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  Pierce was confident, however, that his bluff would not be called. Because Sheriff Carney had sent Dr. Ross, it would be obvious that Pierce had the sheriff’s official support, which meant implicit support from Bar Elohim. Small town like this, the physician would know about the bounty hunters that Pierce had hired and had probably heard one of them was the feared and legendary Mason Lee. Bounty hunters did not travel without that same official endorsement from Bar Elohim.

  Dr. Ross closed his eyes for a few seconds. Muscles quivered at the side of his jaws. He opened his eyes again and met Pierce’s steady gaze. It was a pleasant surprise for Pierce. He appreciated men with true strength. The physician was not afraid, Pierce could tell, but he wasn’t a fool either, so he didn’t vocalize his protest.

  Dr. Ross knelt beside the dying man and opened the satchel he’d brought into the suite for this house call.

  He pulled out a hypodermic needle and syringe filled with clear liquid, tapped it to rid it of air bubbles. With a cotton swab and disinfectant, the doctor prepared Jordan’s shoulder for an injection.

  Pierce had no interest in how the physician intended to bring the man back to consciousness, so he looked out the window again, noticing below and across the street the sheriff on a bench beside a huge man with a boyish, innocent face.

  Pierce gave the two of them little more thought. His mind was on wrapping up the assignment. Capturing the girl.

  They’d found the blouse that Jordan had been using to draw the hounds. Somewhere along the way, she must have made it down the face of the rock. The valley was narrow enough that Mason Lee and the dogs would pick up her scent eventually.

  Pierce hoped she would be found alive. She deserved that chance after all that had been done to her.

  Yet he knew this would not be possible. She might not have survived the climb down. Or, more likely, she would not survive Mason Lee, armed with his legendary shotgun and an equally legendary lack of discrimination in its use. If Mason found her, he had a dry-ice canister, with very specific harvesting instructions. Pierce would have preferred to handle it himself, but he needed to be here if the man on the bed became conscious again.

  All things considered, the assignment should be wrapped up in a day or two. If the fugitive talked, Pierce would learn more about where he sent the girl and why. It might be helpful. At the least, it could lead to more arrests, but that was simply to help the Appalachians. It was part of the agreement that Bar Elohim had brokered with Pierce’s employers to allow Pierce inside.

  Pierce didn’t really care about the politics. His concern was simply to fulfill his assignment, then return Outside. Back to where it was normal.

  Pierce moved away from the window, and his eyes were drawn back to the torn man on the bed. His blood had soaked through the bandages, and in the light of the room, it seemed as black as the blood in Pierce’s memories.

  FIVE

  Mason Lee roamed the valley, hunting the fugitive’s daughter.

  No one had ever escaped the bloodhounds before, at least not alive, and Mason Lee was confident the girl would not be the first.

  Wearing a buckskin vest, he walked among the trees on the creek bank with the efficiency of a cougar. The top of the grass had already been dried by the sun, but the ground was still wet, soaking his boots and the hem of his denim pants. Mason held his trademark shotgun in his trademark manner, crooked open over his right arm, a double-barrel 12-gauge loaded with shells of deer shot. At close range, the blast could tear through a tree trunk.

  Mason was with one of four teams with dogs moving along the creek at the bottom of the valley. Three other teams had dispersed nearby in a grid pattern to pick up her trail, if it existed. Mason had little doubt the girl was dead and the climbers would find her body. But if somehow she had survived the descent of the cliff, Mason would find her.

  In two decades of bounty hunting for the Appalachian government, he’d only failed three times—in each case the men had killed themselves before he could capture them. His reputation was such that once fugitives heard that Mason Lee had been hired to track them, as often as not they fled to the sanctuary of the nearest church to seek the protection of an Elder.

