I WORKED MY WAY UP THE TORSO TOWARD THE THROAT.

It was a man. His chest was broad, and his cheeks were rough with stubble.

I pressed my fingers to the flesh beneath his jaw.

No sign of a pulse.

Again and again I shifted my hand, searching for the throb of a carotid. Or jugular.

Nothing.

The man’s flesh felt cool, not cold. If he was dead, it hadn’t been for long.

Sweet Jesus! Who was he?

With trembling hands, I braille-read the facial features.

Shock sent adrenaline firing through me.

Galimore!

Breath frozen, I pressed my ear to his chest. A faint murmur? The rain was so loud, I couldn’t be sure.

Please God! Let him be alive!

I shivered. Then felt scalded.

My thoughts splintered into even tinier shards. Nothing made sense.

Galimore had not locked me in the shed. If he was a murderer or had partnered with a murderer, what was he doing here himself? Was he dead?

Galimore and I had a common enemy.

Who?

A wave of dizziness forced me down to my bum. I slumped back against the wall. Muddled words and images tumbled through my mind.

Two skeletons embracing in a makeshift grave. Two skulls with bullet holes centered at the back.

Grady Winge praying in the woods. Sitting at a table in the Speedway Media Center.

A ’sixty-five Petty-blue Mustang with a lime-green decal on the passenger side. Winge said it in ’ninety-eight. Repeated the exact phrase over a decade later.

Maddy Padgett standing by a pile of tires.

Padgett had been Cale Lovette’s lover. She was black. Lovette planned to quit the Patriot Posse.

A neon-lit bar. Slidell, yanking a man by his beard.

A cheesy Kmart apartment. Lynn Nolan wearing a tacky negligee.

The old guy said that thing about poisoning the system. Then Cale said something about it being too late. It was going to happen. Then the old guy said something about knowing your place.

Maddy Padgett, face tight with emotion.

Craig Bogan was a racist, a sexist. Cindi Gamble had flash. Again the bones.

Flash and bones.

A photo of a girl with a blond pixie bob and silver loops in her ears.

Craig Bogan in an armchair, stroking a cat.

Bogan said ’sixty-five Petty-blue Mustang.

Not “a Mustang.” Or “a blue Mustang.” A ’sixty-five Petty-blue Mustang.

Ted Raines cringing on a couch.

Every fricking red seed has to be accounted for.

Red beads peeking from the neckline of a jumpsuit.

Galimore talking to a woman in sweaty black spandex. Reta Yountz. A handshake. Yountz’s bracelet jumping like a string of ladybugs doing a conga.

The world slid sideways.

I sucked in my breath.

Was that the message my id had been whispering?

Summoning what little strength I had left, I crawled to the door. Still on hands and knees, I pulled a paper from the back pocket of my jeans and unfolded it on the concrete. In the thin strip of light, I could see the picture and most of the text.

The article was titled “Rosary Pea: Abrus precatorius.” The image showed small red seeds with jet-black spots at one end. The text described them as resembling ladybugs.

In my delirium, atoms collided. Meshed.

Reta Yountz was wearing a bracelet made of rosary pea seeds.

Abrin comes from the rosary pea.

Wayne Gamble was poisoned with abrin.

Maddy Padgett made reference to a contract between Bogan and the Speedway. CB Botanicals. I was in a garden shed.

Padgett described Bogan as a redneck cracker who despised the idea of women and blacks in NASCAR. A man with a wicked temper.

Cindi Gamble was determined to race stock cars. Bogan had watched her race Bandoleros and knew that she could do it.

Nolan’s “old guy” at the Double Shot was Craig Bogan!

Bogan and Lovette weren’t planning a terrorist act. They were arguing about Cindi’s failure to know her place. The system being poisoned wasn’t a water supply. It was Bogan’s twisted vision of NASCAR.

The brutal truth slammed home.

Craig Bogan shot Cindi Gamble to stop her from driving NASCAR. He killed his own son because he and Cale were estranged, and he knew Cale would finger him as a suspect. He murdered Wayne Gamble because Gamble was asking too many questions and prodding the authorities to start a reinvestigation for discovery of new facts.

My vision blurred. My legs trembled.

I reached out to brace myself.

At that precise moment, a bolt slicked sideways.

Grating loudly, the door winged left.

I wobbled but didn’t topple.

A dark figure loomed in front of me, backlit by two powerful beams.

I drew in my arm and shielded my eyes.

Two muddy boots swam into focus.

“Well, well.” Bogan’s tone was bloodless. “Aren’t you the rugged one.”

I sat back on my haunches. Looked up.

Bogan was a black silhouette. One elbow angled out. Something in his hand. “Guess I underestimated you, little lady.”

Bogan shifted. Spread his feet.

Light glinted off a semiautomatic pistol pointed at my head.

Adrenaline-pumped blood made the rounds of my body. I felt a new surge of strength.

“The police are already searching for us.” To my pounding ears my voice sounded slurry.

