As he climbed the ladder of Tower 3, a strange memory struck Ray Navarro. It was of his son. Ray had been sitting on their front porch after finishing the mowing, and a green blur had come zooming down the road. His little boy, in a bright green T-shirt, running full blast, and tugging along their cocker spaniel puppy, the dog’s legs struggling to keep up with those of his son, Ian. A son he would probably never see again.

As Ray placed one hand in front of the next, his wedding ring kept clanging against the metal of the rungs. The echoes of metal on metal trickled down the concrete walls of Tower 3 like water. Each high-pitched sound sent shockwaves of regret and doubt down through Ray’s soul.

He felt like the world was upside down, and he was actually climbing down into hell instead of ascending Tower 3 at Foxbury Correctional Treatment Facility.

The prison was actually an old work camp and mental hospital, which had recently been recommissioned as part of a pilot program for a private company’s experimental prison. All of the guards, including himself, had been warned about the unique working conditions inside Foxbury. The program was voluntary. He had known the risks, but the money was just too good to pass up. He had bills to pay and mouths to feed.

Ray Navarro pushed open the hatch in the floor of the crow’s nest and pulled himself up into the ten-by-ten space of the tower. The little room smelled like cigarettes, even though no one was supposed to smoke up there. A tiny window air conditioner squeaked and rumbled in the tower’s back wall. He shed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. The gun case was bolted to the left wall of the crow’s nest. With almost robotic, instinctual movements, he watched himself unlock the case, grab the 30-06 rifle, and insert cartridges loaded with just the right mixture of chemicals and shrapnel, fire and steel, needed to blow a one-inch hole in a person’s flesh. He had always excelled in the use of high-powered, long-range weapons. A pistol and a tactical shotgun also occupied the tower’s gun cabinet. He was rated as an expert in their use as well, but he had taken to the 30-06 like a boy’s hand to a well-oiled baseball glove.

Ray Navarro extended the rifle’s bipod and started searching the prison yard for his first target.

The scope’s line of sight slid effortlessly over each man’s face. He noticed a pair of the prison’s celebrity inmates. Leonard Lash, the infamous gang leader awaiting execution, and Oren Kimble, the madman responsible for a mall shooting five years ago. Then his eye stopped on two of the guards moving along the perimeter of inmates like cowboys watching over the herd. The men seemed to be having an in-depth conversation, a wiser silver-haired mentor teaching a younger pupil. He knew the older black man well. Bill Singer was a war veteran and a former sniper, just like Ray. When Ray returned from his last tour, he had been lost in doubt and fear and hadn’t known where to turn. Until he had met Bill. Now, Ray Navarro was five years sober and had even patched things up with his wife, who had come very close to being an ex-wife before Bill had started counseling him.

Bill wasn’t supposed to be on duty until Sunday, but something must have changed because there was his friend giving what seemed to be a mini-sermon to his younger counterpart.

The younger white man beside Bill, Jerry Dunn, had just come on with them. Jerry walked with a catch in his gait which made it seem like three of his steps were equal to two of a normal man’s, but that wasn’t the only aspect of Jerry Dunn which had earned him the nickname “Gimp” among his fellow correctional officers. Jerry also blinked about four times more than a normal person and often struggled to spit out more than a sentence or two.

Ray had no problem with Jerry and even felt sorry for the way many of the other guards treated him. A minor limp and a few tics didn’t mean that Dunn couldn’t do his job and, by all accounts, the young CO was more than competent.

Ray prayed that the next person up the tower’s ladder after him wouldn’t be Bill Singer or Jerry Dunn. Although, he didn’t really want it to be anyone else either. It was one thing to kill enemy soldiers or even an inmate if there was no other choice. This was different. This was the outright murder of men who were his coworkers, his friends.

Ray threw up all over the floor of Tower 3.

He cursed under his breath and then said, “It’s them or you.”

He re-acquired his target. Slid the crosshairs over the man’s heart and then up to his head. Normally, he would go for the chest, a larger target capable of accomplishing the same task. But since this was quite possibly one of his very last acts on the planet, he figured there was no harm in showing off and going for the true killshot.

“It’s them or you.”

He kept repeating that phrase like a mantra, over and over.

“It’s them or you.”

~~*~~

Bill Singer watched Jerry limp along in front of him. The more he watched, the more he noticed that the limp didn’t seem to slow Jerry down a bit. Bill realized that from Jerry’s perspective each step may have been painful or at the very least require twice as much effort. At his age, Bill realized the importance of pain management and the economy of movement, the debts that needed paying for each step, each incorrect dietary choice, each year with no trips to the gym, each time you tried to do something that you did easily ten years ago.

Knowing the difficulties faced by Jerry having been forced to start his life with inherent setbacks in that arena, Bill felt a soft spot for the kid and had taken the younger guard under his wing. Bill and his wife had neglected to have children, but he considered himself blessed to have some young men he had mentored who had become like sons to him. Jerry Dunn was one of those adopted sons. Another was Ray Navarro, who Bill knew was on overwatch in Tower 3 at that very moment. Then there were several others whom he had met through his volunteer work down at the clinic with his wife, Caroline.

Jerry Dunn actually reminded Bill more of one of those counseling patients than a correctional officer like Ray Navarro. Jerry was a wounded orphan while Ray was a wounded warrior. Both real problems that were no fault of either man, but whose differences were evident in each man’s demeanor.

Jerry had shared his story around a table of hot wings and beers on the first night Bill met him. The kid had blinked ten times and twitched twice before explaining that his parents had been killed in a car accident when he was only eight months old.

Some of the others had sympathized but continued to mock Jerry behind his back. And, of course, there were a few assholes in the group, who referred to Jerry as Gimp even to his face. Bill had gone a different way. He had befriended the young officer quickly and learned that whatever its cause, Jerry lived with a lot of pain in his heart.

Jerry Dunn halted his half-gait mid-stride and turned on his heels to face the yard. Bill shook his head at the younger man’s appearance. Jerry’s shaggy, black, stick-straight hair hung over his ears and looked as if it hadn’t been combed in days. Jerry’s skin was as pale as Bill’s was dark, and it had a certain smell about it. A mix of body odor and a cheap deodorant that acted as a substitute for bathing.