  This fugitive had avoided hiding among people, keeping to the woods and hills, but Mason still found and trapped the man the night before, after several days of pursuit with the hounds. Although the agent from Outside had made it clear that the fugitive was to be taken unharmed, dusk masked Mason’s discreet hand signal directing one of his handlers to release a few dogs. To Mason’s satisfaction, the savage attack had nearly killed the man. Nobody, let alone an Outsider, told Mason Lee how to hunt bounty. But there was more at stake for Mason than pride, or his pleasure in seeing and hearing pain. He knew his men were as vicious as the dogs they handled. And just like the dogs, at the slightest sign of personal weakness—such as letting an agent give him orders—they’d turn on him with the same savageness he wielded for his own purposes.

  Mason had not been concerned when he found the man without the girl. The climb down was difficult enough that Mason wouldn’t be surprised if she’d jumped, or even if the father had pushed her off as an act of mercy. Mason took pride in the well-known fact that female fugitives suffered worse at his hands.

  Either way, Mason didn’t expect the final chase to take long. They still had a piece of the girl’s clothing, and it was all that the bloodhounds needed to locate their prey.

  Even at its widest, here at the open end where it spilled into Cumberland Gap, the valley was narrow. Five miles upstream to the waterfall, the width was only hundreds of yards of deep chasm. Climbers were using ropes there to descend in a careful search for her body. In the meantime, in case she was alive, Mason and his teams would simply crisscross the valley and work upward to the waterfall to flush her out. The girl might slip between the teams as they traversed from side to side, but the hounds wouldn’t miss her trail as they crossed it.

  Mason rarely considered the reasons behind his assignments. Most of the time, they were straightforward. Fugitives from Bar Elohim, men or women who had transgressed against the Holy Word of God. Thieves, murderers, or worse, anarchists and blasphemers.

  This time, however, it was the ultimate hunt. Not because she would be more difficult to find but because of what he’d learned in the hotel room. The reward for her capture was higher than any other in his past. Ending the girl’s life meant freedom for him—especially now that he knew what the canister would be worth once he disappeared with it.

  Other men might be squeamish about how and what he was supposed to harvest from the body. Not Mason Lee. The canister was designed to preserve human tissue for weeks. Perfect. Much easier to steal and hide a canister than a girl. Much easier to travel with it than an unwilling captive.

  The pleasure of harvesting from the girl was an added benefit for Mason. There was something mystical and exciting about watching a life force dissipate. He knew this because he had gutted animals before they were dead.

  But never a human.

  SIX

  Theo Balder believed that luck had finally turned in his favor. He was hunched behind a log, feeling around in the water for crawfish, when a small man with a backpack knelt to drink about fifty yards upstream.

  Theo had become so hungry that he’d begun to wonder if he would die of starvation. Anything but surrender. The backpack, however, could give him life. It might have money inside. Or matches. Or a knife. Or, best of all, maybe food.

  In the factory, at night, older kids whispered stories about the people of the Clan who roamed the woods, looking for kids to kill, barbecue, and hang from trees as a warning to stay in the towns.

  That’s why, at first, when he’d heard someone approaching as he fished, Theo was terrified that his company might be someone from the Clan. He’d crouched behind a fallen log in ankle-deep water, and the man had not noticed him, so he followed when the man left the streambed.

  Fortune continued. Theo was farsighted, and
anything within thirty yards was blurry, so with the distance between them, he was able to see that the man was limping and could only walk with the aid of a stick.

  A small man. Crippled. There weren’t many other people that Theo could rob safely. Fate was treating him kindly after dealing him so many blows already.

  Theo wouldn’t attribute any of this to God. He knew better than to believe in superstition. He saw no logic in believing that if someone had created the entire universe, he would care about a fourteen-year-old scavenging runaway.

  Theo needed to be patient, however. With his bad vision, he had no chance of picking his way through leaves and branches to approach quietly enough to have any hope of stealing the man’s backpack. He’d have to wait until the man stopped and then decide upon the best plan of attack.

  He felt around in the water for a large smooth stone. Big enough to knock the man out.

