“Okay, listen up,” Quinn said. “Most of you know Tyler, right?”

  There were a few nods.

  “Right?” she asked, louder.

  The nods grew more emphatic. And she realized she was still holding the gun in one hand. She wasn’t pointing it at anyone, but it couldn’t have been comforting.

  “Well, that means Tyler can vouch for what I’m about to say.”

  She pointed back to Officer Cody, who was watching this, dirt and dead grass stuck to his forehead. “That cop’s partner killed Sheriff Lee—while he filmed it.”

  The man looked like he could have been crying, but this far away, with only the floodlights at the top of the barn to see by, it was hard to tell.

  “And his partner was willing to kill me to trick people into believing their story.”

  Quinn looked up to Tyler.

  He nodded.

  She kept looking at him, pleading. He needed to sell it. If she was going to get help, he needed to sell it.

  “Yeah,” he said. It took obvious effort for him to project his voice. “It’s true. That other cop was going to shoot her and leave her in the field.”

  “And I’m only alive because Tyler saw what was about to happen and saved me,” Quinn said.

  The teenagers in the field were listening—there was still the glow of screens, but most phones were down at their waists, or shining through the inside of their jacket pockets.

  “Show of hands,” Quinn said. “Who here has a car?”

  A smattering of hands, fewer than she would have liked, went up.

  “Tyler needs an emergency room. Someone’s going to have to volunteer to get him to a hospital. Fast.”

  “I’ll do it.” Another tallish boy in a clown costume, his with zigzag stripes instead of Tyler’s polka dots, stepped forward. “He’s my friend.”

  “That’s good,” Quinn said. “Thank you. And then I’m going to need—”

  Quinn tried to think. What was next? She’d had the thread of a plan, and then all the steps so far—taking care of Cody, getting the kids to listen, etc.—had gone so well that now she didn’t know what to do with herself.

  Then she remembered.

  “Before I was knocked out . . .”

  Tyler started to apologize, but she ignored him, addressing the small crowd.

  “. . . I saw some videos. Of people around the town. People marching on Main Street. Does anyone know if that’s still happening?”

  She looked around, gaze lingering on the kids with phones visible. Most seemed reluctant to speak.

  “Not rhetorical.”

  “They’re still there. . . .” It was the zombie bride speaking up. The kid next to her held up his phone. “Nobody’s stopping them.”

  Quinn looked back at Officer Cody.

  The Kettle Springs Sheriff’s Department was not a big office. And if two of their deputies were ready to lead a mutiny, then Quinn didn’t have much hope for whoever was left.

  “You, with the car,” she said, then lifted up her shoulder to try to get Tyler on his own two feet. “Take him, get going.”

  “The rest of you. I know it sounds insane. A lot of things today have been insane. And I’m fucking sick of it,” Quinn said. She thought of her father, in a hospital bed, so far from home. And then she thought of their home, how it wasn’t Philly anymore, and how there were people out there that wanted them dead, that didn’t believe even the basic facts of what had nearly killed her a year ago. “But I need help. They’re in town. Right now. Our town. Fucking it up. Terrorizing our neighbors. And sure, some of them, like these dipshits”—she motioned back to Officer Cody—“are locals. But I bet most of them aren’t.”

  “They’re not!” someone from closer to the silo yelled, holding up a phone screen that Quinn couldn’t see at this distance.

  “And they’re here because my friends and I stopped them last year. The people that killed your classmates. The kids you knew. Your brothers and sisters . . .” Quinn felt her voice starting to break. “I’m worried for my friends, and I need help. So, please,” she said, ready for this to be over: “Can you help me? Can we ride into town and maybe put an end to all the bullshit, all the lies, all the times where no one listened to us? Because we lived it. We nearly died. Can we say for once, you know, enough? That it’s fucking enough already.”

  There were a few cheers and some guy yelled, “Hell yeah!” but most of the gathered costumed employees said nothing. Some looked down at their shoes or phones.