Jerry said, “I’m bored senseless. Let’s make a bet. I bet you two bucks that the two big Aryan brotherhood type guys right there. See them, one benching a million pounds and the other spotting him and looking disinterested. I bet you two bucks that the big guy doesn’t get it up and the smaller guy either makes fun of him about it or he barely even notices that the big guy dropped the thing on his chest.”

Bill followed Jerry’s gaze and shook his head again. This time at the younger man’s assessment of the situation. Bill said, “I’ll take that bet, but let’s make it twenty bucks.”

Jerry seemed worried by this raising of the stakes, but not worried enough to keep from saying, “You’re on.”

Bill let his gaze linger on the ABs and watched the scene play out just as he suspected it would. The bigger man dropped the bar, but his spotter didn’t even let the bar touch the other man’s chest before snatching it up onto the rack.

Bill said, “The spotter wasn’t looking away because he wasn’t paying attention. He was looking away because he was scanning the yard for threats.”

“But they don’t need to do that here. There are no physical threats.”

“Old habits.”

Crestfallen, Jerry continued along the perimeter, and Bill followed in step beside him.

“This group of one hundred,” Bill said, referring to the first wave of prisoners being transferred to the refurbished and repurposed Foxbury prison, “has had to form bonds quickly in order to maintain their dominance when the next wave hits. I know we’ve only been here a few months, but I’m shocked that no one has been killed yet. This new ‘experimental model’ gives these guys way too much freedom.”

As the bigger Aryan rose from the bench and took his place as spotter, the two locked fists, held the embrace for a breath, and released each other with a final squeeze of the shoulder. A strangely intimate public gesture that stretched the limits of the physical contact allowed at Foxbury. They may have even felt the jolt of a warning shock. Maybe that was the point. To bond through a little shared pain.

“It’s in their nature to join together into packs. They’re a group of hungry wolves thrown into a pen. The laws of nature take over. They’re going to gang up and start establishing bonds and hierarchy. I don’t care what they claim about this software and technology and cameras. It’s nature of the beast out here. Always has been, always will be. Someone’s going to get this place’s number. There isn’t a security system in the world that can’t be bypassed. If one guy’s smart enough to design it, then there’s another guy out there hungry enough to bypass it.”

“So far, it seems to be working. I think it’s a glimpse of what the prison of the future could look like.”

“Don’t drink the Kool-Aid just yet. It’s only been six months, kid. Trust me. ‘So far’ doesn’t last that long.”

Bill glanced back at the big Aryan, now standing solemn guard over his comrade like a stone sentinel.

Then Bill watched the big Aryan’s head split down the middle. He saw the blood a heartbeat before he heard the crack of a high-powered rifle.

~~*~~

A millisecond of held breath followed the first man’s death. A fraction of a heartbeat when the fight or flight instincts of every inmate twitched toward fight. After all, these men were all fighters in one way or another. It made time seem frozen somehow.

Then everyone, all at once, realized what had happened. The inmates dropped to the ground, as they had been taught, and the guards struggled to keep their wits.

Bill analyzed the situation, years of training and drills all floating to the surface of his personal sea of memories. The training kicked in and won the battle over his instincts.

An inmate must have been putting the life of a guard in danger. That was the only reason a tower guard would have opened fire. His gaze had just enough time to slide over the yard, searching for what he had missed, when the second shot rang out.

This time one of the inmates with his belly to the ground jerked wildly and then lay still, a spray of blood splattering the man to his left.

Bill tried to work it out. Why would a tower guard shoot an inmate lying on the ground?

Unless this was something more.

An entirely different set of training and drills took over—from before he became a correctional officer, from back when he was a young army recruit—and those military-issued instincts helped Bill immediately recognize what this really was. A sniper attack. They were under assault.

“Everyone up!” Bill screamed. “Get inside the buildings. Get to cover!” The throng of prisoners scattered as they scrambled to find protection. The sound of a third shot spurred their legs to pump harder.

Bill didn’t see the third man fall, but he did see from where the shot had originated. He had looked to the towers and walls first, scanning for the shooter. And up in Tower 3, he saw a man who looked like Ray Navarro, eye to his rifle, lining up another shot.

The yard was, looking down from above, the shape of a giant stop sign. Guard towers topped four of the outer vertexes. The safety of the prison’s main buildings was in the distance to Bill’s left. But Tower 3 and the sniper who had become like a son to Bill was closer on the right.

Safety or friendship.

When Bill had served his tour of duty, he had learned and believed that it was all about the man on your right and on your left, your brothers.

Safety or friendship.

Saving his own ass or trying to keep his friend from being killed. The decision was an easy one for Bill Singer. Not even a choice really. Just another instinct; a natural result of all he’d learned and experienced.

He ran toward Tower 3.

Access to the outer perimeter of the yard and the guard towers was made possible via a barred gate in the old stone wall. The problem was that the gate was actually more modern than its surroundings, and it had no locks or keys. It could only be opened by one of the watchers—the name the guards had bestowed on the computer techs who constantly monitored the prison’s thousands of cameras through some kind of special software. Amid the chaos of the yard, among the disorder of one hundred men running for their lives, one of those watchers would have to notice him and buzz him through the gate.

It was a long shot. Not to mention that he had to put himself squarely in Ray’s crosshairs—if that really was Ray up there—just to reach the gate.

The Ray he knew would never fire on him. But the Ray he knew would never fire on anyone. If it really was Ray, then it wasn’t the Ray he knew, and he had no way of anticipating the actions of this robot that had taken Ray’s place, this creature that seemed to walk in Ray’s skin.

Bill wasn’t really surprised to see a pair of the other guards having the same idea. A pair of energetic thirty-something guards who Bill knew as Trent and Stuart were already pounding their fists on the shiny aluminum gate and shouting up at one of the prison’s legion of cameras.

To his surprise, Bill was still twenty feet from the gate when he heard the buzz and clank of the lock disengaging. Big brother was watching. The other pair of guards pushed through and ran out of his view, but he knew where they were headed. He shot a glance to Tower 3 as he ran toward the now-open gate.

