Page 114

"Torres," I say. "That looks like the truck Whitlock drove into Daddy's church lot the morning somebody painted Jezebel across the doors."

Knox is already walking over.

"And Audrey saw a clean white pickup parked on my county road the morning after they took Hector," he says. "No mud on it, no dog box, nobody in the cab. She never got the plate." He nods at Whitlock's truck. "That's a clean white pickup."

"A lot of men in this county drive one," Torres says.

"Then have Audrey look at this one." Knox doesn't take his eyes off the truck. "Ozzie's been asking around town who drives a white pickup that's never hauled a thing. I'll have his answer for you by noon."

Torres studies the truck for a second. She waves an agent over and points at it. "Nobody touches that pickup until it's photographed and towed."

The agents push Whitlock's head down under the door frame of the federal car and shut him in.

My legs start shaking. I sit down on the bottom step before they fold.

Torres comes back to Knox at the foot of the steps. I can hear every word, and she doesn't lower her voice.

"My report on what you did to Voelkel goes up the chain in the morning," she says. "I wrote what I saw."

"Write it straight."

"I don't know any other way to write it." She glances at the holster on his hip. "It covers the pistol you wore onto my operation too."

"Figured."

She turns to me and holds out her hand, palm up. Two brass keys lie in it, the ones Knox handed me on the guest house porch my first morning at Devil's Acre. I gave them to Torres the day she sealed that door.

"My evidence tech bagged Royce's boots and knife out of your dresser this morning, while I was taping that wire on you," she says. "The guest house is yours again."

I take the keys out of her palm and shove them in my jeans pocket. Torres doesn't say goodbye. She walks back toward the building, already talking into her radio.

Jesse's truck comes up the drive from the front gate and stops at the foot of the steps. Jesse climbs out and tosses Knox the keys. Jesse's staying here with Raven until Torres is done questioning her.

Knox stands by the passenger door with his hand on the handle and waits.

I get up off the step and walk to him on my own.

Up close, I can see blood drying in the creases of his knuckles. Some of it is Dutch's. Some of it is his.

Tonight he came down Whitlock's cellar stairs behind Torres's people, stomping the bad step so I'd know it was him.

He stopped beating Dutch the second I said Bandera, the word he gave me to stop anything he does.

None of that changes what's on the card in Torres's evidence bag. He initialed the sale of my daddy's marker to Whitlock, and then he kept it from me every day I slept on his land.

He opens the door and steps back, the way he did the night he drove me out of his fight barn.

I climb in. He walks around and gets behind the wheel.

"Tell me all of it tomorrow," I say. "Not tonight. Tonight, take me home."

He nods and starts the truck.

He takes us down the winery drive past the federal cars, slow, and out between the limestone pillars onto the highway. He keeps both hands on the wheel. Neither of us talks until the highway narrows to two lanes.

His phone buzzes in the cup holder. He reads it at a stop sign and turns the screen so I can see.

Hector's eye is swollen shut. They're keeping him overnight. He's fighting the nurse about going home to feed his horses. Audrey.