  “Good enough,” Quinn said, ready to take any help she could get.

  “Wait,” one of the girls on her phone said. “I’m sorry, but . . .”

  Quinn crossed to the girl. The air in the middle of the clearing felt crisp, a chill fall breeze.

  The girl tipped the phone to Quinn.

  It was a video.

  No. Not just a video but a live video—there were reacts and comments streaming by that Quinn didn’t even attempt to read.

  “Look what we’ve got, y’all.” The man in the video had a canvas Frendo mask pulled up over his mouth, squeezing the sides of his balding head like a sweatband. He was riding in a pickup truck bed, stars and corn streaming by behind him as the truck trundled down a dirt road. Then he turned the camera, Quinn catching a glimpse of the lights of downtown Kettle Springs in the distance before he pivoted enough to show the other side of the truck bed.

  Leaning against each other, their heads banging against the glass of the truck cab as they rode on bumpy terrain, were Cole and Rust. The boys each looked various levels of broken and defeated. Rust scowled up at the cameraman; Cole didn’t, just staring straight forward. His arms were crossed in front of him, and it was hard to tell on the small screen, but they somehow seemed wrong.

  Out the open windows of the truck’s cab, a song was playing, the cameraman pointing at the boys, getting ready to sing along with the lyrics: “Oh here comes, here’s the chorus.”

  The song was “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad.”

  Quinn looked up from the phone, then around her at the employees of Duvall Farms. These were young faces, frightened faces. And more than half of them were already wearing clown costumes.

  “Everyone put your phones down. Nobody film this,” Quinn said, fearing that if even one electric eye was on her—if she were somehow, unbeknownst to her, being broadcasted live right now—then the new plan she’d just come up with would be ruined.

  She turned in a circle and couldn’t see a single phone angled her way.

  “Okay,” she said, then pointed at a kid dressed as a clown. “How many masks like that do you have?”

  Twenty-Seven

  Glenn Maybrook floated in a haze of painkillers and love.

  The hospital’s fluorescent lights hurt his eyes, so he kept them closed.

  But he felt himself getting better. Cells rejoining, cartilage and tissues knitting back together. All because he knew the important women in his life were just there, just beyond that curtain of semiconsciousness. He knew they were there, and he knew that they loved him. That he was safe. That the worst was over.

  He wanted to see them.

  Rest was important, but in his dream Quinn and Izzy had been standing over him, watching him. Marta Lee too. Even though he was sure that, by now, she’d left to go do some police work.

  Sam too—since it had been a dream, that was possible. She could still be alive. They could still be married. Beams of amber light emanating from all of them, a healing golden halo around his sliced neck.

  He had to open his eyes.

  He was so thirsty. He wondered how long it’d be until he could eat. The doctor might have said, but he couldn’t remember.

  He peeled his eyelids open, a gentle gluey pull joining his lashes as he did.

  The room around his bed was empty.

  There were no golden beams of love. No daughter, no girlfriend, no partner, and—not that he was really expecting her—no dead wife. There was flickering white light from the hall window, and the rest of the room had a murky blue tint from the TV, an episode of Property Brothers, the volume way down.

  “Shit,” he said. Whether it was due to the pain that came with alertness or the pain that came with disappointment, the wounds under his dressings began to throb.

  Without turning his body, he turned his head and eyes and looked around him for his phone.

  It was on the tray attached to his bed, currently swung into the away position so he could sleep without shifting and bumping into it.

  Too far. And too much of a hassle to reach his good arm over to pull the tray in. He could check his phone later.

  For all he knew, Izzy was in the hallway or at the vending machines and would be back in a minute.

  He would rest now. He’d hear her come in and wake again.

  Yeah.

  He reached his good hand down in order to readjust the thin, scratchy hospital blanket and . . .

  His fingers hit something?

