Page 102

His voice is the same smoker's rasp I heard every transfer night. With nothing over his mouth, there's no mistaking it.

Every transfer night, my knees folded at that word while I hated him for it. Tonight they stay locked. I told Dutch at the door, and I meant every word.

"No." I stay on my feet.

When Dutch steps toward me, Whitlock lifts one finger, and Dutch stops.

"Evening, Mr. Ochs," I say, clear enough to carry. "You were the one with the riding crop. You hit me with it every time I looked up. You said 'ain't' like you were proud of it, and now I can put a face to that voice."

His face goes red.

"Mr. Lindner." I turn to him. "You clear your throat before you laugh. You did it at potlucks after Daddy's sermons. You did it here, while I was on my knees on that floor."

Lindner's glass rattles against his teeth when he tries to drink.

"Commissioner Fenske. You pick your words like you're standing at a podium. You talked to me that way in here, too."

My voice cracks. "Three of you, in Coleman Whitlock's cellar under his barrel room, on a transfer night, with three women in cages down that hall."

Nobody in the room says a word. Past the wall, the truck's engine settles into an idle.

These men raped me here and made me hold still for it. They wore those masks so I'd never know who did it. I'm saying their names where they hid behind those masks. If the wire is carrying, Torres's receiver is taping every word that makes it out of this rock. Whatever they do to me next, their names will be on that tape, and they can't make me forget their faces.

Whitlock uncrosses his legs and leans forward into the lamplight.

"Did Knox Hollister ever tell you where your daddy's paper came from?" he asks.

"He told me," I say. "I asked him if he sold it to you, and he said yes. You've got nothing left to sell me about him."

Whitlock doesn't answer me. "She's reciting names and places like she's reading them into a record," he says, in the same bored voice. "Dutch. Who is she talking to?"

Dutch steps around in front of me, and his hand comes down flat on my chest. He finds the lump under my breastbone and rips Knox's flannel open. Buttons bounce across the stones. He tears the tape off my skin, and the wire comes away in his fist.

He follows the cord around my ribs to the battery at the small of my back and yanks it free.

He throws the whole thing on the floor and stomps on it until the plastic cracks apart. Whether Torres heard any of that or not, nobody is hearing anything now.

"Federal," Dutch says to Whitlock. "Has to be."

"You were supposed to search her out front," Whitlock says.

"Highway could see the shed."

"And now somebody with a badge may have heard every word she said."

Dutch's jaw works, and he doesn't answer. He steps into the doorway that opens on the tunnel, holds his phone up toward the outside air, and flips it open. He reads the screen and swears under his breath.

"Kid at the shed says there's headlights on the ranch road," he says. "More than one set, heading for the service gate."

Whitlock stands for the first time since I walked in.

"Masks on, gentlemen," he says. "Go up through the barrel room and out the front. Now." He looks at Dutch. "That truck rolls before those headlights reach the gate. Load them all."

The three men pull their masks on as they go. Ochs's mask sits crooked. Their town shoes click away up the hall toward the stairs.

Whitlock picks up the leather account book, tucks it under his arm, and follows them out.

Dutch snaps his phone shut. He steps behind me, takes a zip tie from his back pocket, and wrenches my left wrist behind me, then my right. The plastic goes around both, and he ratchets it tight.