I didn’t have time to be surprised, to ask any questions, to ask anything of Jamey at all. “Jamey, there’s a knife in the glove box,” I said. “Another under Starla’s seat.”

“I got my knife,” Jamey said quietly.

The man knocked on the driver’s side window. I looked at Jamey, at Starla sleeping, then rolled it down.

“I’m gonna need you to step out of the truck, miss,” the man said.

I decided to pretend a little longer. “I’m gonna need to see your badge.”

“Out of the truck. Now!”

The man wrenched the door open. I grabbed for the handle, trying to close it, but he yanked hard, like he was tearing off a chicken leg. He forced me out of the truck and onto the ground. I hit pavement, but snow cushioned me, clung to me. I pulled myself up by the door and closed it, prayed that Jamey would lock it. My heart was hammering too loudly to hear.

The man leaned close to me and spat on the ground. “We want the girl.”

“She doesn’t belong to you.”

“Like hell she doesn’t.”

“She’s fifteen!”

The door of the sheriff’s car popped open.

It was him. I knew it would be him, but he was different. Jamey had done something to him. She had hurt him.

He moved strangely, with a slow drag that reminded me of Grayson, though it made me sick to think it. But like Grayson, Jake had a hurt leg. He had to slide his body forward and lean on a cane to walk. Something was wrong with Jake’s eye. He wore an eye patch. There was red behind it, over his forehead. Old, dried blood, or a bruise or burn stretching into his hair.

But the hurt, the injuries, didn’t make him seem weaker, or slower. They made him seem scarier. Less to lose. Less alive.

“Not that girl,” Jake said. His voice had changed, too. It was thicker, deep with clots. It had lost its joking, maniacal joy.

He didn’t move like Grayson, I decided. He moved like a snake.

“You can keep Jamey. That bitch. I want my baby.”

“You stay away from them,” I said.

“And I want the grower.”

Me.

He wanted me.

The man with the rifle, the man pretending to be a deputy, had not told me to put my hands up—he was not pretending very well. I stood with them at my side. The heaviness in my pocket dragged against me like a stone.