Jordan laughed and pulled a handful of cellophane-wrapped peppermints out of her pocket. “Me too. I emptied that secretary’s jar.”

“We need to get some lunch.”

Jordan shook her head and moved on toward the car. “I don’t have time. If I don’t leave in the next twenty minutes, I’ll miss my flight.”

Caitlin felt an anticipatory sense of loss at the realization that she would soon be without Jordan. She had already called Terry Foreman, a girl from the Examiner’s marketing department, to pick her up at a local service station, but Terry was no substitute for Jordan Glass.

When they reached the car, Caitlin stood rather awkwardly by the door and stared at her friend across the roof. “I can’t tell you how much today meant to me.”

Jordan waved her hand dismissively. “I’m glad I came. But the day’s not over yet. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

Caitlin was confused. “Surprise?”

Jordan gave her a mischievous, almost elfin look. “You’re about to owe me sooo big. Before you jumped in the drink, I shot two pictures of Toby Rambin’s map.”

“What?”

Jordan’s eyes twinkled with pleasure. “While you were studying it earlier, I shot a couple of pics and made sure we had a copy. I didn’t tell you in the boat because I didn’t want Mose to hear.”

Caitlin still couldn’t work it out. “But Sheriff Ellis had us searched when we got to his office.”

“Mm-hm.”

“He confiscated your memory cards.”

“He confiscated a memory card.”

Excited laughter burst from Caitlin’s throat. “Where was the real one?”

“They were both real. But while we waited to see the sheriff, I figured he might try something like that. It’s what all third-world policemen do. So I put the card with the most pictures on it where they wouldn’t find it and left the other one in the camera for him to steal.”

“You are crazy.”

“You don’t know the half of it. When I went to the bathroom, I stepped into an empty office, plugged the card into a computer, and printed you a copy of the map.”

Caitlin gasped in disbelief. “Oh, my God.”

Jordan pulled a folded sheet out of her back pocket and passed it to Caitlin. “I’m pretty sure you can see everything.”

Caitlin unfolded the page and saw a high-resolution copy of Toby Rambin’s map, her own thumbs showing above it on either side.

“You’re a superhero,” she said. “Seriously.”

“Well, don’t show it to every deputy in the parking lot.” Jordan unslung her camera bag and tossed it into her car. “Come on. Let’s get you to your new wingman.”

“Wait a second. Where did you hide that memory card?”

“Trade secret.” Jordan winked. “Let’s go.”

SONNY THORNFIELD TURNED HIS head slightly to the left as a big deputy named Isbell led him into the cellblock and toward his cell. When Snake caught Sonny’s eye through the bars, Sonny winked, then put his eyes front again.

“Open number seven!” Isbell barked.

Someone outside the block pressed a button, and the door to Sonny’s cell opened. He went in and sat on his cot without looking back at the deputy.

“Close seven.”

A deep buzzer sounded repeatedly, then the heavy motorized door slid down its track and clanged shut.

“Hey, Sonny, when the fuck we gettin’ outta here?” asked Skillet McCune, a flat-faced welder who had once been a Double Eagle squad leader. “They can’t keep us here like this without a phone call.”

“FBI says we can,” Deputy Isbell cut in. “Patriot Act. They can leave you in this hole till Judgment Day if they want. They can pull out your fucking fingernails, too. They can waterboard your ass, and the Supreme Court can’t say shit about it.”

As the deputy passed Snake’s cell, Snake said, “What’s that chubby wife of yours get up to while you’re standing guard over drunks and crackheads, boy?”

The deputy’s baton was off his belt in less than a second. He cracked the wood against the bars of Snake’s cell, only missing his fingers because Snake jerked them clear in time. Snake got a good laugh from that. Isbell whacked the bars twice more, but Snake only laughed louder. The red-faced deputy cursed and stomped out of the cellblock.

Sonny lay on his cot with his hands behind his head. He felt like a man balanced on a tightrope, with hell on one side and purgatory on the other. As a Baptist, he didn’t believe in purgatory, but he felt like that intermediate state of punishment was about the best he could hope for, given his past sins, with the hope of getting into heaven someday if he could atone in the time he had left.

He was starting to identify with Glenn Morehouse, who had complained so bitterly during the last weeks of his life about all the sins he’d been dragging behind him like lead weights chained to his dying body. For Sonny, the prospect of starting over with his estranged family in some new town was like an unexpected gift. He couldn’t afford to let himself believe too much in it, in case his daughter screwed it up for everyone—which, if the past was any guide, was a real possibility.

He tensed up as he heard Snake sidle up to the bars of the adjacent cell. He could feel suspicion radiating like heat from that direction. Then Snake’s voice floated to him, coarse but insinuating.

“I hear you were gone an awful long time, Sonny. You makin’ new friends out there?”

“Fuck, no. I got no control over how long they keep me. They’re acting like I’m the weak link or something, probably because of my heart attack. But fuck them.”

Snake nodded, seeming to buy Sonny’s brazen act. “How’d they pitch you?”

“They asked me a lot about Dr. Cage, actually. They want to know where he is.”

Snake laughed softly. “You didn’t tell ’em, did you?”

For a couple of seconds Sonny considered saying that the FBI had already raided his cabin and found it empty, but his sanity stopped him. “Right. When the cabin’s in my name? That’d be a genius move.”

Snake didn’t comment on this.

“They also kept telling me I was gonna die in Angola. That fed Kaiser asked me if I thought I’d last a week in a jail full of niggers, once they found out who I was.”

Snake chuckled. “He’s got a point there. It’s a good thing none of us will spend a day on that farm.”

“You really think we should be talking like this? They could be taping everything we say in here.”

“No, they can’t,” said Snake. “That’s against the law.”

“You heard Isbell,” Skillet said from the cell to Sonny’s right. “We’re talking feds here. They don’t give a shit about the law on this thing. Not with that Patriot Act. Hell, they planted that meth, didn’t they? And you can see the cameras right up there in the corner.”

“Those cameras are there to keep morons from killing themselves,” Snake said. “Keeps the state from gettin’ sued. But they don’t record sound. What, you think Kaiser has a platoon of lip-readers out there, watching us?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” said a reticent man named Gene Christian, a retired electrician’s helper. “Sonny’s right. Let’s keep our mouths shut. Remember what Frank used to say. A man’s worst enemy in this world is his mouth.”

“That’s what Frank used to say, all right,” Snake said. “Didn’t he, Sonny?”

“Sure,” Sonny mumbled, closing his eyes and wishing he’d thrown out that goddamn navy tattoo thirty years ago. Kaiser had promised to make no mention of the eight-inch swatch of human skin when talking to his family about the Witness Protection Program. If Sonny’s daughter heard about that, she might tell Kaiser to put her son back on the plane to California, even if he had to pull another tour in Iraq.

Sonny thought back to the awful day they’d taken the tattoos from Revels and Davis. Snake had been the instigator, of course, as always. Only that day it was worse, since he’d been consumed with grief for his older brother. Frank had just died, and Snake had assumed the role of leader. The rest of the men had egged Sonny on like he was a virgin at a whorehouse, waiting to lose his cherry. What could you do in the face of that?