Jake swayed when he got to his feet. He held onto the stack of haybales for balance. The glass bottle tipped and clattered against the wood floor. "When you told me what Dan Tanner showed you, I thought everything was ruined, but then there was the whole thing with Hobbs and you nearly killed yourself in the damned river, and it all got mixed up in your head." He burped and the sound of it made him laugh. "I made the best surprise for you in the world, little sister. You're going to love it." He flung his arms wide in a grade, sweeping gesture.

"What the hell, Jake? You turned the whole freaking town into a sound stage?"

He beamed at me like a proud father.

Rage boiled in my gut and I shoved him hard enough to make him stagger back against the wall of hay. "What the hell is wrong with you? Everything that happened today--The blood, the empty house, the cops, the damn demonic pastor with his weird bloody sacrifice and the old lady that beaned me over the head—that's all part of some sick show or something?"

The snicker that came out of his mouth lifted my fury to homicidal proportions. I knew if I pushed him hard enough, he'd fall. No one would find him to morning. The odds of surviving would be next to nothing.

Self-awareness washed over me like an ocean wave.

I was as capable of murder as my father.

That was enough to drain away whatever had been empowering me. On shaking legs, I turned to go to the ladder and began climbing back down. "Aw, come on, Jess. You don't understand."

Halfway down, I paused and looked up at him.

"You don't understand. This isn't anything that's ever been done before." He was pleading now, a child begging. "It's epic. It'll—"

"Change humanity," I finished for him. "It's something that's never been done before."

"Yes!" He tottered forward and for a moment I wondered if he'd fall to his death even without my help, but he managed to stay on his feet.

"I'm leaving," I said. The words tasted flat and metallic on my tongue.

"You can't do that."

"Because of a promise I made when I was a child? Don't be stupid. You don't even know what I promised her." My feet reached solid ground and I walked away from my brother. It took me three minutes to gather my things from the house and, though I made no effort to be quiet, my father never emerged from his bedroom. A moment's guilt about driving drunk slowed me down when I slipped the key in the ignition, but I couldn't bring myself to stay even a single hour longer. I turned the key and the lights blazed to life, illuminating my brother, standing near the back door of my father's house, watching me.

He's a killer, Jess. Don't leave him alone. Keep an eye on him, always.

For the first time in my life, I realized there was a chance my mother hadn't been talking about my father when she offered up her dying words.

I slammed the gearshift into reverse and backed onto the empty street.

It's empty because it's all fake.

Don't be an idiot. The streets in this Podunk town are always empty at this time of night.

I glanced at the dashboard. Two AM.

The streets twisted and turned in time with the river and I drove at half the speed limit, desperate to leave town but also scared to death of losing control and falling into the water again. I tried to think back to what Jake told me last night when I arrived at my father's house.

"It's a contained environment," he said. "Privacy is everything."

But that wasn't possible. I'd have noticed if I was indoors all day. I remembered the first time I walked into a soundstage. Everywhere there were cameras and screens, boom mics, rolls of cable and people—more people that you could ever imagine. There were people for every conceivable job and most of those people had assistants, and the assistants had assistants, and those assistants had interns. No one could mistake a sound stage for a real-world setting.

Except, when you were in a scene, in a really fantastic set, you almost could. It would depend which angle you looked from, where you focused your gaze.

Okay, so let's say this was a stage. Let's assume it's super elaborate and, from where I'm standing, so to speak, I can't see the set up.

I rolled to a four-way stop by the elementary school and took a left turn.

How did I enter it without noticing?

I thought back to my trip into town. Nothing unusual happened. I'd driven that strip of road a thousand times in my life, pulling off the Interstate and pointing the car southward, going around the round-a-bout, past the golf course, and under the bridge—The bridge. That had to be the entry point. It was wide enough to accommodate two sets of train tracks and a paved road, practically a tunnel. I hadn't noticed anything weird when I came through, but then again, I hadn't been looking.

I was in town now, passing beneath the stoplight which was flashing yellow since it was between the hours of eleven thirty PM and five AM. Pretty old fashioned lamps, made to look like gas lights lined both sides of the street, but no other lights shone in town. Everyone was tucked in bed and sound asleep. Or maybe everyone had packed up and gone home for the night.

Except, up ahead on the left, lights blazed in a little yellow and white building. Mindy was awake in the bakery. My thoughts rolled through my mind like ball bearings dropped on a polished concrete floor. I pulled into a space in the tiny lot behind the bakery. It occurred to me, as I banged on the kitchen door, that I'd probably scare the poor girl half to death showing up like this at two o'clock in the morning. Lord only knows what I looked like in my sweats with wild hair and bloodshot eyes and a big old bruise smack in the center of my forehead.

The gingham curtain over the door's window twitched and there was a flash of bright eyes and then the bolt thwacked into the open position and Mindy pulled the door open.

"Jess? What in the world?" She pressed a bony hand to her breastbone. "Come inside out of the cold."

Suddenly, I remembered watching Mindy sitting at the kitchen counter when I was with Dan, and I knew if I went inside, Jake would see me there. I stood, rooted to the doorstep, unable to explain my paranoia.

It's not paranoia if they really are after you, Jake teased in my head.

