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“Yes, but there was no sign of Penny being dragged, and that would have left a trail Storm could follow. She was carried. Bruno was definitely big enough for that. Pierre is probably big enough. Mark—the miner—is small, so that’d be tough. And I don’t care how strong Lilith might be, if I couldn’t carry Penny, neither could she.”
“This Mark fellow. Let’s talk more about him.”
“We can. First, though, I need you to look at what I found in the cave with Penny.”
I open the bag I brought and take out the plastic canteen and wrappers. I lay them on the desk.
“Are these from here?” I ask.
“Looks like it.” She checks the protein-bar wrappers without touching them. “That’s the brand we have. We have boxes of them in the commissary, free for the taking. The canteen is definitely the brand we use. Everyone was given one on arrival. There are also extras in the commissary in case anyone misplaces theirs. Most people marked theirs. They get left lying all over the place, and no one wants to be using someone else’s by accident.”
I use a cloth to pick up the canteen and turn it over. We don’t find any markings on it.
“Check Bruno’s room for his,” Yolanda says. “But eitherway, those items definitely come from here. I’m not even going to speculate that whoever put them in that hole just happened to have the same brand of both.”
“Meaning not Lilith and not Mark.”
She hesitates, and I know she wants to find another explanation, one that doesn’t mean a member of her crew left Penny in that pit to die.
“It was someone from town,” she says finally.
“I think we need to put Pierre under house arrest. At the very least, for his own safety.”
Anders gets Pierre into “house arrest.” Once the town is done, we’ll actually have a place for that—there will be a small apartment over one of the service buildings that we’ll use for storage, in the hopes it never needs to be used for actually putting someone into semi-confinement. And now we require it before it’s even fully constructed.
For now, Pierre is put into Mathias’s apartment over the butcher shop. The problem with that is the need for a guard when we can’t spare anyone. I’m at the point of wondering whether I’m overreacting when Nanette and two others show up, demanding answers about Penny and wanting Pierre arrested.
I don’t see the beginnings of a mob—I have dealt with that before—but I do see the first inklings of serious trouble. So house arrest it is, with a rotating guard consisting of me, Anders, and Dalton. The plane carrying Kenny, Isabel, and Phil cannot arrive fast enough.
I’m on the first shift, which means hanging out in the future butcher shop and writing up my notes. The sun is dropping when Anders shows up.
“Penny’s awake,” he says, and I’m off the second he promises to take my place guarding Pierre.
I arrive at the clinic, all too aware of the déjà vu here. Two missing people. Both found seriously injured but alive. Both unconscious. Penny was stable, but so was Bruno two days ago, and we still couldn’t save him.
I won’t let that happen again, even if it means putting a guard on Penny’s door. Someone in this damn town tried to kill her, and they will not get a second chance.
I get inside to find Penny sitting up and sipping juice from a cup.
“She insisted I crank up the bed,” April says. “I said I would prefer her lying down but it was that or she’d crank it herself. She has twenty minutes in that position, and then the bed goes flat.”
Penny manages a wan half smile and says, in a papery voice, “Thank you, Dr. Butler.”
“I will leave you with Casey while I attempt to find some ice chips for you.” April turns to me. “I know you need answers, but please don’t overtax her.”
“I won’t.”
When April is gone, I introduce myself properly and then pull over a chair.
“Can you tell me what happened?” I say.
“I’ll… try,” Penny says. “But I don’t remember much after I was hit on the head.”
“That may come back.”
She nods. Then she says, her voice so soft I have to lean in to hear her, “Dr. Butler said Bruno is dead.”
“He is.”
