Wilma settled back in the seat and closed her eyes, but she didn’t see darkness. She saw the colored girl’s mouth fly open in shock as the acid hit her. By now she was suffering the torments of hell. Deep in her chest Wilma felt a twinge of something she’d thought was dead. It was empathy. But she gritted her teeth against it when she remembered her brother’s eyes while she helped Snake and Sonny inject him with a lethal dose of fentanyl. Once you’d gone that far . . . there was no going back. You could only go forward.

What had most appealed to her about the acid attack was that by carrying it out, she would earn the respect of the VK club, who’d been handling their concealment from the FBI. And not only of the mamas—who were catty, slutty bitches—but the bikers themselves. The leader of the VK, a tough old Vietnam vet named Lars Dempsey, reminded Wilma a little of Frank Knox, or what she remembered of Frank, anyway. She wasn’t sure how Snake kept Lars doing his bidding. In that world, the big ones ate the little ones, and she couldn’t see a man of Snake’s age surviving for long. But she had to give him his due: it had been almost three months since Forrest died, and the VK were following Snake’s orders like an obedient army.

I guess the Knoxes are just born leaders, she thought, half resentfully. And I reckon that’s a good thing, ’cause without Snake I’d be in jail or dead in a ditch right now.

Chapter 7

“You did well, washing her face and eyes so thoroughly,” says Drew Elliott, holding a penlight to Keisha Harvin’s cheek. “You mitigated some of the external damage.”

My father’s younger partner has been working over Keisha for half an hour, but he only let me into the St. Catherine’s ER treatment room two minutes ago. He’s been applying a solution of something called calcium gluconate to every affected surface of Keisha’s skin. To my relief, he’s given her an IV narcotic for pain, and she appears to be unconscious, which makes it easier for me to remain calm while he examines her facial skin under the light.

“Will she suffer any permanent vision loss?” I ask.

Drew looks up at me, apparently confused. Then softly he says, “She’ll probably lose her sight, Penn. Forever. We won’t know for a few hours yet. I’ve called in Pat Crosby for an ophthalmological consult. But her corneas are already cloudy. It doesn’t look good.”

This recalibration of my worst-case scenario starts my heart thumping again. “How bad will the facial scarring be? She’s a pretty young girl.”

Drew moves the beam of light down to her neck. “That’s not my main concern. The question is, will she survive?”