Page 129 of Confessions of the Dead

What makes you say that?

Maro:

[Agitated] Just answer the damn question. I’ve answered all yours.

Analysis Note: I didn’t recognize the voice, but someone told Sordello not to answer. Told her she’d be brought up on charges if she did. She did not seem to care.

Sordello:

Yes. That is Riley Sanchez.

Analysis Note: The same voice told Sordello her career was over. I heard that a moment before three soldiers rushed Sordello’s chamber. Sordello pulled a gun from the folds of her jacket and leveled the barrel at the soldiers. A standard-issue Glock. All three froze, their own weapons raised. Someone was speaking to them, too, but I wasn’t privy to that conversation. That someone clearly told them to stand down. Their weapons remained on Sordello, but nobody fired. She stood, far too calmly, went to the door, and engaged the dead bolt. She pressed the privacy lock, which I later learned prevented the door from being unlocked from the outside—even with a key—then she loaded all the folders she’d held back into the pass-through and shoved the drawer to the subject’s chamber, where he began to retrieve them.

Sordello:

We don’t have much time, Deputy Maro.Youdon’t have much time. I’m going to tell you what I can, and I need you to listen to me very carefully.

101

Sheriff Ellie

ELLIE COULD SEE NOTHING.

With the door closed and the windows boarded up, not a sliver of moonlight found its way into the Pickerton house. The interior was freezing, like stepping into a walk-in refrigerator, like opening the door on a harsh winter night and stumbling out into the cold.

A light came to life and flooded the corner of the room.

Buck holding a flashlight.

What she saw made no sense.

The walls, the ceiling, the floor—all were covered in ice.

“It’s like a goddamn ice cave in here,” Buck muttered, swinging the beam around the room. “Where’s it coming from?”

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