Ray had disappeared from the tower’s window. Whether the shooting was over or Ray was just reloading, Bill couldn’t be sure, but he did know that things would go better for his young friend if he was the first one up that ladder.

Bill shouted at the other guards to wait, to let him go up first, but he was so winded from the sprint across the yard that he couldn’t make the sound come out with as much force as he wanted.

The younger guards didn’t stop their assault. “Wait!” he shouted. The thought of Ray attacking the guards and escalating the situation spurred him forward, pumping his adrenaline to the next level.

Bill caught the gate before it could swing shut and relatch. He rounded the corner of the wall toward Tower 3 and looked up just as the parapet of the tower exploded in a searing ball of glass and fire.

~~*~~

The concussion wave slammed Bill to the ground like a swatted fly. Blackened and flaming chunks of concrete rained down around him. He looked back at Tower 3, and his eyes struggled to regain focus. The midday sun hung in the sky directly behind the watchtower. It looked to Bill as if the sun had simply absorbed the parapet of Tower 3 like some giant fiery PAC-MAN. He held his gaze into the sun just long enough to see that the tip of Tower 3 was gone, as if the crow’s nest was the top of a dandelion blown away and scattered to the wind, there and then not.

He was still disoriented by the blast wave. His vision blurred and then came back into focus. Blurred and focused. Then, through the haze, Bill saw Ray Navarro stumbling toward the opening in the stone wall, heading back to the main building.

It was Ray. Bill was sure of it. Not some impostor or impersonator, but his friend. Had the kid completely snapped?

If something was happening in Ray’s life that could have driven him to this, then Bill had no clue what it could have been. Maybe the kid had some kind of PTSD flashback? He couldn’t have been in his right mind.

Bill’s hearing suddenly returned. One second, it was a high-pitched ringing, a shrill otherworldly sound. Then the sound quickly merged back with the real world. The screams brought Bill back to the moment. He crawled, then stumbled, then ran toward the sound of the screaming. One of the men who had beaten him to the tower was on fire. He didn’t see the other.

The man, or more of a boy to Bill’s old eyes, rolled feebly on the ground to smother the flames. Bill could smell the man’s flesh cooking. It reminded him of sizzling bacon.

Bill shoved his hands through the flames to get to the boy. Just enough contact with the fire to singe off all the hair on Bill’s arms, but also just enough contact with the boy’s torso to shove him into a full roll.

He helped extinguish the last of the flames and then rolled the kid onto his back. His face was charred. He couldn’t stop crying and coughing. And Bill could think of nothing he could do to help.

The sound of boots crushing sand and gravel announced the arrival of more guards. One pushed Bill back and started performing CPR on the burned man.

Bill hadn’t even noticed that the kid had stopped breathing. He felt suddenly disoriented, as if he had just woken up from a bad dream, and his mind was struggling to realign with reality. All he could hear was the ringing, and it seemed to be growing in volume, swelling toward a climax.

He bent over and threw up. What could Ray have been thinking? Had he seen Ray heading back toward the prison? Had that been real? If so, where was Ray going? Had his young friend done this and then was trying to sneak away in the confusion?

Bill ran back toward the gate. The other guards shouted something about needing help, but Bill ignored them. He moved with a singular focus now.

One emotion drove him forward. Anger. One thought fueled his anger. That could have been me.

If Ray had premeditated this—and he obviously had, because he must have brought some kind of explosives with him and had at least some semblance of an escape plan—then that meant that Ray had no way of knowing who would have been the next person through that hatch. It could have been anyone. It could very easily have been Bill.

A few steps closer or a few seconds faster, and it would have been him.

His friend had nearly taken his life; he had nearly taken him away from Caroline.

That didn’t sit right with him and, at the very least, he was going to find out why.

The yard was almost evacuated, and Bill couldn’t miss Ray moving toward the north barracks.

He lowered his head and ran harder, trying to close the gap between them.

Ray didn’t look back, didn’t check over his shoulder once. As if not looking at the destruction he had caused would make it less real, less horrifying. As if guilt and shame wouldn’t catch him if he refused to acknowledge them.

The anger fueled Bill even more—the anger awakened something in him. Something that he hadn’t felt since his army days. He could still smell the young guard’s burning flesh. He could still hear his screams.

He closed the last of the gap in a dive, driving his shoulder into Ray’s back and sending them both sprawling onto the concrete of a basketball court.

Ray was first to his feet. He held a Glock pistol, probably stolen from the gun cabinet of Tower 3.

“Stay back,” Ray said.

“What have you done?”

“I said stay back!”

“Why?”

Bill’s voice cracked as he took a step toward the man he had spent countless hours counseling and guiding back toward sanity.

“Back,” Ray said, retreating toward the barracks.

“You tell me why!”

“I’m sorry. I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Glad I’m okay? I could have been killed. And what about the others you just murdered?”

“I can’t. . .” Ray shook his head and turned to run.

Bill stared at him a moment, dumbfounded.

It looked like the Ray he knew. The voice was the same. The look in his eyes. But the Ray he knew would never have done something like this. Did he have the capability? Sure. Ray was a former soldier. He had killed in combat. This was different. This was the visceral act of an animal with its back to the wall. This was the final attack of a dying predator.

What could have possibly driven Ray to such a desperate, animalistic decision?

Ray had taken three big strides toward the barracks before Bill made up his mind that Ray Navarro wasn’t leaving the yard.

Bill closed the distance between them in two huge strides. He threw all of his weight and momentum into a single blow. He hurled himself at Ray like a locomotive of flesh and bone. He aimed one huge punch directly at the back of Ray’s head. He would hit Ray hard with one sucker punch that would instantly knock him out. The fight would be over before it began.

But Ray ducked the punch at the last second and spun around, the gun still in his hand.

Bill immediately recognized his mistake. An old drill instructor’s words floated back to him from the ether of his memory.

Go for the body. The head is too small a target that can move and shift too easily.

Bill immediately knew the consequence of not heeding that advice.

The gun flashed.

Bill saw the shock and horror in Ray’s eyes.

He felt the warmth of the blood leaving the wound before actually feeling the pain of the puncture. He fell back to the concrete.

The ringing in his ears was fading away but leaving only silence in its place.

