As he walked across the gravel toward the front door, Bo could almost feel his skin crawl. He had a lot of history with this particular place, almost all of it bad and none of it involving strippers. On August 18, 2011, Andy Walton was murdered as he was leaving the Sundowners. Forty-five years to the day earlier, Bo had witnessed Andy and nine of his Klan brethren lynch Roosevelt Haynes at the clearing on Walton Farm. As almost everyone in Pulaski had known that Bo had spent his life trying to bring the men who had killed Roosevelt to justice, when Andy had been brutally murdered, Bo had been the obvious choice as the perpetrator.

Bo had been charged with the crime, but luckily, with the help of Tom McMurtrie and Rick Drake, he had been exonerated. Now, as he looked at the concrete walls of the Sundowners and its neon beer signs, which appeared dull in the middle of the day but which would shine brightly once the sun went down, Bo felt hate in his heart. Hate for this world, which had taken Jazz and Roosevelt and his mother too soon. A world where he’d believed for four and a half decades that the face of evil was Andy Walton only to learn that face was his father.

A world where the sheriff’s department would leak news of an abortion to prejudice the jury panel against one of its most prominent and best citizens.

And a world where a rich prick came to a small town, opened a bank, and gave a bunch of good people short-term loans that they couldn’t pay off, and then foreclosed on their properties, taking everything those people had worked for their whole lives. And if the prick could rape a fifteen-year-old girl and get away with it, he did that too. Why?

Because that’s the world we live in.

Bo spat on the gravel, touched the handle of his gun, and pushed through the heavy front door.

Not counting the bartender, there were three men in the Sundowners Club when Bocephus Haynes walked through the front door. Bo saw Finn Pusser at a table in the back of the place. He appeared to be dressed all in black. Next to him was a slight-looking man whom Bo didn’t recognize. Bo assumed the stranger must be Michael Zannick. Bo made eye contact with Finn, and the longhaired head of security for Z Bank gestured for him to approach. As Bo zigzagged his way through the tables of the club, he noticed the lone dancer on the big stage in the middle. She was a heavyset, buxom woman who was leaning over the stage and rubbing her breasts in the face of the Sundowners’ one spectator. As Bo walked past the stage, he couldn’t help but chuckle as he recognized the patron. “Clete, that you?”