Sheriff Byrd pales. ”You don’t talk to me that way, smartass.“

”I didn’t hear anything,“ Chief Logan says quietly. ”Why don’t we let these two be on their way and concentrate on the work at hand?“

Sheriff Byrd hikes up his trousers and leans in close to me. ”This is where Avery’s staying, ain’t it?“

”That’s right.“

”Is the girl helping you with the case?“

”She’s working for us, yes. As a runner, basically. A gopher.“

”Is that right, Miss Burke?“

Mia nods uncertainly.

”Are they paying you anything?“

Mia looks worriedly at me. ”No. I’m doing it because I believe Dr. Elliott is innocent.“

The sheriff snickers. ”You’re one of the few.“

”All right, that’s it,“ I say. ”You want to ask more questions, you arrest us.“

Byrd looks as though he’s considering it.

Chief Logan takes a single step, but it’s a big one. He places himself directly between me and the sheriff. ”Get going, Penn,“ he says. ”Call me tomorrow morning.“

”Thanks again, Chief.“ I take Mia by the arm and lead her toward the corridor that runs out to Main Street. Then I stop and turn back to Logan. ”I don’t have a car.“

Logan motions to one of his patrolmen. ”Lee will drop you off.“

”Thanks.“

A young black patrolman detaches himself from a group of cops and walks toward us. Sheriff Byrd stares at me with open fury, but I ignore him. Too much has happened tonight to give a damn about a redneck sheriff and his agenda.

”Follow me, Mr. Cage,“ says the patrolman.

”Thank you.“

The ride to Mia’s house is mostly silent. The young patrolman driving us asks a couple of questions, but his only intent is to learn more about the kind of gun battle he is unlikely to see in this town again.

”How’d you get the guy on the stairs before he shot you?“ he asks. ”He was carrying a Glock, and there was a round in the chamber.“

”I’m not sure. I killed a man like that once before. When I lived in Houston.“

”A burglar?“

Mia is staring at me from her corner of the backseat.

”No,“ I reply, watching her. ”He was the brother of a white supremacist I’d sent to death row. He broke into my house to kidnap my daughter. She was an infant then, and he was actually holding her when I shot him. I was so scared to shoot, I almost let him get out of the house.“

”But you didn’t.“

”No. I was lucky then, too.“

”Sho‘ was,“ says Lee, looking at me in his rearview mirror. ”Man alive.“

The squad car slows, then stops before Mia’s house, a thirty-year-old home in a middle-income subdivision off Liberty Road.

”This it?“ asks Lee.

”Yeah. Thanks.“

He releases the locking mechanism on the rear doors, and we get out.

”I’ll walk you up,“ I tell Mia.

She nods gratefully. After thanking Lee at his window, she starts up the sidewalk.

”I’ll come by tomorrow morning,“ I promise, walking beside her. ”I’ll talk to Meredith and explain what happened.“

”Or try to,“ Mia says, laughing nervously.

”Yeah. I think your Nancy Drew days are over.“

She makes a sound I can’t interpret. ”You lost Kate’s flash drives, didn’t you?“

I nod. ”And her journal.“

”I’m sorry. How badly will that hurt Drew?“

”I was never going to use the journal. But we needed those drives.“

”What about Marko’s flash drive?“

I tap my pants pocket. ”I still have that. Let’s just hope it has something useful on it.“

”And that Lucien can crack it.“

”If he can’t, someone can.“

Mia unlocks her front door and steps through it. She looks into the depths of the house, then back at me. ”Mom’s asleep, thank God. I hope no one hears about everything tonight and decides to wake her up.“

”I think you’ll be okay on that.“

Mia reaches out and pulls my hand until I’m standing inside with her. All I can see clearly are her wide eyes shining in the dark.

”What is it?“ I ask.

”I almost died, didn’t I?“

”You could have,“ I admit. ”And it would have been my fault. If Chief Logan hadn’t been there-“

”Look at me, Penn.“

”I am.“

”I’ve never felt more alive than I do at this moment.“

My palms are still tingling from the aftereffects of the fight at the hotel. But there’s something else happening within me, too. ”I think that’s pretty common in these kinds of situations.“

”I want to kiss you,“ Mia says.

”We talked about this before.“

”I know. I know we can’t have a relationship. I even respect that. I just want this moment, okay?“

Before I can think of a response, she stands on tiptoe, takes my face in her hands, and kisses me full on the mouth. I don’t kiss her back, but neither do I pull away. The truth is, I feel exactly as she does about our brush with death-phenomenally alive to every molecule of existence. And I can’t imagine anything more alive than the swelling mouth pressing against mine. Mia’s lips part slightly, and I feel her tongue brush against my lips. For one moment, I open my mouth and taste her, and in that moment I feel a rush of overwhelming desire, the first few feet of a plunge into bliss that Caitlin dubbed evolutionary nirvana. Mia gives my lower lip a soft bite, then pulls away.

”There,“ she says, her eyes shining. ”See? No harm, no foul. Tomorrow I’ll act like it never happened. I promise.“

”Try to sleep, Mia.“

”Not a chance. But don’t worry about me. And don’t feel guilty. Promise me.“

”I’ll try.“

Her teeth flash in the darkness. Then she gently pushes me out the door.

As I walk down the sidewalk, the chatter of a police radio brings me back to the present. I’ve got a lot of work to do tonight. I might have lost Kate’s flash drives, but I still have Sonny Cross’s computer and case notes. If I’m lucky, something in them will lead me to the dark soul who has brought so much death to this town. My town.

Cyrus White.

News of the shooting at the Eola Hotel sent the town into shock. Caitlin published a detailed account of the attack, based on the account I gave her after waking her from a deep sleep in my bedroom early that morning. There was no point in trying to keep it from her. Besides, I figured the more people who knew about my stolen Saab, the better the odds it would be found. Caitlin seemed particularly interested in what I’d been doing at the hotel with Mia at 2 a.m. I explained that Mia was helping Quentin and me investigate Kate Townsend’s life, and that beyond that I couldn’t say more. This didn’t satisfy Caitlin, but she was so glad to get the inside story of the attack that she let it go, at least for a while. After she exhausted my memory of the night’s events-the ones I could tell her about, anyway-I pretended to get ready for bed. Caitlin got dressed, called her editor, and drove down to the Examiner offices to begin working the story.

As soon as she left, I brewed a pot of coffee and retrieved Sonny Cross’s private case materials from my safe. Then I scanned twelve of Sonny’s MiniDV surveillance tapes using fast forward. It was a tedious process, but by the end of it, I’d found two that showed Kate Townsend walking into and out of Cyrus White’s building at the Brightside Manor Apartments. These tapes were what Quentin had asked me to get for him, but they didn’t satisfy me. I wanted Cyrus in the flesh.

I began sifting through Sonny’s case notebooks, line by line. They contained copious notes on the drug activity at Brightside Manor-and elsewhere in Natchez-but nothing that would help me locate Cyrus, unless he’s staying at one of his known safe houses. And Chief Logan assured me that all those are being checked on a regular basis. Sonny’s notes made it plain that he got most of his information from drug users or couriers he’d busted and then forced to work for him in exchange for their continuing freedom. My problem was that Sonny only referred to these snitches by code names. The code names seemed oddly chosen until I realized that they were all characters played by John Wayne on the big screen. ”Rooster.“ ”Chance.“ ”Ethan.“ ”Cahill.“ ”Big Jake.“ ”Chisum.“ ”McQ.“ Almost all the information Sonny had on Cyrus White had been provided by ”Ethan,“ but nowhere in the notebooks could I find a key to the identity of these snitches.