“Stay close,” he shouted.

Clark nodded. She leaned on the gas, eased the clutch.

Go.

To the left they passed the school, the bar, the sheriff’s station. To their right, the empty eastern Flats flew by, the shaggy scrub and wild grass burning in the dawn. Soon they were passing the football field. Its rows of dead lights all cupped the crimson sun.

Only the best years of my life.

She debated calling Joel Whitley and decided against it. Let him sleep, if he was sleeping. If her suspicions were correct he wasn’t about to get much rest for a while.

The two deputies made it almost thirty miles north of town at top speed before Jones began to tap his brakes. Clark followed him around a tight turn, her shocks letting up a moan of protest.

Pebbles scattered as they bustled down what looked to be a private drive. Clark lowered her visor against the molten sun. Soon she caught the shape of a wooden fence, a wooden house in the distance, a scattering of outbuildings: a toolshed, a chicken coop, a horse stall.

A semitruck loomed over three SUVs and a Dodge Ram. Three men were smoking in the shade of the tall truck’s cab. Clark recognized Sheriff Lopez, Investigator Mayfield and Jack Spearson, the owner of the semi.

Jones and Clark clambered out and gave the men hollow little nods. Lopez gestured the two deputies closer.

“You don’t spook easy, do you, Clark?”

A bird whistled from among the leathery leaves of a nearby pecan. A woman’s face watched her from the house’s screen door.

“I don’t believe so, sir.”

Lopez glanced at Mayfield as if for his assent. The investigator nodded.

“The ATV don’t seat but four,” Spearson said. His eyes were glassy, like he was coming off stimulants. “One of y’alls could stand on the fender but—”

Jones said, “I’m fine right here.”

Spearson led them to a rusted red ATV. Clark sat in the back, next to Mayfield, and they went bounding around the house. There was nothing awaiting them on the other side but open country.

“It weren’t nothing but luck,” Spearson shouted over the whining motor. “All this here is Evers land these last few years. Mrs. Evers, she bought it out from me when the stocks went all to shit in oh-eight. But she kept me on as a groundskeeper, see.”

Clark bounced in her seat. She gripped the cool metal bar of the ATV’s frame to steady herself.

“I drives around once a week for her, the Evers lady, to look see has any vagrants set up camp, any of them tweakers cooking up that meth crank out here. I drives armed—I won’t make no secret of that.”

Spearson gunned the gas and soon the little house was only a fleck of black on the gold horizon behind them. Ahead of them, as far as Clark could see, was nothing.

“I got in from my haul late last night, maybe near past midnight, but I couldn’t sleep for shit—pardon, Officer, ma’am—on accounts I got the cedar allergies something bad, so rights around four thirty I say to hell with it, I’ll just make my rounds in the dark. This little guy’s got him the new lights on him, after all, and it were a clear morning.”