Carl held out his hand, and Dontae Edwards finally pulled a folded piece of paper from his inside jacket pocket. He handed it to Carl, who unfolded it. The map looked as if it had been drawn on a paper towel taken from a dispenser in a public restroom.

“Looks real to me,” Carl said, studying curving lines that made Caitlin think of a child drawing with a crayon. “This area here looks like the Valhalla hunting camp, and over here is the federal wildlife refuge. Toby’s got one of the game fences marked here, about in the middle. And where this X is, is a deep stand of cypress. It’s one of the thickest parts of the swamp and covered with water most all year round.”

Caitlin nodded excitedly. “That sounds like what we’re looking for.”

Carl gave her a penetrating look. “I did what we talked about last night, but I didn’t learn much. Nothing that would confirm a location.”

On the phone last night, Carl had offered to have his father, a local pastor, discreetly question some members of his Athens Point congregation about the Bone Tree. Since the church was 100 percent African-American, Caitlin had felt it was worth the risk to gain good information. But apparently Reverend Sims had learned little.

Jordan poked her thumb at Dontae Edwards, who was paying close attention to their conversation.

“Scoot!” Carl ordered. “And forget you ever saw this map, or you’ll be hauling ass out of town like Toby did. Only you haven’t got the money to do it.”

The boy jumped back on the motorcycle and kick-started it, but Caitlin yelled “Wait!” before he pulled on his helmet. As he watched impatiently, she took five one-hundred-dollar bills from the envelope and handed them over. A grin spread across the boy’s face. He waited a half second, then snatched the bills, stuffed them into his jacket, and tore out of the clearing with a scream of his engine.

“So what now?” Jordan asked. “We don’t have a boat.”

Carl smiled, his white teeth gleaming in his coffee-colored face. “I think I can probably do something about that.”

“Such as?”

“My man Danny McDavitt is doing a check-ride in the LCSO chopper this morning. He could pick us up and have a look for Toby’s X for you.”

Caitlin blinked in disbelief. Danny McDavitt was a retired air force pilot who flew the helicopter for the Lusahatcha County Sheriff’s Department. She’d met him two months ago, when the pilot had assisted Penn in fighting against the criminals operating the Magnolia Queen casino. McDavitt had gone far beyond the call of duty to try to locate Caitlin after she’d been kidnapped by those men. “Carl, are you serious?” she asked. “Would he help us today?”

“Sure. Just let me call him.”

“You wouldn’t have to tell Major McDavitt anything about what we’re looking for, would you? I trust him, but this is a special case of secrecy. Not even Penn knows I’m here.”

Carl nodded thoughtfully. “I can play it off like I don’t know myself.”

“Can you trust the major to keep quiet about the search? At least for a few hours?”

The deputy smiled. “Danny’s good people. You know that. He can keep a secret.”

Caitlin was sorely tempted, but the prospect of complications worried her. “But what if we find the Bone Tree?”

“Well . . . at that point it’s going to become a law enforcement matter one way or another, isn’t it?”

“Yes. But I’d like at least an hour there before we call anyone else in. And we’ll have to call the FBI, even if we call your sheriff as well. Would that put your job at risk?”

“That I don’t know. For now, we’ll chalk this flight up to hunting for marijuana fields. If we find that tree . . . maybe Danny and I will scoot and leave you two to report it.”

Caitlin’s pulse raced in anticipation of the hunt, but she also felt conflicted. If Tom’s life was at risk, what was the point of searching the swamp for a tree? On the other hand . . . what could she really do to help find Tom? Walt had already told her she could do nothing. While Carl spoke to Danny, Caitlin tried to call Walt back, but her phone wouldn’t work. When she checked the screen, it said NO SERVICE.

“Danny’s coming,” Carl said, drawing Caitlin’s attention away from her Treo.

“I can’t get a tower,” Caitlin said. “Do you have AT&T or Cellular South?”

Carl grinned and tapped the radio on his collar. “Neither. I’ve got the Lusahatcha County Sheriff’s Department radio net. I used a channel nobody monitors.”

Caitlin’s face fell.

“Sorry,” Carl said. “Reception in this swamp is practically nonexistent. You need to make a call?”

She shrugged. “I don’t feel good about taking off on this little jaunt if I can’t monitor the situation back home. Penn’s father . . .”

The deputy’s smile vanished. “I know. When we get to altitude, your phone will find a tower. Danny can make sure of it.”

Jordan walked over and took Caitlin’s hand. “It’s your call. We can keep going, or you can head back to town and I’ll go on to New Orleans.”

Caitlin looked into the cypress trees and pressed down all guilt and doubt. “Screw it,” she said. “Let’s go.”

FORREST KNOX SAT ON the elevated deck of a five-thousand-square-foot lake house overlooking Lake Concordia, a steaming cup of chicory coffee and a cordless phone on the table before him. Five miles away lay the Concordia Parish courthouse complex, which held the sheriff’s office and the jail, where Penn Cage and Sheriff Walker Dennis planned to interrogate Snake, Sonny, and four other Double Eagles. As soon as the Eagles left Valhalla this morning, Billy had gratefully abandoned his babysitting job and flown himself back to his retreat at Toledo Bend, Texas. Forrest didn’t want to take any chances on someone arresting his cousin. Only after Sheriff Walker Dennis had been removed from his position and the state police had taken over his duties would Forrest tell Billy to return to Mississippi.

Forrest had sent no attorney to the CPSO. He wanted it to look as though the former Double Eagles meant to cooperate fully, right up until the moment Sheriff Dennis was arrested by one of his own deputies. As soon as that was accomplished, Forrest would make contact with Penn Cage and find out whether or not there was a deal to be made. Now that he had the ultimate bargaining tool in his back pocket—in the form of Tom Cage—the son would have no option but to negotiate. Whether such negotiating would result in a deal remained an open question, since Forrest’s real worry wasn’t the mayor, but Cage’s goddamned fiancée.

He owed his knowledge of Mayor Cage’s whereabouts to Sheriff Billy Byrd, who had assigned one of his deputies to follow Kirk Boisseau, the former marine who’d accompanied Penn when he confronted Brody Royal at the hospital on Wednesday night. At 6 A.M. that deputy had followed Boisseau to a house that turned out to be owned by the parents of an old schoolmate of Cage’s. Boisseau and Cage had walked one circuit of the house, then had gone inside for five minutes, after which Boisseau returned home. A half hour later, binocular surveillance had revealed the mayor’s mother as she’d briefly parted the curtains to look outside. Thankfully, rather than storming the house in search of Tom Cage, who he believed was hiding there, Sheriff Byrd had called Forrest about his discovery. He claimed to have done this out of a sense of obligation to a fellow officer who’d had one of his men murdered in the line of duty by Dr. Cage. Nevertheless, it had taken some creative manipulation for Forrest to persuade Byrd that no immediate action should be taken against that house. Forrest, of course, knew that Tom was currently on ice at the Royal Oil field near Monterey, Louisiana. But he couldn’t tell Billy Byrd that. Instead, he’d told the hyped-up sheriff that two plainclothes police officers had checked the Abrams house with infrared technology and determined that it contained only an adult woman and a juvenile female. This, and a promise to keep Byrd updated hourly, had proved sufficient to forestall a SWAT assault.