I felt my cheeks redden. “He paid for additional security at the paper, but he didn’t cover all the reporters at home. I told my guys to watch out for Keisha when she left in the mornings, and most times she’d text them and say she was leaving. But yesterday she was running late and didn’t text anybody.”

“Sounds just like Li’l K,” Aaron said. “Always in a hurry.”

Roosevelt reached out with one of his enormous hands and gently patted his sister’s leg. Then he looked up at me again. “Do you know who done this to Keisha, Mr. Cage?”

“I don’t. Keisha said in the ER that a woman threw the acid, an older woman, but that’s all she knew. Yesterday I went to a restaurant where some of the old Double Eagle guys hang out, and I got in their faces pretty good. Pulled my gun on them. But I don’t think I accomplished much.”

The two brothers shared a look. “How about you show us where that place is?” Aaron asked. “Maybe we’ll get further than you did.”

“I’m afraid you’ll get yourselves thrown in jail.”

“I been in jail before,” Roosevelt said. “Ain’t the end of the world.”

“What about these motorcycle guys we hear been hangin’ around town?” Aaron asked. “Keisha wrote about you and one of your guys shooting two of them a few weeks back. You think this was some kind of payback for that?”

Aaron Harvin spoke without rancor, but he sounded very familiar with the concept of payback.

“I’m afraid it could have been, yes. That’s my deepest fear.”

Both young men nodded sadly, but neither implied that their sister’s present condition was my fault.

“If there’s anything you guys need,” I said helplessly, “anything I can do—”

“You can tell us where those crackers hang out at,” Aaron said. “Ain’t nobody else done no good around here, seems like. Might as well let us try.”

So I told them what I knew. The three of us spoke softly across the sedated body of their sister, our voices barely audible amid the hum and beeping of the medical machines. After we finished, both men took hold of my hands, forming a rough circle over their sister.

“We gon’ pray now,” Roosevelt said. “Aaron, you do the talkin’.”