“No, Amé, it wasn’t. It wasn’t that long ago at all.” He wanted to tell her that Jesse Earl, who’d given him his damaged eye, or Afghanistan, where’d he been trapped in all those small villages (and maybe still was), wasn’t all that long ago, either. Not even the murder of his father on a highway in Sweetwater more than twenty years earlier was all that far away. Scars like that, inside or out, were always still there. Still fresh. All Danny had to do was close his eyes. And if that was true for him, then he had to believe that was true for Amé, too, no matter how she tried to pretend otherwise.

Danny would never fully understand the relationship between America and Sheriff Cherry. Never know all the facts and details, but it didn’t matter. They bore too many of the same scars. It wasn’t just that their shared past wasn’t distant enough for clarity or perspective, it was that they were still far too close to help each other see.

“You know the sheriff is doing this for you, right? Not for your mother, or the rest of your family, or that girl in there. Not because it makes sense or because it’s even close to being right. But for you. He’ll go to the ends of the earth to protect you.”

Amé studied the fire at the end of her cigarette. “What do you want me to say to that?”

“He’s the goddamn sheriff, Amé. You’re asking him to break the law. It’s not who he is. This goes against everything he believes in.”

“He would not be the first sheriff in this town to break the law, or decide that the law is only what he believes it to be.” But she said it without conviction, and they both knew it. “I did not ask him for anything, Danny. I told him what was going on, and if I had not done that, you would have. You gave me no choice.”

“Yes,” Danny conceded.

“I promised him once before I would not keep secrets. I had to tell him.”

“Like you told him about your mysterious gun? That’s a little too convenient.” But Danny raised his hands, surrendering the point. “I already told you what I think, so you tell me how this ends.”

“No lo sé. No more than you do. What would you have me do?”

“We call Agent Garrison. Tonight, now. We do it together, and then this will all be over before the sheriff commits to anything one way or another. Before it goes too far. We take back this thing we put in his hands.”

“That I put there.” Amé watched him through her smoke, before looking away. “Do you know what my papa does, since he returned to México?”