He’d traveled a long way to get to this place, modest as it was; six different countries in eleven weeks, and none particularly enjoyable. Andorra had been the best of them, mainly because that had been the original emergency sanctuary set up by Forrest. Billy was still living there and grateful for every bit of luxury and security that Forrest’s planning had provided. But Snake had no intention of lolling around a French-Swiss tax haven with a bunch of expatriate millionaires. He’d actually felt happier when he was sneaking through Honduras on a third-rate fake passport bought in Mexico. For him, every place he’d been through had been but a waypoint on his journey back home.

The reason was simple: unfinished business.

That was why he was sitting on a tall kitchen stool in front of a mirror while Junelle Crick, one of the VK “mamas,” worked on him with an arsenal of beauty salon chemicals that smelled fouler than some of the poisons Snake used to spray on summer cotton.

Well past fifty, Junelle sported fried blond hair, bright red lipstick, and dark blue eye shadow, and she had a Salem Menthol 100 perpetually hanging from her bottom lip. She had pendulous breasts, a flat butt, a round paunch, and wore stretch pants. Snake couldn’t have felt any more at home if he’d been in Vidalia.

Junelle had set a piece of poster board in front of the mirror so that Snake couldn’t see himself until she had finished her makeover. While she tortured his eyebrows with tweezers, Snake reflected on the past three months.

With epic daring he’d brought down an FBI jet loaded with evidence against the Double Eagles. Then, despite relentless pursuit by the FBI, he had held the gang together and silent. One of his most effective moves had been to kill Silas Groom and frame him for the downing of the jet. Groom’s death had shaken every living Eagle, each of whom had assumed that old Silas had been betraying the group by ratting to the FBI. Frank would have been proud of Snake for that one.

More impressive still, in the midst of a crackdown by Colonel Griffith Mackiever’s Louisiana State Police, Snake had managed to forge an alliance with one of the most feared and powerful motorcycle clubs in Texas and Louisiana. He’d done this by offering the VK access to Forrest’s network of corrupt cops and judges. Snake could only offer that protection because he’d salvaged and maintained enough of the Eagles’ meth trade to keep paying about a third of Forrest’s network. That had been a tough trick. The files discovered in Forrest’s Baton Rouge storage unit had resulted in several statewide investigations, some into district attorneys and judges. Snake had held on to a handful of DAs by blackmail rather than continued bribery, but all that mattered was he still had them.