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“You made sure I knew where to go.”

Her fingers tightened in my thermal.

I held her until she eased back on her own.

O’Shea waited several feet away instead of interrupting. When Sybil finally turned toward him, she kept one hand wrapped around my forearm.

“He admitted killing Justin.”

The sheriff’s attention sharpened immediately, but he let her continue.

“Grant said Justin caught him sabotaging the attraction Thursday night. He admitted he killed him after Justin found him. Then he told me he used my final room to set me up.” Her voice roughened slightly before she steadied it. “He said he smeared Justin’s blood on my prop knife and left it beside him so you’d look at me.”

The hand around my forearm tightened.

I hadn’t heard any of that.

Behind O’Shea, the deputy photographing the mallet changed position and took another shot beneath the light. I looked at the steel head and then back at Sybil without assigning it a history she hadn’t given me.

O’Shea pulled a small notebook from his coat. “I’m going to need the words as closely as you can remember them when we take your full statement. Right now, tell me one thing. Did Bellamy say what he used to kill Justin?”

“No. He had that mallet when he came after me tonight, but he never said it was what he used on Justin.” Sybil glanced toward the weapon. “I’m not guessing about that part.”

“Good. We won’t either.”

The paramedics reached us before O’Shea asked anything else. Sybil released my arm reluctantly enough that I stayed beside her while one of them cleaned her palm and checked the movement in her fingers. The other had her sit on a low equipment crate so he could look at her knee.

She winced when he pressed beside the kneecap.

“I’m going to vote against doing that again.”

The medic gave her an apologetic smile. “I’d vote with you. Can you straighten it for me?”

She did, then bent it again while he watched. He found bruising and a shallow abrasion beneath the torn denim but no obvious sign of a serious injury. He warned her about swelling and told her what would justify getting it checked again.

When he asked if she had hit her head, Sybil glanced at me.

“I don’t think so. I hit walls, screens, one barrier, possibly a doorframe, and my dignity when I nearly went down at the exit.”

“You can lose the dignity,” I said. “The rest I’d like accounted for.”

The medic looked between us and almost smiled.

Sybil did. It was tired and brief, but I had been waiting to see it.

One of the medics checked my ribs next. Nothing felt broken, but the spot where the mallet handle had caught me was already tender, and he warned me I would be sore by morning.

By then, Hollowfield had begun waking around the aftermath. The remaining staff had been kept on the public side while deputies worked their way through the backstage route. Radios carried clipped instructions from the farm office. Somebody switched on one of the portable floodlights near the service lane, and harsh white illumination reached across the corn, exposing the backs of scenery and the muddy tire tracks left by work carts earlier in the day.

Rick arrived wearing a heavy coat over the clothes he had worked in all evening. He came fast until a deputy stopped him at the edge of the secured strip. When O’Shea waved him through, Rick looked first at Sybil’s bandaged hand and muddy clothes.

“Tell me you’re all right enough that I don’t need to call Laurie before you do.”

“Please don’t call Laurie before I do.”

“That isn’t the reassurance I asked for.”

“I’ve been checked. I’m sore, and I’m going home when the sheriff is finished with me.”