Yancy looked at the gun. Looked at Mason. “Now, why would I go and do that?”

“Kicked your ass, didn’t I?”

“Bullshit,” Yancy said, nodding to Mason’s busted lip. “I got you just as bad as you got me. Maybe better.”

He took the pistol back. “Shit, Burke, if you were a cop, you’d be the most fucked-up cop I ever met, you know that?”

“I’m not a cop, Yancy,” Mason said. “Now give me those keys.”

It had been a long time since he’d been on a dirt bike. Hell, he’d been fourteen, maybe fifteen, visiting cousins on the Upper Peninsula. He’d bailed within a half a mile, nearly killed himself. Busted that bike bad enough that his cousin kicked his ass, and that had been that.

He managed to ride out of the clearing without causing a crash. Waited until he was out of Yancy’s sight to try changing gears. The engine ran, anyway, just as the man had said, and Mason found if he took the gravel road slow, but not too slow, he could get along fine.

He pulled off every now and then, paused and tried to listen, half expecting Yancy to come flying down in that truck of his, pistol loaded and blazing. Had he made the right choice giving the dealer back his weapon?

But you had to give respect to get respect, and Mason wasn’t one to make enemies of men who had no cause to hate him. He figured he’d earned Yancy’s trust when he hadn’t shot his ass, figured the dealer cared more about keeping his business afloat than measuring whose dick was bigger.

Mason took the magazine from his pocket, chucked it deep into the rain forest. Pulled out again onto the rough road, took it down to the pavement, and followed that pavement east until the road widened out and the rain forest parted, and he was at the blacktop of the highway.

Now what?

He could try to find Ty Winslow’s setup, or he could try to find where Harwood was keeping Lucy. He figured he’d turn the bike back toward town, grab something to eat at the gas station, and then see if Hank Moss knew anything. But before he could fire up the dirt bike again, Mason heard tires on wet pavement approaching, saw headlights reflected on the blacktop. In short order a car appeared and blew past Mason, and as it did, he saw it was a Makah County sheriff’s Ford Explorer. The SUV’s brake lights came on about ten yards past Mason, and as Mason watched, the SUV came to a stop, made a quick U-turn, and idled back to where he waited on the bike.

The driver’s door opened, and one of Harwood’s deputies climbed out. “Well, hot damn,” the deputy said, adjusting his Stetson and grinning at Mason. “I thought that was you.”