“I never saw him date anyone.” Mandy tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Twenty years is a long time for a man to go without a woman,” Danny said.

“I wouldn’t know.” Mandy’s eyes flitted toward the window overlooking the tree-ringed backyard.

If he didn’t have a local woman, did Nathan have one-night stands or rendezvous with women in other towns? Prostitutes? All questions Danny wasn’t going to ask sweet, small-town Mandy, who was clearly uncomfortable talking about her ex-boss’s sex life.

Just how sheltered was she? Danny shook his mind from the thought of Mandy and her sexual innocence. This was not the time.

Danny walked to a door between the kitchen and family room. He opened it. A stairwell led down. There was nothing down there. He knew it. But the darkness was intimidating. On the way down, he flipped a switch on the wall. Nothing, which was exactly what happened when electric bills didn’t get paid. Danny pulled the small flashlight he’d taken from his glove box out of his pocket. He swept the beam around the dusty room. Scant light filtered through a few dirty, narrow windows at ceiling height.

The basement looked ordinary. Raw concrete floor, whitewashed cinder block walls, unfinished ceiling. Empty shelves lined the walls. A long workbench spanned the far wall. Had Nathan prepared the props of his religion on its scarred wooden surface? There were no signs of the evil that had been planned here. Until Danny looked closer. A circle in the center of the room was dotted with globs of hardened wax in different colors. Danny squatted next to it. Under the dust, faint symbols drawn in chalk decorated the concrete around the space. Spirals. Interlocking triangles and rings. Pentagrams. Afraid of indoor lightning strikes, he avoided church unless someone was getting married, baptized, or buried. But the Catholic boy inside him cringed. He could practically hear his mother saying the rosary from heaven.

This was where it happened. A human sacrifice had been planned right here.

He looked over at Mandy, who was hugging herself at the bottom of the steps. She took a step backward, up onto the last wooden step, as if she were also repulsed by the remnants of pagan rituals on the concrete.

He pulled out his phone and snapped pictures of the circle. The flash illuminated more symbols painted on the rough walls. Stick figures and bonfires galore. Danny photographed everything.

What had he hoped to accomplish by coming here? The police had taken everything that could possibly be considered evidence. But nothing could clear the dusty air of the desperation that clung to the space, or eliminate the taint of ruthlessness that drove a man to kidnap and slaughter innocents to save his own family.

Brutality lingered because the events that were put into play here weren’t over yet. Evil was sticking around.