“I TOLD YOU we should have killed that son of a bitch last night,” Walt Garrity growled. “He was dying anyway. Now every cop in five states is hunting us.”

The Ranger sat in a leather chair in the den of Drew Elliott’s lake house, pecking irritably on a laptop he’d found on Drew’s desk. Tom lay on the nearby sofa, trying not to bitch about Walt’s steady typing. The only illumination in the room came from an overhead lamp. They had closed all the curtains to prevent anyone from seeing movement inside the house. Tom wasn’t much in the mood to talk. Walt had doled out three Lorcet today, and the hydrocodone had quieted his pain for a while, but now his shoulder throbbed relentlessly.

“We did the right thing about Thornfield,” he repeated, recalling the terror in the old Klansman’s eyes as he realized he was having a heart attack—a terror Tom had experienced firsthand.

“He might have seen me shoot that trooper,” Walt said. “Not that it matters. All he has to do is put us at the scene and tell what we did to him.”

Walt looked over at the kitchen counter, where he’d rigged his police scanner to the battery he’d brought in from the van last night. This time the cop chatter was about something besides the APB, for a change.

“I’m sorry, Walt,” Tom said for the twentieth time. “I should never have called you to help me with this. I realize that now.”

The Ranger gave a sullen grunt. “Who else could you call? We need to get some more burn phones. Maybe Melba will take Dr. Elliott’s truck to the Ferriday Walmart and buy us a handful.”

Having tended Tom’s wound throughout the night, Melba Price was napping in the back bedroom of the lake house.

“Calling Mackiever was a big risk,” Walt said, “but I’m glad I did it. If we’d left this house not knowing about that, we’d likely be dead already.”

A half hour ago, Walt had used his last TracFone to call the superintendent of the Louisiana State Police. Griffith Mackiever had served in the Texas Rangers early in his career and knew Walt personally. Walt believed there was no way Colonel Mackiever would knowingly tolerate a crook like Forrest Knox as the chief of his Criminal Investigations Bureau, but whatever the truth of that, they had little choice if they hoped to find a way out of the mess they’d created last night. A simple ruse had gotten Walt past Mackiever’s receptionist, but as soon as his old comrade in arms learned who the caller was, he’d told Walt about the APB, then given him a different number to call in two hours.

“I can’t see a damned thing anymore,” Walt complained, squinting at the computer keys.