“Spoiled little rich girl,” Holly said. “Her daddy owns a Chevy dealership up in Fayetteville. She caught us squatting on her lake house. We thought the place was abandoned. Got weeds growing up all over the damn place. Didn’t look like anyone had been there for a long while till that girl comes busting in, pulling a gun on Ladarius while he was cooking up some steaks. She’s the one who talked TJ into getting on Instagram and telling her story about what happened with Chester Pratt.”

“I saw it.”

“What’d you think?”

“I think I’d like TJ to drop the act and talk sense to me.”

“She ain’t gonna do it,” Holly said. “She doesn’t trust you. She says you’re as crooked as everyone else and all you care about is throwing her ass in jail.”

“That’s not true and she knows it.”

“She may take a few things that don’t belong to her,” Holly said. “My momma says that girl has sticky fingers. But she has a good heart. I promise you that.”

“Where are they headed, Holly?”

“I don’t know.”

“But if you had to guess?”

“This ain’t something I want to guess on,” she said. “I’m too worried about what’s gonna happen. Now they plan to pretend like TJ kidnapped Chastity. Chastity can convince TJ of damn near anything.”

“Why would they do that?”

“More attention,” Holly said. “More views. All that stuff.”

Holly looked out the Waffle House window and started to cry, wiping the tears away with the back of her hand. Quinn drank some black coffee and waited as someone plugged a quarter into the jukebox and an old Mac Davis song came on. “Baby Don’t Get Hooked on Me.” Their waitress began to slow dance with a potbellied trucker in all denim and pointed-toe boots.

“This sure is a weird place at night.”

“Not much different in the day,” Quinn said. “A rest stop for folks wanting to be somewhere else.”

“Chastity’s dad had this room downstairs,” Holly said. “It was a secret room in the basement filled with more guns than I ever seen in my life. Chastity loaded a big bag full of them before we took that boat across the lake.”

Quinn dropped his forehead into his right hand. Sleep wouldn’t come anytime soon.

“She ain’t going quietly,” Holly said. “That’s for damn sure.”

Quinn reached for his phone and called Lillie Virgil’s cell.

TWO

Five days ago

Quinn Colson had just fallen asleep beside his wife Maggie and their four-month-old daughter Halley when he first learned Gina Byrd was missing. Maggie was nursing the child in bed, Halley’s midnight feeding, as Quinn answered his phone and heard from his second-in-command, Reggie Caruthers, that he’d just left Chester Pratt’s house where he’d taken the report.