Somebody laughs, but I don’t know who because Wilma is right on Snake’s ass, and before I can think the stranger turns, sees Lincoln, and grabs for his gun. I pull my trigger, but Lincoln shoots him first, right under the breastbone, probably in the heart because the stranger drops like a steel girder hit him in the chest.

When the others spin, they’re staring straight into our raised weapons. My heart is pounding so hard my vision blurs, but my brain can’t fix my gaze on any object for more than a fraction of a second anyway. All it registers is eyes: panic in Wilma’s, rage in Alois’s, and Snake’s ravenous eyes vacuuming up details, devouring everything—

“Hands up or die!” Lincoln yells. “You’ve got two seconds!”

Alois goes for his gun.

Lincoln swings his aim onto the kid, but before he fires Snake drives his elbow into his son’s arm, ensuring he can’t get to his gun.

“Stand down, goddamn it!” Snake yells. “They’ve got us!”

For a couple of seconds Alois looks like he might still go for his gun, but the urgency in his father’s eyes—and the hate in Lincoln’s—finally tips the balance.

The acrid stink of powder fired in anger hurls me back to nights when I was the one who did the killing, and my stomach threatens to betray me. The man on the floor is already dead, thank God. I don’t know if I could stand here watching a stranger gurgle out his last living breaths.

“People heard those shots,” Lincoln says. “You want to talk to him, get to it.”

It takes a few seconds for me to regain control, but then I motion toward the sofa with my pistol. “I want to talk to all of you. Get over on the couch.”

“Fuck you,” snarls Alois, his blue eyes filled with contempt.

“Shut him up,” Lincoln growls at Snake. “Or I’ll blow his fucking spine out.”

“Alois,” Snake intones.

The kid’s eyes drip disdain.

I can’t get over Snake’s appearance. Someone has transformed him from a wild-haired hell-raiser into a dyed-black, Brylcreemed church deacon. But even this new incarnation is tied to death in my mind, to the writhing body of Will Devine dying on the floor of the Adams County courthouse—

“Throw your guns in that sink,” Lincoln orders. “Right now.”

Alois starts to say something, but Snake says, “Do it, Junior. This ain’t the time.”