  Theo listened carefully for the man’s progress along the path, then began to follow.

  Caitlyn held herself to the branches, motionless in the shape of a cross, hanging parallel to the ground from more than ten feet above it. Her face and toes pointed downward.

  She’d looked for a place on the path where solid branches would be far enough apart to assist her maneuver. She’d jumped, grabbed the branches, and tilted her body from vertical to horizontal, just as she’d done countless times under Papa’s supervision.

  Outside, Papa told her, gymnasts called it the Iron Cross, but in Appalachia, there were no gymnasts, so it had no name for most people, and there was no one to be amazed. Papa usually called it, simply, the Cross. The exercise was an unexplained part of her life. Papa would hang two ropes down from a thick tree branch, three feet apart. The ends of each rope were knotted and at least four feet off the ground. The exercise she secretly performed daily would have been astounding to any gymnast. Because her body was so light and thin, she could hold the position almost without effort. From there, her body vertical to the ground, she could tilt forward until her body was parallel to it, arms still outstretched, and remain like that without trembling for half an hour.

  Until now, the Cross had seemed purposeless. But she’d finally found use for it, given that it was unlikely her pursuer would look up in the air to find her. Who would expect her to be in this position, and she was well hidden by smaller branches and leaves.

  She doubted that her pursuer was much danger anyway.

  It was the boy. The annoying skunk boy.

  Down at the stream, getting water, she’d smelled skunk and looked around, then saw him hiding in the water behind a log. He’d begun to follow her.

  Caitlyn had spent the previous twenty minutes following deer paths up a hill, trying to lose skunk boy as best she could with her twisted ankle, but the boy had stayed with her, keeping a constant distance of twenty or thirty paces behind.

  She knew he was behind her, as every few minutes she would hear a grunt as if he had walked into something. Occasionally, the swirling breeze brought her the smell of skunk until she’d decided it was time to end this.

  She held herself in the shape of a cross and waited.

  SEVEN

  On a bench overlooking the Cumberland Gap town square, Billy Jasper sat beside Sheriff Clarence Carney. Carney was in his midfifties, lean and perpetually serious. Billy was more uncomfortable than usual, because this was the first time that Carney had made a point to spend time with Billy in the two weeks since the town Elders had chosen Billy as deputy.

  “What do you see?” Carney asked Billy. Although he was a large man and easily three decades older, Carney stood a full head shorter than Billy and a hundred pounds lighter. Still, from Carney’s tone of voice, there was no doubt the smaller man was in control.

  It wasn’t just Carney’s serious tone and ramrod posture that made people nervous. It was the hard-set face he’d earned through thirty years of enforcing every law, down to the slightest infraction.

  “What do you see?”

  Billy didn’t like questions. This one was worse because there was no obvious answer. And there was a vidpod on the bench between them recording the conversation. Bar Elohim, if he wanted, would be able to hear Billy’s answer. He knew, like everyone in Appalachia knew, that Bar Elohim had access to information on all vidpods.

  “Talk, boy,” Sheriff Carney said, showing, as usual, irritation at Billy’s deliberateness.

  Billy didn’t like this about himself either. As a boy, so large he had often been mistaken at a distance for a man, Billy had been so meek about his size and strength that he’d become a target, unable to find anger when other boys goaded him. Fights weren’t fights; he towered above them and would placidly let them pummel him—sometimes two or three at a time—until they were exhausted. Billy was also aware, however, that the people of Cumberland Gap considered him an ox when it came to intelligence. Time and again, he saw others give glib answers that brought smiles or laughter, a skill he envied. Billy wished he could learn to answer without taking time to consider whether it was the best and truest answer possible. Maybe people would stop saying he was slow but nice.

  “I see Cumberland Gap,” Billy said in answer to Carney’s vague question. Was he supposed to mention details, like the empty mockingbird nest in the tree in front of them? Or that the little birds had left the nest two days earlier, and one had fallen from the nest and Billy had barely gotten to it before the courthouse cat pounced?

