It was freeing in a way—goddamn liberating—to know that no matter what choices he’d made, he was always going to end up truly fucked.

Particularly when it came to any questions about the deputies, about the Mex girl, America, or even Danny, who Johnnie seemed to know personally and not much like.

Eddy didn’t tell them jack shit about Deputy Danny Ford.

—

HE DIDN’T KNOW how long they had him tied to that chair, but when they were done, and Johnnie brought him another Bud to drink or put against his darkening bruises, it had gotten good and cold sitting in his mini-fridge . . .

“I didn’t want to do that,” Johnnie said, as Eddy clutched the beer. He held on to it like it was a goddamn rope, and he was drowning. “See, I didn’t enjoy it, not at all, not like some of those other fuckers in there.” Johnnie hooked a thumb behind him into the trailer. Johnnie and Eddy were standing behind it outside in the grass, or rather Johnnie was standing, drinking his own beer. Eddy instead was hunched over, every muscle, even his fucking eyes, hurting. Like he’d taken a bath in sand and salt. He’d tried to stand up straight, but when dark blood had leaked out of his goddamn pecker, he decided it was best he just kinda stay down low.

The others were still inside; through the pain, Eddy could hear them laughing and cutting up again, probably about him.

“There’s a good lesson here, though. Don’t ever fuck with those boys of mine. Ever. They’re nervous now, amped up about being here. They get up a head of steam like that again? Who knows what might happen. For me, this is all business, all professional. They take this shit way more personal. They get off on it.”

As fucked up as Eddy was, he still picked out some uncertainty in Johnnie’s voice . . . something weak and unsteady and unsure. That old Spidey sense of his was tuning right through the static and pain to a clear station—it always worked a helluva lot better when his brain wasn’t burning like a forest fire—where he could hear the frustrated sound of a small dog that had grabbed hold of the bumper of a big car, like that Dodge Charger hidden down in the salt cedar, and now had no idea what the fuck to do with it.

Even as Johnnie stared down at him in the grass, Eddy knew Johnnie was seeing a future where he was the one all bloody and busted up, if those laughing fuckers inside slipped their own leashes and decided they weren’t taking orders from him anymore. Maybe, if things here didn’t go quite as planned, Johnnie himself might end up tied to some fucking chair, getting his clock cleaned.