“No, but …” She doesn’t know what to say. “Where are we going? To your house?”

“Only long enough to get Annie packed. We’ve got to go into hiding. At least you and Annie do, until I can find out what’s really going on. The FBI will be here tomorrow, and things should be safer then.”

“Penn, this is crazy. Why are you saying this?”

“Because Dad’s put us all in danger! Maybe more than he understands. I hope so. But either way, I’m going to need your help with Annie.”

Mom shakes her head, reflexively resisting me. Gripping her shoulders, I lean down and look hard into her eyes. “Annie needs you. Now, go. Go!”

She hesitates five or six seconds, but then her resistance crumbles. Annie is the future of our family, and my mother cannot contemplate exposing her to danger. The decision made, she takes her pistol from her pocket and darts through the bedroom door.

CHAPTER 51

TOM SAT IN the back of Walt Garrity’s Roadtrek van, looking into the flat, uncommunicative eyes of Sonny Thornfield. They’d sat him on the edge of the six-by-six-foot bed in the rear of the van. The old Double Eagle’s hands and feet were bound with a pair of flex-cuffs that Walt had brought from Texas.

“What the hell am I doing here?” Thornfield asked.

Neither Tom nor Walt answered. Walt had explained to Tom that for their plan to work they must instill genuine terror in Thornfield. If they had more time, a different approach might work. But under the pressure they faced now, they couldn’t afford gentleness. Sonny Thornfield had to believe that they didn’t care whether he lived or died. Only then would he grasp at the only escape route they offered him.

To ensure privacy, Walt had parked the Roadtrek on the river side of the levee, near the edge of the borrow pits—the long trenches left behind where earth was “borrowed” after the 1927 flood to build the levee system that protected Louisiana from the wrath of the Mississippi River. In the decades since, those huge pits had filled with black water, cottonwood trees, and scrub vegetation, a perfect environment for snakes, fish, and alligators to thrive. More than one corpse had been found in the borrow pits over the years, and at this time of night, the only people likely to drive down here would be poachers or teenagers looking for a place to have sex. They would give the polished silver RV a wide berth.

“You guys just kidnapped me,” Sonny said resentfully. “That’s a fucking felony.”

Walt backhanded him across the face, just to set the tone of the occasion.

The old Klansman let out a screech of anger. “What the hell are you up to?” he asked Tom. “You aren’t supposed to leave Mississippi.”