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"Washed before daylight and parked on my road by the time Audrey drove out to my place," I say.

"If the footage shows that, it's more than a lead." She pauses. "Whitlock, Voelkel, Strackbein, and the three from the cigar room are in federal custody in San Antonio. The young man in the straw hat who drove Hector down to your gate turned himself in this morning with his father. Rusk hired a lawyer out of Austin before the sun was up. A judge has already signed a warrant for his bank records. Nobody's charged him yet."

"You'll get him."

"I'll charge what the records prove." She hangs up without saying goodbye.

At midmorning I drive Delilah into Fredericksburg to see Nell's doctor. Before she climbs into Jesse's truck, she tells me riding to town with me doesn't mean anything. I tell her this truck doesn't belong to me, so it can't mean much. She doesn't smile, but she doesn't tell me to shut up, either.

She rides the whole way with her bandaged hand propped on the dash. The doctor keeps her most of an hour while I wait in the truck. When she comes out, her hand is wrapped fresh, with a splint along a couple of her fingers.

"Second-degree," she says. "The deep part's just on the tips. The splint comes off in a couple of weeks. It'll scar, and it'll work."

"Good."

Neither of us says another word on the drive home. She sits pressed against her door, as far from me as the cab lets her get.

That afternoon Audrey's gray rental comes up my drive with Hector in the passenger seat, one eye swollen shut and his hat in his lap.

Before Audrey has the engine off, he's out of the car and into the horse barn, pulling a flake of hay off the stack for Sadie.

Delilah comes out of the tack room and walks straight to him, and he lets her hug him. Hector has never let anybody hug him in all the years I've known him.

That night her porch light stays on, and her curtains stay shut.

I sit on my back steps with the rifle until her light goes off, and I don't cross the yard.

Wednesday morning Torres texts me a still from the car wash camera. It's Whitlock's white pickup in the self-serve bay, under the wash lights before sunrise, with Whitlock himself running the pressure-washer wand up under the wheel wells.

That Sunday. His truck, his hands, caliche all over the bay floor. It's in my file.

By Thursday I'm sitting in a law office on Adams Street in Fredericksburg, across from a lawyer who's never bet on a fight in this county. I tell her everything: the ring, the books, the green ledger Torres already has, and what I did to Dutch Voelkel in that cellar hall in front of half a federal team.

She listens without writing anything down until I'm done.

"The county prosecutor will want to talk to you about the gambling," she says. "Torres's report on the beating will go wherever it goes, and the prosecutors will sort out who handles it. I'll go in with you. I can't promise you a single thing."

"I'm not asking you to," I say. "But when we're in there, I'm telling him nothing Delilah says on the stand gets traded to help me."

She looks up from her empty legal pad. "You don't get to tell a prosecutor how to treat a witness."

"Then I'll tell him what I won't take."

That afternoon we sit across from the county prosecutor in his office over the courthouse square. He looks young for the job, with a Hill Country drawl and Torres's reports stacked at his elbow.

"Your ledger puts an illegal gambling operation on your property for years," he says. "I haven't decided on charges. Agent Torres's report on the beating has gone to the federal side. Who handles that, and how, isn't my call yet."

Before my lawyer can answer, I lean forward, and the prosecutor's eyes come up to mine.

"Delilah King testifies to whatever she saw and whatever she knows," I say. "None of it gets traded for anything to do with me. Not one charge. Not one day."

He looks at me a while. "Nobody offered you a trade, Mr. Hollister."

"Good. Keep it that way."

I walk out onto the courthouse square knowing charges may come, and knowing I'll stand up and take whatever they are.

The guest house porch is empty when I pull in.