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stumbled slightly as her feet hit a rock, and there was a terrible, sharp pain. She’d broken the big toe of her right foot. She was sure of it. It slowed her down, but it didn’t stop her. The truck was still some distance away, but she would reach the highway long before it passed her spot. She was prepared to stand in the middle of the road and risk being hit if that was what it took. She’d rather die quickly under its wheels than be taken back to that basement.
    Something pushed her from behind, and she fell to the ground. An instant later, she heard the shot, and there was a pressure in her chest, followed by a burning that set her lungs on fire. She lay on her side and tried to speak, but only blood flowed from between her lips. The truck passed barely an arm’s length from where she lay, the driver oblivious of her dying. She stretched her fingers toward it, and felt the breeze of its passing. The burning inside her was no longer fiery but cold. Her hands and feet were growing numb, the ice spreading inward to the core of her being, freezing her limbs and turning her blood to crystals.
    Footsteps approached, and then two men were looking down at her. One was the limping cop, the other the old man who had given her his coat. He was holding a hunting rifle in his arms. She could see the rest of his friends following behind. She smiled.
    I got away. I escaped. This wasn’t the ending that you wanted.
    I beat you, you fuckers.
    I . . .

    BEN PEARSON WATCHED THE life depart the girl, her body deflating as its final breath left it. He shook his head in sorrow.
    “And she was a good one too,” he said. “She was scrawny, but they were fattening her up. If we were lucky, we could have got ten years or more out of her.”
    Chief Morland walked to the road. There were no more vehicles coming their way. There was no chance that they would be seen. But what a mess, what a godawful mess. Somebody would answer for it.
    He rejoined the others. Thomas Souleby was closest to him in height. These things mattered when you were dealing with a body.
    “Thomas,” he said, “you take her arms. I’ll take her legs. Let’s get this all cleaned up.”
    And together the two men carried the remains of Annie Broyer, lost daughter of the man named Jude, back to the store.

CHAPTER
    V
    They saw the cars pull into their drive and knew that they were in trouble.
    Chief Morland was leading, driving his unmarked Crown Vic. The dash light wasn’t flashing, though. The chief wasn’t advertising his presence.
    The chief’s car was followed by Thomas Souleby’s Prius. A lot of folk in Prosperous drove a Prius or some other similarly eco-­conscious car. Big SUVs were frowned upon. It had to do with the ethos of the town, and the importance of maintaining a sustainable environment in which to raise generations of children. Everybody knew the rules, unofficial or otherwise, and they were rarely broken.
    As the cars pulled up outside the house, Erin gripped her husband’s hand. Harry Dixon was not a tall man, or a particularly handsome one. He was overweight, his hair was receding, and he snored like a drill when he slept on his back, but he was her man, and a good one too. Sometimes she wished that they had been blessed with children, but it was not to be. They had waited too late after marriage, she often thought, and by the time it became clear that the actions of nature alone would not enable her to conceive they had settled into a routine in which each was enough for the other. Oh, they might always have wished for more, but there was a lot to be said for “enough.”
    But these were troubled times, and the idyllic middle age they had imagined for themselves was under threat. Until the start of the decade, Harry’s construction company had weathered the worst of the recession by cutting back on its full-time employees and paring quotes to the bone, but 2011 had seen the company’s virtual collapse. It was said that the state had lost