Chapter 2

The third ring died into a fourth, and a fifth, and then the phone fell silent the way a thing falls silent when it's given up on being answered. Kessinger's hand was still frozen above the intake paper. The dust column outside the window had stopped rising and was now drifting sideways, pushed by the rotor wash of the two helicopters that had landed somewhere beyond his line of sight.

Alma was the first to move. She crossed the room in three steps, pressed the intercom button on the wall console, and spoke into it with a voice that was almost steady.

"County dispatch to Sheriff Kessinger. We have unmarked aircraft on the impound lot. Repeat, unmarked aircraft on the county impound lot. Requesting instructions."

The intercom crackled. No response.

"Sheriff," Alma said, turning. "The channel's dead."

Kessinger forced his hand down onto the desk. The phone sat silent, red and heavy, its receiver still in the cradle. He could see the ring log on his computer screen, a digital line of zeros that had never once flipped to a one. Fourteen years of nothing. He'd checked it on his first day in office, a nervous ritual he'd abandoned after a year of the same zero staring back at him.

"What do you mean, dead?"

"Like someone flipped a switch," Alma said. "I've got one bar on the repeater, and it's not our repeater."