TOM FOUND THE SILVER conversion van exactly where Walt had told Melba it would be, on the south side of his office building. Framed in the open driver’s window was a face tanned so deeply that even in December it looked like varnished wood. Walt Garrity had spent thirty years as a Texas Ranger, and every hour in the sun showed on his face. But Walt’s eyes still smoldered with the fire that had driven him to hunt men across trackless wastes in the days when Sputnik was still on the drawing board and the only computers in America were in the Pentagon. In more recent years, the retired ranger had worked as an investigator for the Houston DA’s office, where Penn had first met him.

“Itty-wa deska, Private!” Walt snapped.

Tom found himself grinning. Itty-wa deska was phonetic Korean for “Get the hell over here!”

“Police car scare you?” Tom asked, walking up and slapping his hand against the van’s side.

“It didn’t reassure me.”

“City cop,” Tom said. “Probably here as a patient.”

Walt shrugged. “Will that nurse I talked to be any problem?”

“No. Mel’s good people.”

“Get in, then. There’s a full-size door on the other side. Good for crips like you.”

Tom scanned the parking lot, wondering if Sheriff Byrd had anyone watching his office. This side of his office bordered an apartment complex, and he saw no one between the buildings. Cars were passing on the boulevard to the east, but too fast for their drivers to notice anything back here. He walked around the Roadtrek and found the door Walt had described. Tom had to stoop to get through it. As he pulled the door shut behind him, he found himself in a spotlessly clean RV, small but laid out with supreme efficiency.

“We’ll stow your bag later,” Walt said. “Sit behind me till we get out of here.”

Garrity was sitting in a captain’s chair, but another seat lay directly behind him. Tom collapsed onto cushy leather and felt the van lurch as Walt put it in gear. A police radio turned down low chattered in the background.

“I’ve run down a lot of bail jumpers in my time,” Walt said. “This is the first time I ever helped one skip.”

“Thanks for getting here so fast.”

“Hell, I’m just glad for the chance to make up for last time.”

Two months earlier, the old Ranger had tried to help Penn with some dangerous business, and he’d failed in a way that left Walt thinking that age had finally robbed him of the ability to do what he’d done so well for so long.

“Glad to accommodate you,” Tom said. “Get this kimchee cab moving.”

He expected a belly laugh, but instead, Walt rotated his captain’s chair and looked intently at him. “You know they can try you in absentia if you skip bail, right?”