“What I need is a car,” TJ said. “We lost the one Ladarius stole and I don’t know a damn thing about stealing cars. Maybe an old one. Try that trick with a screwdriver.”

TJ was walking while she talked to Holly on Anna’s phone, cutting right through Audubon Park with John Wesley ahead of her, trailing through the crooked paths as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

“You’ll figure it out,” Holly said. “You always do, TJ. But leave. Go.”

“Okay, okay,” she said. “That’s what I’m about to do. Me and John Wesley are walking back right now. We’re gonna get our damn shit and I’m gonna give Chastity one last chance.”

“One last chance?” Holly said. “What are you thinking? How many chances does that girl need? From what I heard from the sheriff, she’s why you had to shoot the damn one-eyed trucker dead.”

“You heard about that, huh?”

“ ’Course I heard about it, TJ,” she said. “Are you crazy? Everybody’s heard about it. That’s what happens when you decide to tell your story to anyone who’s listening. Have you seen you got a hundred thousand folks following you?”

“More like three hundred now,” TJ said, talking low in the phone while she and John Wesley turned into another wide curve of the park. “After I shot that trucker.”

“You proud of that?”

“Hell no, I’m not proud of it,” TJ said. “What would you do? Don’t get so damn cocky, Holly Harkins. What would you do to protect yourself and your little brother? This world hasn’t left me with too many options. Although I did just get me a nice coat and this phone I’m calling you on.”

“You’re lucky I answered,” she said. “The number wasn’t familiar at all.”

“You knew it was me just by the ring,” TJ said. “Didn’t you?”

“Maybe,” Holly said. “Me and you always had that. That thought connection.”

TJ stopped and let John Wesley walk on ahead, the streetlamps shining in the dark along the path. The old oaks looking like something from back in the dinosaur times. There wasn’t a single tree in Tibbehah County that could grow that thick without attracting greedy men with axes trying to make a quick dollar. Seemed like everything back home of any value got cut down or uprooted.

“You okay?” TJ asked.

“Sheriff Colson called again,” Holly said. “He said your life’s in danger.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘No shit, Sheriff,’ ” Holly said. “But he said it for real this time. He said that Chastity Bloodgood’s daddy hired some bad folks to come snatch her up before she’d get arrested and that you’d get killed if you stood in the way.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “They can have her.”