“Let them search. Where you’re going, no one will find you.”

“We found Cale and Cindi.”

The razor face hardened into cold stone.

“You’ve already killed three people,” I said. “I suppose you don’t care about one more?”

“You forgetting your buddy over there?” Bogan flicked the gun toward Galimore.

I kept my mind pointed at one thought. Stall.

“Takes a special kind of man to shoot his own son.”

Bogan’s fingers tightened on the Glock.

“How’d you rope Winge in? Threaten to fire him? Appeal to his Patriot Posse loyalties?”

“Winge’s a fool.”

“Don’t have Grady to do your dirty work this time? To lie for you? To bury your dead kid and his girlfriend? You know he’ll break and implicate you.”

“Not if he wants to live, he won’t. Besides, it’s only the word of an accused suspect. There’s no evidence connecting me.”

“Good cover. The stranger in the Mustang. How long did you have to coach him to get it right?”

As we sparred, I tried looking past Bogan. The double beams were blinding. Headlights?

I listened for sounds. Heard no engines. No amplified voices. I assumed the race was long since over. Or else we weren’t at the Speedway.

“Your kind just can’t be happy with what you got.” Bogan’s face was pinched with loathing. “Always wanting more.”

“My kind? You mean women?”

I knew I should quit piling on words. Couldn’t stop myself.

“We scare the shit out of you, don’t we, Craig?”

“That’s it. You’re history.”

Before I could react, Bogan lunged, yanked me to my feet, and spun me into another chokehold. With a gloating laugh, he jammed the Glock into my ribs.

“Now who’s scared shitless?”

Bogan dragged me toward the lights, gouging the muzzle deeper with every forced step. It was the scene at the haulers’ all over again. Only this time my muscles were mush. I was like a moth flailing at a screen.

Rain was still falling. The ground was slick underfoot.

I heard traffic in the distance but couldn’t lower my eyes to check for landmarks.

We passed the source of the double beams. Headlights shone from a backhoe with enormous front and rear shovels.

Ten yards beyond the backhoe, Bogan halted, shifted the gun to my occiput, and forced my head down.

I blinked into a yawning wound in the earth.

The sinkhole!

The gears of my mind jammed with terror.

“Enjoy eternity in hell.” Bogan’s voice was pure venom.

I felt his body tense. The pistol was no longer jammed against my head. Hands clamped onto my shoulders.

“Kiss my ass!” I screamed, twisting and writhing with adrenaline-stoked terror. “You worthless piece of shit!”

Bogan’s right hand slipped on my wet nylon jacket. Slithered down the sleeve.

I wrenched my upper body sideways.

Bogan squeezed so tight, I thought my bones would shatter.

I cried out in pain.

Sliding the shoulder hand down my other arm, Bogan flexed both knees, lifted, and sailed me out over the edge.

My body flew sideways, then dropped. Time froze as I plummeted into inky blackness.

I hit hard on my right side, against an embankment partway down. The force of the impact sent me pinwheeling farther down, through muck and rubble. In seconds, I hit water.

Putrid liquid closed over me. I drew my knees to my chest and prayed that the pool was shallow.

Using my battered arms, I flayed the water and stopped my forward motion. I stroked my body vertical and extended my legs.

My sneakers touched bottom. I tested.

Terra not so firma. But solid enough so my feet were not sinking.

I stood in stagnant water up to my chest.

I smelled the sour reek of mud and rotten humus, the brown stench of things long dead.

Around me was tomblike darkness. Far above me the sky was a slightly paler black.

I had to get out. But how?

I waded to the point where I thought I’d entered the water. Explored with shaking hands.

The sides of the sinkhole were sharply angled. And slimy with sludge and putrid garbage.

Facing the bank, I lifted a leg that weighed a thousand pounds. Positioned my foot. Stretched my hands high and curled my fingers into claws.

Then I was spent.

My leg crumpled.

I collapsed and lay with my cheek and chest pressed to the mud.

A minute? An hour?

Somewhere, in another universe, an engine sputtered to life.

Gears rattled.

The engine grew louder.

The sinkhole seemed to wink.

I lifted my head.

Twin beams were slicing the darkness overhead.

My brain groped for meaning.

Steel screeched.

The engine churned.

Metal clanked.

I heard rumbling, like potatoes rolling down a chute.

A massive clod of dirt hit my back.

The wind was knocked from me.

As I fought the spasm in my chest, more soil avalanched down from above.

I tucked my head and wrapped my arms around it.

Bogan was filling the sinkhole! The monster was burying me alive!

Get to the far end!

I was dragging myself sideways along the bank when the engine backfired.

Muffled voices drifted down.

Or was I hallucinating?

The backhoe popped again.

Gears rattled.

The engine groaned, then cut off.

A small beam shot down from the lip of the sinkhole. Was joined by another. The small ovals danced the water, the muddy banks, finally settled on me.

“She’s here.”

“Sonofafrigginbitch.”

Slidell’s voice had never sounded so sweet.