Chapter 19: The Empty Room

They carried Rodney out first.

Dean and Boone took him on a door pulled off its hinges.

Dean's fingers pressed hard under the rib, and his voice counted out loud.

Wyatt walked ahead of them with Nash under one arm.

At the gate, a county ambulance had been idling since eleven.

The old widower had called the deputy on Thursday, when the convoy first rolled through town.

The deputy had called everyone else.

Mara stood on the porch and watched the paramedics take her brother over.

Her palms were still red to the wrists.

"Go with him," a voice said behind her.

It was the road captain.

"Not yet," she said.

Four riders came out of the church next, carrying her husband on another door.

He had stopped screaming.

He lay on his back with his shot knee wrapped in somebody's cut, and his gray shirt was stained to the elbows.

The deputy waited at the foot of the steps with his cuffs out.

"Sir," he said, "you're under arrest for kidnapping, aggravated assault and attempted murder."

The husband turned his head.

He looked along the porch at the men he had ridden with for thirty years.

Not one of them looked away, and not one of them said a word.

"I want a lawyer," he said, in his soft voice.

"You'll get one," the deputy said.

"Look at me," Mara said.

The men carrying him stopped.

She walked down the steps until she stood over him, where he had to look up.

"You told me no was a bruise," she said. "You told me nobody would ever come."

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