“You can’t help me, Tom. You want to, but what can you do? You’ve got a wife and kids to take care of. You want to fight the Ku Klux Klan for me? I know you’re brave. But are you that kind of hero?”

Until that moment, Tom had never quite realized how high the risks of becoming involved with Viola were. She seemed to want an answer to her question. Her unblinking gaze probed him like an X-ray beam.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “You’re probably right about the police not believing you. It would be your word against Knox’s buddies, and they’d all give each other alibis.”

She gave him the most cynical look he had ever seen.

“To be honest,” he said, “about the only thing we could do … is kill them.”

Viola nodded slowly. “I got one of them.”

Tom shuddered as the magnitude of what they had done hit home. “There’ll almost certainly be an autopsy,” he thought aloud. “An experienced pathologist might discover the true cause of death, but this post will probably be done by Adam Leeds. With Knox’s massive injuries, Leeds won’t be looking for anything exotic. I doubt he’ll notice the air escaping when he cuts open Knox’s heart.”

Viola seemed unconcerned by the risk of being found out.

“Where’s Jimmy now?” Tom asked. “Still in Freewoods?”

“I don’t know. I’ve stopped calling him, in case the klukkers on the police force are tapping my phone.”

Viola was right about the police department having Klansmen in its ranks. “What do you want to do now? Do you want to go home?”

Her eyes had been flat and lifeless for so long that it stunned Tom to see some depth come back into them. “What do I want?” she asked softly. “I want you to take me away from here. I want you to take me to a place where we can have children and grow old together. A place where my brother can come live and be safe, and play music all day long. A place where I can love you like you ought to be loved, and you can love me the same.”

Tom felt himself shaking.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Don’t I look the same to you anymore? Do I look different to you, now that you know them rednecks used me?”

“No.”

“Do I look different now that I killed somebody in front of you?”

“No. I’m as guilty as you of that crime.”

She stared relentlessly at him, as though waiting for him to admit that he could not give her what she wanted. But she was only waiting for him to face what she’d known all along.