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The cold air felt even colder. Leaving the camera and its zoom lens well below the rim, he warily eased his head up and studied the barn. Five minutes later, the three brothers emerged and began to do chores. Watching, Romero opened a plastic bag of Cheerios, Wheat Chex, raisins, and nuts that he’d mixed together, munching the trail mix, washing it down with water. From the drop in temperature the previous night, the water in his canteen was again cold. But the canteen was almost empty. He had brought two others, and they would last him for a while. Eventually, though, he was going to have to return to the river and use a filtration pump to refill the canteens. Iodine tablets would kill the bacteria.

By mid-afternoon, the brothers were all in one field, Matthew on a tractor, tilling the soil, while John and Mark picked up large rocks that the winter had forced to the surface, carrying them to the back of the pickup truck.

I’m wasting my time, he thought. They’re just farmers, for God sake.

Then why did John try to get me fired?

He clenched his teeth. With the sun behind his back, it was safe to use the camera’s zoom lens. He scanned the farm, staring furiously at the brothers. The evening was a replay of the previous one. By ten, the house was in darkness.

Just one more day, Romero thought. Tomorrow’s the fifteenth. Tomorrow’s what I came for.

Pain jolted him into consciousness. A walloping burst of agony made his mind spin. A third cracking impact sent a flash of red behind his eyes. Stunned, he fought to overcome the shock of the attack and thrashed to get out of his sleeping bag. A blow across his shoulders knocked him sideways. Silhouetted against the starry sky, three figures surrounded him, their heavy breath frosty as they raised their clubs to strike him again. He grabbed his pistol and tried to free it from the sleeping bag, but a blow knocked it out of his numbed hand an instant before a club across his forehead made his ears ring and his eyes roll up.

He awoke slowly, his senses in chaos. Throbbing in his head. Blood on his face. The smell of it. Coppery. The nostril-irritating smell of stale straw under his left cheek. Shadows. Sunlight through cracks in a wall. The barn. Spinning. His stomach heaved.

The sour smell of vomit.

“Matthew, bring John,” Mark said.

Rumbling footsteps ran out of the barn.

Romero passed out.

The next time he awoke, he was slumped in a corner, his back against a wall, his knees up, his head sagging, blood dripping onto his chest.

“We found your car,” John said. “I see you changed models.”

The echoing voice seemed to come from a distance, but when Romero looked blearily up, John was directly before him.

John read the note Romero had left on the dashboard. “ ‘Hiking and camping along the river. Back in a couple of days.’ ”

Romero noticed that his pistol was tucked under John’s belt.

“What are we going to do?” Mark asked. “The police will come looking for him.”

“So what?” John said. “We’re in the right. We caught a man with a pistol who trespassed on our property at night. We defended ourselves and subdued him.” John crumbled the note. “But the police won’t come looking for him. They don’t know he’s here.”

“You can’t be sure,” Mark said.

Matthew stood silently by the closed barn door.

“Of course, I can be sure,” John said. “If this was a police operation, he wouldn’t have needed this note. He wouldn’t have been worried that someone would wonder about the abandoned car. In fact, he wouldn’t have needed his car at all. The police would have driven him to the drop-off point. He’s on his own.”

Matthew fidgeted, continuing to watch.

“Isn’t that right, Officer Romero?” John asked.

Fighting to control the spinning in his mind, Romero managed to get his voice to work. “How did you know I was up there?”

No one answered.

“It was the reflection from the camera lens, right?” Romero sounded as if his throat had been stuffed with gravel.

“Like the Holy Spirit on Pentecost,” John said.

Romero’s tongue was so thick he could barely speak. “I need water.”

“I don’t like this,” Mark said. “Let him go.”

John turned toward Matthew. “You heard him. He needs water.”

Matthew hesitated, then opened the barn door and ran toward the house.

John returned his attention to Romero. “Why wouldn’t you stop? Why did you have to be so persistent?”

“Where’s Luke?”

“See, that’s what I mean. You’re so damnably persistent.”

“We don’t need to take this any further,” Mark warned. “Put him in his car. Let him go. No harm’s been done.”

