Chapters (110)
- Cover
- ALSO BY J. TODD SCOTT
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- PROLOGUE
- I
- II
- PART ONE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- PART TWO
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- PART THREE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- FORTY-SIX
- FORTY-SEVEN
- FORTY-EIGHT
- FORTY-NINE
- FIFTY
- FIFTY-ONE
- FIFTY-TWO
- FIFTY-THREE
- FIFTY-FOUR
- FIFTY-FIVE
- FIFTY-SIX
- FIFTY-SEVEN
- FIFTY-EIGHT
- FIFTY-NINE
- SIXTY
- SIXTY-ONE
- PART FOUR
- SIXTY-TWO
- SIXTY-THREE
- SIXTY-FOUR
- SIXTY-FIVE
- SIXTY-SIX
- SIXTY-SEVEN
- SIXTY-EIGHT
- SIXTY-NINE
- SEVENTY
- SEVENTY-ONE
- SEVENTY-TWO
- SEVENTY-THREE
- SEVENTY-FOUR
- SEVENTY-FIVE
- SEVENTY-SIX
- SEVENTY-SEVEN
- SEVENTY-EIGHT
- SEVENTY-NINE
- EIGHTY
- EIGHTY-ONE
- EIGHTY-TWO
- EIGHTY-THREE
- EIGHTY-FOUR
- EPILOGUE
- I
- II
- III
- IV
- V
- VI
- VII
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- Excerpt from LOST RIVER
- LITTLE PARIS
- DILLON
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- What’s next onyour reading list?
In St. Louis in 1999, in the backseat of a Pontiac Grand Am, with light gray snow blowing in through a rolled-down window, Joe Garrison was shot once in the chest with a .38 revolver.
It wasn’t something he talked about anymore, and many of the agents who’d worked with him through the years had never asked about it, not directly, although they’d all heard some version of it from someone else. To Garrison, it was old history, so long ago it was a thing that might as well have happened to someone else. He was lucky he was wearing his soft vest that day (usually he didn’t), beneath a Carhartt jacket and a flannel shirt that Karen had bought him the Christmas before, and although it hurt like nothing he’d ever felt before or since—like Mark McGwire hitting him in the chest with a Rawlings Big Stick swinging for the left-field wall—and the back-face signature of the blast had left him bruised and tender for three straight months and sometimes doubled over coughing up blood, the truth of it was he still walked away. Alive. Someone even pulled the flattened slug out of his vest, and he carried it around for some years in a small plastic case that had once held Angie’s baby teeth for the tooth fairy.
Just a reminder . . . a totem or lucky rabbit’s foot.
He talked even less, though, about the man who didn’t walk away that day, the one he shot and killed in the backseat as they struggled over that .38. Garrison fought that gun out of Junior Worrell’s hands, and in all the chaos—ears ringing and blood on the window and a smoky haze choking and blinding him—he worked it up under Worrell’s chin and pulled the trigger, or Worrell did—one shooting investigation by the St. Louis Police and two months of trauma counseling never decided the issue—blowing the top of that man’s head all over the inside of the car. Garrison had watched Worrell’s face explode right in front of him; crawling out of that Pontiac with Worrell’s blood still thick in his eyes and his mouth . . . swallowing it.
And really, what was there to say about that?
How the hell did you explain that to anyone?
In the end, it was just one of those dumb undercover deals gone bad, the sort of thing you pray never happens, but that occasionally—horribly—does. Garrison had been applauded as a hero for a few months, but struggled with it for quite a while longer. There were the nightmares and drinking and that one lost weekend in D.C., but time passed and he got over it and the nightmares finally started to dim like an old light. Karen forgave him for the things he’d said and done, and life had moved on.