Shit, the whole goddamn town was dying. Harwood had thought he might have to let one of the boys go, Sweeney or Dale, wasn’t really enough county resources to justify keeping them both on. So if some slick motherfucker wanted to come through waving hundred-dollar bills in Harwood’s face, well, damn. It was practically his civic duty to jump aboard, when you thought of it that way.

It was supposed to stay easy. Stay civil. Pick up a package, hand it off to Okafor’s guys, pocket ten percent for the trouble. Money rolled in. Terri-Lee got her kitchen redone. Cole and Dale kept their jobs. Hell, the whole town reaped rewards.

And then Ty Winslow got greedy.

In truth, Harwood couldn’t fault the guy for making his play. He’d have done the same thing, if the tables had been turned. He might even have been willing to deal, if Ty’s number had made sense. But Ty’s number was high, too high. It was high enough that it made more sense to beat the story out of Ty than to pay him.

He wasn’t supposed to die; that had been a mistake. Shit, though, you play the game, you might could lose. If Ty hadn’t foreseen that possibility, he’d been dumber than Harwood imagined.

Jess, though.

So maybe he’d played it wrong at first. Maybe it didn’t exactly make sense to go in strong-arming a marine. In Harwood’s defense, he’d been freaked the fuck out. No sign of the shipment, Okafor on his ass, and Jess Winslow should have been an easy fix, screwed up in the head as she was. He should have known better, and that was his bad.

But now? This bullshit, and with Mason Burke? Harwood was done feeling guilty. He was done being sorry. There was no reason for Jess to take up with Burke. There was no reason for Burke to be here at all. If Jess’d had any sense, she would have dealt out with Harwood, realized she was better off talking things over, working together. Hell, she might even have made money off the deal.

But Jess had to get cute. And so this, what was happening now, this house fire and whatever came after, this was on her. And Harwood figured he would make sure she understood that, when the time finally came to put an end to this.

Beside him, Bryce Whitmer nodded at the fire. “Best we get a move on, don’t you think?” he said. “We don’t want to be sitting here with our thumbs up our asses when the volunteers get the memo.”

Harwood turned the key in the ignition, felt his truck rumble to life. Shifted into reverse, executed a three-point turn, and drove, smelling the fire in his clothes, the road behind him hazy with low, drifting smoke.