He heard the shouts of other guards telling Ray to get down. He closed his eyes. At least he had stopped Ray from escaping and hurting anyone else or himself.

Bill Singer heard the ringing. Then more shouting. Then the ringing again. And then nothing at all.

PROLOGUE
SEPTEMBER 2004

My life was saved by a murder. At the time, of course, I didn’t understand that. I just knew I was having the best year of my life. Given all the terrible things that happened, I should be ashamed to say it, but that year was a blessing for me.

I’d just turned fifteen when Della Kincaid bought Daddy’s store. At first nothing much changed. Daddy was still round a lot, getting odd jobs as a handyman and farming enough to sell what Mama couldn’t put by. And we still lived in the house next door, though Mama banned me from going inside the store. She said she didn’t want me to be a nuisance, but I think she was jealous of “that woman from Washington, D.C.”

So I just sat out front like I always did when Daddy owned it, killing time, chatting with a few friendly customers or other bench-sitters like me. I never wanted to go inside while Daddy had the store, not because he might have asked me to help, but because he thought I couldn’t help. Oh sure, I’d go in for a Coca-Cola or Dr. Pepper, but, for the most part, I just sat there, reared back with my chair resting against the outside wall, my legs dangling. Just like my life.

I’ve never forgotten how crazy it all played out. I had forgotten about the two diaries I’d kept that year. I discovered them while cleaning out our home after Mama died in April. (Daddy had passed two year earlier, to the day.) They weren’t like a girl’s diary (at least that’s what I told myself, when I worried about such things). They were notes I’d imagined a reporter like Della or her ex-husband would make, capturing the times.

I’d already cleaned out most of the house, saving my room for last. I boxed up my hubcaps, picking out my favorites from the ones still hanging on my bedroom walls. (We’d long ago sold the collection in the barn.) I tackled the shelves with all my odd keepsakes: a deer jaw, two dusty geodes, other rocks I’d found that caught my eye, like the heart-shaped reddish one—too good not to keep. When I gathered a shelf-full of books in my arms, I saw the battered shoebox where I’d stashed those diaries tucked behind the books. I sat on my old bed, the plaid spread dusty and faded, untouched in a couple of decades, and started to read. The pages had yellowed, but they stirred up fresh memories, all the same. That’s when I called Della (I still looked for any excuse to talk with her), and we arranged a couple of afternoons to go over the diaries together.

We sat at her kitchen table, where she’d placed a pot of tea and a plate of homemade cookies, and talked. And talked. After a time or two recollecting over the diaries, I told Della I wanted to write a book about that year. She agreed. We were both a little surprised that, even after all these years, we didn’t have any trouble recalling that spring.

APRIL 1985

CHAPTER 1 ABIT

Four cop cars blocked our driveway.

I thought I might’ve dreamed it, since I’d fallen asleep on the couch, watching TV. But after I rubbed my eyes, all four cars were still there. Seeing four black-and-whites in a town with only one could throw you.

All I could think was what did I do wrong? I ran through my day real quick-like, and I couldn’t come up with anything that would get me more than a backhand from Daddy.

I watched a cop walking in front of the store next door, which we shared a driveway with. As long as I could remember, that store hadn’t never had four cars out front at the same time, let alone four cop cars. I stepped outside, quietly closing our front door. The sun was getting low, and I hoped Mama wadnt about to call me to supper.

I headed down our stone steps to see for myself. Our house sat on a hill above the store, which made it close enough that Daddy, when he still owned the store, could run down the steps (twenty of ‘em, mossy and slick after a rain) if, say, a customer drove up while he was home having his midday dinner. But of an evening, those same steps seemed to keep people from pestering him to open up, as Daddy put it, “to sell some fool thing they could live without ‘til the next morning.”

I was just about halfway down when the cop looked my way. “Don’t trouble yourself over this, Abit. Nothing to see here.” That was Lonnie Parker, the county’s deputy sheriff.

“What do you mean nothing to see here? I ain’t seen four cop cars all in one place in my whole life.”

“You don’t need to worry about this.”

“I’m not worried,” I said. “I’m curious.”

“You’re curious all right.” He turned and spat something dark onto the dirt drive, a mix of tobacco and hate.

That’s how it always went. People talked to me like I was an idiot. Okay, I knew that I wadnt as smart as others. Something happened when Mama had me (she was pretty old by then), and I had trouble making my words just right sometimes. But inside, I worked better than most people thought. I used to go to school, but I had trouble keeping up, and that made Daddy feel bad. I wadnt sure if he felt bad for me or him. Anyway, they took me out of school when I was twelve, which meant I spent my days watching TV and hanging out. And being bored. I could read, but it took me a while. The bookmobile swung by every few weeks, and I’d get a new book each time. And I watched the news and stuff like that to try to learn.

I was named after Daddy – Vester Bradshaw Jr. – but everyone called me Abit. I heard the name Abbott mentioned on the TV and asked Mama if that was the same as mine. She said it were different but pronounced about the same. She wouldn’t call me that, but Daddy was fine with it. A few year ago, I overheard him explaining how I got that name.

“I didn’t want him called the same as me,” Daddy told a group of men killing time outside the store. He was a good storyteller, and he was enjoying the attention. “He’s a retard. When he come home from the hospital, and people asked how he was doing, I’d tell ‘em,‘he’s a bit slow.’ I wanted to just say it outright to cut out all the gossip. I told that story enough that someone started calling him Abit, and it stuck.”

Some jerk then asked if my middle name were “Slow,” and everybody laughed. That hurt me at the time, but with the choice between Abit and Vester, I reckoned my name weren’t so bad, after all. Daddy could have his stupid name.

Anyway, I wadnt going to have Lonnie Parker run me off my own property (or near abouts my property), so I folded my arms and leaned against the rock wall.

I grabbed a long blade of grass and chewed. While I waited, I checked out the hubcaps on the cars—nothing exciting, just the routine sort of government caps. Too bad, ‘cause a black-and-white would’ve looked really cool with Mercury chrome hubcaps. I had one in my collection in the barn back of the house, so I knew what I was talking about.

