“She liked to do a whole lot of everything.”

“My sister in Guatemala like that,” Florencia said. “She what we call a mujer perdedora.”

“That Spanish for tramp?”

“Loose woman,” Florencia said. “Very, very loose.”

“I liked Gina Byrd a lot,” Lillie said. “She was a whole lot of fun. But I swear you put a quarter in her slot and her ass would play Tammy Wynette.”

“Que?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Lillie said. “If you can’t laugh, you’ll end up crying.”

If it hadn’t been for Florencia, there was no way Lillie could keep up her work with the marshals. She might have found a desk job somewhere, away from being a POD, a plain old deputy. And Lillie knew what it was like to ride the desk. She’d been sidelined for three months after she’d shot Fannie Hathcock in the back at the Golden Cherry Motel. And although that evil bitch, the queenpin of north Mississippi, appeared to have been going for a pistol and most surely deserved it, there had been a lengthy investigation and a whole lot of questions. The Mid-South media had even dubbed Lillie the U.S. Marshals Service’s Calamity Jane, a name she liked and hated at the same time.

The last thing she’d wanted was any notoriety for a justified shooting, especially since there was a legion of truckers out there who looked at Fannie Hathcock as the benevolent mother of lap dances and cold beer on Highway 45. There was even some kind of redneck ballad written about the woman, “The Tears of Fannie.” What complete horseshit.

“You like breakfast?” Florencia asked.

“No, ma’am,” Lillie said, “I’ll get a biscuit on the way in.”

“Sit,” Florencia said. “Eat. Two minutes.”

Lillie shook her head but knew it was no use. Florencia didn’t accept no as an answer.

Soon Rose bounded down the steps and into the kitchen, Lillie giving her a big hug before she took a seat at the counter. The little girl had come into Lillie’s life almost ten years ago, during an investigation into a baby-trafficking operation right in Tibbehah County. Like Florencia, she’d been born in Guatemala and now appreciated both sausage and biscuits and pupusas.

“You carrying the Sig today?” Rose asked. The kid knew her guns.

She was brown-skinned with long black hair and bangs, dressed today in the blue polo shirt and khakis that were her school uniform.

“Yep,” Lillie said. “Feels better on my hip. I don’t care for the Glock they gave me.”

“Y’all find that shitbird who set all those fires?”

Florencia turned around and whacked the spatula against the bar. “No, no, no.”

Lillie winked at her daughter and said, “I don’t know where she gets this stuff.”

Rose giggled as Florencia offered a short prayer for both of them before flipping the pancakes and sliding them onto two blue plates.