Chapter 19: The Truth About Lacey

Brent left at midnight.

I was awake on the barn platform with the short rifle across my knees, and I watched the purple line of him get up from the gatepost and go.

He didn't hurry.

He walked down the county road with his hands in his pockets, whistling.

"There he goes," Conroy said, from the ladder.

"Is the truck ready?"

"The truck's been ready since sunset."

We left Hattie in charge of the wall.

She gave me a look that said everything and then said it anyway.

"If you're not back by sunrise, I'm coming with a welding torch."

"Understood."

We followed him for six miles, with the lights off and the engine barely turning over.

At the crest of a hill he turned east, over a cattle guard, and I stopped the truck and looked down.

The county fairgrounds lay below us, ringed in floodlights.

School buses stood nose to tail around the whole grounds, with guards on their roofs and one lit gate at the front.

Past the buses were rows of tents, a cattle barn, and a Ferris wheel stopped halfway round.

On the grandstand, under a white tent, a long table held a single lantern.

I took the field glasses from Conroy.

People moved between the tents with numbered tags tied to their wrists.

Men, women, and children, carrying water in buckets and pulling carts of firewood.

None of them were talking.

A guard stood at every corner of the lanes with a rifle, and none of them looked at the people they guarded.

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