Joel paced the room. He knew he should tell Investigator Mayfield about this discovery, should at least text Clark. Perhaps if he threw the cops a bone they would keep him abreast of the search for Dylan (assuming, of course, they were even searching at all), possibly give him some comforting news.

Joel laughed to himself. Who was he kidding? After what the Pettis County Sheriff’s Department had put him through as a boy, was he really naive enough to think they would be of any use to him now? Any news Joel gave the police would become the gossip of the town. He’d never subject his brother to that sort of pain. Hadn’t he come here to keep Bentley from chewing up yet another troubled boy? No, Joel would do his own digging, and he would keep any discoveries to himself.

Starting with these pills. He carried them into his room and stuffed them in his bag.

South Street resembled an old Western set left to blanch in the sun. Joel counted six businesses still in operation in the splintered wooden storefronts: the First Community Bank (GO #12 T-BAY BASKIN! read the marquee in the window), a CVS Pharmacy, Mr. Jack’s Steaks, Hash and Brown’s Egg House (the large fiberglass chicken suspended above the door in desperate need of a wash), Beauty Sanchez Beauty Parlor and, all but hanging off the butt end of the street, the tall polished windows of Lott’s Hardware.

Joel walked past the last store slowly, hoping he might talk to Mr. Lott—one of the few men who had been decent to Joel in the wake of the scandal—but saw instead a plain, mousy girl standing behind the counter.

When Joel stepped into the store the girl gave him only a curious glance—curious but not unkind—and looked back down at her phone.

“Excuse me,” Joel said, approaching the counter. “I’m Joel Whitley—”

“I know.” The girl finished typing a message, set down her phone, leaned back on her stool. Joel recognized her from the game. She was a cheerleader, and if Joel wasn’t much mistaken he’d seen her posing for photos with KT Staler, Dylan’s friend, in those giddy moments after the town had stormed the field.

“Are you Mr. Lott’s daughter?” Joel asked, though on second glance he saw he didn’t need to ask: she had her father’s brows and her mother’s frown. She wasn’t the prettiest person he’d ever seen—he hated himself for noticing, but the girl certainly had nothing on Bethany Tanner—and judging by her faded clothes and her frizzy heap of hair it was clear her family’s store was far from flush. But Kimbra had a spark in her eye, a slyness. Here was a girl who knew she was made for something more exciting than this.

“Kimbra.” She extended a cool hand across the counter to him. Her handshake was firm. “Dadders is away quail hunting this weekend. Do you need him?”

Joel wasn’t surprised to hear this—he’d never known Mr. and Mrs. Lott to enjoy each other’s company.