  He grabbed onto the item, something heavy and wrapped in paper. He lifted it, not to his face where he’d be able to see it, but just a few inches off the mattress, to test its weight.

  It was small but heavy.

  While he slept, had someone left Glenn Maybrook a gift?

  The idea put him in better spirits than waking up to a cramped, empty hospital room had.

  He used the pinkie of his bandaged hand to work the remote and get his bed adjusted to a sitting position. Then he lifted the small, heavy paper-wrapped cylinder to where he could see it.

  Oh.

  It wasn’t wrapping paper. Just a single sheet of plain white printer paper, curled into a scroll around something black and heavy, a rubber band to fix the paper in place.

  He swallowed, the sensation like dull razors against his throat, then began to unwrap the note.

  Getting the rubber band free with one hand was harder than it should have been. He snapped himself a blood blister, then, trying to uncurl the note, got a paper cut, lengthwise along the knuckle of his middle finger.

  With the paper free, he could see what he’d been left, what it’d been wrapped around.

  It was Quinn’s combat baton.

  “Thanks . . . ,” he said to no one.

  He held the note up but couldn’t read it. After an annoying, painful few moments of effort, he had his glasses on.

  The note wasn’t from Quinn.

  He knew his daughter’s handwriting. And this wasn’t it.

  He skipped ahead, read to the bottom of the page.

  Your Izzy

  Funny how he could know someone so intimately, in all senses, or at least feel like he knew them, and still not recognize their handwriting.

  Too much texting. He’d have to change that, when he was out of here. Get to know all of her.

  He started at the top, angling the page toward the TV for a little more light.

  Glenn,

  We haven’t said the L word, the love word yet, but I’m sure we’ve both felt it.

  What I’m not sure of is how that love makes you feel. Since I’m not Sam. But it saddens me that I’ll probably never find out.

  I think it could have been great.

  I know how that love made me feel. It made me feel undeserving, but that was only when you weren’t in the room with me to sweep that feeling away.

  I’m leaving you this note wrapped around this baton. Your daughter gave it to me, but it’s because she doesn’t know me. Like you, she doesn’t know about the weapon I keep in the projection booth closet. I can no longer keep it at home because I’m afraid that one day you’d find it and ask me questions I never want to answer.

  The world is sick. Sicker every day. There’s not an hour that passes that I’m not tired and ashamed for the part I played in that sickness.

  I hope that you do not have to use this baton, but if you do: aim true.

  If I don’t see you again, or if you see me differently when you do, know that today I’m making a choice to try and undo some of the harm I’ve done.

  Love,

  Your Izzy

  By the end of the letter Glenn Maybrook was crying, even if he didn’t fully understand why. More than a breakup letter, it felt like a confession, and there were a few things that jumped to mind, what a lifelong resident of Kettle Springs could be confessing to—

  A shadow fell over the room.

  Someone blocking the light from the hallway, obscuring the small safety-glass window.

  Glenn dropped the letter and picked up the baton.

  Aim true.

  But before he could figure out how to extend the tip of the weapon to its full, dangerous length, the person at the window was turning the doorknob, pushing their head inside the room.

  “Oh, you’re awake,” a female voice said, turning on the overhead lights in Glenn’s room.

  Glenn’s eyes stung, but only for a moment. It was a relief to see the nurse. Kindness in her eyes and pastel cartoon cats and dogs on her scrub top and matching scrub bottoms.

  He put down the weapon, embarrassed that she might understand how he’d been scared, how he’d been ready to clobber an intruder.

  “Mayor Maybrook?” the nurse said. “The commissary is closing for the night. Would you like some Jell-O?”

  “My . . .” Glenn swallowed. It was so hard to speak. “Can you hand me my phone?” He needed to talk to Quinn. Needed to let her know about this and know she was safe. If he could keep his eyes open, maybe he’d call Marta, too. He needed to hear if anything else was going on in his little insane town.

  The nurse guided the phone into his uninjured hand. Like the baton, the device felt heavy.

