“We got one night here,” she said. “Then what?”

“Her daddy would know where we at.”

“Ways around that,” she said. “Venmo and shit. Only one big thing. We’re gonna need another car. Especially by tomorrow when the word’s out.”

Ladarius smirked and scratched at his neck with the back of his fingers. “Are you asking your boyfriend to use his great and fine talents to get y’all’s asses down to Louisiana? Or wherever the fuck we’re going.”

“Nothing fancy,” she said. “Doesn’t have to be nice. Just something that’ll get the five hundred miles due south.”

“Still need food,” he said. “Still need gas.”

TJ passed him the cigarette and reached for his hand and smiled up at him, while he looked out at the highway, back and forth across the road. Nothing but an empty dirt lot, cracked asphalt, and a used car lot a half mile back.

“Let me handle the money,” she said. “You get us a new ride.”

“And how are you going to get us more money?” he said. “Rob a damn bank?”

“Chastity wants to cut my hair real short and dye it black.”

“And what’s that gonna do?”

“She said we need a lot more followers and more views,” she said. “She said I need to present an iconic image. Whatever the fuck that means.”

“It’s about shaking down her ole man,” Ladarius said. “And sticking it to Chester Pratt.”

“That’s the idea.”

“Well,” Ladarius said, grinning and rubbing his goatee. “Good luck with all that. I don’t know how that plan will work out, but I bet that hair’s gonna look hot as hell.”

*   *   *

Johnny Stagg was at the Rebel, back in his office, trying the best he could to wrap his mind around what he’d just seen and smelled, put warm and wet right in the palm of his hand. He hadn’t thought too much about what he’d sent ole Mr. Bishop to do. After all, that was the cost of doing business in his county. But to have tables turned on him, flipped damn well upside down, was unacceptable. Those midgets came to him with their damn hands out, wanting a little something extra for leaving Chester Pratt alone and asking to come into Stagg’s fold as trusted employees of his organization. They couldn’t be serious. But they damn sure were.

Stagg spun in his chair, checking out the flat-screen monitors, now live and in living color. Two screens brightening up with the noon news out of Memphis and Tupelo, Stagg clicking up the sound to hear if there was anything new about that TJ Byrd and the McCade boy. And damn if wasn’t all their lead story, Mississippi Teens Suspected of Kidnapping Fayetteville Girl.