He would have to tell Mack but still try not to scare him. Darren had convinced himself on the drive over to the McMillans’ cabin at the northwest edge of San Jacinto County that there was no reason to panic. The best thing they could do now was stick with the story they’d always told, continue to keep secret the night at Mack’s house when the old man had pointed a gun at Ronnie “Redrum” Malvo’s head, furious with him for coming onto the property, for scaring his granddaughter Breanna, for all the ways he’d been harassing her for weeks.

There was a fire going inside the A-frame cabin. Darren could see a curl of smoke coming through the chimney, could smell a mix of chestnut and pine in the fireplace. He parked his Silverado behind Mack’s ancient Ford truck. There was another car in the driveway, a little Chevy Spark, red as an apple.

Darren glanced inside the compact car on his way to the cabin’s front porch. He saw a few college textbooks and a dream catcher hanging from the rearview mirror. He guessed Mack had scraped together some money to get Breanna a car so she wouldn’t have to walk around town anymore or catch a bus up to Polk County, where she was in school, so she would never have to come face to face with the likes of a Ronnie Malvo and his kind ever again.

Mack opened the door before Darren even knocked.

Inside, the TV was on, and Mack was drinking a beer and eating a ham sandwich off a TV tray, watching a game show. He didn’t bother to offer Darren a beer or even a glass of water, and that’s when Darren sensed something was seriously wrong. He took a closer look at the undershirt Mack was wearing, saw it covered in stains of a variation in color and placement that suggested he’d been in it for days. His hair was knotted in places, like he hadn’t run a comb through it in a while, and his eyes glazed over as he looked at the TV.

Darren sat down next to Mack. “Vaughn come by here again?” he said, wondering if this was the cause of what appeared to be a psychological decline of some sort. This was the most undone Darren had seen him since this all went down, and that included the night he’d cried with Darren when he realized how close he had come to killing a man. Maybe the actual doing of it was slowly starting to tear him apart.

“Listen, Darren, we got to talk.”

“I know about the gun. I know they have it.”