He throws more wood on the fire until the flames soar and the heat cooks my shins. “I know what you’re thinking,” he says. “I shoulda lit out. It took me too damn long, but I done it, so you don’t need to judge.”

I look down at the holes in the knees of my jeans and pick at some of the loose strings. “I’m not.” There’s one more question burning at the back of my brain. Should I ask? I squeeze my hands at my sides. “Who’s Kody?”

He shoots me a glance that chills my insides. He opens his mouth as if to speak. Then closes it, stands and stalks off.

I’ve broken the quiet moment. My eyes flick to the fire that’s eaten up most of the scrub and sunk into a few guttering flames. The night air grips me. I hug myself and feel deeply alone again.

Movement. Clay’s back, standing at the edge of the circle. He’s breathing hard, as if he were running. His eyes are wild. He seems to have trouble getting the next words out. “I’ll say this once and then I never want you to ask me again.”

I nod.

He takes a deep breath and steels himself. “Last month my pa made me take a twelve-year-old boy to the Riders. The kid …” His jaw tightens. “The kid wet himself when I carried him to their truck.” He looks into my face, his eyes shining with unshed tears. “He cried my name as they drove away.”

“Kody,” I whisper.

Clay sniffs and stares into the dancing blue and orange flames of the fire, the veins tight cords on his neck. “I’ll see his face forever. Knowing what I did to him …” He curses and tugs at his hair angrily. Then he lifts his sorrowful face to me. “That day I swore I’d never trade another human being. That I’d get out.”

I pull my knees up to my chest and think about Clay handing over the boy to the Riders. It’s awful. Then again, if my dad was the Sheriff, would I have done any different? Having Arn’s death on my hands is bad enough, but I didn’t actually kill him. What must it be like for Clay to carry that kind of guilt around?

The raw emotion hangs over the fire like a cloud. For several moments we sit in silence as the fire dies down. The hog legs emit a delicious aroma, but right now I don’t feel like eating.

Finally, Clay walks forward as if unstuck. Some of the wildness has fallen off him. “We need to eat,” he says handing me my portion of meat.

I take it from him. My stomach grumbles at the smell. Maybe I can eat.

Clay kicks dirt over the fire until it sizzles. “Come on. We’ll eat in the Jeep.”