But that night, in the impermeable darkness that seemed to draw down on the valley like a great shroud, the primeval beauty of eastern Kentucky turned inside out with the grotesque grandeur of bat wings, unfurling in the silence, feeding Drinkwater’s dread and guilt and remorse.Would she ever see Grove again? Would they find him dead at the bottom of a coal mine? Would Drinkwater be blamed by the Bureau for Grove’s erratic behavior after it all hit the fan? The questions plagued her throughout most of that night, despite the old man’s and his granddaughter’s best efforts to distract her. They played gin rummy on a little fold-down table in the reeking camper, they finished the old man’s bottle of Jack Daniel’s, and they studied old blueprints and maps of the Wormwood mine as it had been in its last year of operation—1972—discussing escape routes and possible exit points up north in the Green Ridge preserve through which Grove might emerge.Grove’s two handguns sat on the table next to a bowl of pork rinds like dead soldiers.Drinkwater spent a lot of time staring at those two handguns, and the ammo magazines lying next to them—bad-luck charms taunting her.
