“I’m sorry. I really fucked things up. Do you think they’ll come here, the people you talked to?” She took a big swallow of beer and grimaced.

“If they do, I’m armed. I don’t go nowhere without this.” I patted my sidearm. “Besides, ain’t much benefit to let it be known they talked to me. Get them killed quicker than me. We won’t hear from that Fury again.”

“I hope you’re right.”

I’d thought ten-thirty was a mite early to start lunch, but the lasagna wasn’t ready til noon. By the time it come outta the oven, Dirk was up. Zhorzha bandaged his arm and counted out them antibiotics.

“You sure it’s safe to take that shit?” he said, when she put the pills in front of him.

“Yeah, I’ve taken them plenty of times. Unless you know another way to get antibiotics without going to the doctor.” She picked up the bottle and pretended like she was reading off it. “Possible side effects: may grow gills and flippers.”

“Jesus, fine.” He tossed the pills back with some beer and then we was ready to eat.

We gone through lunch, not talking about nothing serious, but after we ate, I reckoned we had waited as long as we could. I gone into the front room and turned on the news. Dirk come and sat down in the rocker, but Zhorzha stood in the doorway, swirling her beer around in the can. We didn’t have to wait too long for the news to come around to the story. Folks love a good story with blood and suffering.

“The manhunt for escaped mosque killers Tague Barnwell and Conrad Ligett ended in Arkansas last night, with the death of Ligett and the arrest of Barnwell. Authorities have not released details about the circumstances surrounding the arrest, but local sources say three other men are dead, and another man and a woman are in custody at this hour.”

That was all they had, and the same old mug shots of Barnwell and Ligett.

“What do you make of that?” I said.

Zhorzha was standing there, beer in one hand, her other hand clutched over her stomach.

“Shit. I guess Edrard didn’t make it. That’s a goddamn shame. He seemed like a real good guy,” Dirk said. He got himself puffed up the way men do when they want to talk tough. “He took a couple slugs in the gut. That’s why we had to leave him, you know.”

“Hush,” I said to him. Zhorzha looked peaked as hell and none too steady on her feet. “Girl, you ain’t gonna faint, are you?”

“No,” she said. For once Dirk took his cue from me and kept his mouth shut.

“Y’all got your story straight? Them federal marshals, they’re gonna circle back around with more questions.”

“I didn’t go,” Zhorzha said. “That’s what I’m telling them. I don’t know what happened.”

“Exactly. I don’t know nothing,” Dirk said. He got up and gave Zhorzha a hug, before he gone into the kitchen and out the back door.

“Is your man likely to tell them otherwise?” I said.

“I don’t think so, but what about LaReigne?”

“What about her?” I said. “You ain’t so much as said her name til now. I was starting to think she fell off the edge of the world, except I’m guessing she’s the one they got in custody.”

“She wouldn’t leave. I went there to get her, and I got Gentry’s friend killed, and she wouldn’t leave. She’s in love with that piece of shit, and she stayed there with him.”

“It may not matter much what she says about you. And maybe she gone off and done something stupid, but that don’t mean she forgot it’s her job to protect her little sister.”

“Except she abandoned us. For that asshole. Why would she do that?”

Zhorzha finished her beer and stared down into the empty can, like the answer was in there.

“Well, she takes after your mam. Dot woulda done anything for your daddy, right up to and including breaking him outta prison, if she coulda figured out how. For that matter, LaReigne takes after me and your daddy. Consider the goddamn reckless thing I did for Tess, and he helped me. I reckon you got more of your grandpappy’s sense than we did.”

“Are you kidding me? Did I or did I not just drive down to Arkansas and get people killed, trying to ransom my sister? I’m just like you all.”

I laughed, which wasn’t the kindest thing I coulda done, but it did tickle me.

“Shit, girl. I was trying to cheer you up. I didn’t want you driving all that way home alone, feeling like you made a huge mistake.”

“I did make a huge mistake.” She crunched the beer can in her fist and leaned her head against the doorframe like it was too heavy to hold up.

“That’s the way of the world. If there ain’t nobody in the world you care enough about to do something crazy for, that’s gotta be an empty feeling. What I did for Tess, it was dumb as hell, but it come from how much I loved her.”

“And you think that makes it okay that LaReigne abandoned her family for that bastard. That she helped them, and those prison guards got killed?”

“No,” I said. “But it means something that you love your sister so much you done what you done.”

CHAPTER 46

Zee

   When I’d parked the truck the day before, the dog had walked out to the end of his chain to look at me. On Monday morning, after I said goodbye to Uncle Alva, the dog was standing in the exact same spot, waiting. As close to the truck as he could get. When I opened the door to get in, he took a step closer, so that his chain was stretched tight. I put out my hand the way Gentry had, and the dog sniffed it.

“Are you hungry? Did anybody feed you while Dirk was gone?”

When I touched his scabby head, he squinted his eyes but didn’t move. Before I could change my mind, I took ahold of the hook on his collar and thumbed it open. The chain hitting the ground spooked him enough that he tucked his flanks and rolled his eyes at me. I jerked my hand back, but the dog didn’t do anything except scuttle a few feet away from the chain. Then he trotted straight to the truck and hopped up in the cab.

I headed back up to the house, leaving the truck door open. When I walked into the kitchen, Uncle Alva was sitting at the table with his glasses up on his head and his eyes closed.

“Tell Dirk I’m taking his dog,” I said. “And tell him not to get another dog if all he’s going to do is chain it up out there.”

“I been thinking about getting me another beagle. You know, them Snoopy dogs. We used to have one. You remember?”

“Yeah. Beelzebub. You told us you stole him from the devil.”