“I know.” Moving forward, I pull her tight against me. An hour ago I made the worst mistake of my life by begging her to suppress part of a story in order to try to bargain with a killer for my father’s life. I’ve got no right to try to control anything she does now. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you. You tried to tell me something like this would happen. My worry over Dad blinded me.”

She shakes her head against my chest. “It wasn’t just you. Once I made that recording of Katy, Brody was going to come after us, no matter what.”

“But he wouldn’t have known about the recording if I hadn’t told him.”

This is debatable, but Caitlin only draws back and looks hard into my eyes. “Whatever happens now, I need to get back to the newspaper. Please do whatever you can to make that happen.”

The fire engine screeches to a stop thirty feet from us, and uniformed men leap off and out of it. The hoses come out faster than I would have believed possible, but these guys don’t have a prayer of putting out this inferno. One fireman hurries toward the body on the ground and drops to his knees, but I call out to him that the man is dead.

“What happened?” shouts another man from behind me. “Is there anybody still in the house?”

When I turn, I see a fire captain wearing a black hardhat and a fireproof coat. “Three dead men. That’s all I know. Not from the fire, though. There was a gunfight.”

His mouth drops open. “Gunfight? In Mr. Royal’s place?”

“Brody Royal’s one of the dead.”

“Oh, no.”

“His son-in-law is another. The third is Henry Sexton, the reporter.”

The fire captain shakes his head, unable to comprehend what I’m telling him. “Is that it? Nobody else?”

“I really don’t know. There’s nobody I’d risk my men to save.”

The fireman looks at me as if I might be out of my mind.

“They were torturing us,” I say. “Before the fire.”

“Torturing . . . ?” The captain looks closer at me. “Hey, I know you. You’re the mayor of Natchez. Penn Cage.”

“That’s right.”

“Are you okay?”

“I guess so. This is Caitlin Masters, the publisher of the Natchez Examiner.”

“What the hell started the fire?”

The answer to this question isn’t something the fire captain could accept. Let’s see . . . Brody Royal was preparing to burn off Caitlin’s arm with a flamethrower. I was chained to the wall, tearing my hands to shreds in my desperation to break free. That’s when Henry Sexton, despite his injuries, somehow struggled to his feet and shielded Caitlin with his body. Royal meant to burn him too, but like some medieval martyr, the reporter charged Royal and threw his arms around him before the old man could safely ignite the flamethrower. While the rest of us stared in horror, Henry pulled the trigger and immolated them both, creating a firestorm that no amount of water could smother—

“Mayor?” says the fire captain, catching hold of my shoulders. “Maybe you ought to sit down, huh?”

“A World War Two flamethrower,” I mumble. “Loaded with gasoline and tar.”

The man shakes his head in disbelief, then motions for help and starts shouting orders.

The sound of gunning motors makes me turn toward the driveway entrance. Three Concordia Parish Sheriff’s Department cruisers roar up behind the fire truck. Two park there, but a Chevy Tahoe pulls around the fire truck and drives up to within ten feet of me before it stops.

“Thank God,” Caitlin says in my ear.

Sheriff Walker Dennis gets out of his cruiser and stumps toward us. Three years shy of fifty, he carries himself like a minor-league baseball star gone to seed. He weighs 220 pounds and has forearms that would discourage anyone from betting against him in an arm-wrestling match. The way he wears his brown uniform and Stetson gives the impression that he’s been a sheriff all his adult life, but in fact he only took over the job about six weeks ago, after his predecessor was indicted on corruption charges that decimated the entire department.

“Are you okay?” Dennis shouts, striding forward and grabbing my forearm as though to reassure himself that I’m alive.

“Yeah, yeah. Caitlin, too.”

The sheriff looks over at the fire. Two crews have trained hoses on the base of the flames, but most of the house is gone already.

“Anybody in there?” Dennis asks.

“Royal and Regan, both dead.”

“Shit. They couldn’t get out?”

“No.”

The sheriff gives me an odd look. “You couldn’t get ’em out?”

“I didn’t try, Walker. They kidnapped us from the Examiner office—or sent two guys to do it. They were torturing Caitlin for information when this guy”—I point at the dead body of Sleepy Johnston—“busted in with Henry and saved us. Royal had a flamethrower in there. It was a miracle we got out alive.”

“Henry’s dead too,” Caitlin says.

Walker Dennis rubs his forehead like a man with an incipient migraine. This has already been one of the worst days of his life, and this event will only compound his difficulties. “I obviously should have pressed you harder about Brody Royal.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered.”

He takes a tin of Skoal from his breast pocket, opens it with some urgency, and jams a pinch beneath his bottom lip. “Who the fuck is that?” he asks, pointing at the dead man on the ground.

“Sleepy Johnston. You know him better as ‘Gates Brown.’”

The sheriff’s eyes widen. Dennis knows “Gates Brown” as the alias of a man who haunted the periphery of our investigations for the past couple of days. Walking closer to the body, he looks down at the face of a sixty-seven-year-old black man who lived in this area as a boy, then fled to Detroit for the rest of his adult life.

“This the guy who called me about seeing Royal and Regan burning the Concordia Beacon?”

I nod.

“We need to get the hell out of here. The state police could show up any second, and we need to get some things straight before you talk to them.”

I glance at Caitlin, who’s watching us closely. I nod, thinking the same thing that she and Dennis must be: Captain Alphonse Ozan.

“All right,” Dennis says. “Let’s get back to the department to get your statements. At least that way I’ll be on my home turf if they try to take this case away from me.”

“What about the FBI?”

“Agent Kaiser called me just before I got here. He’d just heard about the fire, but he didn’t seem to know it was Royal’s house yet.”

“I’ll bet he does by now.”

Sheriff Dennis spits on the ground and leans close to me. “We’ve got a jurisdictional clusterfuck on our hands here. And both our asses are on the line.”

“I know.”

“You ride with me,” he says, pulling me toward his Tahoe. “Ms. Masters can come in the car behind us.”

“Hold on.” I yank my arm loose. “Caitlin rides with us.”

Walker shakes his head. “Sorry. I have to separate you two. A lot of eyes will be watching this. I’ve got to follow procedure.”

“Surely she can ride with us? You can swear we didn’t talk on the way.”

Sensing danger, Caitlin has come up beside me and taken hold of my arm.

“I’m sorry,” Dennis says firmly. “It’s got to be this way.”

Before I can argue further, Walker leans in close and says, “My brother-in-law will be driving the second car. If you need to call her on the phone, you can. The stupidest thing we can do is stay here and argue. You want Ozan to arrest you two for killing one of the richest men in Louisiana? A friend of every governor for the past fifty years?”

“I’ll be fine in the second car,” Caitlin says, nudging me toward Dennis’s truck. “Let’s not waste one more second. Just let me grab Henry’s files.”

Walker gives her a grateful look, then signals a deputy standing by one of the cruisers behind the fire truck. The man reaches us as Caitlin trots back with her box, and Dennis introduces him as Grady Wells, his brother-in-law. I beg Wells to take care of Caitlin like he would his own flesh and blood, and he promises that he will.