Kaiser slammed his hand on the table. “Damn it! What else does she know?”

“We’re trying to find out. But I’ve already learned one thing that’s not good.”

“What’s that?”

“One of the things Sexton asked for was a shotgun. And she brought him one.”

Kaiser thought fast. “Could Henry even drive? He was heavily sedated when I saw him earlier today.”

“He probably skipped his last doses of meds, except the pain pump.”

“Did Mrs. Sexton know where he was going with the shotgun?”

“She claims she doesn’t.”

“Do you believe her?”

The agent paused. “Yeah.”

“Keep her there! You hear me? I’m coming straight over. And put out an APB on her vehicle. The vehicle and Sexton both. Wait—don’t do that. If the state police hear that, they’ll find Henry and kill him before we get close. He’ll just disappear. Tell our guys to hit the streets. Everybody but you. I’ll wake up the troops here.”

“Got it.”

Kaiser clicked END and started to get up, but at that moment his wife touched his shoulder. Jordan Glass was wearing a LEICA T-shirt and sweatpants, but her eyes were glued to the screen in front of Kaiser.

“Has Caitlin already posted tomorrow’s edition?” she asked. “I figured she’d be writing right up to the last possible deadline.”

For a moment Kaiser considered lying, but experience had taught him that would come back later and bite him on the ass.

“No,” he said. “We went into their intranet.”

Jordan’s gaze slowly moved to him. “You didn’t.”

“I had to see Henry’s notebooks, if I could. Things are happening too fast to wait.”

“I told you she was going to show them to you tomorrow.”

“You can’t be sure of that, Jordan.”

His wife gave him a look of infinite reproof. “I was sure.”

Kaiser endured her gaze as long as he could, out of penance, but then he turned to his techs and said, “Wake everybody up, and I mean everybody. We’ve got to find Henry Sexton ASAP.”

“The Double Eagles murdered the woman he loved earlier this evening,” Jordan said. “They were gunning for him, and she died in his place. Whoever Henry thinks did that, he’s going to kill them.”

Kaiser couldn’t believe this. “Henry is the most mild-mannered guy I’ve met in all this.”

“Everybody has a breaking point, John. You know that.”

As Jordan turned to leave, half a dozen phones began to ring.

WEDNESDAY

CHAPTER 1

TONIGHT DEATH AND time showed me their true faces.

We spend our lives plodding blindly through the slaughterhouse gate between past and future. Every second is annihilation: the death of this moment, the birth of this moment. There is no “next” moment.

There is only now.

While the pace of life seems stately in the living, we funnel through that gate like driven cattle, fearful, obedient, insensate. Even while we sleep, now becomes then as relentlessly as a river wearing away a rock. Cells burn oxygen, repair proteins, die, and replace themselves in a seemingly endless train: yet from the womb, those internal clocks are winding down to final disorder.

Only in the shadow of death do we sense the true velocity of time—while adrenaline blasts through our systems, eternity becomes tangible and all else blurs into background. It is then, paradoxically, that seconds seem to stretch, experience becomes hyper-real, and flesh and spirit unite in the battle to remain breathing, conscious, aware—afloat in the rushing stream of time. If we survive the threat, our existential epiphany quickly fades, for we cannot bear it long. Yet somewhere within us, a dividing line remains.

Before and after.

Tonight time slowed down so much I could taste it like copper on my tongue. I felt it against my skin—dense and heavy—resisting every move. Mortality hovered at my shoulder, a watchful beast of prey. Chained to a cinder-block wall, I watched a man older than my father torture the woman I love with fire. I realized then that hell existed; the terrible irony was that I had created it. In arrogance, against the counsel of others, I’d wagered all I had and more—the lives of others—to try to save my father. In desperation, I cast away every principle he ever taught me and reached into the darkness in the hope of a bargain.

What did I get in exchange for my soul?

A pillar of fire roaring in the night. The pyre of three men, probably more, visible for miles across the flat Louisiana Delta. Probably even from Mississippi. Not far to the east, my town sleeps along the high ground above the river, but here all sense, all logic is suspended while the fire devours the dead. Two of those men gave their lives for Caitlin and me. Henry Sexton, reporter. Sleepy Johnston, musician and prodigal son of Louisiana. One a white man, one black. Allies by chance, or maybe fate. Either way, they’re gone forever.

Through the slaughterhouse gate.

I’ve never witnessed such brutality as that which preceded their deaths, nor such heroism as was displayed in their sacrifices. Yet all I can taste is ashes. Three months ago I felt a lot like this, as a flood of biblical scale swept over New Orleans, the only real city between the Gulf and Memphis. Three hours south of here, hazmat-suited crews are still dragging bodies from mildewed houses. That disaster, like this one, had human causes. Greed, apathy, hubris—even loyalty—all demand payment in the end. Storms will always come, and men will always do evil in the shadow of some other word.

It’s how we respond that defines us.

A FEW MINUTES AGO, gripped by a mad delusion of invincibility, I carried Sleepy Johnston out of the basement inferno where this fire was born, and not once while I staggered through the smoke and flames did I doubt I would reach the surface. I hauled a man nearly my own weight as easily as I would have carried my eleven-year-old daughter—but to no avail. Two minutes after I laid him on the ground, Johnston died of his injuries. Now he lies a few yards behind us, staring sightlessly at the smoke-obscured stars.

I did not pray while Caitlin knelt to ease his passing. Anything I said would have been superfluous, for if any God exists, he must surely fold such martyrs into his embrace. I watched in silence while Caitlin reenacted the oldest ritual in the world, cradling the older man’s head and murmuring maternal reassurance into his ear. Touching my newly scarred face with my right hand, I drove the nails of my left-hand fingers into my palm. Pain is proof of life.

After Johnston expired, I comforted Caitlin as though I had some purchase on reality. But that was only another delusion, though I didn’t know it then.

Then . . . ?

With alarm I realize that these events happened only a minute ago, if that. Does a man in shock know he is in shock?

Probably not.

If I rewind history fifteen minutes, this chaotic mass of fire and smoke was a stunning lake house. Now its owner is being cremated in the ruins of his home, and we two survivors stumble about as reality slowly returns with soul-searing clarity. An imaginary newscaster’s voice speaks in my head: Brody Royal, multimillionaire sociopath, burned to death last night in a fire started by his antique flamethrower. Sadly, Royal was unable to complete the murders he was contemplating prior to his demise, due to a sudden and suicidal intervention by a man he’d ridiculed as harmless for the past twenty years—

Brody’s house shudders like some giant creature, and then, with the sound of cracking bones, one wing implodes. The heat diminishes for a few seconds, then suddenly intensifies, as though feeding on the evil within. Soon it will drive us farther back, away from Johnston’s body.