I heard some loud voices coming from upstairs, the apartment above the store, where Della lived with Jake, some kind of mixed hound who came to live with her when she lived in Washington, D.C. I couldn’t imagine what Della had done wrong. She was about the nicest person I’d ever met. I loved Mama, but Della was easier to be round. She just let me be.

Ever since Daddy sold the store, Mama wouldn’t let me go inside it anymore. I knew she was jealous of Della. To be honest, I thought a lot of people were jealous a lot of the time and that was why they did so many stupid things. I saw it all the time. Sitting out front of the store most days, I’d hear them gossiping or even making stuff up about people. I bet they said things about me, too, when I wadnt there, off having my dinner or taking a nap.

But lately, something else was going on with Mama. Oncet I turned fifteen year old, she started snooping and worrying. I’d seen something about that on TV, so I knew it was true: People thought that any guy who was kinda slow was a sex maniac. They figured since we weren’t one-hundred percent “normal,” we walked round with boners all the time and couldn’t control ourselves. I couldn’t speak for others, but that just weren’t true for me. I remembered the first one I got, and it sure surprised me. But I’d done my experimenting, and I knew it wouldn’t lead to no harm. Mama had nothin’ to worry about, but still, she kept a close eye on me.

Of course, it was true that Della was real nice looking—tall and not skinny or fat. She had a way about her—smart but not stuck up. And her hair was real pretty—kinda curly and reddish gold, cut just below her ears. But she coulda been my mother, for heaven’s sake.

After a while, Gregg and the sheriff, along with some other cops, started making their way down Della’s steps to their cars.

“Abit, you get on home, son.” Sheriff Brower said. “Don’t go bothering Ms. Kincaid right now.”

“Go to hell, Brower. I don’t need your stupid advice.” Okay, that was just what I wanted to say; what I really said was, “I don’t plan on bothering Della.” I used her first name to piss him off; young people were supposed to use grownups’ last names. Besides, she’d asked me to call her Della. Then I added, “And I don’t bother her. She likes me.”

But he was already churning dust in the driveway, speeding onto the road.

CHAPTER 2 DELLA

I heard Jake whimpering as I sank into the couch. I’d closed him in the bedroom while the sheriff and his gang of four were here. Jake kept bringing toys over for them to throw, and I could see how irritated they were getting. I didn’t want to give them reason to be more unpleasant than they already were.

“Hi there, boy,” I said as I opened the door. “Sorry about that, buddy.” He sprang from the room and grabbed his stuffed rabbit. I scratched his ears and threw the toy, then reclaimed the couch. “Why didn’t we stay in today, like I wanted?”

Earlier, I’d thought about skipping our usual hike. It was my only day off, and I wanted to read last Sunday’s Washington Post. (I was always a week behind since I had to have the papers mailed to me.) But Jake sat by the door and whined softly, and I sensed how cooped up he’d been with all the early spring rains.

Besides, those walks did me more good than Jake. When I first moved to Laurel Falls, the natural world frightened me. Growing up in Washington, D.C., hadn’t prepared me for that kind of wild. But gradually, I got more comfortable and started to recognize some of the birds and trees and especially the wildflowers. Something about their delicate beauty made the woods more welcoming. Trilliums, pink lady’s slippers, and fringed phacelia beckoned me to, encouraging me to venture deeper.

Of course, it didn’t help that my neighbors and customers carried on about the perils of taking long hikes by myself. “You could be murdered,” they cried. “At the very least you could be raped,” warned Abit’s mother, Mildred Bradshaw, normally a quiet, prim woman. “And what about perverts?” she’d add, exasperated that I wasn’t listening to her.

Sometimes Mildred’s chant “You’re so alone out there” nagged at me in a reactive loop as Jake and I walked in the woods. But that was one of the reasons I moved here. I wanted to be alone. I longed to get away from deadlines and noise and people. And memories. Besides, I argued with myself, hadn’t I lived safely in D.C. for years? I’d walked dark streets, sat face-to-face with felons, been robbed at gunpoint, but I still went out whenever I wanted, at least before midnight. You couldn’t live there and worry too much about crime, be it violent, white-collar, or political; that city would grind to a halt if people thought that way.

As Jake and I wound our way, the bright green tree buds and wildflowers soothed my dark thoughts. I breathed in that intoxicating smell of spring: not one thing in particular, but rather a mix of fragrances floating on soft breezes, signaling winter’s retreat. The birds were louder too, chittering and chattering in the warmer temperatures. I was lost in my reverie when Jake stopped so fast I almost tripped over him. He stood still, ears alert.

“What is it, boy?” He looked up at me, then resumed his exploration of rotten squirrels and decaying stumps.

I didn’t just love that dog, I admired him. He was unafraid of his surroundings, plowing through tall fields of hay or dense forests without any idea where he was headed, not the least bit perturbed by bugs flying into his eyes or seeds up his nose. He’d just sneeze and keep going.

We walked a while longer and came to a favorite lunch spot. I nestled against a broad beech tree, its smooth bark gentler against my back than the alligator bark of red oak or locust. Jake fixated on a line of ants carrying off remnants from a picnic earlier that day, rooting under leaves and exploring new smells since his last visit. But mostly he slept. In a sunspot, he made a nest thick with leaves, turning round and round until everything was just right.

Jake came to live with me a year and a half ago when a neighbor committed suicide, a few months before I moved south. We both struggled at first, but when we settled here, the past for him seemed forgotten. Sure, he still ran in circles when I brushed against his old leash hanging in the coat closet, but otherwise he was officially a mountain dog. I was the one still working on leaving the past behind.

I’d bought the store on a whim after a week’s stay in a log cabin in the Black Mountains. To prolong the trip, I took backroads home. As I drove through Laurel Falls, I spotted the boarded-up store sporting a For Sale sign. I stopped, jotted down the listed phone number, and called. Within a week, I owned it. The store was in shambles, both physically and financially, but something about its bones had appealed to me. And I could afford the extensive remodeling it needed because the asking price was so low.

Back in my D.C. condo, I realized how much I wanted a change in my life. I had no family to miss. I was an only child, and my parents had died in an alcoholic daze when their car wrapped around a tree, not long after I left for college. And all those editors and deadlines, big city hassles, and a failed marriage? I was eager to trade them in for a tiny town and a dilapidated store called Coburn’s General Store. (Nobody knew who Coburn was—that was just what it had always been called, though most of the time it was simply Coburn’s. Even if I’d renamed it, no one would have used the new name.)