“Hasn’t there?”

“You just said we were in the right to attack a stranger with a gun. After it was too late, we found out who he is. A judge would throw out an assault charge.”

“He’d come back.”

“Not necessarily.”

“I guarantee it. Wouldn’t you, Officer Romero? You’d come back.”

Romero wiped blood from his face and didn’t respond.

“Of course, you would,” John said. “It’s in your nature. And one day you’d see something you shouldn’t. It may be you already have.”

“Don’t say anything more.” Mark warned.

“You want to know what this is about?” John asked Romero.

Romero wiped more blood from his face.

“I think you should get what you want,” John said.

“No,” Mark said. “This can’t go on anymore. I’m still not convinced he’s here by himself. If the police are involved … It’s too risky. It has to stop.”

Footsteps rushed toward the barn. Only Romero looked as Matthew hurried inside, carrying a jug of water.

“Give it to him,” John said.

Matthew warily approached, like someone apprehensive about a wild animal. He set the jug at Romero’s feet and darted back.

“Thank you,” Romero said.

Matthew didn’t answer.

“Why don’t you ever speak?” Romero asked.

Matthew didn’t say anything.

Romero’s skin prickled. “You can’t.”

Matthew looked away.

“Of course. Last fall when I was here, John told you to bring him the phone so he could call the state police. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it.” Romero waited for the swirling in his mind to stop. “I figured he was sending the weakest one of the group, so if I made trouble he and Mark could take care of it.” Romero’s lungs felt empty. He took several deep breaths. “But all the time I’ve been watching the house, you haven’t said a word.”

Matthew kept looking away.

“You’re mute. That’s why John told you to bring the phone. Because you couldn’t call the state police yourself.”

“Stop taunting my brother and drink the water,” John said.

“I’m not taunting him. I just—”

“Drink it.”

Romero fumbled for the jug, raised it to his lips, and swallowed, not caring about the sour taste from having been sick, wanting only to clear the mucus from his mouth and the gravel in his throat.

John pulled a clean handkerchief from his windbreaker pocket and threw it to him. “Pour water on it. Wipe the blood from your face. We’re not animals. There’s no need to be without dignity.”

Baffled by the courtesy, Romero did what he was told. The more they treated him like a human being, the more chance he had of getting away from here. He tried desperately to think of a way to talk himself out of this. “You’re wrong about the police not being involved.”

“Oh?” John raised his eyebrows, waiting for Romero to continue.

“This isn’t official, sure. But I do have backup. I told my sergeant what I planned to do. The deal is, if I don’t use my cell phone to call him every six hours, he’ll know something’s wrong. He and a couple of friends on the force will come here looking for me.”

“My, my. Is that a fact.”

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t you call him and tell him you’re all right?”

“Because I’m
not
all right. Look, I have no idea what’s going on here, and all of a sudden, believe me, it’s the last thing I want to find out. I just want to get out of here.”

The barn became terribly silent.

“I made a mistake.” Romero struggled to his feet. “I won’t make it again. I’ll leave. This is the last time you’ll see me.” Off balance, he stepped out of the corner.

John studied him.

“As far as I’m concerned, this is the end of it.” Romero took another step toward the door.

“I don’t believe you.”

Romero stepped past him.

“You’re lying about the cell phone and about your sergeant,” John said.

Romero kept walking. “If I don’t call him soon—”

John blocked his way.

“—he’ll come looking for me.”

“And here he’ll find you.”

“Being held against my will.”

“So we’ll be charged with kidnapping?” John spread his hands. “Fine. We’ll tell the jury we were only trying to scare you to keep you from continuing to stalk us. I’m willing to take the chance that they won’t convict us.”

“What are you talking about?”
Mark said.

“Let’s see if his friends really come to the rescue.”

Oh, shit, Romero thought. He took a further step toward the door.

John pulled out Romero’s pistol.

“No!” Mark said.

“Matthew, help Mark with the trapdoor.”

“This has to stop!” Mark said.
“Wasn’t what happened to Matthew and Luke enough?”

