He resented the suggestion that he, of all people, didn’t understand the danger of the Aryan Brotherhood, that he was somehow shirking his duty to fight this particular form of homegrown terrorism. It pissed him off, frankly, made his blood run hot. He understood the threat of the Brotherhood in a way that Wilson never would, and he privately derided his lieutenant’s naivete, saw privilege in his earnest belief that the ABT was going anywhere. Darren thought he finally knew better, and it turned something heavy that had been sitting in his stomach for weeks now. It raised a sour taste in the back of his throat and put a name to what he’d been feeling: despair. Away from his daily office drudgery, the sterile combing of records that kept him off the road, he could finally admit that some part of him had merely been going through the motions these past weeks. In truth, he was the least optimistic he’d ever been that the Brotherhood and what it stood for would ever truly be eradicated. There were too many of them; in tattoos or neckties, they were out there. Everywhere. The country seemed to grow them in secret, like a nasty fungal disease that spread in the dark places you don’t ever dare to look. The country was in more trouble than any task force could handle. Darren knew this better than Wilson, better than the entire department maybe, no matter how much it scared him to admit it. He thought of Levi King and reached for the boy like a twisted lifeline, a dull ray of hope. Darren couldn’t stamp out hatred in a day, but what he could do was find a nine-year-old and give himself permission to nail the boy’s father for Malvo’s murder.

Bill King’s freedom would be the price he paid for his son’s life.

He was standing next to his Chevy truck parked a few feet from the Cardinal Hotel, a red-brick building that was a full city block long, with black shutters and a second-story balcony where four Lone Star flags flew. Briggs was out of his cruiser as soon as he saw Darren was off his phone. He hiked up the beige pants of his uniform and asked the Ranger if he was hunting for a place to eat. Briggs had a buddy who ran the kitchen at the Steamboat Palace, and he could probably get them a table. Darren looked around the nearly empty streets of downtown Jefferson and suppressed a chuckle. Even though it was only four o’clock in the afternoon, he told Briggs that unless he heard word about the search of Marnie and Gil’s trailer, he was turning in for the night. Briggs offered to help get him settled in the room, keep an eye on things, as had been his orders.

Darren made that sound foolish. “Don’t need someone to watch me sleep.”