“Right. Of course, you take their word for it. It’s just me you doubt.”

“In light of the ambush and your convenient absence? The fact that the girl needed help to get out and then succeeded?” Born said. “What would you do in our place? Wouldn’t you wonder?”

“I tried to stop her,” Chris said. “Did the guards tell you that?”

“It doesn’t matter, Chris. Can’t you see it? They’ve already made up their minds,” Lena said. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears as she rounded on Yeager. “You think he’s guilty, and even if Alex did come back, you’d make sure she never set foot in Rule or saw Chris again.”

“Because she broke the rules!” Yeager’s face was the color of a plum. “She defied us, and she had help, and I will know who!”

“And I said I don’t know!” Chris jerked free. His wrists burned as if scorched. “You need us and you get to be the boss of how we feel, who we decide to care about? We go out, we take all the risks! We die out there while you sit here in your robes and judge us, and it’s still not enough. You want everything. You want what I think and what I fee—”

“Quiet!” His grandfather’s hand blurred. The slap was so hard and so fast the sound was like brittle ice cracking in two. Chris’s head snapped to one side, his breath snatched from his lungs in a surprised, pained hiss. “Don’t presume to lecture me! Your allegiance is to me and to Rule, and we will have no Judases in our midst!” His grandfather slapped him again, much harder. “I will break you, boy, I will break you!”

“Yeager,” Kincaid said, appalled. He made a move, but a guard grabbed his arms. “Rev, please, listen to what you’re saying!”

“You need me,” Chris croaked. His ears rang. The coppery taste of his blood made him want to vomit. “You need my voice, but only to prove you’re still in charge. You already know enough, or else you wouldn’t have brought all these guards. I can’t win this, and you know it. If I tell you, you lock me up. If I don’t say anything, you lock me up.” He surprised himself with a bloody, bubbly little laugh. “You want me to choose, but there’s only one right answer for you.”

“I want to hear it.” His grandfather’s lips were so thin they were no more than a fissure in stone. “From your mouth.”

“To God’s ear?” Chris laughed again. He dragged his hand across his lips, inking his skin red. His grandfather was Rule, and Chris would bend, or the old man would keep at him until he did. Not going to happen. “You’re not God. There is no god, and if there is, he’s one sick bastard to put you old farts in charge.”

I’ve gone nuts, he marveled. He saw his grandfather’s hand draw back again. I could deck this old guy, but then I’d be just like him, and like Dad. I know how I feel about Alex. No one can take that away.

Lena slid between them. “Stop! You don’t need his voice. You can have mine.”

“I don’t want yours, girl,” Yeager said.

“Too bad,” Lena said.

“Lena, it’s okay.” Chris put his hands on her shoulders. “I’ve had a lot of experience with bullies.”

“Me, too,” she said. To Yeager: “You want to know who helped Alex, I’ll tell you.”

She leveled a finger at Nathan. “Him.”

16

Nathan actually flinched. “What? That’s nuts.”

“No, it’s not.” Lena stared down at Yeager. Oh, it was all she could do to keep from scratching the old creep’s eyes out. If she had a knife, she’d do him the way she’d done Crusher Karl a year before this nightmare began and not be sorry, not one bit. The world had come crashing down, and still all she’d managed was to swap one abusive ass**le for another. “It was Nathan, and probably Jess, too. They were always hanging around together. The night before Alex left, Tori said Nathan and Jess were talking, and then it was Nathan who brought Jess back, but oh, look, now she’s in a coma. You don’t think that’s just a little too convenient?”

“Convenient?” Kincaid echoed. She heard the surprise in the doctor’s voice. “Wait just a minute. What the hell are you implying?”

“And I’ll bet Kincaid’s in on it, too.” Lena didn’t look around.

“He and Jess are really tight, too.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Kincaid said.

“Lena, be quiet.” Chris’s hands tightened on her shoulders.

“This isn’t helping.”

Yeah, but it can’t hurt. I don’t think things can get much worse. “Chris had nothing to do with it.” She kept her eyes on Yeager, who stared as if she’d suddenly sprouted a second head. “I’m telling you it was Nathan, and I can prove it.”

“She’s just—” Nathan began, but the old reverend lifted a hand, and the guard fell silent.

“What are you saying, girl?” Yeager asked.

It’s Lena, ass**le. “The shotgun, the one they said Alex took? I saw it. It was hooked onto Nathan’s saddle with one of those leather tube things . . . a scabbard. It’s not back in Jess’s room, so—”

“What?” It was Hammerbach. “You, girl, you’ve been in Jess’s room, among her things?”

“I don’t give two shits about her stuff. But I’m telling you, Jess has a shotgun. The case is in her closet.” Dipping a hand into her pocket, she tweezed out the shotgun shell and handed it to Yeager. “There’s a box of these on the same shelf. This shell was on the floor. She probably dropped it when she was loading the shotgun, because there are three shells left in a box of ten.”

“I didn’t know Jess had a gun,” Tori said wonderingly. Sarah only shook her head.

“Me neither,” said Lena. “Only Nathan says Alex got hold of it. But how? Either she knew about it and forced Jess to give it to her, or Jess handed it over herself. Whatever. It’s not back in the closet, which means that Nathan still has it, and I’ll bet it’s got the same shells.”

Yeager stared at the black Remington cartridge and then craned up to look at Nathan. “Is this true? Do you have the shotgun?”

“Yes, I retrieved it after Alex tossed it. That’s my job.” “Yeah, but did you clean it, ass**le?” Lena shot back. There was a short silence, which Yeager broke. “Why is that important?”

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