“Throw that fucker in the drunk tank,” Dennis says, stumping toward us with blood in his eye. “Put Thornfield in there with him. Process the rest and put ’em in the main cellblock. We’ll separate ’em later.”

“What about that phone call?” Kaiser asks.

“Fuck him,” Dennis mutters, walking past the FBI agent without even a glance. “And fuck you, too. Stay out of my way.”

AFTER TWENTY MINUTES OF flying over the Lusahatcha Swamp, Caitlin realized that hunting for the Bone Tree in a boat would have taken weeks without a guide like Toby Rambin. From five hundred feet in the air, the swamp appeared vastly larger than it had on Google Earth, which Caitlin had used to scan the terrain this morning. The cypress forest seemed endless, and the thick undergrowth was caught in the transition from fall to winter, an uncertain process in the South. Though it was late December, a lot of green still dotted the landscape below, and a greenish-brown scum floated at the edge of the black water between the big trees. Caitlin now understood why Henry and the FBI had not found the Bone Tree during their relatively brief searches. With half a million trees between the east and west borders of the swamp, the odds of finding a single one by pure luck were practically zero.

“The X on your map,” Danny McDavitt said over the headset, “appears to lie in the borderland between the federal wildlife preserve and the private hunting club in this area. Some of it’s disputed borderland.”

“What do you mean, disputed?” Jordan asked.

“I’ve always heard that fence down there is in the wrong place,” Danny replied. “Some say the hunting club fenced in more land than they own. But they claim they actually own more than they’ve fenced. I never heard of any litigation over it, though. Too many senators hunt at that place.”

Caitlin figured this was her chance. “Have either of you hunted at the Valhalla camp?”

“I went once,” Carl said. “Sheriff Ellis took me. He’s tight with the people who own it.”

“The Knoxes?” Caitlin asked as casually as she could.

“That’s right,” said Danny. “Some of them are old Klansmen, but one is a big dog in the state police. I think that Brody Royal was a member, the one who died the other night.”

Caitlin wondered if Danny knew that she’d been in the room when Henry Sexton immolated the old multimillionaire. Of course he did. That would have been the talk of the county this morning, and certainly the sheriff’s department.

“I didn’t care for the place,” Carl said.

“Big surprise,” Danny cracked. “You’re definitely the wrong color.”

“Yeah. The sheriff only took me over there to show those assholes he’s got the best rifle shot in the state on his payroll.”

Caitlin looked over at Jordan, who was gazing out the window as though this were a commuter shuttle from New York to Boston.

“What the hell is with those huge fences?” Jordan asked. “We saw them on the way in. The whole place felt like a goddamn concentration camp.”

“That’s what it is,” Carl said glumly. “But for animals.”

Danny tilted the chopper so that they could see more landscape below. Caitlin scanned the swamp for cypresses noticeably larger than the others.

“What’s it cost to belong to one of those hunting clubs?” she asked.

“Ten grand a year for some, others ten times that much. Depends on what you’re after.”

“Unless you’re a senator or a titan of industry,” said Danny. “Then you can order what you want off a menu, just like going to a restaurant. They take you out to an electric feeder where the game of your choice eats every day, and you execute the animal while he’s having dinner.”

“Real sporting, huh?” Carl said. “It’s like hunting in a zoo.”

“Pathetic,” Jordan said. “You see how those deer run when we roar over them? That’s exactly how people run from choppers in some countries I’ve been to. Only slower.”

“Yeah,” Carl said, his voice suddenly somber. “I’ve seen that myself.”

“Is that the way Valhalla is run?” Caitlin asked. “Like a hunting zoo?”

“For the customers, yeah. But the owners do some crazy stuff, like the spear hunting.”

“There are politicians who have wet dreams about being asked down to those camps for a weekend,” said Danny. “They’ve got chefs and waiters and whores on call for those boys. It’s redneck heaven down here.”

“And Sheriff Ellis is tight with the owners?” Caitlin asked.

Carl nodded. “The sheriff’s okay. He’s a redneck, but he’s basically a decent man.”

“Are we getting close to the X?” Caitlin asked.

“Not long now,” Danny said. “This map wasn’t exactly drafted by the U.S. Geological Survey.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

The pilot laughed, then looked over his shoulder at Caitlin. His eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses. “You ladies going to let us in on what’s supposed to be waiting under that X?”

Caitlin felt a chill of suspicion.

“It’s not Jean Lafitte’s pirate treasure, is it?”

“How did you know?” Jordan said with a laugh. “If it’s there, we’ll cut you in for five percent.”

Carl laughed. “I think this chopper rates a four-way split, don’t you?”

Caitlin forced herself to laugh, but she wondered how the pilot would react if they actually discovered the Bone Tree this morning. As a young black man, Carl obviously sympathized with her cause, but Sheriff Ellis wasn’t going to be happy to have his county become the new epicenter of civil rights cases that would draw the attention of the whole world.

Out of nowhere, an image of Tom Cage rose in her mind. Without intending it, Caitlin prayed as she never had before. She prayed for Tom’s deliverance, of course, but more than that, she prayed that Penn would never discover that she’d known where Tom was and kept it from him.

She started as Jordan’s hand fell on her knee.

“I’m okay,” she said, looking up at her new friend. “Just a little airsick.”

Jordan smiled, but she wasn’t buying it.

CHAPTER 54

WALT STOOD WITH his back to the wall of the rearmost upstairs bedroom of the Bouchard lake house and listened to the muted hum of voices from the deck. Only a glass door covered by a curtain separated him from Knox and Ozan now. He had accomplished a minor miracle in getting this far. After the Redbone arrived, Walt had put on some rough clothes he’d found in the neighbor’s house, then crossed the open ground wearing a gardener’s cap and gloves and carrying a short shovel. Once he’d gained the house undetected, he’d quickly searched the garage. After determining that Tom wasn’t inside Ozan’s pickup truck, Walt had taken out his pistol and begun searching the house, room by room.

With every room he cleared, the embers of hope in his heart burned lower. After ten minutes, he found himself standing here, in the final room, which was as empty of human beings as the others. This huge house contained only Walt Garrity, while Forrest and Ozan talked in low tones on the deck. Walt clenched his pistol against his chest and tried to make out what the men were saying.

He couldn’t do it.

Unless he put his ear to the glass window, there was no point in even trying. His only hope now was to confront the bastards directly. At two to one, the odds were against him, but he’d faced worse as a Texas Ranger. Much worse, in fact, and he’d survived.

Truth be told, the safest plan would be to shoot Ozan outright and then force Knox to give up Tom’s location. But if he did that, he’d have little choice but to finish off Knox as well. Both men certainly deserved to die, but Walt found the idea of blowing Ozan away without any warning more difficult than he would have expected. Perhaps he could get the drop on them so cleanly that they wouldn’t go for their weapons. . . .