More pounding and a scream from below. Cameryn, yanking at the cardboard lid, felt the box fly out from her fingers. Bullets rolled everywhere, like pennies from a broken roll, bouncing hard on the wooden floor. Swearing at herself, she squatted, opened the gun’s chamber, and loaded a single pointed copper bullet into a cylinder. She could tell they had stopped talking. One of them asked, “Is someone else here? Seth—you check the upstairs.”
Out of time! One bullet was all she’d loaded, but there was no time left. Staggering to her feet, she ran down the hall, not caring if they could hear her footsteps as she pounded down the stairs. “
Stop!”
she screamed as she rounded the corner.
One man held Ruth by the hair, her blonde locks coiled around his wrist like a rope. Ruth’s face was covered in blood and a pool of it stained the kitchen tabletop, a deep red blot the size of a dinner plate. Her eyes were so wide Cameryn could see the white all around, but it was the man she had to keep locked in her gaze. His hand clutched a gun, not yet fully raised. He stared at Cameryn, his face grizzled, his lip curled.
“I said stop!” she cried. “Drop your gun!”
“You’re just a girl,” the man said with disdain. He unwound his hand from Ruth’s hair and gave her a shove. “You see that, Seth? Another Jezebel in this house of defilement.” Nephi wasn’t tall, but he looked strong, his arms thick with muscle. His buzzed gray hair topped a sunburnt face, seamed as elephant hide. A plaid cowboy shirt, the kind with piping and buttons that looked like pearls, gapped over his ample belly.
“I see her.” Seth’s blue cap with a stiff bill cast a shadow across his own weathered features. Both men wore boots, cowboy boots that came to a sharp point.
“Drop your gun!” Cameryn demanded again, her own gun so heavy she had to hold it with both hands. It shook in her grip.
“You know, Seth, I don’t think she’s got it in her,” said Nephi, his voice suddenly cool. “Look at her shakin’ like a baby.” His own gun had begun to inch up, millimeter by millimeter. He was staring at her. Cameryn knew he was calculating his odds.
Her voice unnaturally high, she cried, “I know how to shoot.”
“Do it, then. You’re just a female. You think you’re gonna shoot me? Then shoot me. But you’ve never killed, have you?” He grinned. “It takes a man to do that sort of thing.”
Cameryn could barely breathe. She watched as Nephi’s gun moved higher still. He was calling her out, his small eyes hard, challenging her.
She cocked the hammer and told him, “I’m warning you—”
“And I’m warnin’ you right back,” Nephi said. “You drop that gun, little girl. Drop it, and we’ll go. No one will get hurt.”
“Don’t believe him! ” Ruth cried.
Suddenly Nephi’s arm jerked up and in the same second Cameryn squeezed the trigger of her Magnum. As the deafening blast burst through the air like a sonic boom, she felt a recoil so sharp she almost lost her footing. A blue lamp, inches away from Seth’s head, exploded into thousands of tiny pieces, leaving bits of ceramic scattered across the carpet like mosaic tiles. Adriel let out a loud shriek and both Seth and Nephi jumped. She could sense shock and fury burning behind their immobile faces.
She’d used her one and only bullet.
But they don’t know that,
she told herself.
Hold it together or we die.
The men stared at her, wide-eyed.
“Put your gun on the floor and kick it to me
,
” she commanded. “I’m serious. Kick it to me or I’ll blow your freakin’ heads off.”
It was surreal. Cameryn, who didn’t even like violent movies, was talking like she was in an old Clint Eastwood film. Neither one of them moved, so she said, “I’m not a girl, I’m a woman. And this is a Magnum
.
Do you really want to mess with a Magnum?”
Nephi’s gun clattered to the linoleum. It was Seth who kicked it to her, the revolver spinning like a whirligig until it was stopped by a table leg.
“Ruth,” Cameryn cried, “are you okay?”
