Tourmaline screamed. She bounded off the porch, still screaming. Panicking. She hadn’t needed to go farther to know what that weight was. What that sick, soft heaviness was. She shivered a scream again, needing out of the woods, out of this moment.

Virginia was at the door.

And only when Tourmaline realized that Virginia had run inside did she manage to stop screaming, gulp great drafts of air, and run after her.

“V, get out of there,” Tourmaline whimpered, sticking her head in and breathing through her mouth. She hadn’t noticed a smell, but she wasn’t going to take any chances.

“Did you see him?” Virginia said quietly. “Come in. We’ll go in a second.”

Tourmaline hadn’t. She didn’t want to. But she knew she should—to know for certain instead of feeling in her gut. She slipped through the narrow opening the body allowed, and looked down, already dizzy from shallow mouth-breathing.

It took her a while.

Seconds of staring. Trying. Blinking. To organize what she was looking at. To realize.

Half his face was gone. The bullet had gone in small, but exploded a massive hole on exit. Tourmaline’s stomach turned endlessly, loose and sick at the sight of gray matter and blackened, drying blood and white bone. Only one eye was left, staring unseeing at the dark rafters of the cabin and the circling flies. Instantly she remembered that eye glittering with rage under a streetlight in Roanoke. That eye fixed on her with silent fury under the bathroom lights at putt-putt. That eye as he came for her with intent in the hazy river sunset. She sobbed and squeezed her eyes shut, relieved it was done and relieved she’d not had to watch this happen under her hands: to do this to a person. Her mouth and nose filled with the smell of burned cat inside a burned carpet, a smell that was so familiar—and also something else, that tasted like metallic despair. Turning, she went back out to the porch.

The ridgeline fell the same way as it had before, and the trees remained on guard, and in that golden dazzling underbrush hiding the cabin so well, Tourmaline sat on the steps and cried.

After a minute, Virginia’s hand slid up and down her back, soothing her as her shoulder shook. “He was cutting Hazard’s dope in there. The heroin. I left the gun, like we planned. Just in case.”

Tourmaline nodded. “I want to go home,” she said, wiping the tears off her cheeks and trying not to smell—to taste—the inside of the cabin.

“Do you think?”

Tourmaline froze. She hadn’t thought. Hadn’t. Until that very second with the question hanging in Virginia’s voice. Did she think one of the Wardens did this? Who else would have? It had just happened—Wayne hadn’t begun to bloat, or decay. Her heart pounded and she blinked unseeing at the ground. “I was with Cash.”

“I was with Jason.” Virginia turned. “And terribly unrelated, inappropriate side note—I want to hear about all that later.”

Tourmaline glared at her. How could she even care right now?

Virginia met her gaze, eyes clear. “I could have done it. I could do it now. We should have planned for me to do it all along.”

A chill ran up Tourmaline’s arms.

“He died like my old man.”

“Ray,” Tourmaline breathed.

Virginia nodded. “It’s a mercy. To all he touched. To his own soul. And I see what they carry for those lives they take. Someone has to pay a price, and they do.” She spoke almost reverently. With a firmness that took Tourmaline by surprise. Always, Virginia surprised her.

The truth slithered deep down in her bones. She’d been holding the space left vacant by her mother, waiting. And now she could give it up. “Could it have been someone else?” she pleaded to Virginia.

“You tell me.” Virginia glanced back inside and then leaned on her knees. “Do you really think it could be someone else? Where was your dad last night?” She asked the questions gently, prodding Tourmaline toward a truth she already knew.

Won’t be home as long as you’ll be okay by yourself. Dad’s text. She hadn’t thought. She’d seen it and thought only of the open night, calling her name. And now.

Tourmaline dropped her chin to her chest.

Her worst fears had come true.