“Nothing will be left when we’re gone,” Sam Frye said. “They keep the monitors in with the dispatcher. We lock up the jailer, the dispatcher, or anyone else who gets in our way, and destroy the equipment. Every deputy in this county is out on a call. Look at that stop sign. See the way it’s blowing? It looks like a damn toy.”

“You don’t give a shit,” Toby said. “You don’t have long to live and can be reckless. Not me. I have my whole life ahead of me. The little girl I was with tonight was some kind of mystic. She said she saw great things for me. Said she could feel my aura.”

“Keep your head down,” Sam Frye said. “When I unlock your cuffs, you reach down and grab your gun. I’ll have a gun on me, too.”

“Of course you’ll have a fucking gun,” Toby said. “Fucking Sam Frye. Big goddamn Indian. You’re dressed as a damn cop. I’m the one they’ll shoot first.”

“The man we want is named Wes Taggart,” Sam Frye said, driving the police cruiser around the town square, the rain pelting the windshield. “OK? Wes Taggart. We kill him and no one else.”

“What if someone tries to kill us?”

“I hope it won’t come to that.”

“But it could.”

Sam Frye lifted his eyes in the rearview mirror and didn’t answer. He damn well knew the answer but didn’t want any more trouble than was necessary. They were bad men hired to kill another bad man. You don’t kill a police officer unless you have to. But this rain, this storm, was a blessing for all of them. He spotted the sheriff’s office and the jail coming up on the right side. Sam found the burner phone and dialed in to their dispatch. He breathed as the phone rang and rang into the static.

His uniform and the vehicle would show they were coming from Lafayette County. All they had was a simple drop-off of a man wanted on a warrant in Tibbehah County. Just some friendly cooperation between the two counties.

He explained it all to the woman on the phone as he turned behind the jail, the road running down below street level and stopping at a tall concertina fence.

“I don’t know nothing about no prisoner transport,” a woman said. “Where you coming from again?”

“I have the paperwork with me,” Sam Frye said. “Let us in the sally port and I’ll hand it all over.”

The wind and rain shook the car, the wipers working a slow, steady rhythm.

“Son of a bitch,” Toby said. “This is a terrible idea.”

Sam Frye didn’t answer. The patrol car idled by the wide chain-link gate. He noticed the lights flickering off in the jail yard but then flickering on again.