ALSO BY ACE ATKINS
Crossroad Blues
Leavin’ Trunk Blues
Dark End of the Street
Dirty South
White Shadow
Wicked City
Devil’s Garden
Infamous
The Ranger
Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby
The Lost Ones
Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland
The Broken Places
Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot
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Copyright © 2014 by Ace Atkins
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Atkins, Ace.
The forsaken / Ace Atkins.
p. cm.—(A Quinn Colson novel ; 4)
ISBN 978-1-101-59292-2
1. United States. Army—Commando troops—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 3. Mississippi—Fiction. 4. Mystery fiction. I. Title.
PS3551.T49F67 2014 2014015440
813'.54—dc23
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For Dutch Leonard, Tom Laughlin, and Fluffer Nutter
Contents
Also by Ace Atkins
Map
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Most men are more afraid of being thought cowards than of anything else, and a lot more afraid of being thought physical cowards than moral ones.
—WALTER VAN TILBURG CLARK, The Ox-Bow Incident
If somebody’s trailing you, make a circle, come back onto your own tracks, and ambush the folks that aim to ambush you.
—ROGERS’ RANGERS STANDING ORDER NO. 17
July 4, 1977
After Diane Tull caught her boyfriend in the back of his cherry-red Trans Am making out with some slut from Eupora, she told Lori she didn’t give a damn about the fireworks. Jimmy had run up after her, right in front of everyone and God, grabbed her elbow, and said she didn’t see what she thought she saw. And Diane stopped walking, put her hands to the tops of her flared Lee’s, wearing a thin yellow halter and clogs, big hoop earrings, and Dr Pepper–flavored lipstick. She wanted Jimmy to see what he was missing just because a six-pack of Coors had clouded his brain and he’d jumped at the cheapest tail he could find on the Jericho Square.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I swear. She just crawled on top of me.”
“Here, would you hold something for me?” Diane said.
Jimmy smiled and nodded. Diane shot him her middle finger, turned on a heel, and walked through the Square toward the big gazebo, all lit up for the celebration, a band playing a half-decent version of “Freebird.” There were a lot of old men and young men hanging out in folding chairs and folding tables, big metal barbecue pits blowing smoke off chicken and ribs, talking about Saigon and the Battle of the Bulge. The town aldermen had called it a celebration of Tibbehah County’s “Contribution to Freedom.” Damn, Diane just wanted the hell out of there to go smoke a cigarette and settle in and watch Johnny Carson before her father, a Pentecostal minister, told her to turn off that Hollywood filth.
He was never much fun. He didn’t even laugh when Johnny had on those animals who would crap on his desk.
“Let’s get a ride,” Lori said. Damn, she’d never forget that, Lori not wanting to walk the two miles home. Diane remembered being mad at Jimmy in that seventeen-year-old heartbreak way, but also feeling the freedom of the summer and a night like the Fourth of July when Jericho actually felt like a place she wanted to be, with the music and good-smelling food and cold watermelon. All the boys with their big shiny trucks and muscle cars circling the Square like sharks, revving their motors, tooting their horns, and trying to get Diane and Lori inside like some kind of trophies for the boy parade.
“We could see the fireworks,” Lori said. “After that, lots of people would give us rides.”
Lori was three years younger and lots less developed, still sort of gawky, with her plastic glasses and braces, hair feathered back, wearing a tight Fleetwood Mac T-shirt, ass-hugging bell-bottoms, and clogs identical to Diane’s. Diane and Lori had lived next door to each other since they’d been born, and Diane for a long time felt like the mother before she became the big sister. She was glad that Lori saw that shit with Jimmy. She wanted Lori to know a girl didn’t get treated like toilet paper, no matter if Jimmy was a senior and that his dad owned the big lumber mill and had bought him that red Pontiac for his birthday. You didn’t take a goddamn tramp thrown in your face.