  “And the Jell-O?” she asked.

  Yeah, Glenn Maybrook was tired, stressed, and heartbroken, but he’d take some Jell-O.

  Twenty-Eight

  There were shards of wood in the bottoms of Arthur Hill’s feet, his scabby legs studded with shotgun pellets, but the pressing, life-threatening issue had been the fire.

  So he’d jumped.

  From his bedroom window he’d jumped, hoping to spin into a roll at the last moment, not only to break his fall, but to extinguish some of the small flames that had caught on the cuffs of his costume, begun to melt the material.

  The jump hadn’t ended well. The world literally reached up to slap him in the face. The cool lawn hard and unforgiving.

  Everything went black.

  “We got a brother down back here,” was the first thing he heard when he woke from his daze, body smoldering.

  Someone else came over, heavy footsteps on brittle dead grass.

  Don’t take my mask off.

  “Get him in the truck and . . .”

  Please. I need it. Don’t take it off.

  “Yeah. Maybe I’ll put down a towel first.”

  I’m not ready to take it off yet.

  “Exactly what I was thinking. Phew. Maybe crack a window, too.”

  Hands were lifting him up. But nobody tried to remove his mask.

  Thank you.

  He chanced a glimpse out of the side of one swollen eye. These men. They wore masks, too.

  “You’re going to be okay, pal. We don’t leave a man behind. . . .”

  Arthur Hill would not die.

  Could not die.

  But he did need to rest as they drove into town.

  He’d rest and then he’d tell these men who he was, remove his mask and reveal himself.

  Arthur Hill was not their brother. Or their pal.

  They were his retinue. He was their leader. And they would learn some respect. And foist upon him the admiration that, after a trip around the world and months in hiding, he was due.

  Jerri sat, listened, and wondered whether or not she was going to be killed when the truck got where it was going.

  It was hard to tell if they considered her one of their prisoners. Neither man riding back here had pointed a gun at her; they’d simply set her in the corner of the truck bed and paid all their attention to Rust and Cole.

  But she wasn’t completely off the hook like Hunter seemed to be. Hunter, she assumed, had been granted VIP status because of his mom. The two of them had been ushered into an SUV that now followed directly behind the truck. From where Jerri sat in the truck bed, she could see the clown driving and Red Nose Trixie in the passenger’s seat. Jerri thought there was at least one more truck behind that, their convoy three vehicles deep.

  “We’re so fucked,” Cole said. He kept weaving in and out of consciousness, his head lolled against Rust’s shoulder. Jerri couldn’t imagine the pain Cole must be feeling. The bones in his arms weren’t set, and with every bump and jostle, the jagged ends of his fractures would be grinding against each other.

  Rust wasn’t saying anything, just glaring at the clown standing over them in the truck bed, the man’s legs bent to stabilize himself. The clown didn’t care that Rust was glowering at him. The guy was too busy snapping selfies and singing along with the radio. The men in the truck’s cab were having a good time, too. The radio on, they joined in on the karaoke.

  The other clown in the truck bed with them was more serious. He was one of the soldier clowns Jerri and Rust had seen marching through Main Street at the start of all this. And Rust’s dad had blown up one of those guys. So this guy probably wasn’t happy about that, if they all knew each other.

  “Get ready,” the clown with the long gun said, then pointed at the other clown’s phone. “Put that away.”

  Ready for what? Jerri wondered. If the plan was to kill Cole and Rust, she would have assumed they’d be driving out to the fields that ringed the Hill property, where it’d be quieter and easy to bury them.

  But instead they were driving toward civilization. And while the one clown had just been told to get serious and look alive, the truck’s radio switched to that “Celebration” song. . . . Jerri didn’t have it on any of her playlists and didn’t know the artist, but it was played at every wedding, barbeque, and older relative’s birthday party she’d ever been to.

  The driver turned up the volume as they approached Main Street.