“The woman and the deputy are locked up,” Toby said. “And I smashed the ever-living fuck out of the consoles in the dispatch room. There’s no video feed. I yanked out the whole damn hard drive and set it by the back door.”

“You opened up the gate?”

“Of course I opened up the damn gate,” Toby said. “First thing. I did like you told me.”

“Wait in the car.”

“I don’t want to wait,” Toby said. “I want to watch you kill this man.”

Sam Frye and Toby stood in front of a small holding cell by the processing desk. The man they came to kill, Wes Taggart, sat in his bunk staring dead-eyed at the two men. He hadn’t tried to stand or argue, just sat on the bunk, elbows on knees, waiting for them to get the whole thing done.

“Go,” Sam Frye said. “Now.”

He had added some real force to the words. The kid looked at him and turned toward the door back to the sally port. Sam Frye lifted his .357 off his belt and nodded to the man on the bunk.

“Don’t move.”

Sam Frye turned the key in the lock and opened the door. Taggart, a skinny, hard-looking white man, swallowed and kind of pursed his lips. “How’s it hanging, Tonto?”

“On your knees.”

“Why don’t you just shoot me right here?”

“On your knees,” Sam Frye said, slow and even.

Taggart stood up and walked a few feet. Sam could tell he was trying to judge the distance between him and the gun, thinking maybe, just maybe, he could wrestle it from Frye’s hands and reverse his sorry situation.

“Who sent you?” Taggart said, getting to his knees. “Buster White? Or Ray? Or was it that redheaded cunt herself?”

Sam Frye didn’t know any of those names or care to know any more than he’d been told. He heard the wind and the rain against the windows and the stolen patrol car turn over and then idle in the sally port. Sam Frye lifted the gun, wanting to make it a good, clean single shot. They would ditch the patrol car way down by the county line and pick up their car where they’d hidden it off a back road. The darkness, the rain, and the confusion would offer them the damn perfect cover.

“I used to like Indians,” Taggart said. “Noble savages and all that kind of bullshit. But now? I think y’all deserved to get cornholed on this fucked-up land.”

Sam lifted the gun toward Taggart’s forehead and pulled the trigger. The lightning cracked and the lights sputtered inside the cells as he turned and made his way to the back door out of the jail.

Episode 4: The Teacher