

Chapter 35

I DIDN’T GET THE FULL STORY UNTIL PRESBYTERIAN HOSPITAL cut me loose three days later. By then Mark Martin had beaten twenty-to-one odds to win the Coca-Cola 600. Sandy Stupak had finished at number nineteen.

Completion of the Nationwide race had been postponed Friday night due to rain and the possibility of tornadoes. The following day Joey Frank crossed the line at number twenty-seven.

And the sun finally came out.

Katy had visited my bedside daily. Larabee dropped in. Charlie Hunt. Pete, sans Summer.

Hmm.

The sting on my finger wasn’t from a biting insect. Bogan had hit me with an abrin-coated dart. My mobile rang at the precise moment he aimed his little blow tube at my neck. Either the movement of my hand, the phone, or my jacket sleeve deflected the hit.

Karma? Fate? Blind-ass luck? Whatever. That kind of help is welcome any time.

Here’s a bit of irony. The caller was Summer. Another bout of wedding hysteria had saved my life.

The trace amount of abrin that had penetrated my skin caused vomiting, fever, headache, and disorientation. But I lived.

Galimore had also been poisoned. The prognosis was that, although further hospitalization was required, his recovery would proceed without complications.

Doctors figured either the abrin was degraded, incorrectly processed, or Bogan had put too little on the dart. Or maybe rain had diluted the toxin before or during delivery. Bottom line: the dosages were too low to be lethal to either of us.

Padgett was right. Bogan had been supplying flowers and greenery to the Speedway for years. After darting us, he’d locked our “bodies” in one of his gardening sheds, waiting for the right moment to dump them.

The sinkhole had been a stroke of luck. Bogan’s offer to deal with the inconvenience had been gratefully accepted by frantic Speedway personnel. He intended to load us onto the backhoe, deposit us thirty-five feet below ground level, then shovel tons of fill over our corpses. Finding me alive had forced him to modify his plan. He’d drop Galimore after he got some dirt over me.

My epiphany in the shed was dead-on. Bogan had killed Cindi and Cale, then threatened Grady Winge with the loss of his job if he didn’t help a fellow posseman dispose of a couple of bodies.

The Gambles and Ethel Bradford would be vindicated. The task force finding was indeed flawed. The couple hadn’t run off to get married or to join an extremist group out West.

Lynn Nolan and Wayne Gamble were also wrong. Cale hadn’t killed Cindi, then gone into hiding for fear of being caught.