Eugene shrugged and watched the clouds roll over like slumbering giants. "I don't know. Maybe."

“People find it easy to believe in the devil long after their faith in God has died. Did you ever have faith?”

“Some, when I was little. But I’m not at home in churches anymore. They don’t seem to have room for people like me.”

Johnny glanced at him. Eugene studiously kept his gaze fixed on the sky.

“What do you believe in?”

“This house. The bayou. You.” Eugene rubbed his thumb over the toe of his shoe where the leather was scuffed. “Maybe that’s it. I’m not sure anything’s left of the outside world anymore. I don’t know if there was ever anything out there."

“We won’t stay here forever. Just another few days, until we’re sure no one’s looking for us. As soon as the Bureau is convinced we’ve left the state for good, we’ll get gone.”

“The Bureau's never going to catch you.”

“No? We’re common outlaws, aren’t we? Why shouldn’t they catch us?” Johnny wore a smile as he asked it, as if waiting to see if Eugene would get the answer right.

Eugene looked away. “You were never common anything. Like Angelique said, laws can’t touch you.”

“They can touch you, though.”

How was the law supposed to work when there was no one left to enforce it? Aloud, he said, “Angelique said if I wanted your side of the story about her husband, I should ask you directly. She didn’t say you killed him, but she didn’t say you didn’t, either.”

“I didn’t push him down the stairs, but I did facilitate his death, sure. That much is true. Does that frighten you?”

If half of what Angelique said about her late husband was true, Eugene couldn’t find it in him to mourn his death. “What was that old line about how children are innocent, so they demand justice, while adults would rather pray for mercy?”

“I prefer justice,” Johnny said. “I like the taste of it.”

“I don’t know what I prefer,” Eugene admitted. “But I’m not sorry her husband died, whatever your role in it was.”

“She asked me for help,” Johnny said. “For a favor.” The way he said it lent the word a weight greater than it could bear. “She was so fiercely unapologetic about it—I couldn’t refuse. I did whatever she needed. And then, after . . .” He shrugged, as if bank robbing were the next natural step. Maybe it was, for people like them. Johnny leaned in to nudge their shoulders together. “Do you want to go back to Chanlarivyè?”

A shudder ran through Eugene at the thought of returning to his little town and seeing for himself how it had been gutted. As long as he stayed away, he could pretend it was only a dream. “I ought to. I need to see it. But I don’t know if I can bear it. I don’t think there’s anything left for me there.”