"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 any more. 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 p.r.i.c.kled. "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 they won't convict us."

"What are you talking about?"

Mark said.

"Let's see if his friends really come to the rescue."

Oh, s.h.i.t, 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 been meant to run this family, you'd have been the first-born."

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 down 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 sc.r.a.pe of the barrel being shifted back into place.

G.o.d 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 st.u.r.dy 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 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 doork.n.o.b. 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 doork.n.o.b. 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.

For a terrible instant, he thought he was staring at bodies. He almost stumbled back, inwardly screaming, until a remnant of his sanity insisted that he stare harder, that what he was looking at were bulging burlap sacks.

And baskets.

And shelves of...

Vegetables.

Potatoes, beets, turnips, onions.

Jesus, this was the root cellar under the barn. Repelled by the musty odor, he searched for another door. He tapped the walls, hoping for a hollow sound that would tell him there was an open s.p.a.ce, perhaps another room or even the outside, beyond it.

He found nothing to give him hope.

"Officer Romero?" The faint voice came from the direction of the trapdoor.

Romero stepped out of the root cellar and closed the door.

"Officer Romero?" The voice sounded like John's.

Romero left the chamber and stopped halfway along the corridor, not wanting to show himself. A beam of pale light came down through the open trapdoor. "What?"

"I've brought you something to eat."

A basket sat at the bottom of the ladder. Presumably John had lowered it by a rope and then pulled the rope back up before calling to Romero.

"I'm not hungry."

"If I were you, I'd eat. After all, you have no way of telling when I might bring you another meal."

Romero's empty stomach cramped.