Through the wall of Wilson’s office, he heard the constant purr of phones ringing and Rangers talking in the hall, their boots tromping across the thin industrial carpet. He had a stack of phone records sitting on his desk right now next to hundreds of pages of intercepted prison correspondence to and from members of the Brotherhood. He’d imagined he would spend the day looking for patterns and connections, cracking codes that ordered hits or sold kilos of meth or moved cash money through legit businesses selling everything from tires to beauty supplies to linoleum flooring in small towns all across the state. Since Darren’s return to work, this had been his sole contribution to the task force that had been after the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas for years.

But now Darren was being called off the bench.

“The boy’s father—Bill ‘Big Kill’ King—is an ABT captain doing a twenty-year bid at the Telford Unit up near Texarkana on a slew of drug-related charges. Sales, production, armed robbery, the works.”

Never mind that he’d skated on assault charges in a separate case that had left a black man, a father of two, dead, Darren thought.

“And, lo and behold, in the time he’s been paying his debt to society,” Wilson went on, “his wife takes up with a low-level piece-of-shit hanger-on by the name of Gil Thomason who’s done a few times inside himself, for running cons, mostly. Ponzi schemes and cheating little old ladies out of their bingo money. Word is, Bill King doesn’t want his boy around the guy anymore.”

“You think this is some kind of custody deal?”

“We don’t know,” Wilson said. “But the kid’s been gone since Friday evening.”

“That’s coming on seventy-two hours,” Darren said.

Wilson nodded, both of them knowing this didn’t portend a happy ending. “The father, King,” he said, “he swears he doesn’t know where his kid is. In fact, reports from inside Telford say he’s a mess over it. He’s begging for the sheriff’s office in Jefferson to do something, to not hold the father’s crimes against the son. He even wrote a letter to the governor.” Wilson looked down for the first time at the open file folder on his desk. Sitting on top was a handwritten letter intercepted by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice from Bill King, TDCJ no. 657372212, to the governor. King had addressed it simply to Capitol Hill, Austin. Wilson pushed it across his desk to Darren. The letter had never made it to the governor, and now it rested in his black hands. He didn’t read it, not right away. He let it sit on his lap so as not to smudge the pencil markings. He said, “Seems like a local matter.”

“Officially, yes,” Wilson said. “But I’d be lying if I told you we didn’t see an opportunity here.”

“Opportunity?”