In addition to the store, the deal included an apartment upstairs that, during its ninety-year history, had likely housed more critters than humans, plus a vintage 1950 Ford pickup truck with wraparound rear windows. And a bonus I didn’t know about when I signed the papers: a living, breathing griffon to guard me and the store—Abit.

I’d lived there almost a year, and I treasured my days away from the store, especially once it was spring again. Some folks complained that I wasn’t open Sundays (blue laws a distant memory, even though they were repealed only a few years earlier), but I couldn’t work every day, and I couldn’t afford to hire help, except now and again.

While Jake and I sat under that tree, the sun broke through the canopy and warmed my face and shoulders. I watched Jake’s muzzle twitch (he was already lost in a dream), and chuckled when he sprang to life at the first crinkle of wax paper. I shooed him away as I unwrapped my lunch. On his way back to his nest, he stopped and stared down the dell, his back hairs spiking into a Mohawk.

“Get over it, boy. I don’t need you scaring me as bad as Mildred. Settle down now,” I gently scolded as I laid out a chunk of Gruyere I’d whittled the hard edges off, an almost-out-of-date salami, and a sourdough roll I’d rescued from the store. I’d been called a food snob, but these sad leftovers from a struggling store sure couldn’t support that claim. Besides, out here the food didn’t matter so much. It was all about the pileated woodpecker trumpeting its jungle call or the tiny golden-crowned kinglet flitting from branch to branch. And the falls in the distance, playing its soothing continuo, day and night. These walks kept me sane. The giant trees reminded me I was just a player in a much bigger game, a willing refugee from a crowded, over-planned life.

I crumpled the lunch wrappings, threw Jake a piece of roll, and found a better sunspot. I hadn’t closed my eyes for a minute when Jake gave another low growl. He was sitting upright, nose twitching, looking at me for advice.

“Sorry, pal; you started it. I don’t hear anything,” I told him. He gave another face-saving low growl and put his head back down.

“You crazy old hound.” I patted his warm, golden fur. Early on, I wondered what kind of mix he was—maybe some retriever and beagle, bringing his size down to medium. I’d asked the vet to hazard a guess. He wouldn’t. Or couldn’t. It didn’t matter.

I poured myself a cup of hot coffee, white with steamed milk, appreciating the magic of a thermos, even if the contents always tasted vaguely of vegetable soup. That aroma took me back to the woods of my childhood, just two vacant lots really, a few blocks from my home in D.C.’s Cleveland Park. I played there for hours, stocked with sandwiches and a thermos of hot chocolate. I guess that’s where I first thought of becoming a reporter; I sat in the cold and wrote up everything that passed by—from birds and salamanders to postmen and high schoolers sneaking out for a smoke.

A deeper growl from Jake pulled me back. As I turned to share his view, I saw a man running toward us. “Dammit, Mildred,” I swore, as though the intruder were her fault. The man looked angry, pushing branches out of his way as he came toward us. Jake barked furiously, but I grabbed his collar and held tight.

Even though the scene was unfolding just as my neighbor had warned, I wasn’t afraid. Maybe it was the Madras sport shirt, so out of place on a man with a bushy beard and long ponytail. For God’s sake, I thought, how could anyone set out in the morning dressed like that and plan to do harm? A hint of a tattoo—a Celtic cross?—peeked below his shirt sleeve, adding to his unlikely appearance.

As he neared, I could see his face wasn’t so much angry as pained, drained of color.

“There’s some … one,” his voice cracked. He put his hands on his thighs and tried to catch his breath. As he did, his graying ponytail fell across his chest.

“What? Who?”

“A body. Somebody over there,” he said, pointing toward the creek. “Not far, it’s …” he stopped again to breathe.

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Cross … creek.” He started to run.

“Wait! Don’t go!” I shouted, but all I could see was the back of his shirt as he ran away from us. “Hey! At least call for help. There’s an emergency call box down that road, at the car park. Call Gregg O’Donnell at the Forest Service. I’ll go see if there’s anything I can do.”

He shouted, “There nothing you can do,” as he ran away.

Jake led the way as we crashed through the forest, branches whipping our faces. I felt the creek’s icy chill, in defiance of the day’s warmth, as I missed the smaller stepping stones and soaked my feet. Why didn’t I ask the stranger more details, or have him show me where to find the person? And what did “across the creek” mean in an eleven thousand-acre wilderness area? When I stopped to get my bearings, I began to shiver, my feet numb. Jake stopped with me, sensing the seriousness of our romp in the woods; he even ignored a squirrel.

We were a pack of two, running together, the forest silent except for our heavy breathing and the rustle we made crossing the decaying carpet beneath our feet. Jake barked at something, startling me, but it was just the crack of a branch I’d broken to clear the way. We were both spooked.

I stopped to rest on a fallen tree as Jake ran ahead, then back and to the right. Confused, he stopped and looked at me.

“I don’t know which way either, boy.” We were just responding to a deep, instinctual urge to help. “You go on, Jake. You’ll find it before I will.”

And he did.

CHAPTER 1

East San Antonio, Texas

“Nobody goes beyond this point, ma’am,” the tall, burly San Antonio policeman, outfitted in full riot gear, told Caitlin Strong.

“That include Texas Rangers . . .” She hesitated long enough to read the name plate over his badge. “. . . Officer Salazar?”

“That’s Sergeant Salazar, Ranger. And the answer is, yes, it includes everyone. Especially Texas Rangers.”

“Well, Sergeant, maybe we wouldn’t need to be here if a couple of your patrolmen hadn’t gunned down a ten-year-old boy.”

Salazar looked at Caitlin, scowling as he backed away from her Explorer. A few blocks beyond the checkpoint, a grayish mist seemed to hover in the air, residue of the tear gas she expected would be unleashed again soon. That is, unless the youthful crowd currently packed into the small commercial district at the near end of Hackberry Avenue dispersed, which they were showing no signs of doing. The third night of trouble had brought the National Guard to the scene in full battle attire that included M4 rifles and flak jackets. Caitlin could see more floodlights had been brought in to keep the street bathed in day-glow brightness, casting a strange hue in the air that reminded her of movie kliegs, as if this were a scene concocted from fiction rather than one that had arisen out of random tragedy.

