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I lift my chin. "Royce died on my cell floor knowing exactly who killed him. I stuck him like a pig and watched him bleed out."

His hand tightens on the iron until it shakes. He lays it back in the coals, grabs a fistful of my shirt between my shoulder blades, and steers me toward the door.

I know these stairs by sound. I've lain on concrete at the bottom of them and listened to every man in this place come down.

Cool air meets me on the stairs, along with the low hum I heard all those weeks down here and always took for the hill itself. Sunday at dusk, Beckett told us a generator was running behind the tunnel's roll-up door. If he's right, the lights down here run off it.

I go down slowly with Dutch hanging on to my shirt. Near the bottom, the bad step gives under my sneaker and groans.

Torres swore at Knox's table that if I came down these stairs, she'd come in behind me. Her people should be moving. I don't know how long it takes them to get here from that ranch road.

The hall stretches ahead of me under bare bulbs, with barred doors along one side. Dutch walks me past my old cell, nearest the stairs. Its door hangs open, and the cell is empty.

The next cells hold three women. The first one is young, in a filthy sundress, with grass stains on both knees. I'd bet she's the girl from Hector's ditch.

The second sits against the back wall with her arms around her shins, and her black hair hangs over her face. The third stands at her bars with both hands wrapped around them, and her mouth is set tight.

I stop in front of the girl in the sundress. "What's your name?"

She stares at me.

"Your real name. Say it out loud."

"Kaylee," she whispers. "Kaylee Burke."

"Marisol Treviño," the woman against the wall says without lifting her head.

"Jenna Halvorsen," says the one gripping the bars. Her voice is steady.

"I'm Delilah Ruth King," I tell them. "Say your names every night. Don't let anybody make you forget them."

"Save the sermon," Dutch says. He shoves me between the shoulder blades, and I stumble past them.

Sandy made us do that in the Thornton barn so we'd remember who we were. If the wire is still carrying, Torres just heard all three names.

The cigar room sits at the far end of the hall, just short of the tunnel, with one door on the hall and a second that opens straight onto the tunnel. Light and voices spill out of the hall door. Dutch pushes me through it without slowing down.

Three men sit in the leather chairs around a low table with their faces bare. Four masked men used to sit in these chairs while Whitlock watched from the corner. Tonight one of the four chairs is empty.

The rubber masks lie in a pile on the table beside a bottle of bourbon and a leather account book. The book is open, and a fountain pen lies across the page. The men have their jackets off and their sleeves rolled up.

In the corner where the lamp doesn't reach, Coleman Whitlock sits in his chair with his legs crossed.

The man nearest the door lunges for his mask. The other two freeze with their glasses halfway to their mouths.

"Leave them," Whitlock says quietly. "She goes on tonight's truck, and that truck is backing into my tunnel right now. By morning she'll be across the river. Let her look."

Past the cigar room wall, a diesel engine grinds as the truck backs into the tunnel. The man who lunged for his mask drops his hand and settles back into his chair. Whitlock's word is good enough for him.

I look at them. Down here, I never let myself think about home long enough to wonder if these men sat in Daddy's pews. Now the lamplight is full on their faces, and I can name all three.

The man closest to the bottle is Curtis Lindner. He has sat on my father's church board since I was in grade school. He passes the offering plate down the fourth pew every Sunday, and he laughed at Daddy's jokes in the fellowship hall over coffee.

The man who lunged for his mask is Wendell Ochs. He runs loans at the bank on Main, and he opened my first savings account.

The third man sets his glass down and folds his hands. He has silver at his temples and a politician's careful smile. His face has been on yard signs all over this county since before I could vote. He's County Commissioner Harold Fenske.

"Kneel," Ochs says.