“Mama!”

Autumn ran into the bedroom, her eyes on her mother, not on Blessed, who was smiling at her. “Mama! Are you all right? Mama, what’s wrong?” Autumn ran up to her mother and hit her hard on the arm. Joanna didn’t move; she was looking at the bed. She took a step toward the bed but Autumn shoved her back.

“Come here now, Autumn. Come to your uncle Blessed.”

Autumn looked him dead in the eye and said, “No. You’re a bad man. Go away. Leave us alone.”

“Don’t be afraid of power, Autumn. You and I will go away together to where you’ll be surrounded by people who will value you, who will help mold you into what you’re meant to become. Your mother doesn’t understand, she never will. She’s common, unimportant, merely shackles to be cut away to free you.” He extended his hand to her, the thick veins bulging madly, purple and ugly.

Autumn yelled as she hit her mother again, “You’re horrible! Let my mother go! Mama, come back.” She kept hitting her mother, on her arm, on her shoulder, jerking on her hand.

Blessed looked bewildered. “You’re an amazing girl, Autumn—you can look at me and still you can resist me.” He slowly shook his head at the child who was staring right into his eyes. He then spoke in his natural voice, higher and sharper, with a kind of a country whine, “You’re really looking at me, aren’t you? Well, it makes sense, since you’re Martin’s daughter. I couldn’t stymie Martin either. See, you don’t know what you can do because your mother can’t teach you anything; she can’t even accept you for what you are, what you will become.

“Come here now, Autumn. You and I have a long road to travel. I imagine that idiot sheriff will be coming along real soon now. We have to go.”

Autumn didn’t move.

“You will come with me or I will have your mother hurt herself. Look, she wants to, all I have to do is tell her to pull the trigger.”

“No!” Autumn looked at her mother, who was still standing motionless, looking at the bed, the gun held out in front of her now, straight at Blessed. She looked vacant, like she wasn’t there. Autumn shook her mother’s arm hard. “You took my mama!”

“Yes, I did, but she’ll be all right if you come with me. If you don’t, I will make her kill herself.”

Autumn closed her eyes.

“Open your eyes. Stop that foolishness. What are you doing? What—?”

Dillon had taken a sip of tea as he listened to Ethan describe Blessed’s attack on Saturday night when Autumn screamed at him, Dillon! Help, he’s in the bedroom and he’s hurting Mama. Dillon!

The tea spewed out of Savich’s mouth. He had his SIG in his hand and was running toward the house in under three seconds, yelling over his shoulder, “Ethan, get your deputies outside Joanna’s bedroom window; you cover the front of the house. Blessed is here!”

He slammed through the kitchen door, Sherlock six feet behind him, heart pounding, her SIG in her hand. She was running into the back hallway when she heard a man’s voice yell, “You keep away or I’ll kill Joanna, you hear me?”

Autumn screamed at him, “Dillon, don’t look at him!”

“You look at me right now, fella, or she’s dead, you hear me?”

Savich raised his face to stare at Blessed Backman. He didn’t know what he’d expected Blessed to look like, but this pallid, middle-aged man with his stooped narrow shoulders, his baggy pants belted too high over a golf shirt, his light brown hair thinning—this man wasn’t it. He didn’t look like a bogeyman in a horrific nightmare. Except for his eyes. There was something moving behind his eyes, something corrupt, something hot and twisted. This man looked like he saw things others didn’t. He looked like he saw the flames burning in hell and warmed his hands over them. They were Tammy Tuttle’s eyes.

He watched Blessed’s face take on an immense focus, felt his ungodly need to get inside his head, to control him, destroy him. And he felt the instant Blessed realized he couldn’t get in.

Savich smiled. “I guess not, Blessed.”

Blessed’s eyes flared wild and panicked, and he howled, “No! Who are you? There can’t be two of you!”

Savich said, never taking his eyes off Blessed’s face, “Autumn, look at this man who let his gift be corrupted. Let Joanna go now, Blessed. Release your hold on her.”

Blessed swung those mad burning eyes toward Joanna. “Oh, no, the bitch will do as I say.”

Joanna brought the gun up slowly, very slowly, and she aimed it at her head.