Chester had grown giddy with the idea when he’d fallen fast asleep, headlong into a wild dream about endless sugar beaches and clear blue waterfalls and brown Mexican women with nipples as big as silver dollars. He dreamed he was king of some kind of tribe, sitting high on a throne, wearing nothing but a sarong and getting attended to until something went crazy and those beautiful brown women smiled to show pointed teeth. Their eyes glowed red and they attacked, chasing him into the palm trees and some kind of rain forest, making crazy-ass sounds, clicking their tongues and scattering up trees as a squirrel or monkey might do. He found himself alone and screaming on a flat boulder in a fast-moving river, those brown women jumping in after him, gathering around the rocks and beginning to feast on his flesh as if he was a turkey supper. Chester Pratt awoke kicking and screaming, breath caught deep down in his chest and choking for air.

He opened his eyes and looked up into the face of TJ Byrd.

“Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Hellfire,” he said. “Shit. Shit. I’m not scared one damn bit.”

“Why’d you scream like a woman?”

“Scream?” Pratt said. “Men don’t scream. I didn’t scream.”

“You sure as hell just screamed,” TJ said, kicking his feet off a glass coffee table. His legs knocked over the Yeti of whiskey and he goddamned her as he reached down and uprighted the mess, a good cup of bourbon seeping down through his deck. This just wasn’t Chester Pratt’s day at all.

“I asked you before and I’ll ask you again,” TJ said. “Where’s my damn money?”

“Where’s your momma?”

“Somewhere where you ain’t never gonna find her,” she said. “Her welfare ain’t none of your concern.”

“The hell it ain’t,” he said. “I’m worried sick about that woman. Did y’all get into it again? ’Cause if she’s hurt or you hurt her, I need to know. Right here. Right now.”

“This is between you and me,” TJ said. “You better get me what I’m owed. Or I’ll make your life a hell on this earth. I promise you that.”

Chester was more than sixty years old and wasn’t used to being lectured by some teenybopper. TJ Byrd was ninety-nine pounds of pure redneck muscle and attitude. She couldn’t be more than five feet tall, standing there with her hands on her hips, wearing a heavy camo coat up over her jeans and T-shirt cut up above her bare belly. Her skin as pale and smooth as alabaster.

“That wasn’t your money,” Pratt said. “That’s your momma’s money. And any type of financial or business arrangement is between consenting adults. Sorry, little girl. Take a seat at the kids’ table. This ain’t none of your damn business.”