“I was just at his house,” she said. “There’s not much of him left.”

FRIDAY

THE BRIGHT LANDS

JAMAL

“We need to talk.” Jamal awoke to the sound of his lawyer rapping on the bars of his cell. Mr. Irons was dressed in a sharp suit and tie, smelled of leather and cinnamon. “But you got a visitor. Hurry now, I have an appointment at the federal courthouse.”

Jamal dragged himself up from the hard cot. He had finally slept last night, had suffered no dreams, but after a week of terrible nights it felt almost more exhausting to be rested.

He said to Mr. Irons, “I can’t shower or nothing first?”

“They’re transporting you to the jail in Austin tomorrow. They have showers there.” Irons dug into his suit pocket. “I brought you these.”

Jamal accepted a pack of wet towelettes his lawyer passed through the bars.

He let the deputy cuff him and lead him down the hall past a drunk who had screamed half the night and a woman curled in the corner of her cell. She raised her gray head as he passed.

“It’s back,” she said, staring Jamal straight in the eye. “It never left.”

Jamal stepped into the interview room and saw Kimbra Lott and for a moment he was happier than he’d been in weeks. She had straightened her hair and made up her face and painted her nails a bright Bison green. Of course. The Stable Shootout was tonight.

A foil packet waited for him on the table. Jamal slid out the cookies he knew awaited him inside—he noticed that someone at the department had already opened them for him—and tried to laugh at the name written in icing across their crust: KT.

“Don’t mind the name,” Kimbra said. “I figure you deserve them more.”

“Did your dad make these?” Jamal asked. Mr. Lott was famous for his Bison spirit.

“The man can’t help himself.”

A brief silence came over them. Jamal took a bite of the cookie: he hadn’t eaten anything decent since his breakfast yesterday at home.

He waited a moment to raise the cookie and asked, “Has anyone heard from KT?”

Kimbra glanced back at the one-way glass. Jamal wondered if Mr. Irons had warned her about the men who would be listening on the other side. If he had, her face betrayed no concern. She said only, “I hear he got home last night.”

“He did? Where was he?”

“Dallas, I think.”

“He hasn’t texted you?”

She shrugged.

Jamal pushed the cookie aside. “That guy treats you like shit, you know.”

Kimbra only shrugged again. “What can you do?”

God, Jamal thought, and not for the first time: if only he had spent last weekend with Kimbra instead of Bethany. He’d always had a soft spot for the girl, for her sly little smiles and the eyes that said she was too smart for you but she’d politely endure your company anyway. The fact she had come here just to bring him a pack of cookies was perhaps the kindest thing anyone had ever done for him. Jamal fought a sudden, foreign urge to weep.