“It’s all right,” Molina said. “I have it in the record.” She nodded at Gideon when he looked at her in surprise. “When I became aware of Mr. Terrill’s presence, I brought him in for an interview. He’s made a full statement, including telling us where to find the Comstocks’ grave. Our forensics team has already recovered two of the bodies. Broken necks, just as Mr. Terrill claimed.”

“Like the madam and the college student,” Rafe said quietly.

Molina nodded. “Exactly like them. Breaks at the same vertebrae on each victim. Mr. Terrill, if you would.”

“I wanted to leave then. That day,” Amos said. “I needed to tell someone what had happened. But I wouldn’t leave Abigail. I couldn’t leave her. I failed you, Gideon. I failed Mercy and your mother. I even failed Eileen. I couldn’t leave Abigail.”

“Of course you couldn’t,” Mercy said, covering Amos’s hand with hers.

“How did you fail Eileen?” Gideon asked, his tone less acerbic, but still far from warm.

“Her parents came to me. Asked me to help smuggle her out. I made a hope chest large enough for her to hide in. But none of us could go with her. I distracted DJ while Stephen and Ezra put the chest on the truck so that DJ wouldn’t know it was extra heavy. We just hoped Eileen would get out. But something bad must have happened, because I read today that she’s also dead.”

Gideon looked stunned. “You were the one who helped her escape?”

“I tried.”

“She did escape,” Mercy said. “She escaped Ephraim only to be taken by someone even worse, if that’s possible. But she did get out. She made it all the way to Macdoel, nearly a hundred miles north of Snowbush. We think she must have hopped a train, because the settlement we found was near a train track. From Macdoel she went to Redding and took a bus to Portland, where she was taken by the man who killed her.”

“Who almost killed you,” Amos said, then looked at Daisy. “And you.”

“But we got away,” Mercy said firmly. “It brought me back to Gideon, so some good came from it.”

“It brought me to Gideon as well,” Daisy said.

Irina sniffed. “Only because you both ignored all my matchmaking attempts.”

That brought chuckles from everyone, even Gideon, who was studying Amos with more respect. “You risked yourself by making that hope chest for Eileen. Thank you.”

Amos sighed. “Don’t thank me. As you said, it took me long enough. But I saw Eileen one day and she was bruised and bloody. And I remembered Mercy and your mother . . . And I had to do something.”

“What prompted you to leave last night?” Daisy asked.

“I was waiting for spring. There’s still snow up in the mountains. I made another hope chest, this time with a false bottom to hide Abigail. I was biding my time, hoping for an opportunity to get her out on DJ’s truck, but with me accompanying her. I didn’t want her to end up like Eileen. Ephraim told us that she’d fallen down a ravine. The body that he brought back was unidentifiable, just like the body that Waylon brought back after your escape, Gideon. But then I saw Ephraim kill the Comstocks with such . . . glee. He told the membership that they’d decided to return to the world, that they’d turned their backs on God because of Eileen’s death.”