The girl slipped the gun inside the pocket of the fancy cheetah-print coat, still holding the phone in her right hand. “Y’all are famous,” she said. “You’re all over the damn news. Got your lover under your spell and everything. In love and on the run.”

“He ain’t my lover,” TJ said. “He’s just a friend.”

“Not from what I’m hearing,” the girl said. She nodded to the middle of the island where Ladarius had left half a joint at the edge of a saucer. “Wait a second. Y’all have some weed?”

“Help yourself, sweet thing,” Ladarius said.

TJ shot him a look. She turned back to the girl, waiting to see what she was doing. Behind her, she could hear Holly Harkins sobbing, hands over her eyes, not wanting to see what happened next.

“Only an insane person would sit down and smoke a joint with a bunch of redneck outlaws like you,” the girl said.

Ladarius reached for the joint and handed it to her. She reached out and took it.

“Well,” the girl said. “I guess it’s your lucky goddamn day. I just got back from rehab last week. My counselor told me to get out and live my own life. You know? All that good shit.”

TJ held John Wesley as tight as she could, looking back to Holly. Holly, covered up in a big blue sweatshirt, had her hands still over her face and eyes, turning her head from side to side and mumbling some kind of prayer.

“Okay, then?” TJ asked. “Are we good?”

“Maybe.” The girl smiled. “Let me think about it. One of y’all outlaws got a light?”

*   *   *

To call Tabitha Threadgill unattractive might be a little too generous, Quinn thought. She had to weigh well over three hundred pounds with a face like a bulldog and a temperament to match. The woman started most conversations with “What the fuck do you want?” or “That bitch told you what?” So many crazy women out on her land. For as long as Quinn had been sheriff, Tabitha had always had a string of steady girlfriends, most of them partners she’d met online and coerced to come and stay with her down home on her “Mississippi Ranch.” Her ranch being sixty acres of logged-out hills and a narrow patch of skinny pine trees where she lived in a one-story house of indeterminate style or shape, mainly held together with duct tape, Visqueen, and spit.

Quinn turned off the main road and headed onto the woman’s land, the small, ramshackle house coming into view. As he parked, he noticed a nice collection of new toys around the trailer. A new aboveground swimming pool covered for the winter, a speedboat up on a trailer, and two matching jet skis.