“Talk to me, boss,” the Redbone said.

Ozan’s voice brought back a memory of last night: pulling away from Cherie Delaune’s house trailer, after giving the Redbone thirty minutes alone with her. “How’d it go?” Forrest had asked. “You ruin her?” Ozan had laughed and said, “Oh, yeah, boss. Next time Ricky try to hit that, he gon’ fall in.”

Forrest forced the lurid scene out of his mind. “I want you to find out everything there is to know about the mayor of Natchez, Mississippi. Especially people with grudges against him. A former prosecutor always has a shitload of enemies rotting in prison. You need to check Texas, mainly.”

“No problem,” Ozan said, sounding enthusiastic. “I bet Huntsville is full of guys who’d like to carve his liver for him.”

“If we’re lucky, some of his old pals have wound up in Angola in the past few years.”

Ozan laughed. “True dat, boss.”

“Call Snake, too. He’s gonna hear that Henry Sexton and Cage went to see Sheriff Dennis with some bone they pulled out of the Jericho Hole, and I don’t want him to panic. Reiterate what I said last night: nobody touches Henry Sexton unless I give the word. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Find out about Cage’s fiancée, too. The newspaper publisher.”

“Lookin’ forward to it, boss. She’s a hot one, that girl. I seen pictures.”

Forrest ended the call there, but Ozan’s predatory laughter echoed in his ears for a long time.

CHAPTER 36

“I CAN’T BELIEVE you kept this from me!” Caitlin snaps, her eyes flashing with anger. “What else have you held back?”

She’s talking about Glenn Morehouse and his interview with Henry Sexton. There’s nothing quite like confronting an angry and intelligent woman who also happens to be your lover.

“You obviously figured out Morehouse was a Double Eagle on your own,” I point out. “I didn’t need to tell you.”

“But the time I lost.”

“Are you in a race?”

“Oh, come on. That’s all journalism is, and with Shad or Lincoln tipping out-of-town papers, this story’s going to break fast.”

“You want to take over Henry’s story, don’t you? And you swore to me that you wouldn’t.”

Caitlin is one of those rare people who never seem to blink, and now she focuses on me with the eerie intensity of a serpent watching a bird it intends to devour. “I didn’t know how big this thing was when I made that promise. I want to know what else hasn’t been made public.”