Special Agent Kaiser had taken over the Examiner’s conference room and turned it into an FBI command center. There were now nine special agents spread across Natchez and Concordia Parish, plus a half-dozen technicians of different types, and more manpower was on the way. FBI computer experts had begun the laborious task of trying to reconstruct the deleted scans of Henry Sexton’s files and journals from the Examiner’s servers. And while they did that, Kaiser had been working with Jamie Lewis in an effort to identify a possible second mole among Caitlin’s editorial staff. She felt conflicted about giving the Bureau access to personnel records, but she couldn’t risk another security breach while they were working such critical stories.

The proximity of Kaiser and his team had made it tough for Caitlin to contact Toby Rambin, the poacher who’d offered to guide Henry Sexton to the Bone Tree. Three times during the night she’d risked calling the number Henry had given her, but each time she’d gotten no answer. By researching the numerical prefix, she learned that the number was a landline, so she figured Rambin might be out in the swamp plying his trade. Caitlin also wanted Kaiser out of the building so that she could review Henry’s most recent journal—the one she’d saved from the burned ruins of the Concordia Beacon—but she wasn’t about to risk Kaiser discovering that. Along with Henry’s journal containing his leads and meditations on the Bone Tree (which, thankfully, she’d kept separate from the group that had been stolen and burned), this was all that remained of the brave reporter’s original records. Right now the two Moleskine journals lay atop Caitlin’s tall office credenza like holy relics hidden from an invading pagan army. Those journals—along with Toby Rambin—represented her only investigative advantage over the FBI, and the crux of her head start against the army of journalists descending on Natchez.

Just before dawn, Kaiser had told her that he was trying to organize a massive search of the Lusahatcha Swamp, in hopes of locating the Bone Tree and the bodies that might still lie there. This prospect gave Caitlin hives, and she’d felt immense relief when Kaiser slammed down her desk phone and complained that Washington had denied his request. A few minutes later, Jordan Glass confided to her that the director’s position wasn’t exactly unreasonable. Within twenty-four hours of sending “his best New Orleans agent” to Concordia Parish, half a dozen bodies had piled up, and the director was afraid that more would follow. He wasn’t about to organize a military-scale search in Mississippi without more cause than Kaiser had given him so far. He wanted to proceed with “cautious deliberation.”

Caitlin wasn’t sure Kaiser had given up his plan for the swamp search until word came in that Penn and Sheriff Dennis were sweeping up Concordia Parish’s meth cookers and dealers. It was then that she saw what John Kaiser looked like when he truly lost his temper. She didn’t envy Penn being on the receiving end of that anger. While Kaiser fumed, she pled ignorance and went about her business, thanking her stars that the Bone Tree would remain undiscovered by the FBI for some time yet.

At 7:45 A.M. Caitlin received one request she could not ignore: a summons to appear before the Adams County sheriff, Billy Byrd, for questioning. After telling Kaiser to send the cavalry if she hadn’t returned in an hour, she went out to her car, trusting that Henry’s journals would be fine where they were until she returned.

Turning east onto Main Street, Caitlin checked the Motorola cell phone she was currently using—she’d sent one of her advertising people out to replace the Treo 650 that Brody Royal had burned—and saw that she’d received twenty-six text messages in the past fifteen minutes. For the next few days, she was going to have her hands full merely evading friends, much less the remainder of the media locusts. If she couldn’t find a way to set her team’s course for the day and then get out of the office—preferably to meet Toby Rambin—she would be overrun.

As she turned onto Wall Street, Caitlin saw two TV trucks parked in front of City Hall: one from WAPT in Jackson, the other from WLOX on the coast. After passing the trucks, she glanced right and saw two more parked in front of the courthouse: KNOE out of Monroe and WBRZ from Baton Rouge. There were more to come. When she turned west onto State Street, she saw a big CNN truck parked between the sheriff’s department and the district attorney’s office, and beyond that was a minivan that read MPB—the Jackson PBS station.

Slowing to scan the block for parking spaces, Caitlin saw Shadrach Johnson giving an on-camera interview on the steps of his building. As usual, he was dressed to the nines and standing as straight as a man announcing his candidacy for governor. When she looked left, she saw Sheriff Byrd doing the same on the steps of the ACSO building across the street from Shad. At least five reporters had microphones jammed into Byrd’s face, and he looked as happy as a pig in slop.

Caitlin parked around the corner near Judge Noyes’s chambers, then walked back to the ACSO building. Byrd was winding up the interviews as she approached, and he motioned for her to follow him inside. She soon found herself sitting before his desk like a schoolgirl called to see the principal. Her chair had been chosen to drop male visitors half a head lower than the potbellied sheriff, so she was forced to sit ramrod straight to achieve any sense of being on equal terms.

Squinting down at her like a caricature sheriff from some 1960s western, Byrd announced that he’d brought her there because of complaints filed by the Royal family, who claimed she’d broken into Katy Royal Regan’s house and harassed the woman until she committed suicide. However, it quickly became apparent that the sheriff’s real objective was discovering why Penn had been riding shotgun in Sheriff Dennis’s cruiser during the drug raids. Caitlin only smiled and asked whether Sheriff Byrd planned to make a similar sweep of Adams County. Bristling, Byrd declared that Adams County had no significant meth problem, which was ridiculous, since only the river separated Natchez from Concordia Parish, and traffic flowed over the twin bridges twenty-four hours a day. Caitlin only smiled and kept pressing him.

After Byrd realized she wasn’t going to give him anything on Penn, he began questioning her about the stories in the morning edition of the Examiner. Byrd was obviously accustomed to women deferring to him, so Caitlin played the game, hoping to discover how much or how little he knew by way of his inept questioning. The risk was negligible. Fooling Billy Byrd was child’s play compared to dealing with Kaiser.

Ninety seconds of back-and-forth told her that Byrd knew nothing of the real situation, and she was trying to think of a way to gracefully extricate herself from his office when his cell phone rang. He held the phone away from him and squinted at its LCD, then took the call. After listening for a few seconds, he turned pale and sat up straight.

“How many?” he asked, his face darkening.

Caitlin took the opportunity to check her cell phone, which she’d silenced before entering Byrd’s office. The last text message was from Penn. It read: Disaster at the warehouse. One deputy dead, others critical. I’m ok, headed to C hospital w Dennis.

Caitlin felt the blood drain from her face.

“Call me as soon as you know more,” Sheriff Byrd said, and slammed the phone down on his desk.

“What happened?” Caitlin asked, fighting the urge to bolt from the office.

Byrd cursed and rubbed his forehead. “Sheriff Dennis just lost a man in an explosion. Looks like a booby-trapped drug warehouse. He’s got three more men in critical condition, some being airlifted out.”