“I’ve seen you work magic, all right. But this case reminds me of that crazy motorcycle jumper back in the seventies, Evel Knievel. He kept on adding more cars to the line he had to jump. And then he tried to jump a canyon. I think you’ve set yourself up the same way. There’s a limit, Quentin, even to genius. And you’ve got to drag that jury over the canyon with you.”

“You know what I say about that?”

“What?”

“Ain’t no hill for a stepper.”

Joe Elder looked at the place where Quentin Avery’s legs should have been. “Speaking metaphorically, of course.”

Quentin raised his forefinger and shook it at his old clerk. “What did I used to tell you before we walked into a trial?”

Elder laughed heartily for the first time. “Watch and learn, Joe. Watch and learn.”

Quentin smiled. “I knew I’d taught you something.”

Chapter 47

Snake Knox stood in darkness amid the twenty-three surviving columns of the Windsor Ruins and listened to the rumble of approaching motorcycles. It sounded like at least four to him, but he kept calm and focused on the business at hand. He’d placed lookouts on the highway covering both approaches, and now that was paying off.

5 Harleys, read the text from one of the Quince twins, two quiet but eager nineteen-year-olds enlisted by Alois.

Stay on point till I clear you, Snake texted back.

He’d chosen Windsor because of its isolation and its proximity to Rodney, but also for its history. Built only four miles from the river, the mansion and its third-floor cupola had served as an observation post for Confederate forces until the Vicksburg Campaign, when Ulysses Grant took over the 2,600-acre plantation and converted the house to a Union hospital—and observation post. Snake figured if it was good enough for the Blue and the Gray, it was good enough for him.

Tonight the ornate capitals of the great Corinthian columns stood out starkly against the moonlit clouds, giving the scene a ghostly aura that appealed to his sense of the dramatic. He wondered if the Varangian Kindred would appreciate the ambiance.

Snake had parked Red Nearing’s pickup in the turnaround in front of the ruins, to give Lars and his VK boys the impression that he was trapped here, if they chose to believe that. But Alois and the Quinces had parked three ATVs in the trees on the north side of the ruins. If Snake needed to make a quick getaway, he could do it—so long as he reached the ATVs. To that end, he’d posted Alois in a nearby tree with a rifle and a night scope, while Wilma Deen waited behind one of the massive plinths that supported the forty-foot columns. Armed with a pump shotgun, Wilma could provide a hell of a lot of covering fire in the event of a hasty retreat.