And the magistrate said the only thing that mattered: “If it is an invention, then it will be very easy to disprove.

We are going to go and inspect that cellar right now.”

And for the first time in the entire ordeal, I watched real terror cross Delilah’s face — not the theatrical grief she had worn for the town, but genuine, animal fear.

And Wayne Vance began, quietly, to edge toward the door, and found two deputies already standing in it.

We went out to the property in a convoy.

Behind stacked sacks of feed in the old timber warehouse, there was a concealed wooden door, and when it was pulled open, Vivienne stopped dead, and could not go closer, and only whispered, “That is where they kept me.” Inside were a plastic cup, a filthy blanket, crusts of stale bread, and a severed length of thick rope — and there, bolted to the wall, the rusted iron bracket, its edge still holding the frayed fibers of the rope she had spent a night in the dark rubbing through.