“Don’t apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong.” I rubbed his back.

“Did you get a chance to call anyone?”

I closed my eyes and tried to keep from bursting into tears. “Yes. But I didn’t know the number for the state police, so I called Joe.”

“Did you leave another message?”

“No, he answered and I even found this house’s address on a stack of mail in the kitchen.”

“So he’s sending help?”

I stayed silent.

“Rose, what happened?”

“He told me he was coming and he’d call the state police.”

“Then why do you sound so worried?”

“Because he didn’t get my call yesterday and when I told him that Hilary must have deleted the voice mail, he got defensive of her. I got angry…”

“And?”

“And I told him not to bother coming, that I’d call the state police myself. I made him give me the number.”

“But you didn’t get a chance to call.”

I heaved a long breath. “No.”

“It’s okay. Joe will probably call them anyway. Just to make sure they got the message.”

I wasn’t so convinced, but I didn’t want to think about what was going to happen if he didn’t. “We need to move you, Mason. You’re lying flat on your face. Do you want to lie down or sit up?”

“Can you help me sit up?”

“Yeah.” I grabbed his arms and we maneuvered him into a sitting position, his back propped against the wall. I tried to undo the binding on his hands, but it was a zip tie.

“I can’t get it undone.”

“Do you still have your gun?” he asked.

“No. Deputy Gyer, the guy who showed up to help Deputy Miller, took it. Crocker had warned him that I might have a hidden gun.”

“Deputy Gyer? He’s one of them too?”

“It looks like it.”

“We never stood a chance.” He sounded disgusted. “Okay. Let’s figure out something we can use to defend ourselves. Check the hangers.”

I stood and felt around, my eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness. We had to be in a spare bedroom; there were linens stacked on the shelves and just a few articles of clothing hanging from the rod. “There are about ten plastic hangers.”

“No wire?”

“No.”

“Will the pole that’s holding them come out of its brackets?”

I lifted the rod, banging the end into the wooden shelf above it. “Yeah.”

“Be careful,” he whispered. “We don’t want them to realize we’re up to something.”

“What am I going to do with this?”

“Fight like hell.”

He was right. I couldn’t sit calmly and wait for Crocker to show up and get his revenge. But I was scared to death. I laid the pole on the floor and after a bit more rustling around, found two shorter poles in brackets, one stacked over the other. “Now what?”

“Keep searching the closet and see if you can find something to cut this zip tie.”

I searched the entire closet, finding only more linens and clothing and two objects that felt like stuffed animals only with real fur and they stunk to high heaven. “There’s nothing.” My voice broke. I sat next to Mason, discouraged. “Mason, I’m scared.”

“I know. I am too.”

I laid my head on his shoulder, trying to keep from crying. “You know what I regret most?” I asked.

“What?”

“I regret not visiting the farm sooner. I love it there. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and if we get out of here alive, I think I’m going to move to the farm.”

Mason rested his cheek on my head, his breathing slightly labored. “Not if, Rose. We will get out of this.”

I wasn’t so certain. “I also regret not telling Violet off sooner. That was a long time coming.”

“She deserved it, that’s for sure.”

“And I regret not telling you about Joe’s father and the evidence he falsified.”

“When we get out of this, it’ll be on the top of my list of things to deal with.” His tone was stern.

I still didn’t want him to get tangled up in the whole mess, but this hardly seemed like the time to say so.

“I have regrets too,” he said softly. “I regret being so harsh with you when we first met.”

“Mason…”

“And I regret that Joe met you first. I lived in Henryetta before you two started dating. In theory, I could have met you before you and Joe became involved.”

“I’m not the same person I was then, Mason. I’m not sure you would have noticed me.”

“Joe did.”

“Because he thought I was a suspect. He only paid attention because it was part of his job. He insists that’s not true, but he’d lived next to me for a month before we so much as exchanged a word. The first time we spoke was when I knocked on his door after I found Momma’s body.”

We were silent for a moment.

“I can’t regret Joe,” I whispered. “He’s part of who I am today.”

He kissed my forehead. “And I would never ask you to regret him. I didn’t mean it that way. I just wish that we could have had more time together.”

“What would you have done if Joe and I didn’t break up?”