Ethan said, “It’s going to be hard enough to protect the people who stayed.”

“So they’re just on their own?”

“We’re all on our own now.”

He went around to the front passenger seat of the Bronco, reached in, and grabbed the bullhorn. Handing it to Kate, he asked, “You got this?”

She nodded.

Ethan looked at Theresa. “I want you and Ben to stay with Kate.”

“Okay.”

Ben said, “I’m coming with you, Dad.”

“I need you with Mom.”

“But I can help you.”

“This is how you help me.” Ethan turned to Kate. “I’ll catch up after the sheriff’s office.”

“Come to the little park at the north end of town.”

“With the gazebo?”

“That’s the one.”

Brad Fisher, Wayward Pines’s only lawyer, sat awkwardly in the destroyed front passenger seat of Ethan’s Bronco, clutching the handle on the door as Ethan hit sixty on First Avenue.

Ethan glanced over. “Where’s your wife?”

Brad said, “We were in the theater. You were talking, telling us everything. Then I looked over and Megan was just gone.”

Ethan said, “Considering what she was teaching the children behind their parents’ backs, she probably figured people would see her as a traitor. Feared for her life. How do you feel about her now?”

This seemed to catch Brad off guard. Normally, he was spit-shined and clean-shaven, the model of a competent young lawyer. Now, he scratched at the sandpaper on his chin.

“I don’t know. I never really felt like I knew her or that she knew me. We lived together because we were told to. We slept in the same bed. Sometimes we slept together.”

“Sounds like a lot of real marriages. Did you love her?”

Brad sighed. “It’s complicated. You did the right thing, by the way. Telling us.”

“If I’d known he’d kill the power to the fence—”

“Don’t go there, Ethan. You can’t play that game. You did what you believed was right. You saved Kate and Harold. Showed us all what our lives are really worth.”

“I wonder,” Ethan said, “how long that sentiment is going to last once people start dying.”

The high beams fired across the dark sheriff’s station. Ethan steered over the curb and took the Bronco right up the sidewalk. He brought it to a stop a few feet from the entrance and climbed out, clicking on a flashlight as he and Brad reached the double doors. Ethan unlocked them, propped one open.

“What are we grabbing?” Brad asked as they ran through the lobby and turned down the corridor to Ethan’s office.

“Anything that shoots.”

Brad manned the flashlight as Ethan pulled guns out of the cabinet and matched up the ammunition.

He set a Mossberg 930 on the desk and pushed in eight slugs.

Fed thirty rounds into the magazine of a Bushmaster AR-15.

Topped off the mag for his Desert Eagle.