“I’d say you deserve better.”

A sudden warm draft lifted the hairs on the back of Joel’s neck.

“I’d say you deserve more of that fifty-k.”

A dull amber light came from somewhere just over his shoulder. Years later, Joel would imagine a thousand explanations for the voice he heard in his head at that moment.

But Joel knew something he would never tell a soul: his brother’s voice came not from inside his head but from behind him. He heard it a few inches from his ear. And his brother’s hand had pivoted his head, ever so slightly, to show him exactly what he needed to see.

Browder was pinned between Clark and the kitchen wall, his hands around her throat, hoisting her into the air. She grabbed for his black eyes—her feet convulsing, her strength failing.

But what was that on her ankle?

“He needs vessels,” said Dylan’s small voice. “But you can break them.”

Joel felt the little key in his hand turn smoothly and the cuff around his ankle pop free.

“Go.”

He stumbled down the canted trailer floor in a crouch—careful to avoid the pipe Kimbra had pulled loose earlier—and when he reached Clark, he somehow moved his bad arm enough to touch her leg. To still her.

With his good hand he slipped his brother’s hunting knife free from the sheath on her ankle. He stood up straight. He met Browder’s black, empty eyes over her shoulder.

The knife was so sharp it slid into Browder’s side as easy as sex after a long night. When the hilt of the blade reached the skin Joel turned it once, turned it farther, then turned it back around, just as he had seen Browder spinning his own knife earlier. Joel studied the pain in the deputy’s blackened face and wondered when he would find the exact combination of turns to take the life from his twisted body.

Browder shuddered. His mouth opened wider and wider, the jawbones cracking free of their sockets, and a horrible smell of blood and clay and rot seeped out.

A blink, and Browder’s eyes were his own again. The young deputy focused on Joel with an expression of absolute, desperate tenderness.

From his ruined mouth, Browder said, “You look just like him in this light.”

Joel pulled the knife free. Blood splashed onto the old linoleum. Browder’s fingers fell from Clark’s neck. His eyes died.

Clark was saying something that Joel couldn’t hear. She was pulling him away from the wall. He stumbled back up the canted floor and felt the bloody knife fall from his fingers.

Joel raised his head to see the place where his brother’s voice had spoken to him. He saw nothing there. No shadows, no light, no bends in the air. No ghostly presence to give him one final nod of encouragement.

Instead he could just make out the trailer door rattling. “Fire!” screamed a voice outside. “You’re on fire!”

BETHANY

It was a piece of paneling off the side of the tall triple-wide that did it. She saw a wooden board come loose from the triple-wide’s wall, hit the grass and a second later there was a flash bright enough to blind her.