Sergeant Salazar came right up to her open window, close enough for Caitlin to smell spearmint on his breath, as he worked a wad of gum from one side of his mouth to the other. “Those patrolmen found themselves in the crossfire of a gunfight between a neighborhood watch leader and gang bangers he thought were robbing a convenience store where most pay with their EFD cards. The clerk who chased them down the street just wanted to return the change they’d left on the counter for their ice cream, but the watch leader, Alfonzo Martinez, saw the scene otherwise and ordered the bangers to stop and put their hands in the air.”

Neighborhood watch leader Martinez, a lifelong resident of J Street who’d managed to steer clear of violence all his life, started firing his heirloom Springfield 1911 model .45 as soon as the gang bangers yanked pistols from the droopy waistbands of their trousers. The only thing his shots hit was a passing San Antonio police car, the uniformed officers inside mistaking the fire as the gang bangers’ and opened up on them so indiscriminately that the lone victim of their fire was a ten-year-old boy who’d emerged from the same convenience store.

It was almost dawn before everything got sorted out and the investigative team comprised of San Antonio and Highway Patrol detectives thought they’d managed to get control of the situation. Then relatively peaceful protests by day gave way to an eruption of violence at night, spearheaded by rival gangs who abandoned their turf wars to join forces against an enemy both of them loathed. Violence and looting reined, only to get worse by the second night when eight officers ended up hospitalized, one from what was later identified as a bullet instead of a rock. And now the third night found the National Guard on the scene in force and armored police vehicles from as far away as Houston barricading the streets to basically shut off the neighborhoods of East San Antonio’s northern periphery from the rest of the city.

“You’re still here, Ranger,” Sergeant Salazar noted.

“Just considering my options.”

“Only option you have is turn your vehicle around and leave the area, ma’am. You’re not needed or welcome here.”

“On whose orders exactly?” Caitlin wondered.

“Mine,” a female voice boomed, a moment before Caitlin heard a loud pop!, like a shotgun blast, crackle through the air.

CHAPTER 2

East San Antonio, Texas

A few blocks beyond the checkpoint, one of the spotlights fizzled and died, victim of a well-thrown rock more likely than a bullet. Caitlin was out of her Explorer by then, hand instinctively straying to her holstered SIG Sauer P-225 in anticipation of more shots to follow.
“Get back in your vehicle, Ranger,” said Consuelo Alonzo, deputy chief of the San Antonio police department, as she strode forward, red-faced from the exertion of rushing to the scene from the police line upon learning of Caitlin’s arrival.

“You got a problem with getting some more back-up?” Caitlin asked her.

“I do when it comes from you.”

“Why don’t you catch your breath and hear me out?”

“Because there’s nothing you have to say that can possibly interest me right now. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re sitting on a powder keg one spark away from blowing San Antonio to hell. We don’t need you providing that spark, Ranger. No way.”

Instead of settling down, Alonzo’s agitation continued to increase. Her face had grown redder, her words emerging through breaths becoming more and more rapid. She had risen quickly through the ranks of the department, becoming the youngest woman ever to make captain three years prior to her recent promotion to deputy chief. And she had been rumored to be in line for the job of Public Safety Commissioner that came with a plush Austin office and a job that would place her, among other things, as chief overseer of the Texas Rangers. Alonzo no doubt relished that particular perk of a job certain to be hers, until the death of a Chinese diplomat, exacerbated by Caitlin’s solving the murder while Alonzo was dealing with more politically oriented ramifications, led to her being passed over.

Alonzo had overcome an appearance often referred to as “masculine” by even her supporters and much worse than that by her detractors, who seemed to put no stock in the fact that she was happily raising three young children with her husband who was a professional boxing referee. This was Texas, after all, where a woman needed to work twice as hard, and be twice as good, in a profession ruggedly and stubbornly perceived to be for men only. Caitlin and Alonzo had had their differences over the years, but had mostly maintained a mutual respect defined by their professionalism, and the sense that their own squabbles only further emboldened those who sought their demise.

At least until Alonzo cast Caitlin with all the blame for her losing out on a job that was likely never going to be hers now. Since then, she’d used her position as deputy chief to wage subtle war on the Rangers’ San Antonio-based Company F whenever possible, seizing upon any bureaucratic conflict or jurisdictional dispute she could in a hapless attempt to make Caitlin’s life miserable.

Alonzo ran a hand through her spiky hair. She was heavyset and had once set the woman’s record for the bench press in her weight class. She’d also done some boxing and was reputed to be the best target shooter with a pistol in the entire department. But Caitlin had beaten her three times running when they’d gone up against each other in state-sponsored contests, winning the overall title in two of those instead of just the woman’s division. She’d stop entering after her most recent victory, figuring the last thing she needed was to draw more attention to herself than her exploits already had.

“You’re not moving, Ranger,” Alonzo told her.

Caitlin gestured toward a figure pressed tight against the waist-high concrete barrier erected to close off the street to unauthorized vehicles. “See that woman there? That’s the mother of the boy who was killed by the fire of those SAPD officers. She’s the one who called me, asked me to see what I could do about the violence being done in her boy’s name. She doesn’t want the city to burn on his account. She wants this resolved peacefully.”

“And you think I don’t?”

“No, ma’am. It’s question about how you’re going about things.”

“And how’s that?” Alonso asked, not sounding as if she was really interested in Caitlin’s answer. “We got a full-scale riot brewing back there. What exactly do you think you can do about it that we can’t?”

“I’ve got an idea or two.”

“Care to share them?”

“Ever hear of Diego Ramon Alcantara?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“He goes by the nickname ‘Diablo.’ Leader of a gang running drugs for a Mexican cartel that sees the riots as their opportunity to solidify their hold on the business throughout the state. And Diablo Alcantara has united the city’s normally warring gangs toward that purpose on the cartel’s behalf. I take him off the board, all this goes away.”

Alonzo shook her head, her expression a mix of resentment and disbelief. “You alone?”

