She shoved Sonny out of the way, then climbed onto the bed and lay beside her brother. Cradling Glenn’s head against her breasts, she began to sing, so softly that Sonny couldn’t recognize the tune. He thought it might be a hymn, but the more he heard, the more it sounded like a children’s song. Snake was shouting from the door that they should go, but Sonny couldn’t pull himself away.

“Get out,” Wilma said coldly. “Get out, you bastards.”

After a last look at the eerie tableau, Sonny bolted and followed Snake through the back door at a run. He could still hear the screen door slam in the night, its screeching spring like the howl of a tortured soul.

“Looks like the water’s rising,” Snake said, staring out over the moonlit backwater. “Temperature’s dropping, too. Might be good fishing tomorrow.”

Sonny had always known he was different from Snake, but in that moment he wanted to leap from the truck and run until he’d forever separated himself from this man who had led him into so much violence. But it was far too late for that. He was bound inextricably to Snake, as surely as to his own blood.

“Might be,” Sonny said, his throat parched with fear. “Maybe we’ll go out early.”

CHAPTER 23

HENRY SEXTON AND I sit locked in his war room, waiting for an escort from the Concordia Parish Sheriff’s Office. It took me a couple of minutes to reach Sheriff Dennis, who sounded as amazed as the 911 operator to get a call from the mayor of Natchez. I said nothing to him about the possible murder of one of Henry’s sources, but I did tell him I was concerned for Henry’s safety. The sheriff agreed to send a cruiser around to escort us home within ten minutes.

“They really killed him, didn’t they?” Henry says in a dazed voice.

“I’d say so. After decades of silence, this guy decides to open up to a reporter investigating unsolved murders in which he was involved. Then he dies that very night?”

“His cancer was terminal,” Henry says halfheartedly. “Maybe the stress of today pushed him into some fatal event. I mean—”

“Henry, wake up. They killed him.”

The reporter looks at me like a sailor who doesn’t want to admit that a hurricane is headed his way. “They must have found out he talked to me today. Which means I killed him.”

“Don’t even start down that road. He lived by the sword, he died by it.”

He squints at me as if trying to decide whether we’re two different kinds of men.

“Do you have any idea who might have blown your source to the Double Eagles?”

Henry stares blankly at the cracked tile floor. “I know Glenn didn’t trust his sister.”

“Glenn?”