Maggie moved along the chair, peeling out of her sweater, and wrapping her arms around Quinn’s neck. They kissed for a while, the old chair creaking on the hardwood floor, rain tapping along the kitchen windows.

“We can’t go upstairs,” Maggie said. “We’ll wake Halley.”

“I’m just fine here.”

“In the kitchen?”

“We’ve done it before,” Quinn said. “Plenty of times when you were rehabbing me.”

“Is that what you’re calling it?”

“It worked,” Quinn said. “Didn’t it?”

Maggie reached for Quinn’s belt buckle and started to open up his blue jeans as they heard a soft knock and the front door start to open.

“Hello?” Jean Colson called from the hallway. Quinn’s mother always having a knack for bad timing. “Brought y’all some biscuits and fried pies from town.”

Maggie closed her eyes, took a long breath, and crawled out of Quinn’s lap. “In here, Miss Jean. I’ll turn the oven on.”

*   *   *

“You sure you want this?” the Old Man, also known as Chief Deputy Marshal Dalton Ames, asked. “You being friends with this woman makes things a little complicated.”

“Yes, sir,” Lillie said. “I pulled the pickup on those kids straight off. I wanted it. The girl and those kids headed into Memphis two nights ago.”

“Tag reader on the state line?”

“That damn minivan crossed into Arkansas yesterday morning,” she said. “I know those kids, their people, and how they think. I used to deal with the girl when I was a deputy in Tibbehah. A hellcat if I ever knew one.”

“Is she violent?”

“Mean as a copperhead.”

“Crazy?”

“Deep in that Byrd family DNA.”

The Old Man leaned back into his padded leather chair, his brushy gray mustache dropping down over his lip. His eyes were hooded and his gray hair slicked back over his broad forehead. Ames had on a navy suit with a white shirt and a black tie, same as he’d worn the day Lillie had first met him. This morning, he didn’t seem too pleased to take Lillie off her current case file and approve a short-term transfer to Oxford.

“Sounds like this might turn ugly.”

“Yes, sir,” Lillie said. “Based on my interactions with the girl. And her boyfriend’s prior history. But when it comes right down to it, I also think I can talk some sense to her, make sure she knows she’ll get a fair shake back home.”

“Even after she killed her own mother?” the Old Man asked. “Your friend.”

“Even then,” Lillie said.

“Okay, let’s cut through the bullshit,” the Old Man said. “No matter what they did or how they did it, nobody wants to see some U.S. Marshals gunning down some damn lovey-dovey teenyboppers on the run. I also can’t have any of my people shot because they’re trying to be fair and compassionate. You get my meaning?”