Darby didn’t have a flashlight – couldn’t find one on the shelves stocked with food. But she found the phone Lucius had given her to watch the news coverage.
Up the ladder again, the nine tucked in the back waistband of her jeans, the phone in her pocket. When she entered the hidden chamber, she grabbed both items, using the phone to light her way through the dark.
She went down on her knees and put her ear to the chamber door, straining to hear over the blood pounding in her head. Satisfied that no one was standing on the other side, she gently pushed against the small door, her body shuddering with gratitude when she discovered it was unlocked. She climbed out, into the house’s hidden heart.
Darby reached the spiral staircase and checked the phone for a signal.
No bars.
She wasn’t wearing her boots, only socks, so she didn’t have to worry about her footfalls announcing her presence, in case someone was inside the bedroom, waiting.
What had Mike the Driver told her about the sheriff?
He’s in the house.
But was he alone?
Up the stairs, taking one at a time and pausing to listen.
She was coming up to the landing when she checked the phone for a signal. Still nothing. She decided to put the phone away, not wanting the light from the screen to wink underneath the bookcase, in case the sheriff and whoever might be with him saw it.
A razor-thin beam of light burned against the bottom of the bookcase.
If he, or anyone else, is inside the bedroom, a voice said, they won’t be expecting you.
How many people could be waiting inside the bedroom? Two? Four?
How many people in town knew about this place?
She had five shots left.
Make them count.
Darby found the latch and pulled, click.
She pushed open the bookcase to bright sunlight.
And there, lying on the bed, was Sheriff Powers, reading a big paperback book that rested on his stomach: Chicken Soup for the Soul. He was the only one there.
His eyes widened, then turned hard.
Scared.
Right then Darby knew he was here alone. She moved to the foot of the bed, the nine trained on him. The bedroom door was open all the way and she didn’t see anyone standing in the hallway, and she didn’t hear anyone moving around downstairs. If someone else was here, the smart gamble might have been for Powers to yell. She would have taken him as a hostage, and when his men ran upstairs she would have seen she was outnumbered and outgunned …
But none of that happened. He held the book, studying her, his gaze turning inward as he tried to figure a way out of this.
‘The remains downstairs,’ Darby said. ‘Who are they?’
‘Don’t know their names.’
‘Where are they from?’
‘Before my time.’
Darby could see the beads of sweat along his hairline.
‘I know what you’re going to do,’ he said. ‘Mind if I say a prayer first?’
Darby didn’t answer.
Powers closed his eyes. He sounded relieved, as if a great weight had been lifted off his shoulders, when he spoke. ‘Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in –’
Darby shot him in the thigh, the round tearing through his femoral artery.
After the screaming stopped, and after he staggered out of the bedroom and collapsed on the landing near the stairs, his body growing still and his lips moving soundlessly in prayer, she removed his sidearm, holding it with a tissue, and placed it on the bed. She would tell them he had pulled the gun on her before she fired. With no witnesses, it would be easy to sell the idea she had killed him in self-defence.
She took out the phone. All the signal bars were full. She dialled the operator and asked to be connected to Montana’s US Marshals’ office.