UnSouled

Then they cut Argie’s ropes and haul him out. He doesn’t complain, doesn’t resist, and he doesn’t look at Grace.

After the others leave, one of the local deputies lingers, looking around at the stockpile of food. “He stole all this huh?”

“You still go

The deputy actually laughs. “Not today, Gracie.”

Now she recognizes him as a man she went to school with. She recalls he used to tease her, but he seems to have mellowed—or at least redirected his bad into good.

“Thank you, Joey,” she says, remembering his name, or at least hoping she remembered it right.

Grace thinks he’s going to leave, but he takes a second look around at the stockpiles of emergency supplies. “That’s an awful lot of potatoes.”

Gracie hesitates and shrugs. “So? Potatoes is potatoes.”

“Sometimes they are, and sometimes they’re not.” Then he pulls out his pistol, keeping his eyes trained on the large pile of potato sacks. “Out of the way, Gracie.”

8 • Co

The deputy only suspects Co

The man goes down, shouting in surprise, and his weapon, which he was not holding on to the way a deputy should, flies free. Grace goes for the weapon as the man lands in a stack of water bottles, sending them bouncing and rolling all over the ground.

Co

“Nice socks.”

Grace stands above them, aiming the gun at the deputy’s chest. “Don’t move and don’t call to the others or I swear I’ll shoot.”

“Hold on there, Gracie,” he says, trying to charm himself out this. “You don’t want to do this.”

“You shut up, Joey! I know what I do and don’t want to do, and right now I want to see you in your underwear.”

“What?”

Co

“What’s the game, Grace?” Co

“The kind we win,” she says simply. Then to the deputy, “Go on—the shirt too.”

“Grace . . .”

“No backtalk or I’ll fill ya full a’ lead!”

Co

“Yeah, yeah—no backtalk from you, either.”

Joey the deputy, Co

“Where d’ya think you’re go

“Why should you care?”

“Put your back against the pole, please,” Co

“They’ll all be after you the second I get loose. You know that, don’t you?”

Grace shakes her head. “Nope. The second you get loose, you’re go

“What?”

“That’s right—you’ll hide there till everyone else is gone. Then you’re go

“You’re crazy! Why would I do that?”

“Because,” says Grace, “if you don’t keep this a secret, everyone in Heartsdale is go

Co

“I should shoot you in the kneecap for that,” Grace says, “but I won’t because I’m not that kinda girl.”

Co

9 • Lev

It’s only a hunch. And if he’s wrong, his actions will make things worse—but he foolishly acts on his gut, because he needs it to be true. Because if it’s not true, then Co

There is a whole series of observations that are feeding into this hunch:

—The fact that the deputy comes from behind the house rather than walking out through the front door.

—The fact that he seems to intentionally avoid the other officers.

—The fact that his hat is pulled low on his forehead, shielding his face like a sombrero.

—The easy way he grips the arm of the woman he’s taking into custody—the same one who came to give Lev the message. The deputy escorts her to a police car by the curb, and Lev can tell that her behavior is off too. It’s as if she’s anxious to get to the car, rather than resistant.

And then there’s the way that officer walks—with one arm stiff and pressed to his side, as if he’s in pain. Maybe from a wound on his chest.

The two get in the police car and drive off—and although Lev can’t get a clear enough look at the deputy’s face, the hunch is pinging Lev’s brain on all frequencies. Only after the squad car has driven away does Lev convince himself that this is Co

Lev knows that when the car reaches the end of the street, it will have to turn right on Main, and now he’s thankful that he had spent most of the day searching the town, because he knows things he might not otherwise know. Such as the fact that Main is in the midst of heavy construction, and all traffic will be diverted down Cypress Street, two blocks away. If Lev can cut through a series of front and back yards, he can get there first. He takes off, knowing if he makes it there, it will only be by seconds.

The first yards have no fences. Nothing dividing one property from another except for the state of the grass—well tended in one yard, neglected in the next. In a moment, he’s tearing across an adjacent street to the second set of yards. There’s a picket fence in the front yard of the next house, but it’s a low one, and he’s quickly able to get over it, onto artificial turf of a weird aquamarine shade.

“Hey, whad’ya think you’re doing?” a man shouts from the porch, his toupee as artificial as his lawn. “This here’s private property!”

Lev ignores him and runs down the side yard to the back, coming to his only major obstacle: a wooden fence six feet high that divides one backyard from another. On the other side of that fence a dog begins barking as Lev climbs. He can tell it’s no small dog either.