Not to Leroy, Margaret, Ray, Donald, Virginia, Sadie, the baby, or the other members of the Caddo tribe that Darren had hardly gotten to know. He never talked to Marnie or Dana again, or Gil Thomason, who was looking at a good stretch of time inside the facilities of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Their trailer soon to be bulldozed, Marnie had moved her kids into a motel off Highway 59, just south of Jefferson. He drove by it on his way out of town, looking for a towheaded boy with tight, chip-heavy shoulders. He saw Dana watching Levi at the pool, Marnie sitting with a foot dipped into the deep end, not a one of them wearing a proper bathing suit. They were laughing at something Levi had said. Darren took one long last look at the boy, hoping like hell he was right about the kid and Greg was wrong, that after all this he wouldn’t one day meet up with a nineteen-year-old Levi King, a man-child with SS bolts inked on his wrist.

Camilla

HE WAS back to staying in the house where he’d grown up, the homestead in San Jacinto County, his beloved Camilla. He didn’t put a date on his return, just told Lisa he needed to be close to it for a while. Home. She didn’t press it, had felt buoyed by her ability to help Darren for once, clearing the interlopers out of what was now the home of the Hasinai band of Caddo Indians of Marion County, Texas, their petition to the Bureau of Indian Affairs going through with new documents that carried none of the mercenary stink of Sandler Gaines. She had shared a part of him, his work, and that was enough for now. If he wanted space—and she was granted a few more days without having to answer any questions—she was happy to give it. It was weird for Darren, commuting into the city to get to the Rangers office in Houston, weirder still to walk into his lieutenant’s office on his first day back and find a piece of San Jacinto County staring him in the face.

District Attorney Frank Vaughn was sitting across from Wilson, who was standing behind his desk, arms crossed as tight as if two pythons were taking the breath from a grown man. He was staring at something resting on top of the papers and file folders on his desk. The plastic bag it sat in caught the light and Darren didn’t know what it was until he saw the red tape across the top of the bag, the word EVIDENCE. He didn’t move, didn’t take a step forward. Vaughn turned around in his seat and saw Darren had entered the room. He shot him a grin that could cut glass. “And here come this ol’ boy now,” he said.

The gun, a snub-nosed .38 revolver, was sitting on Wilson’s desk.