“Wait.” The ice chip she slipped in his mouth felt like heaven. “They took out your breathing tube, so your throat will be sore for a while. Here’s a pad and pen. Don’t talk.”

“What?” he repeated again, ignoring her. “How bad am I?”

“You’ll be out of the hospital in a few days. You were lucky. The bullet didn’t hit anything vital.” She kissed one corner of his mouth. “You won’t even need surgery. Your wound had already started to seal itself. You’ll make a full recovery and be back to work in a few weeks, a month at the outside.”

Something was still very wrong. “What happened to Mansfield and Granville?”

“Mansfield, Granville, and O’Brien are all dead. Frank Loomis, too. I’m sorry, Daniel. He was probably dead a few minutes after he was shot. But Bailey’s alive.”

“Good.” He said it as fiercely as he could. “What happened back there, Alex?” he asked hoarsely. “You and Luke… I heard you talking. Something about girls.”

“Granville was into something horrific,” she said quietly. “We found the bodies of five teenaged girls. He’d been keeping them prisoner. Beardsley said he thought there were maybe a dozen in all. Granville began to move them, but he didn’t have time to move them all. He killed the ones he left behind.”

Daniel tried to swallow, but couldn’t. Alex slipped another ice chip in his mouth, but this time it didn’t help. “One of the girls got away, with Bailey’s help. She’s unconscious, so we don’t have any details yet. Luke said he recognized one of the dead girls from the work that he was doing before.” She sighed wearily. “I guess he can’t forget their faces any more than you could forget the faces in Simon’s pictures. One of the girls we found was featured on one of the child-porn sites Luke’s team shut down eight months ago.”

Daniel’s stomach rolled. “God.”

“We were an hour too late.” Alex stroked his hand lightly. “Daniel, before he died, Granville said he taught Simon, that there were others, then he said, ‘I was another’s.’ ”

“Who were the others?”

“He never said.”

“Mack O’Brien?”

“Chase’s team found where he’d been living.”

“At the warehouses Rob Davis built on O’Brien land?”

“You’re half right. He’d been living in one of the warehouses the printer of the Review used for storage. Delia’s car was equipped with GPS and Chase’s people followed the signal and found all the other cars Mack kept. Luke found e-mails on Mack’s computer. He was planning to sell Delia’s Porsche, Janet’s Z, and Claudia’s Mercedes. He’d repainted Gemma’s ’Vette. Apparently he was going to keep it.”

“Wait. Mack was in a warehouse where they stored copies of the Review? Why?”

“He worked for the Review. Daniel, Mack was the paperboy. He stood on my front porch talking to me Tuesday morning, just as pleasant as you please.”

Daniel’s gut tightened at the thought of Mack O’Brien that close to her. “Shit. And nobody recognized him?” he asked hoarsely.

“Marianne hired him. She did all the admin for the paper. She’d never met him. Mack would have been just a little boy when you all were in high school. He delivered the papers when most people were asleep, and the rest of the time he just drove around in Marianne’s delivery van, watching. Mack did a lot of watching.”

“Who?”

“He watched all of them. He’s got pictures of Garth going into Bailey’s house, Mansfield delivering girls to Granville’s bunker, Mansfield -”

“Wait. Mansfield was involved in that?”

“Yeah. We don’t know how yet, but he was part of Granville’s business.”

Daniel closed his eyes. “Fuck. I mean… God, Alex.”

“I know,” she murmured. “For what it’s worth, it looks like Frank wasn’t. He got a text message yesterday morning telling him where he’d find Bailey. He thought it was from Marianne, but it was from Mack’s cell phone.”

“But Frank still falsified evidence in Gary Fulmore’s murder trial.” His voice was a dry croak, and Alex fed him another ice chip with a look of reproach.

“Use the pad and pen. Yes, Frank did falsify evidence then, but I don’t think he meant to betray you yesterday. Bailey said Frank helped her get away.”

There was some comfort in that, Daniel supposed. But still… “I wish I knew why. I need to know why.”

“Maybe he was protecting someone. Maybe he was being blackmailed.” She smoothed a hand over his cheek. “Wait until you’re strong again. You’ll investigate and hopefully come up with some answers.”

Hopefully. Daniel knew he might never know Frank’s reason, but he had to believe Frank had one. “What else?”

Alex sighed. “Mansfield hired Lester Jackson, the guy who ran me down and who killed Sheila and that young Dutton officer at Presto’s Pizza. Chase found a disposable cell in Mansfield’s pocket. The phone number matches the incoming calls to Lester Jackson’s cell phone the day he tried to kill me.”

“Journals?”

“Chase found them with Mack’s things. Everything Annette said was right. Mack had been following Garth and Rob Davis and Mansfield for a month. I think he wasn’t sure who the seventh guy was either, because he had pictures of a lot of the men in town at the beginning. But then he saw Granville standing outside the bunker and from then on, all the pictures were only of Toby, Garth, Randy, and Rob Davis. Rob was having an affair with Delia, so I guess Mack figured killing her was a double bonus. He got revenge on Delia for maligning his mother and hurt Rob Davis even more.

“Mack had pictures of Mansfield killing Rhett Porter.” She hesitated. “And he had pictures of me and of us.” Her face heated. “He was outside your house Thursday night in his van. He took pictures of us, through your window. It doesn’t appear that he uploaded them. Or anything.” She shrugged. “He wanted me to close the circle.”

She said it so matter-of-factly, while Daniel’s temper boiled. “Sonofabitch,” he said through clenched teeth, and she rubbed his hand. “Safe-deposit box?”

“If Rob Davis knows, he’s not saying. Garth has lawyered up. Eventually they may give some answers, but it’ll be in exchange for favor with the SA’s office.”

“Hatton?”

She smiled. “He’s going to be okay. He might not come back as a field agent any time soon, but he’ll live. He said he was close enough to retirement anyway.”

“Crighton?” he asked, and her smile faded.

“They found his bloody prints in Sister Anne’s room, in her blood, so they have enough to arrest him for her murder. Chase has told me that if Craig doesn’t confess, we can’t get him for killing my mother or for conspiring to hide a crime with Wade.”

“The pills you took?”

“I may never know. I don’t plan to beg him for an answer.”

“Have you seen him?”

She tensed. “No.”

“I’ll go with you,” he said. She relaxed, and he knew she’d been afraid to go alone.

“Bailey thinks he and Wade forced me to take the pills, based on some things Wade said back then, but we have nothing definitive.”

“Bailey’s awake?”

She nodded. “I’ve been hospital-room-hopping,” she said with a little smile. “You and Bailey and Beardsley and Hatton and the girl Bailey saved. Bailey said that the one thing she did remember about the night Alicia died is that Alicia put something in my soup at lunch to make me sick. She knew she was going to a party that night and she didn’t want me tagging along. She was still mad at me about the tattoo and telling the teachers about our switching for tests. Her being pissed probably saved my life.”

He tightened his hold on her hand. “Hope?”

“She knows Bailey is alive, but hasn’t seen her yet. Bailey still looks bad. Daniel, Granville injected Bailey with heroin to get her to talk.” Alex’s voice trembled. “She’d been clean for five years. Now she has to go through all that again. He was a doctor.”

“He was a cruel bastard.” Daniel forced out the words.