My legs had been peppered with shrapnel from the exploding batteries. The wounds themselves weren’t severe-my bones had escaped damage-but since the shrapnel was mostly lead fragments from the battery plates, poisoning was a serious concern. A surgeon spent two hours under a fluoroscope digging every fragment out of my body.

Before Dad admitted any visitors into my glass-walled cubicle in the ICU, he drew the curtains and stood close beside my bed. The white hair and beard gave him the look of a doctor who had seen everything, but I could tell that he’d never dreamed of seeing his son like this.

”Annie’s had a tough time these past few days,“ he said. ”We all have, but she had it the worst. She thought you were dead. And nothing we said to her would change her mind. I guess losing her mother so young proved to her that the worst nightmares do come true. You need to spend a lot of time with her, Penn.“

”You can count on it. How’s Mom?“

Dad shook his head. ”She’s a tough old girl, but this just about did her in. She sat by the telephone day and night, waiting for word. I don’t believe she slept more than three consecutive hours the whole time you were gone. She was afraid they were going to find you in a ditch somewhere.“

”I’m sorry. I’m sorry I got myself into this mess.“

A small smile touched my father’s lips. ”That’s your nature, son. I understand it. But you’ve got a family to think about.“

I nodded.

Dad looked through a crack in the curtains at the nurse’s station. ”When they brought you into the ER, they put you on the same treatment table they put Kate Townsend on two weeks ago. I saw Jenny Townsend that night. And I felt just like her when I saw you.“ Dad’s jaw muscles flexed with the effort of holding in his emotion. ”I’m not burying my son,“ he said in a shaky voice. ”I won’t do it.“

I reached up and gripped his wrist, squeezing as hard as I could.

”I couldn’t just sit and wait,“ he said. ”I knew if there was a way to stay alive, you’d manage it. After meeting with Sheriff Byrd and Chief Logan, I called your old assistant and got the names of every FBI agent you’d ever worked with. I called them all, and they lit a fire under the task force here. I still wasn’t convinced that was enough, so I called Dan Kelly’s security company in Houston.“

Daniel Kelly is the former Delta operator I considered bringing in to protect Annie. My father got to know him well during the Del Payton case.

”Kelly was still in Afghanistan, but twelve hours later, he returned my call. When he heard you were missing, he promised to get back to the U.S. by hook or by crook. It took three days for a replacement to arrive in Kabul, but forty-eight hours ago Kelly arrived in Natchez and started searching for you. He even brought a buddy with him to protect Annie. You may not believe it, but Kelly was planning to search the Triton Battery plant the day after you escaped. I saw it in his daybook.“

”He has good instincts. But I probably would have been dead when he found me.“

Dad shook his head slowly. ”No doubt about it.“

”Is he still in town?“

”Yes. He said to tell you he’s waiting for instructions.“

For some reason, Kelly’s continued presence brings me a blessed feeling of relief.

”Now,“ Dad said, ”there are some people waiting to see you.“

He turned to go, but I said, ”Wait.“

”What is it?“

”What about Cyrus White? Did they bring him into the ER?“

Dad nodded but said nothing.

”Did he make it?“

”No. He died. Bad.“

Dad left me in silence with my memories of Cyrus and Blue. I felt no satisfaction at having killed them. New predators would soon take their places in the local drug hierarchy, and probably already had. Cyrus and Blue had never meant to kill me, but they had been content to watch me die by a process they didn’t understand. Now they are dead, and I am alive, and that is all that matters.

Two minutes after Dad left the ICU, Caitlin led Annie into my room. When Annie stared at me as if unsure I was real, I told her to climb up into my bed. I hugged her tight, and Caitlin hugged us both from behind Annie. We watched an episode of Leave It to Beaver on TV Land, hardly speaking as we did, but words didn’t matter at that point. My mother came into the room during the show. She sat on the edge of my bed for a while with her hand on my knee. She had aged visibly since I last saw her, but I sensed that she was still far from broken. When Leave It to Beaver ended, she kissed me on the forehead, then lifted a sleeping Annie into her arms and left for home.

Finally alone, Caitlin and I simply held each other, both shivering from an emotion we could not name. After a while, she asked to see the damage done to my body by the vasculitis. She cried then, but she knew the outcome could have been much worse. Though I was still suffering from the reaction, at least no more skin had died.

As for Drew’s trial, the news was almost all bad. A few hours before Caitlin’s visit, Shad had stunned the court by providing proof that Kate had been visiting Cyrus to procure drugs for Drew, who had then given them to his addicted wife. To prove this, Shad produced four different witnesses, each of whom knew only part of the story. The most powerful of those witnesses, Caitlin said, was Ellen Elliott herself. Because Ellen was testifying about her drug habit, and not giving direct testimony against her husband, her testimony was allowed. I figured Ellen would be glad to give testimony that might convict Drew, but Caitlin said Ellen had been very hostile to Shad during direct examination, and as she left the witness box, she appeared to have been shattered by the ordeal. This testimony had fulfilled Quentin Avery’s worst fear, and it left me deeply troubled. Cyrus himself had not known whom Kate was buying the Lorcet for, so how had Shad Johnson divined that the hydrocodone was for Ellen? I resolved to discover this as soon as possible.

According to Caitlin, Quentin had been playing catch-up throughout the trial. He had little inside information to work with, and he was saddled with a client who seemed bent on self-destruction. Drew remained firm in his belief that he should tell the whole truth about everything, and he was still demanding to take the stand in his own defense. That might happen as soon as tomorrow.

After Caitlin returned to the newspaper office, I settled back in my bed and tried to rest, but my withdrawal symptoms made it impossible. I was shaking like an epileptic when Daniel Kelly walked into my room.

I hadn’t seen him for five years, but he looked the same: curly blond hair, sea blue eyes, an Irish smile, and a reserved manner. Kelly also sported a desert tan, which somehow added to the aura of centeredness he always projected. Kelly knows how to go unnoticed in a crowd, but when he reveals himself, you know you’re in the presence of a man of supreme competence.

I asked him what he’d been doing in Afghanistan, and he gave me a typical one-word answer: ”Babysitting.“ I thanked him for dumping his contract and playing seventh cavalry on my behalf, but then I told him I was fine and that he could go back to Asia. Kelly gave a small shake of his head and said, ”I’ve been checking things out for a couple of days. Been to the trial, been out in the street. This thing isn’t over, Penn.“

”It is for me.“

Kelly raised his eyebrows. ”That may not be your choice. I went out to Triton Battery and looked at the lab where they held you-what was left of it. And I found two pounds of ninety-eight percent pure heroin.“

” Youfound it? Not the cops?“

”They took drug dogs out there, but Cyrus had figured a way to beat the dogs. Probably learned it in the air force. I’ve seen most of those tricks in my time, so I knew where to look.“

I’ve learned to expect Kelly to amaze me. ”Two pounds of pure heroin. What’s the street value of that?“