The Bodies Left Behind

gonna be happy.”
    Gandy dragged Brynn along the path. He snarled, “You scream, you say a word, you’re dead.”
    “You’re the one screamed,” she couldn’t resist saying. And was rewarded with another fist in her face.

    THE CAMPER WAS filthy, filled with plates of old food and discarded beer cans and clothing and other trash.
    And it was hot. A half dozen metal pots sat on two propane stoves. Canisters of anhydrous ammonia lined one wall; a workstation for cutting apart lithium batteries was in the corner. There were also huge piles of matches.
    Gandy pushed Brynn inside and tossed her knife on a table.
    “Who’s she?” said a scrawny, twitchy young man in an Aerosmith T-shirt and filthy jeans. He hadn’t shaved in some time or washed his hair. His fingernails were black crescents. A heavier man in overalls, with curly red hair, looked Brynn over.
    The overweight woman who’d slugged her with the club said to a little girl, about nine or ten, in a shabby T-shirt and stained denim skirt, “Keep going. You’re not through yet.” The girl—Amy, the stepdaughter, Brynn assumed—blinked at the visitor and returned to filling larger plastic bags with smaller ones containing the finished product.
    The skinny man said, “Lookit her face. It’s all swole up. What’s going—”
    “Shhh,” the heavy one snapped. “What’s the story?”
    Gandy grimaced. “She’s a deputy, Rudy.”
    “Bullshit. Dressed like that? And she’s a fucking mess. Look at her. . . . She’s from Fletcher’s crew.”
    “I saw her ID.”
    Rudy was looking Brynn over carefully with a disgusted visage. “Well, fuck me. Police? I don’t want to burn this place too. Fuck, I don’t want to do that. After all this work.”
    Brynn muttered, “There are troopers on the way—”
    “Shut up,” Gandy said, though lethargically, as if it would take too much effort to hit her again.
    The skinny one, obsessed with her face, picked at the speed bumps on his forearm. Gandy, the woman and Rudy didn’t seem to have been slamming their own product. Which didn’t put her at ease; it meant they’d make rational decisions about protecting their operation. And that meant killing her and finding Michelle and doing the same. She remembered how casually Gandy had offered his ID; because the man had known she’d be dead soon.

“Mommy . . .”
    The woman slapped her own thigh twice. Apparently a command meaning: Be quiet. Amy instantly stopped speaking. This infuriated Brynn—and broke her heart.
    The woman’s fingers were stained yellow. Though she probably wasn’t a tweaker herself, she clearly wanted a cigarette. But lighting up in a meth lab would be like using a match to find a gas pocket in a coal mine.
    Rudy asked, “Was she alone?”
    “No. Somebody was with her. She got away. They claim a couple of guys’re after them. I saw ’em. But I don’t know what’s going on. Something about a break-in in Lake Mondac. It’s about five miles—”
    “I know where it is.” Rudy walked close. Examined Brynn’s wound. He announced, “’S’a setup. Fletcher called them, had that ho of his do it, I’ll bet. The skanky redhead. Said we were here. Didn’t have the balls to come up against us himself.”
    Gandy said, “I don’t know. How the hell could he find us here? We covered all the tracks.”
    Rudy’s eyes went mad for a moment and he leaned into Brynn’s face, raging, “Talk to me, bitch. Talk to me! What’s going on? Who the fuck are you?”
    Brynn had dealt with the emotionally disturbed. Rudy was out of control, running on pure anger. Her heart beat fast, from both present fear and past memory of Keith’s fist strafing her jaw.
    When she said nothing he screamed, “Who are you?” He pulled a pistol from his taut waistband and pushed it against her neck.
    “No,” Brynn whispered and turned away, as if avoiding the challenging eyes of a mad dog. She managed to say evenly, “There’ll be state troopers and county deputies and tactical backup in the area anytime now.”
    The woman dropped the club on the counter. “Oh, no . . .”
    But Gandy was laughing. “No way. She had a fucking spear. She was on the run from some assholes broke into a house around here. What she told me ’s the truth. No police, no troopers. Oh, and no choppers in the county. She told me they don’t use them around here for tactical work. Only medical. That answers one of our questions.” He smiled at Brynn. “Thanks for