Uncle Bob nodded and shifted his weight until his body was blocking the view of the officers on-site.

I gripped Reyes’s arm, clawing at him as he slid off my boot. He almost brought me out of my seat as Ubie peeled off one hand and took it into his. After studying my lower extremities, a feat I couldn’t bring myself to do, Reyes glanced back at me, his deep mahogany eyes sympathetic when he said, “Bite down.”

Fear spiked like a nuclear explosion in my head. “Maybe we should—”

A sharp pop sounded in the small space, and the pain that shot through me evoked a gasp loud enough to turn the heads of those around us. Reyes’s arms were around me instantly, and I clutched on to him, buried a scream in his shoulder as the pain—a pain that had risen so high and so fast, I’d almost passed out—ebbed. When it reached a level tolerable enough for me to trust myself not to cry out in agony, I eased my hold. Only then did I realize Uncle Bob still had my hand, his thick fingers engulfing mine until all that was visible were my fingertips.

22

On a scale of one to stepping on a LEGO,

how much pain are you in?

—SIGN IN HOSPITAL

Two days after the incident that would come to be known around the world, or at least around the office, as the Great Silo Tragedy, I quite bitterly hobbled to the entrance of the New Mexico Women’s Correctional Facility, crutch in one hand, case file in the other. Cookie had managed to track down what happened to Miranda. She got a copy of the case file. It explained what had happened to her, why she’d chosen to haunt a cable car, and what became of her abusive mother.

I had a funeral to get to later in the day, but this morning was set aside for one woman and one woman only: Miranda’s mother. The woman who had abused her daughter so severely, the girl could not escape the mental repercussions even in death.

I needed to know. What she did to her daughter was unconscionable. I needed to know if she felt remorse of any kind. If she took responsibility for what she’d done. If she knew how severely her actions had affected her gorgeous child. If she cared. How anyone could do such a thing was far beyond my realm of understanding. Did it take a sociopath? Or simply an utter bitch?

I pulled some strings, namely the one I had wrapped around Uncle Bob, and had him call the women’s detention center to set up an interview. He told them I was a consultant working on a case for APD and needed to question Mrs. Nelms about an old case. Which would explain why I was sitting in front of a large pane of glass, waiting for Miranda’s mother to arrive.

She was in prison, thankfully, for her daughter’s death, but she’d never admitted to any wrongdoing. The court transcripts showed that she’d professed her innocence even after a jury of her peers had convicted her. Even after a judge had sentenced her to fifteen years in prison. She’d probably be out on parole in a couple more years. If she failed my test, I’d be waiting.

A large woman stepped into the room. I was surprised. In the mug shot from her arrest record, Mrs. Nelms was painfully thin, the lines of her face hard and cracked like the plains of an unforgiving desert. She’d gained weight while in the big house and cut her horrendously bleached-out hair. She now wore it short and didn’t look so much like a crack addict as the stalwart matriarch of a Russian girls’ school. Neither look was appealing.

She sat in front of me, her regard curious as she picked up the phone. I did the same and, wanting a clean, unobstructed read off her, said one word only.

“Miranda.”

Outwardly, she blinked and waited for me to get to my point. Inwardly, her defenses rose. Her pulse quickened. Her muscles tensed.

“Did you kill her?” I continued.

She pressed her lips together so hard, they turned white. When she finally spoke, it was with a vehemence I hadn’t expected. “I did not kill Miranda.”

I forced myself to be still as a wave of shock rushed through me. She wasn’t lying. Not completely. But I knew from Miranda’s crossing she had been horribly and unforgivingly abused by this woman. I went over the case file in my mind. They’d found Miranda’s body in the Sandia Mountains, almost directly under the path of the tram. She was too decomposed when they found her to determine an exact cause of death, but the evidence pointed most strongly to blunt force trauma to the head. She had two cracks in her skull. Either could have caused a subdural hematoma. Either could have caused her death. She also had ligature marks on her ankles and wrists and multiple discolorations along her skin suggesting massive amounts of bruising.

That certainly wasn’t enough to convict Mrs. Nelms. In fact, it would almost point to the opposite. Anyone could have taken Miranda. Anyone could have tied her up and killed her. But the prosecution had proved that Mrs. Nelms lied about how long Miranda had been missing. She’d reported her daughter missing two weeks before they found her body, but forensics showed she’d been in the wilderness at least a month. The fact that the timelines didn’t match up combined with other circumstantial evidence, like the multiple fractures and repeated visits to the emergency room over Miranda’s short life, was enough for a jury to find her guilty of a lesser charge of gross child endangerment resulting in death. The prosecution, knowing they probably couldn’t get much more, settled for that.

“I had nothing to do with her death,” she added. Though there was a boatload of resentment, there wasn’t the slightest spark of guilt in her eyes. How was that possible? I’d felt it from Miranda. Sensed it when she crossed. This woman had caused her death. She had to have.

I leaned forward, more determined than ever to get to the bottom of Miranda’s passing. “Then who did?”

“Is this why you came here? To question me on my case? The guards said it was for another case. I just figured it was about my son.”

“Marcus? Is he in trouble?”

She glared at me, making it very clear she had nothing else to say.

Perhaps she was a sociopath, and the reason I felt no guilt off her was because she simply felt none. But she’d reacted when I mentioned Marcus’s name. She’d flinched, the movement quick, almost invisible. And a wave of emotion sprang out of her. It wasn’t what I’d expected. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was fear. The kind of fear that materialized when one had done something bad and didn’t want anyone else to find out about it. Not that I had any experience in that area.

I suddenly had someplace else to be.

“Fine,” I said, placing my elbows on the desk in front of me, “you may or may not have been directly responsible for Miranda’s death, but you damn sure contributed. She’s in a better place, a place where monsters like you can never harm her again.”

Mrs. Nelms schooled her expression, refusing to say more. It didn’t matter. I had what I’d come for. What I needed to see. She had zero remorse for what she’d done. Whether she killed her daughter or not, she was a monster, and I intended to make sure she burned in hell for what she’d done.

Just in case someone in the future dropped the ball and she got sent in the wrong direction after she died, I put my hand on the glass, relaxed my muscles, cleared my mind, and stepped back onto another plane. I’d been here before. I’d seen Reyes’s eternal fire from this plane. I’d seen the flames that licked across his skin, that caressed every inch of him. And from this plane, I could see the true nature of the woman sitting before me. I could see her soul, cold and dark and empty like a giant chasm.

I swept my hand between us, brushing my fingertips along the glass partition, sweeping my essence across to her, and marked her soul. As I sat there, an energy took shape in the blackness within her. I had seen it before on Reyes. Not on his soul, but imprinted on his skin. It was part of the map to hell, a part of his tattoos, and I knew I’d sent Mrs. Nelms’s soul to the right place.