“Lot of that going around, seems like.” Lincoln grunts and scoots forward on his seat like a man feeling drowsy.

“Sorry. The FBI thinks Wilma Deen threw the acid in that reporter’s face. Keisha Harvin.”

“Blinded her, didn’t it?”

“She’s got about ten percent of her vision left.”

“Well, then. No need to worry about collateral damage with those motherfuckers.”

In the silence after this assertion, I realize that I haven’t seen a light for several miles, other than the moon. We have to be getting close to our destination. Though I’ve seen no visual sign, I sense that the Mississippi River lies just to the west of us, a great tide of mud and water that alters the very atmosphere for miles on either side of it.

“Do you have any sort of plan?” I ask in a neutral tone. “Or do you just plan to bust into this little shack with guns blazing?”

“I can come up with something better than that. But don’t kid yourself. We don’t have any options here. You think of that house as a nest of snakes, if it helps you. But don’t start looking for some other way. There isn’t one.”

“There’s got to be. I want to see the layout. How far do we have to go?”

Lincoln taps the brakes and points through the windshield as he eases onto the dark shoulder. “Not far. We’re here, brother.”

A quarter mile ahead, a single light flickers through the trees like a distant star. Lincoln kills the headlights and stops the truck with a crunch of gravel. The high thrumming whine of night insects is so loud it penetrates the window glass.

“Rodney, Mississippi,” he says. “Get your guns. And get your game face on, Mayor.”

The trip from the truck through the nearly lightless skeleton of the old town is like walking back through history. I feel that we are the ghosts who earned the town its name. We walk past the place where the pavement gives out on the east-west access road coming in from the highway, then down the single lane that was the only real street Rodney ever had. The rifle in my hands sends energy vibrating along both arms, and my heart flutters at the realization that I cannot hear our footsteps. There’s enough humidity in the air to keep the dust settled around our shoes, so maybe that’s deadening the sound.