Cody leaned down next to her face. His lips pulled back, and he showed off a gap-toothed snarl. “You see that you got us the wrong brother now?”

Jessa tried shaking her head, but Cody held her by the hair. “Marshall was with his girlfriend.” She cried. “Wouldn’t even pay attention to me. There wasn’t no way I’d be able to separate him from her.”

“Then you knew you brought us the wrong brother?”

Cody slammed her into the side of her car and grabbed her throat. Her voice strained when she spoke. “What else did you want me to do? I couldn’t just start a fight with Brystal in the middle of the bar. Marshall would’ve been on her side. Thought the next best plan was for me to bring y’all Mack. If he don’t know what y’all want y’all can use him to trap Marshall.”

Neither of the Eli brothers argued with Jessa. “Can y’all let me go now? I did the best I could and at least got y’all one of the Dooley brothers. It won’t be hard for y’all to get the other one.”

“We’ll have to clear it with Brother Jessup first. He’s the one who specified which Dooley to bring us.” Cory jerked me off the ground and wrenched one of my arms behind my back. It brought me up to my tiptoes, and he led me toward the church entrance.

“Hey,” Jessa said, and I could hear her trying to get away from Cody, “I’ll give y’all back the money y’all gave me. I ain’t even spent none of it yet. Just don’t make me go see that preacher.”

Cory stopped me at the church doors. A faint glow came from the sanctuary, and a big cross made a shadow over the room. We waited for Cody to bring Jessa, but he struggled to get a hold of her. She kicked and clawed, and when he had enough of that, he let a backhand across her face that dropped her to the pavement. She fell in a heap by her car, and he scooped her up like a sack of groceries.

“You got the keys?” Cody asked.

Cory said, “Ain’t you got ’em?”

“You leave ’em in the truck?” Cody nodded over at it.

Cory said, “I ain’t had ’em on me.”

“What the hell, Cory?”

“Just knock on the damn door.”

“Don’t let him hear you talk like that.”

Cory got stiff when his language got mentioned and hushed up faster than a Sunday morning altar call. Cody pushed me against a window, so my face smushed against it, banged on the door, rattling the whole frame.

Randy Jessup moved like a silhouette in the dark. He’d rolled his shirt sleeves to the elbows and changed into khakis instead of funeral black. He approached the door without his eyepatch on to hide the thick scar tissue where an eye should’ve been. He took in the scene outside with his good eye and unlocked the door.