“You’re a real piece of work, Burke,” he said. “You’d think a guy like you would have learned something the first go-around, but you can’t keep your nose out of trouble, huh?”

Mason said nothing. Assumed he’d been pistol-whipped from the way his ears were ringing. He put his hand to the side of his head, felt blood.

“I should just put you down,” the deputy continued. “Right here and right now. You think anyone would give a shit if some murderer bought it?”

“Have to be pretty gutless to shoot an unarmed man,” Mason said. “Then again, you all are already terrorizing a combat-wounded marine, so maybe this kind of thing is right in your ballpark.”

The deputy flinched a little bit, and he couldn’t meet Mason’s eyes.

“That make you feel big, Sweeney, what you’re doing to that woman? That kind of thing get you off?” Mason gave it a beat, but the deputy kept his mouth shut. “Or maybe you’re just Harwood’s little bag boy. Is that it?”

“Fuck you.” Sweeney glared down at him. “You don’t know what you’re kicking over, coming around here. It don’t concern you any more than your bullshit Michigan life concerns me.”

“I’m just here for the dog, Deputy. You going to shoot me, or what?”

The deputy looked up and down the road again. Then focused back down on Mason. “I could do it,” he said. “I could put you down, easy. Leave your body in the woods for the bears and the cougars to fight over, and wouldn’t nobody care one way or the other.”

“So do it. Put me out of my misery. Make your boss happy.”

“I should.” Sweeney’s gun trembled in his hand. His finger massaged the trigger. Mason stared up at him, rain soaking his face, figured at least if he died, it was warm where he was headed.

But the deputy didn’t shoot him. He relaxed his trigger finger, took a step back. Motioned with the pistol.

“Get up,” he told Mason. “We’re going to take a ride.”

“You want my advice, you need to forget about that dog,” Sweeney said.

They were in the deputy’s SUV now, headed east along the highway. Sweeney had made sure to knock over Mason’s bike as he pulled back out onto the road, ran it over a couple of times for good measure.

“Thing was a piece of shit anyway,” he’d said, smirking at Mason in the rearview mirror.

Mason hadn’t replied. Sat in the back seat and shifted his weight, his hands cuffed behind him, the steel digging into his wrists. Sweeney drove in silence for a few miles, still smiling to himself. Every now and then his radio squawked static. Otherwise, the ride was quiet.