Like a tightly wound spring that was suddenly released, John whirled and struck Mark with such force that he knocked him to the floor. “Since when do you run this family?”

Wiping blood from his mouth, Mark glared up at him. “I don’t.
You
do.”

“That’s right. I’m the oldest. That’s always been the rule. If you’d have been meant to run this family, you’d have been the firstborn.”

Mark kept glaring.

“Do you want to turn against the rule?” John asked.

Mark lowered his eyes. “No.”

“Then help Matthew with the trapdoor.”

Romero’s stomach fluttered. All the while John aimed the pistol at him, he watched Mark and Matthew go to the far left corner, where it took both of them to shift a barrel of grain out of the way. They lifted a trapdoor, and Romero couldn’t help bleakly thinking that someone pushing from below wouldn’t have a chance of moving it when the barrel was in place.

“Get down there,” John said.

Romero felt dizzier. Fighting to repress the sensation, he knew that he had to do something before he felt any weaker.

If John wanted me dead, he’d have killed me by now.

Romero bolted for the outside door.

“Mark!”

Something whacked against Romero’s legs, tripping him, slamming his face hard onto the floor.

Mark had thrown a club.

The three brothers grabbed him. Dazed, the most powerless he’d ever felt, he thrashed, unable to pull away from their hands, as they dragged him across the dusty floor and shoved him through the trapdoor. If he hadn’t grasped the ladder, he’d have fallen.

“You don’t want to be without water.” John handed the jug down to him.

A chill breeze drifted from below. Terrified, Romero watched the trapdoor being closed over him and heard the scrape of the barrel being shifted back into place.

God help me, he thought.

But he wasn’t in darkness. Peering down, he saw a faint light and warily descended the ladder, moving awkwardly because of the jug he held. At the bottom, he found a short tunnel and proceeded along it. An earthy musty smell made his nostrils contract. The light became brighter as he neared its source in a small plywood-walled room that he saw had a wooden chair and table. The floor was made from plywood, also. The light came from a bare bulb attached to one of the sturdy beams in the ceiling. Stepping all the way in, he saw a cot on the left. A clean pillow and blanket were on it. To the right, a toilet seat was attached to a wooden box positioned above a deep hole in the ground. I’m going to lose my mind, he thought.

The breeze, weak now that the trapdoor was closed, came from a vent in an upper part of the farthest wall. Romero guessed that the duct would be long and that there would be baffles at the end so that, if Romero screamed for help, no one who happened to come onto the property would be able to hear him. The vent provided enough air that Romero wasn’t worried about suffocating. There were plenty of other things to worry about, but at least not that.

The plywood of the floor and walls was discolored with age. Nonetheless, the pillow and the blanket had been stocked recently—when Romero raised them to his nose, there was a fresh laundry smell beneath the loamy odor that it had started absorbing.

The brothers couldn’t have known I’d be here. They were expecting someone else.

Who?

Romero smelled something else. He told himself that it was only his imagination, but he couldn’t help sensing that the walls were redolent with the sweaty stench of fear, as if many others had been imprisoned here.

His own fear made his mouth so dry that he took several deep swallows of water. Setting the jug on the table, he stared apprehensively at a door across from him. It was just a simple old wooden door, vertical planks held in place by horizontal boards nailed to the top, middle, and bottom, but it filled him with apprehension. He knew that he had to open it, that he had to learn if it gave him a way to escape, but he had a terrible premonition that something unspeakable waited on the other side. He told his legs to move. They refused. He told his right arm to reach for the doorknob. It, too, refused.

The spinning sensation in his mind was now aggravated by the short quick breaths he was taking. I’m hyperventilating, he realized, and struggled to return his breath rate to normal. Despite the coolness of the chamber, his face dripped sweat. In contrast, his mouth was drier than ever. He gulped more water.

Open the door.

His body reluctantly obeyed, his shaky legs taking him across the chamber, his trembling hand reaching for the doorknob. He pulled. Nothing happened, and for a moment he thought that the door was locked, but when he pulled harder, the door creaked slowly open, the loamy odor from inside reaching his nostrils before his eyes adjusted to the shadows in there.