Ruth nodded. Blood oozed out her nose, but she wiped it away. Her lip was cut and one eye had begun to swell. Leaning over, she picked up the gun. Ruth wobbled as she stood, but when she raised her arm, her aim seemed deadly. In a steady arc, the barrel moved from Nephi to Seth. Adriel sat crying in her playpen as Ruth said, “Hush, baby. It’s okay now. Mommy’s okay.” When Ruth spoke, Cameryn saw that her teeth were coated in red. “Cameryn, can you call the police?”
A siren wailed in the distance. “I already did. That’s them now.”
Ruth croaked a single word. “Good.” She swayed for a moment before righting herself. Keeping the gun pointed at the men, she walked past Cameryn to the front door, and throwing it open, she let in the light.
Chapter Seventeen
“. . . AND SO YOU’RE saying that’s when you shot the lamp,” the corporal continued as he jotted down her words. “I’m sure those two have never seen spunk like that from a girl. You must have been quite a surprise.”
“It was more of an accident than anything else,” Cameryn said. “I’ve never shot a gun that powerful before. The kickback about knocked my arm out of its socket.”
“It was enough to stop them.”
She sat in a small interview room in the Durango Police Station, an older building cattycorner to the La Plata County Courthouse. Corporal Dunlop wore a regulation deep navy blue uniform, and he had a regulation haircut, too, buzzed flat on the top of his head. In the sparsely furnished room—just a metal table and two chairs—a small wall-mounted camera recorded everything she said, both audibly and visually. What the corporal wrote down, he told her, would be for his own files.
“Well, after two hours, I think I can safely say we’re just about done,” he announced, leaning back and stretching. “I’m sure you’d like to get out of here. Plus, I’ve got a truck-load of people coming. The FBI is getting involved, and Social Services. That town over there in Four Corners was run lock, stock, and barrel by this Childs group. When your deputy . . . What’s his name?”
“Crowley. Deputy Justin Crowley.”
“Oh, yeah. When Crowley talked to the sheriff in Placement, he had no idea that the man he spoke with was actually their Prophet. Crowley obviously didn’t get a straight story from the guy.”
Cameryn twisted her hair around her finger like a ring. “I just don’t get it—how could the rest of the state not know?”
“Don’t be too hard on Arizona,” the corporal told her. “That group lived in a closed community, way out on hardscrabble land. Their children were born without doctors. No birth certificates, no death certificates. Makes them hard to track. According to Ruth Gilbert, dissenters were executed and buried in the Childses private cemetery. The FBI will be in Placement tomorrow, searching for graves. And you,” he said, smiling from behind his desk, “were the one who put it all together. Why don’t you forget about forensics? We lawmen could use someone like you.”
He stood, signaling they were done. Cameryn, relieved, shook his hand and went down the stairs into the December sunshine. She was shocked to see Lyric and her boyfriend Adam leaning against her Jeep. Lyric laughed out loud as Cameryn halted, openmouthed.
"Surprise!” Lyric cried, running forward to hug her. “Justin called and told me what happened. Your dad’s in Grand Junction—”
“Yeah.” Cameryn hugged her friend back, hard. “Dad told me he’s already turned his car around and is on his way home. I think I may be in for it.”
“Well, I know someone who isn’t mad. After all you’ve been through,
Justin
didn’t want you to drive home alone. So
Justin
sent me. And Adam.”
Grinning, Adam waved.
Lyric went on, “Justin called your dad who called the principal and
we
got a note.
We
are excused absences,” said Lyric. “That boy has got it for you good, even when you treat him bad.”
Lyric wore a lime-green parka with fuchsia trim, and a pair of striped knit gloves in green and yellow. A long-tailed ski hat with bells, bright pink, hung down her back. Locking arms with Cameryn, she said, “We’re taking you to one of Adam’s favorite spots. Stoners.”
Adam finally spoke. “I think you’ll like it,” he said. Always dressed in some version of black, today he wore black jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, no doubt sporting a skull or a headstone obscured by his dark, ankle-length coat. His hair, parted in the middle, hung in dark sheets, but his eyes were surprisingly warm. “It’s close, right off of Main. It’s got a good vibe.”
“I could use a dose of that,” Cameryn said. “Mammaw’ll have to say a whole string of rosaries to keep me out of the flames.”
