“What worried you so much that you went on a morning bender and started drunk dialing the sheriff?” Quinn said. “What happened? Why are TJ and John Wesley gonna get hurt?”

Chester wobbled on his feet. He lifted the coffee to his lips and took a good long pull. Over the rim, his eyes closed for moment and then he straightened up a little. Swallowing hard and trying to find even footing on those chicken legs.

“Those men,” Chester said. “The Nixes. They’re headed down to New Orleans. They’re gonna get that rich girl back and might kill TJ Byrd along the way. Goddamn, that little bitch sure caused me some trouble. A whole lot of trouble. But I can’t have her on my damn ledger, too.”

“Did they kill Gina?”

“Oh, hell,” he said. “I don’t know.”

“Bullshit.”

“I talk too damn much.”

“Who sent those boys to pick up the Bloodgood girl?” Quinn said. “Did you set that up, too? Or are you working with someone else? Talk to me, Chester. It’ll make your future a lot brighter on down the road.”

Chester shook his head. He pointed to the door. “I shouldn’t’ve opened up my goddamn mouth. I need to get my head straight and then I’ll come in. I need to call up Sonny. Sonny will know what to do.”

“Chester,” Quinn said. “You can call Sonny on our way to town. Your sorry ass is under arrest. If I were you, I’d spill everything I knew about those kids. TJ Byrd and her little brother sure as hell better make it home alive.”

*   *   *

Lillie and Charlie Hodge were southbound and down on Interstate 49, headed to New Orleans and feeling good after they’d recovered the Bloodgood girl’s phone. The hell of it was knowing that poor girl at some point had entered the cab of the late Floyd Eugene Hicks. Damn, if a one-eyed trucker didn’t make you cautious, Lillie thought maybe a rig called the Purple People Eater just might. Of course, Miss Chastity Bloodgood didn’t seem the look-before-you-leap type.

The Feds had already been working on tracking Chastity’s phone after she disappeared from Hot Springs. But that shit took days to get sorted out. Depending on the service provider, it would take anywhere from three days to a week to ping the phone. Now they had the real thing in hand. It was locked by a passcode, of course, so Lillie figured it was another dead lead until one of the local cops tried Chastity’s DOB on the damn thing and it opened. What followed was a goddamn Russian novel of bullshit between that crazy girl and a fella named Graham who lived down in New Orleans.