“That’s right. Just give me a chance. What have you got to lose, Deputy Chief?”

“How about this city?”

Caitlin turned her gaze in the direction of the rioting. “Seems to me it’s already lost. Thing at this point is to get it back.”
Alonzo’s lower lip crawled over her upper one, puckering her cheeks until she blew out some breath that hit Caitlin like a blast wave from a just opened oven. “We’ve got five hundred personnel on scene who haven’t been able to manage that.”

“Would it really hurt to listen to what I’ve got to say?”

“It hurts me standing here right now instead of commanding the front line. The governor just approved an assault. We move inside the next hour, if the crowd doesn’t disperse as ordered.”

“Just give me a chance.”

This time Alonzo finished her chuckle. “You know the saying ‘stone cold dead,’ Ranger?”

“I do.”

“Maybe you haven’t heard that among Texas law enforcement types it’s called ‘strong cold dead’ now.”

Caitlin smiled slightly. “Is that a fact?”

Alonzo was left shaking her head. “Tell me, when you look in the mirror, how big’s the army that looks back?”

“Well, you know how the saying goes, Deputy Chief,” Caitlin said, backpedaling toward her SUV. “’One riot, one Ranger.’”

CHAPTER 3

East San Antonio, Texas

Caitlin skulked about the outskirts of the neighborhoods just outside the riot zone. Through windows not boarded up or covered in grates, she spied more than one family following the simmering violence just a few blocks away on their televisions while huddled against a wall.

According to the information she’d obtained from a trio of informants, “Diablo” Alcantara was running the show from his sister’s home near J Street two blocks from the brewing riot’s front lines. The cartels had trained Alcantara well, taught him the tricks of their own trade to inspire everyday people to turn to violence to the point that it came to define them. A road a person was often too far down by the time he found himself on it at all. So it was here in East San Antonio, where closing the schools for the day had turned hundreds of teenagers into virtual anarchists, looting and destroying for its own sake. Right now Caitlin could still smell the smoke from a Laundromat that had burned to the ground when local firefighters and their trucks were chased back by crowds hurling bottles and rocks. Three had been hospitalized and one of the engines had been abandoned at the head of the street where it too had been set ablaze.

The Laundromat had chemicals and detergents stored in a back room that turned the air noxious for a time, the strange combination of lavender soap powder mixing with the corrosive bleaches to form the perfect metaphor for the city of San Antonio. Watching those white curtains of mist wafting through the flames to chase the rioters away more effectively than any efforts the authorities had mounted, though, had given Caitlin the idea to which Deputy Chief Alonzo had refused to listen.

Holding her position against a house in view of the main drag, Caitlin checked her watch, then the sky, and finally her cell phone to make sure she had a strong signal. Since word was the gangs were communicating via text message, there was talk of shutting down the grid, lasting until nobody could figure out a way to do it quickly—something she was glad for now.

Above the fire smoke and tear gas residue staining the air in patches, the night sky was clear and she made out a bevy of news choppers with navigation lights flashing like the stars millions of miles beyond them. Creeping closer to J Street and the home of Diablo Alcantara’s sister, Caitlin froze just beyond the spray of a streetlight showcasing a block packed with gang members proudly and openly displaying their colors.
Amid the gang bangers unified in this unholy alliance, she spotted a stocky figure more bulk than muscle holding court near the rear. Diablo Alcantara had gotten into a knife fight while in high school and ended up losing an eye to a slice that split the left side of his face right down the middle. Even in pictures, it was hard to look at the jagged scar and translucent orb visible through the narrow slit Alcantara had for a socket without feeling a flutter in her stomach from the sight.

Caitlin knew the stocky figure was Alcantara the moment he turned enough toward the streetlight for its spray to reflect off the marble-like thing wedged into his skull in place of an eye. She counted fifty bangers in the vicinity armed with assault rifles and submachine guns no intelligence report had made mention of, meaning such firepower must’ve only just reached the scene courtesy the cartels.

The bangers, under Diablo Alcantara’s leadership, looked ready to launch their assault that would push the rioting from this neighborhood into the city proper, intent on turning San Antonio into Juarez. Caitlin’s plan hadn’t accounted for going up against heavy weaponry, but the reality made its implementation all the more necessary. Giving the matter no further consideration, she lifted the cell phone closer and pressed out three words in a text message:

COME ON IN

Caitlin figured she had three, maybe four minutes to wait, spending the first of them following the gang members’ antics in preparation for what was to come. Some of them wore military-grade flak jackets, in odd counterpoint to the pungent scent of marijuana smoke gradually claiming the air. She watched beer bottles drained and smashed, a few stray shots fired into the air to cheering by the most chemically altered in the bunch.

Caitlin checked her watch one last time before she stepped out from the darkness onto the street, light glinting off her badge and holstered pistol in plain view, as she continued toward the center of the block.

“I’m a Texas Ranger,” she called out to the gang members, whose gazes fixed on her in disbelief. “All of you, stay right where you are.”

‘It’s not the same,’ Melanie argued. ‘She can do some shopping when she comes here. Nobody wants to shop in Coniston, do they? Making a delivery over there really is a waste of time and petrol. And you’re not supposed to do too much driving, remember.’ Melanie’s protectiveness had become a habit since Simmy had suffered an injury, shortly before Christmas, and been forbidden to drive until early in February. She had used crutches throughout most of January. Damage to her head had necessitated a shaven area, which prompted her to have a very short all-over haircut that still felt strange.

‘Well it’s too late now. I just hope it doesn’t go mad tomorrow or I’ll be turning orders away. You know you’ll be doing all the local ones, don’t you?’ ‘Yeah, yeah. My feet’ll be worn away to nothing by the time I’ve done them all.’ There had been a degree of discord about how Melanie might best make the deliveries of flowers in the streets of Windermere and Bowness. Her battered car was deemed by Simmy to be bad for the image of the business, but she had compromised slightly, and agreed that it could be left full of flowers in the Bowness car park, and again at the northern end of Windermere, for increased efficiency. She had also, as a major concession, permitted Melanie to use the van while she herself had been unable to drive. As a resident of an area renowned for walking, the girl was almost a freak in her reluctance to use her own legs as a means of transport.