Mason gave a sour laugh. “Mary Beth? You think she’s alive? No way. Garrett raped and killed her, and buried her in a shallow grave someplace. We can stop worrying about her. It’s our job now to make sure that don’t happen to anybody else. You with me?”

Nathan didn’t say anything but the snapping sound of the deputy pressing the long copper-jacketed shells into his rifle’s magazine was answer enough.

II
The White Doc

… chapter thirteen

Outside the window was a large hornets’ nest.

Resting her head against the greasy glass of her prison, an exhausted Mary Beth McConnell stared at it.

More than anything else about this terrible place, the nest—gray and moist and disgusting—gave her a sense of hopelessness.

More than the bars that Garrett had so carefully bolted outside of the windows. More than the thick oak door, secured with three huge locks. More than the memory of the terrible trek from Blackwater Landing in the company of the Insect Boy.

The wasps’ nest was in the shape of a cone, the point facing toward the earth. It rested on a forked branch that Garrett had propped up near the window. The nest must’ve been home to hundreds of the glossy black-and-yellow insects that oozed in and out of the hole in the bottom.

Garrett had been gone when she’d wakened this morning and after lying in bed for an hour—groggy and nauseated from the vicious blow to her head last night—Mary Beth had climbed unsteadily to her feet and looked out the window. The first thing that she’d noticed was the nest outside the back window, near the bedroom.

The wasps hadn’t made the nest here; Garrett had placed it outside the window himself. At first, she couldn’t figure out why. But then, with a feeling of despair, she understood: her captor had left it as a flag of victory.

Mary Beth McConnell knew her history. She knew about warfare, knew about armies conquering other armies. The reason for flags and standards wasn’t only to identify your side; it was to remind the vanquished who now controlled them.

And Garrett had won.

Well, he’d won the battle; the outcome of the war had yet to be decided.

Mary Beth pressed the gash on her head. It had been a terrible blow to her temple, and had peeled away some skin. She wondered if it would become infected.