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I fold the form back into thirds and slide it into the pocket with the card. I zip the pocket shut and tuck the cuff under the rope beside its mate. I put every one of his things back the way they were.

My jeans are on the floor where I stepped out of them. I pull them on under his flannel and work my feet into my sneakers without untying them. My ribs catch when I bend, and I don't slow down.

What I wanted back then is still mine. Nobody gets to take that from me, not the men in the masks, and not him.

"I want to talk to my father," I say. "Whatever you're keeping about him, he knows it too. I'm done waiting on you to tell me."

"Then you'll talk to him. Not tonight, and not alone." He doesn't raise his voice. "Rusk's bounty hunter is out there looking for you, and every one of Whitlock's men knows my truck. I'll drive you to the parsonage at first light, and I'll be standing right there when you do it."

Standing right there. Deciding what I get to hear, and when, and who's in the room for it.

"Fine," I say.

He studies my face, and I can see he doesn't believe me. He goes to the closet for his jeans anyway. A man in a towel can't drive anybody anywhere.

The rule is his own. He doesn't touch me on a day he's put his hands on anything in anger. He beat that heavy bag in anger today, so he won't put a hand on me tonight, not even to stop me. I'm betting everything on that.

While his back is to me, I walk out of the bedroom.

In the kitchen, I find his keys on the counter where he always drops them. I punch the release by the back door, and the light goes green. The door locks behind me without a sound.

His truck starts on the first try. Before I'm out of the yard, the back door bangs open behind me. In the side mirror, Knox comes down the steps into the porch light, barefoot, his jeans unbuttoned, shouting my name.

I don't stop.

At the bottom of the drive, Hector sees the boss's truck coming and swings the gate open. I'm through before he can see whose face is behind the windshield. In the mirror his arm comes up, and then he's grabbing for the radio on his belt.

I drive. I don't have a license or a dollar in my pocket. Somewhere out here, a woman Whitlock's lawyer hired is looking for me, and I'm in a truck Whitlock's men would know on sight.

I take the caliche county roads anyway, with the windows down and the night air cold on my face.

Long after closing time, I come out on the highway and pass the Cattle Guard. The neon's off, and the lot behind it is dark. I keep my eyes on the white line and my foot on the gas until the back lot where they took me is behind me.

Near a creek crossing on a road I don't know the name of, I pull onto the shoulder and shut off the engine. The tree frogs start up again around me.

Knox gave me Bandera, the word that ends it, before he gave me a single order in his bed. He never put a form in front of me. Out here in the dark, some ugly part of me wonders if I didn't rate the paperwork.

The rest of me knows better. He stopped the second I went blank under him that first night, and he asked me about every limit I had before he touched me again. I'm hunting for a reason to stay mad at the wrong thing.

Whatever Knox is keeping, my guess is it's tied to my father's debt. Out of every man in that church, Knox went to Coleman first, and Coleman holds that debt. If it's about the debt, my father knows more than Knox does. The debt was his.

Knox knows I want my father, so the parsonage is the first place he'll look tonight. I'm not going near it until it's light enough to see who's watching it. In Sadie's pen, Knox told me I'd be standing beside him when I faced my father. I'm going to face him with nobody beside me.

When the sky over the hills goes from black to gray, I start the truck and drive into town.

Main Street is empty except for a delivery van idling at the bakery. A man unloading bread trays from the back of it looks up at the truck as I go by. The light at the corner by the bank blinks yellow.

I turn into the gravel lot beside First Hill Country Fellowship and park by the hedge, where the truck can't be seen from the street.

Royce's knife is on the table back in the guest house. I reach behind the seat and feel around until my hand closes on the cold steel of a tire iron. I'm not facing my father empty-handed. Proverbs says a soft answer turns away wrath. I'm bringing the tire iron in case it doesn't.

I come around the front of the church with the tire iron down along my leg, and I stop at the foot of the steps.

Red spray paint covers both of the big oak doors, in letters that reach from the brass handles nearly to the top of the frame.

JEZEBEL

The paint has run in long drips down the wood and dried on the stone steps below.