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can always wish for billions more. Remember—you betrayed your best friend. You broke your promise.”
    She felt the dig in the soft center of her being, the place where she’d always assumed she was a good person. She felt defeated by everything. They took the exit off the highway, and in the woodsy distance she spotted a towering Ferris wheel, like a child’s erector set.
    “What’s a Ferris wheel doing all the way out here?” she asked.
    “No idea.”
    They drove around for a while and kept coming back to the highway.
    “Okay,” Ryan sighed. “We’re officially lost.”
    They aimed for the Ferris wheel and found a vacant field where a traveling carnival had set up shop, huge trucks idling in the parking lot. Ryan swung his Range Rover between two vehicles baking in the hot sun. They got out and walked over to the ticket booth.
    They could hear laughter coming from the amusement park beyond the chicken-wire fence. Little kids with feverish faces were running around in a delirium of joy, clutching paper cones of cotton candy. Inside the rickety ticket booth, a glassy-eyed woman sat on a folding chair. She’d lost her girlish figure long ago, and her flabby arms were covered with interesting tattoos.
    “I’m afraid we’re lost,” Ryan said apologetically. “How do we get to Welcome Street from here?”
    The woman wiped the sweat off her upper lip and said, “Yeah, you’re way off.”
    Ryan held up the map. “They told me to take Exit 5.”
    “No, no.” The woman shook her head, grabbed the map and traced her finger over the little lines. “Get back on the main road here and take a left. Keep going straight for two miles. Take another left at the light. Go another five miles and you’ll come to this fork in the road. See this fork? Take a right at the fork, go three miles, and it’s on your left. See there? You can’t miss it. Dead end street.” She tapped her finger on the map and handed it back. “I suppose they’re still out there. Nobody knows for sure. Tickets? Step aside, please.”
    A jostling line had formed behind them. Ryan and Cassie stepped aside.
    “Come on,” he told her. “Let’s go.”
    “What did she mean—nobody knows for sure?” Cassie whispered.
    “No idea.”
    “This place has ‘Deliverance’ written all over it.”
    He smirked.
    She made the sound of the deranged banjo duet, while they got back in the Range Rover. They followed the ticket-taker’s directions past abandoned farms and ruined houses with For Sale signs stuck in the yards. Cassie knew the economy was bad, but this was ridiculous. Entire streets were abandoned. They followed Welcome Street to the bitter end, where Delilah Kincaid lived. The road simply stopped. It turned into an overgrown pasture studded with rocky outcrops.
    Ryan pulled into the driveway next to an old black Ford Escort. He got out and moved purposefully across the yard, seeming to want to get it over with. As if he’d resigned himself to the fact that Delilah Kincaid wouldn’t have any answers for him, either.
    Cassie was nervous as hell. One more visit, and they could go home. She hurried to catch up, the blood throbbing in her temples. As they crossed the shaggy yard of this sprawling property, a flock of birds burst into the air, crying out in protest before gently settling into the thin limbs of a pear tree.
    The old house frightened her. The dilapidated Victorian was in dire need of restoration. Climbing ivy grew up the peeling walls, and the impenetrable windows on the second floor reminded her of tormented eyes. She could almost feel the house watching her. It was probably just the people inside who were watching her, but that didn’t make her feel better.
    Ryan knocked with mild impatience, and a bland beauty with swan-white skin, scraggly brown hair and passive blue eyes answered. “Hello?” she said, and Cassie knew right away this must be Delilah Kincaid, the third name on the list. She wore a simple faded housedress