Snake scratched at his hairline. The dye seemed to be irritating his scalp. “Do what you gotta do. But you’ll want him around later, when the shootin’ starts.”

“I got plenty of gun hands, Grandpa.”

Snake laughed softly. “Alois is more than a gun hand. He’s a mechanical genius. You’ll see what I mean pretty soon.”

“Yeah, yeah, I can’t wait. I’m out.”

Snake hung up. Then he switched off the cell phone, removed its SIM card, and dropped it in the bowl of hair dye Junelle had left on the nearby card table. As he looked down at the black fluid, Penn Cage’s words echoed in his head: Why don’t you ask Forrest Knox that question?

“Everything copacetic, Daddy?” Junelle asked, easing back into the room.

Snake looked into the mirror at the handsome stranger staring back at him. “What do you think about Toons, Junelle?”

She took a deep breath, then gave Snake a sidelong glance. “Just between you and me?”

He nodded.

“He’s a mean son of a bitch. Paranoid. Which I guess is sort of his job. But Toons takes it too far, you ask me. He’s a fuckin’ psycho. The younger girls say he’s sick in the bedroom, too. Which in this club is sayin’ something.”

“I’m a psycho, too, June-bug.”

Junelle gave him a knowing grin. “Yeah, but you’re my kind of psycho.”

Snake gazed back into the mirror and forced a smile so that he could examine his new teeth. Damn, but they were white. Like Chiclets. Yeah . . . the new look would take some getting used to. He looked more like Brody Royal than himself.

“You okay, Daddy?” Junelle asked, lighting a fresh Salem with a kitchen match, then shaking it out and drawing deep on the cancer stick. “You look tense.”

He grunted, turning left to examine his profile.

“You want me to suck it for you?” she asked, blowing out a long stream of blue smoke. “Take the edge off?”

Leaning away from the menthol cloud, Snake turned back to the glass, thinking about his unfinished business. I wonder how far this face can take me? I wonder how close it can get me to Penn Cage—

“Daddy?”

“Later,” he snapped. “After dinner. Jesus.”

“Okay, okay. Don’t get pissy. I’m just tryin’ to help.”

He felt a flash of anger. “You wanna help?” He started to tell her to get the hell out, but upon reflection he unzipped his fly and hung his dick out instead. “Help.”

Junelle laid her cigarette on the edge of the card table and dropped to her knees with a contented smile. Hell, he thought as he disappeared into her bright red mouth. She’s probably been doing that since she was thirteen. Happier sucking dick than doing anything else.

While Junelle fulfilled her destiny, Snake thought about the Cage family.

Chapter 9