The tingling heat spread down her neck. “Catastrophes?”

“I got Mayfield heading to a gas leak all the way over in Rattichville. I thought Jones was supposed to be guarding that bank but he won’t get on the horn so now I’m heading to a wreck in Lockpoint, the damn constables say they’ve never seen the likes of it. Clark, I swear those constables couldn’t save grass from shit.”

Clark held her phone against her shoulder, tapped her thumbnail to her teeth. She was suddenly very afraid for Mayfield. “We inherited this town,” he’d told her, as if it excused sabotaging an investigation. But then he’d worked her shift, he’d left hard proof on her desk that the department was covering up for the Bison’s golden boys. And now he wasn’t answering his phone.

And neither, apparently, was Deputy Jones. The man who’d last been seen with Jason Ovelle while he was still alive.

“Any of these catastrophes have to do with Joel Whitley?”

“Not that I know of. I saw his car outside the hardware store a bit ago. Want me to run back and check if he’s there when I’m done with this pileup?”

Clark saw the highway clearing.

“I thought these were the best years of our lives,” Coach Parter had said in that article Joel had sent.

Coach Parter, who had been so quick to defend Garrett Mason this morning.

She stepped on the gas.

“Don’t worry about it,” she told Browder. “I’ll be there soon.”

KIMBRA

Her head ached where she’d been struck; her back had gone numb from lying on the stockroom’s concrete floor. She heard a knock on the back door of the hardware store. She flexed her shoulders, stretched her arms and legs, but it was no good: she was tied up tighter than a roast.

The door opened. Garrett Mason spoke from outside. “They said you needed me. I got here as quick as I could.”

The other man said, “About time. Go get your truck.”

There was a low moan from somewhere to her left.

“Fuck,” Garrett said. “He don’t look right.”

“You’ve seen worse.”

A minute later Kimbra heard the sound of the truck rumbling down the alleyway.

“...folks, we’re only ten minutes into the second half and it’s already hard to tell if this little Garcia boy is either brave or crazy,” Buddy Laurie said from a crackling radio. “But he’s throwing himself at these Perlin tackles like a dog at a bone.”

“Christ, that’s a tight fit,” said Garrett, stepping back inside.

“Grab his legs.”

There was a rattling as someone was lifted off the ground. “He’s heavier than his brother,” Garrett said as he and the other man shuffled awkwardly to the door. A few minutes later they came back for her.

It was terrifying, of course, but being carried by her wrists and ankles didn’t hurt as bad as she’d thought it would. Kimbra told herself that this was practically like tumbling practice. When they heaved her into the cold bed of the truck the zipper of her singlet dug into her spine.