  Was he supposed to point out the apartment above the store across the street, where he knew Carney had a man imprisoned and was keeping it a secret? Was he supposed to mention that Mrs. Andrews on the other side of the street was wearing a shawl across her face, even though the weather was blazing?

  “You see men and women walking down the street in peaceful conversation,” Carney said. “You see horse-drawn wagons. You see clean sidewalks. Well-built stores. You see harmony.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Andrews had stopped to look through a store window. Both shaped like pears. Mr. Andrews was a dog-kicker. Billy didn’t like that. Mrs. Andrews sometimes had a bruise on the side of her face. Probably had one under the shawl right now.

  To Billy, that didn’t suggest harmony. Nor did the screams that had echoed through town last night, from the apartment above the store. But arguments tightened Billy’s stomach, so he found it easier to agree with Sheriff Carney than point out Cumberland Gap wasn’t all harmony. Besides, he knew why the Elders had endorsed Billy as deputy. Carney didn’t want deputies who thought for themselves. Neither did the Elders. Like an ox, Billy was easy to control, and that didn’t bother him. He just wished people would overlook him. But he was too big for that.

  “What don’t you see?” Carney asked.

  By now, Billy realized Carney was going to answer his own question, so he held off replying. That was good. Billy didn’t have to think through all the possibilities before answering. He’d been working at the livery before the Elders chose him for a deputy. He’d enjoyed the livery. Not many questions there.

  “You don’t see fear,” Carney said. “You don’t see fear because you don’t see crime. It’s no accident that the Elders don’t allow towns to grow to a population of more than three thousand.”

  Appalachian government policy restricted town size because small towns meant accountability, in sharp contrast to Outside, where the anonymous lifestyles in large cities bred sin.

  “Let me repeat. You don’t see fear because you don’t see crime,” Carney said. Carney crossed his legs and leaned back against the bench. “What you see is good, and nothing bad. That’s the result of living in a society that follows the literal Word of God.”

  Billy nodded. Nothing to disagree with there.

  “It’s why the Elders fought for freedom from Outside,” Carney said. “And it’s taken two generations to ensure a place where men follow the Word of God. If you want to see all of this destroyed before the Second Coming, all you need to do is invite the snake back into the
garden.”

  “Sir?”

  “Adam and Eve had all they needed. But what fruit did the snake tempt them with?” Carney’s voice rose. “The snake told Eve that if she ate the fruit from the Tree of Good and Evil, that she would have knowledge like God. The woman wanted God’s wisdom. She wanted God’s knowledge. She wanted to be like God.”

  Billy knew this story very well from all the Bible lessons in church. Trouble was, every time it came to the part about the man and woman realizing they were naked, it got him to wondering what a naked woman looked like. Then he’d think some more on what a person might see if women wore dresses made of leaves, like the Good Book described. Especially what a person might see on a windy day, unless the leaves were sewn really securely. None of those thoughts were good, he knew, but they were difficult to push away.

  Carney continued, oblivious, of course, to the sinful thoughts that Billy had not invited into his mind. “What you’re not often told was that the woman ate of the fruit before giving it to Adam. They didn’t each take a bite at the same time. She was corrupted by that first bite. Instead of protecting the man, she wanted him corrupted too and offered some to him, so she wouldn’t be alone in her sin.”

  Carney paused and reached up to put his hand on Billy’s shoulder. Man to man.

  “There’s a woman like that in town right now, son. Mrs. Shelton.”

  Mrs. Shelton? Billy blinked a few times. Old Mrs. Shelton?

  “I learned a long time ago not to let appearances fool me,” Carney said. “She has been corrupted by knowledge, the kind that God sees fit to keep from us, and she wants others corrupted by it too.”

  Carney gestured at the town square. “If that corruption has a chance to spread, you won’t see all this harmony in front of you. That’s why it’s so important to keep the snake from getting loose anywhere in Appalachia.”