Mason ducked down and to the left, swung his right arm up and knocked Yancy’s pistol hand away from his head. Yancy squeezed the trigger but not nearly in time. The pistol fired, loud, above Mason’s head, the shot somewhere high and wide, nowhere near its target.

Before Yancy could recover, Mason swung around, tackled him in the midsection, driving him back across the clearing and into the hood of the Ford, Yancy hammering down on his head with the pistol the whole time. Mason ignored the blows, launched Yancy hard against the front of the truck, and swung him around. Crashed down to the ground, landed on top of him and knocked the wind from Yancy’s lungs. Pinned the drug dealer’s pistol hand to the mud and focused on prying the weapon out of his fingers, while Yancy focused on battering Mason’s face in with his free hand.

But Mason had taken worse shots, and Yancy wasn’t much of a fighter. In short order, he had the pistol prized free, and he squared it at Yancy and watched him quit fighting, just lie there and breathe heavy and glare at the gun.

Mason stood, kept the pistol trained. “Get up,” he told the dealer.

Yancy stood, and Mason kept a couple of yards between them. Caught his breath and let Yancy catch his.

“I’m not a cop,” Mason said again. “But I’m not here to buy your crank, either. I just have a couple more questions for you. You think we can have an actual conversation?”

Yancy nodded, his eyes still on the gun. Mason tasted blood, touched his mouth; the drug dealer had busted his lip.

“That ship back there,” he said, gesturing to the water. “I guess that’s where you cook.”

Yancy spat some blood of his own. Nodded again.

“Ty cook there too?”

Yancy studied the gun for a moment. Then he shook his head. “Ty had his own setup inland, up in the hills a ways,” he said. “Somewhere off the main-line logging road, tucked behind some old clear-cut. Wasn’t nobody but Ty knew the actual location.”

“Ty ever come around here?”

“Maybe once or twice. Would have been a social call, though; we didn’t never do business together.”

“What about Harwood?” Mason asked. “He come up here?”

“What, the deputy?” Yancy laughed. “Shit, every now and then.”

“You all do business?”

“Me and Harwood? That depends on your definition of ‘business,’ I guess,” Yancy said. “He come around when he wants some shakedown money, make sure we know we only exist ’cause of his good graces.”

“Same with Ty?”

“I assume so,” Yancy said. “There’s not much goes on in Deception Cove that Kirby Harwood doesn’t know about. I don’t imagine Ty Winslow would constitute an exception.”

“Yeah,” Mason said. “All right.”