"I can't come in." The words come out in a whisper, though I hadn't meant them to. Afterward, though, I was glad I'd been quiet. Who knew how many cameras there were? How well they could hear?

"What happened to you? Is everything okay?"

Mindy tapped her fingers against the door frame. Her gaze roamed the darkness behind me.

I looked upward and saw stars. Apparently, the storm had blown away. How hard would it be to create a fake sky--one so convincing the observer would never give it a single thought? I wish I knew anything about astrology. I had only the vaguest notion of constellations and their proper place in the sky. "No, everything is not okay. I'm leaving. Now. If you want to come, you've got to get your stuff and get in the car."

"Now?" Mindy turned so her back was to me. Her arms flitted at her sides, as if she were a hummingbird struggling to take flight.

"I know it's late. I know this sounds crazy, but I've got to go, right now. I can't wait."

"Okay." She spun to face me again, balancing on the tips of her toes. "Give me two minutes to grab my stuff."

Her quick, unquestioning acceptance surprised me, but I found I was somewhat relieved to have a companion at my side. I told her I'd wait in the car and slipped back into the Audi. I kept the engine running, the lights on, the doors locked. Nothing around me moved. On the radio, the announcer told me that the current temperature was twenty-seven degrees and the county had deployed salt trucks in response to the earlier storm.

If there was budget enough to create a fake sky and fake weather, creating a fake radio station would be no trouble at all.

In the distance, I saw a flashing green and yellow light. The salt trucks, as mentioned. Proof that the announcer spoke the truth? Or another elaborate detail.

Why would Jake do this to me?

I pressed the heels of my hands to my burning eyes and fought the urge to take off right that second, leaving Mindy behind.

She took longer than two minutes, but not more than five. I hit the unlock button and she slipped in and tossed a duffle in the back seat. Her wide grin made her eyes crinkle at the corners. "Let's go on an adventure."

There was nothing in the world I wanted less than adventure at that moment. It occurred to me that I should let her drive, but I couldn't bring myself to relinquish that one last measure of control, so I backed out of the space and pulled onto the main street just in time to see the salt truck turn off that road. Less than two miles separated us from the bridge I'd passed under when I came into town. As if the forty-mile-per-hour signs didn't exist, I punched the gas and let the speedometer climb toward seventy.

Mindy giggled nervously and pressed her hands together between her denim-clad legs. "You really are in a hurry to get out of here."

"You have no idea," I said. The bridge was in view now, a wide shadow arching over a rectangle of darkness.

Mindy shifted in her seat, leaning forward against her seatbelt. "What is that?"

"What?"

"Slow down, Jess."

No way did I have any intention of slowing down. The needle edged up to seventy two.

"Jess, stop, there's something there!"

She was right. The darkness under the bridge wasn't right, not the soft velvety darkness of night, but something dull and uneven. My foot slammed against the brake pedal and the car skidded sideways so the passenger side now led us down the road, closer and closer to what I could now see were heavy metal doors of some kind. Yanking hard on the steering wheel helped us almost complete the turn. Impact centered on the passenger's-side brake light. The unmistakable crunch of glass and metal added to the clatter of tires screaming against pavement.

Mindy sat huffing with her hand pressed to her heart.

My fingers hurt from clutching so tightly to the steering wheel. "They closed the road."

"I didn't even know they could do that."

"You'd be amazed what they can do." I took a deep breath and slid my foot over to the gas pedal, but I kept my speed much more reasonable as I headed back into town.

The salt truck passed in front of us, crossing from one side street to another, it's light slicing through the still silence of the scene.

"Where are you going?" Mindy asked.

"There are other roads out of town." Four, that I could think of. All, save this one, required crossing a bridge to get over the winding river. We had to go back through the center of town to get out.

"Do you have a cell phone?" I asked.

"Yeah, of course."

"Mine," I almost laughed and bit it back, recognizing the same hysteria that had overcome me in the barn. "Got wet," I finished. "Will you dial a number for me?" I wanted Aiden to know where I was. I wanted to hear his voice. What I really wanted was for him to swoop in and save me like a knight in shining armor, feminism be damned, but I recognized that as impossible. I'd have to settle for having my first two wants. Aiden's number rolled off my tongue like a magic spell. I waited to hear the faint sound of ringing, but the screen of Mindy's phone flashed twice, drawing my eye.

No signal.

A sound that wasn't quite a scream nor exactly a growl burst out of me and I smacked my palm against the steering wheel three times.

"You going to tell me what's happening?" Mindy asked with a nervous giggle behind her words.

"I'll tell you after we get out town." Maybe. If we get out of town.

"What's that?" She asked again, this time pointing not at the road straight ahead, but in the distance where a glow lit the sky.

In my mind, I navigated a map of the town. The bridge, the market, and the bakery stood behind us along the main street. Ahead, the flashing yellow light indicated the crossroads around which the little shops of the downtown area were centered. If I was to turn right there, go one block, turn left and go one block further, I'd be at the church. I'd be about where that glow came from.

What compelled me? Even now, I can't say, but for some reason, maybe I really had gone mad, I turned right beneath the yellow light and left at the first intersection. From there, I could see the church engulfed in flames. Not a fire truck was in sight anywhere, but Alma James stood in the middle of the street watching the building burn. She had a huge gas can at her feet.