And in doing so she kept something worth infinitely more than five million dollars: the truth about what had been done to her, intact and unpurchased, a crime that stayed a crime all the way to a prison cell.

Chapter 18 — The Sentences

Six months later, facing indisputable dash-camera footage, digital recordings, and an unbroken financial paper trail, Trent Prescott pled guilty to every state and federal charge against him, and received a twenty-two-year sentence in a maximum-security facility — one year, as it happened, for every year his father had ruled the county.

Sheriff Roy Prescott chose to go to trial.

It did not go well for him.