CONSCIOUSNESS RETURNED AS a hammer pounding the base of my skull and lights flashing in the stinking dark. I’m lying on the metal floor of a van, Caitlin beside me, still unconscious. Duct tape binds our hands and ankles, and Chief Logan’s cop lies senseless at our feet, near the van’s rear doors. Two minutes ago I pried off one shoe with the other and searched for his carotid pulse with my toe, but I felt nothing.

I didn’t recognize either of the men waiting for me outside the Examiner building—didn’t even see them until one clubbed me with the butt of his pistol. They were trying to force me to ask Caitlin via text to come outside when she obligingly ran out on her own. I half wish she’d gone back inside when I told her to—but if she had, I’d be dead.

I can’t see our abductors clearly; a dense wire partition divides the cab of the van from its cargo area. I remember two thugs: one older with long hair, one younger with a crew cut. Flexing my wrists and ankles as hard as I can, I quickly learn this duct tape doesn’t give. As silver steel girders continue flashing through the long horizontal windows above me, I realize we’re crossing the Mississippi River Bridge, heading into Louisiana. For a few moments I consider waking Caitlin, but Royal’s men will do that soon enough, and the prospect of being delivered to the psychos who forced one female employee to kill another is something I’d like to spare her for as long as possible.

Brody Royal. How smoothly that old man played me. The consummate deal maker, he told me exactly what I wanted to hear, buying just enough time to arrange a permanent solution to the threat picture I’d painted for him. I briefly wonder whether Royal might have some subtler plan than killing us in mind, but the pragmatist in me knows the truth. If Brody has his way, after tonight, no one will ever see Penn Cage or Caitlin Masters again—alive or dead. We’ll disappear into the same void that Pooky Wilson and Jimmy Revels did.

Despite my intent to leave her unconscious, after a couple of miles, Caitlin’s eyelids flutter, then pop open. As full comprehension dawns, she glances at me, then closes them tight again, expressing tears from their corners.

Very softly, I lean close and whisper, “Do you have your phone?”

She opens her eyes and shakes her head, then mouths, You?

“They took it.”

“Gun?”

“Same.”

I watch her absorb what this means for our chances of survival. Looking toward her feet, she whispers, “Is that the cop who was guarding the parking lot?”

I nod.

“Is he dead?”

“I think so. I kicked off one shoe and touched his throat. I couldn’t feel a pulse. And I felt something wet.”