The room at the top of the stairs was large and had a number of windows facing the burnt portion of the mill. There was one door, which was unlocked, and she pushed it open, stepped into the grinding area itself—two large millstones sat in the center. The wooden mechanism was rotted; the sound she’d heard wasn’t the stones but the waterwheel, powered by the diverted stream. It still turned slowly. Rust-colored water cascaded off it into a deep, narrow pit, like a well. Lydia couldn’t see the bottom. The water must’ve drained back into the stream somewhere below the surface.

“Stop!” Garrett cried.

She jumped in shock at the angry sound. He stood in the doorway. His eyes were red and wide and he was cradling his arm, on which was a huge black-and-yellow bruise. “You made it sting me,” he muttered, staring at her with hatred. “It’s dead. You made me kill it! I didn’t want to but you made me! Now get your ass downstairs. I’ve gotta tape your legs up now.”

He started forward.

She looked at his bony face, brows knit together, his huge hands, his angry eyes. Into her thoughts came a burst of images: a cancer patient of hers, slowly wasting to death. Mary Beth McConnell locked away somewhere. The boy madly chewing his chips. The scuttling millipede. The fingernails snapping. The Outside. Her long nights alone, waiting—desperately—for a brief phone call from her boyfriend. Taking the flowers to Blackwater Landing, even though she didn’t really want to …

It was all too much for her.

“Wait,” Lydia said placidly.

He blinked. Stopped walking.

She smiled at him—the way she’d smile at a terminal patient—and, sending a good-bye prayer to her boyfriend, Lydia, hands still bound behind her, plunged headfirst into the narrow pit of dark water.

The crosshairs of the Hitech telescopic sight rested on the redheaded cop’s shoulders.

That was some hair, Mason Germain thought.

He and Nathan Groomer were on a rise overlooking the old Anderson Rock Products quarry. About a hundred yards away from the search party.

Nathan finally stated the conclusion he must’ve come to a half hour ago. “This don’t have anything to do with Rich Culbeau.”

“No, it doesn’t. Not exactly.”

“What’s that mean? ‘Not exactly’?”

“Culbeau’s out here someplace. With Sean O’Sarian—”

“That boy’s scarier than two Culbeaus.”

“No argument there,” Mason said. “And Harris Tomel too. But that’s not what we’re doing.”

Nathan looked back at the deputies and the redhead. “Guess not. Why’re you sighting down on Lucy Kerr with my gun?”

After a moment Mason handed back the Ruger M77 and said, “’Cause I didn’t bring my fucking binoculars. And it wasn’t Lucy I was looking at.”