Lyric squeezed her close. “I don’t think they’re mad, Cammie. Just worried. But you’ve had enough tension for one day. You solved the case, your mom’s out of jail, so let’s celebrate!”
Stoners turned out to be an organic café. Customers grabbed their own personal mugs off a peg board before ordering chai or oolong tea. Overhead, tie-dyed batiks billowed from the walls. Cameryn picked a mug with a picture of Einstein sticking out his tongue. A worn couch had been set next to a coffee table displaying an assortment of eclectic literature on the afterlife, the Buddha, the truth about Roswell’s aliens, and vegan cooking. There was nothing in here she would possibly want to eat, Cameryn knew, but she didn’t care. As they waited to be seated, Lyric and Adam peppered her with questions about polygamy and Seth and Nephi, talking above each other as Cameryn answered all she could. A sudden warmth infused her. Lyric, with her kohl-rimmed eyes, and Adam, his skin Edward Scissorhands-white, had driven all the way to Durango to help her. Cameryn, who’d found a girl’s killer and freed her own mother from suspicion, could now relax in the company of her friends.
On the way back to Silverton—Lyric and Cameryn in the Jeep while Adam drove alone in his truck—Lyric admitted there was one more subject she’d been dying to talk about. “But not with Adam around,” she said. “I wanted to wait for some privacy, so here’s the thing. You and I—we’ve been friends forever, right?”
“Since grade school,” Cameryn agreed, downshifting as the hill rose steeper.
“And friends tell friends the truth.”
“Not if the friend of this friend has already had a really hard day.”
“Come on, let me say it. I think it’s really important.” Lyric tucked a strand of purple hair behind her ear. Just last week Cameryn’s grandmother had worried that Lyric’s ever-changing hair color was too intense. “God made a person’s hair the color that He wanted it to be, so it should be left at that,” she’d said.
“Tell that to your friend Margaret,” Cameryn had shot back. “It wasn’t God who turned
her
hair blue.”
“That was just a wee bit of a tint gone wrong. It’s not the same thing at all,” Mammaw had sniffed, but she’d said no more.
Now Cameryn sighed. She reset her mind in order to receive whatever it was Lyric was about to say. In her rearview mirror she saw the slash of Adam’s face as his truck chugged behind them. “What is it? Are you having a psychic moment? Is my aura out of whack?”
“As a matter of fact,” Lyric answered primly, “it is.”
“
How
is it out of whack?”
“You’re not seeing something that’s clearly in front of you.”
“Which is?”
“Justin.”
Cameryn’s hands tightened on the wheel.
“Justin really cares about you,” Lyric said, twisting in her seat. She’d pulled off her hat, and her hair, full of static, crackled toward the roof of Cameryn’s Jeep. “And stop rolling your eyes when I say his name. When Justin called me, he was panicked. Totally panicked. I thought he was going to have a meltdown because he couldn’t drive down and be with you.”
Instead of a negative feeling, a smile spread through Cameryn. “Really?”
“Really.”
Cameryn’s smile grew. Riding the day’s victory made anything seem possible, maybe even stepping out of her reserve. Opening up. With Hannah set free and taking her medication, who knew what lay in store?
“That’s a wicked grin, Cammie,” said Lyric. “Seriously wicked.”
It was a grin Cameryn wore all the way home.
Although it was only three o’clock in the afternoon, the lights from their Christmas tree were already on. Through the window Cameryn watched them blink on and off, casting small orbs of colored light against the living-room wall. She stood on the front stoop as if treading water, half afraid to go inside, but aware that she had no choice. Bracing herself, she opened the door, and almost immediately found herself in the arms of her mammaw.
“Good grief, child, what were you
thinking
? Going down to Durango like you were a spy.” Mammaw hugged her tight, her hands like knots against Cameryn’s back. Her grandmother smelled of cinnamon and cloves. “You could have been
killed
. And you cut school. You cut school and took off. That’ll land you in trouble.”
“I’m sorry, I was just trying to help.”
“Your father’ll be here any minute. Oh, don’t look so worried, girl. We’re both so relieved you’re all right that nothing else matters. Have you seen Hannah?”