“And your mouth full of morphine ampoules.”

Tom lifted his arm to take in the prison visiting room. “Luxury by comparison.”

Thirty seconds passed, during which Tom looked over at the window in the door to see if anyone was observing them.

“I’m glad to see you, Walt,” he said finally. “Something happen?”

Walt shook his head. “Nothing on my end.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. Is it safe to talk in here?”

Tom nodded. “Within reason.”

“I heard about that colored reporter. The one who got acid thrown in her face yesterday.”

“People don’t say ‘colored’ anymore, Walt.”

“Well, I do. Among friends, at least. No harm done. Anyway, it seems like an escalation. I’m afraid that acid attack is just the beginning of something.”

“You and me both. Kind of puts teeth in Snake’s message about wives and children.”

Walt grunted. “That old boy makes it easy to pick a side, don’t he?”

A shadow came into Tom’s face. “Not for you. Not when the stakes are what they are.”

“The stakes are what they always were, pardner.”

“Walt. Carmelita wants you home, and don’t try to sell me anything else. She feels lucky to have you, and you’re damn lucky to have her. You keep this up for me, and you could get killed. You might not get home to her.”

The old Texas Ranger sat in silence for half a minute. Then he said, “I reckon I’ll stick a while longer.”

“Walt—”

“I figure I owe it to you.”

“You don’t owe me a goddamn thing. We’re even. We’ve been even since Korea. We each of us saved the other.”

Walt smiled in a way that cut right through Tom’s assertion. “No, sir. When we escaped from that Chinese patrol, you should have left me behind.”

“Left you? Go to hell, Garrity.”

“You know I’m right. My leg was broke. I couldn’t walk for shit. If you hadn’t carried me down that mountain, I’d have spent the past fifty years buried in North Korea.”

“Well. Whatever you think you owe me, you paid off last December, with change to spare.”

Walt shook his head. “Maybe that’s not even it now. Sometimes during the long nights, I get to thinking about Knox and his bunch. They’ve outlived their time, you know? We have that in common with them. And I think maybe they’re our burden to bear. Our evil to deal with.”

Tom nodded. “I can’t argue with that. But we haven’t exactly done a bang-up job so far.”

“Sometimes it takes a while to stir a rattlesnake out of his hole. Sometimes you gotta smoke him out.”

“I thought Penn was going to do that for us.”

“Give it time, buddy.”

Tom winced in pain as he shifted on the chair. “I don’t know how much time we have. My trial starts in three days.”