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their truck in no time. Tom felt confident that his wife’s brother would help him ditch the truck, but that meant putting another family at risk, and Tom had already gotten people killed by doing that.
    Peggy would tell me to do it, he thought.
    The real question was what to do if he did manage to get safely to ground somewhere. This nightmare had begun when he was charged with Viola’s murder, but the death of the state trooper had complicated matters exponentially. Jumping bail on the first charge only made him look more guilty, and further reduced his options. Walt’s plan had been to seek help from the superintendent of the Louisiana State Police (who, like Walt, was a former Texas Ranger) in getting the APB on Tom and Walt withdrawn. But something had obviously gone wrong. Tom had expected Walt back long before the two hit men found him, yet he’d heard nothing.
    That left two options. He could try to turn himself in to some arm of law enforcement—preferably the FBI, if he could reach them—and hope to survive the encounter. Or he could do exactly what he’d advised Penn not to do—deal with the devil direct, and try to remove his family from harm’s way by any means necessary. Given that he was likelysurrounded on all sides by Louisiana’s state and local cops, the chance of safely delivering himself into the arms of federal agents was small. Simply using his personal cell phone was likely to bring a state police helicopter down on his head within five minutes, and the last burn phone Walt had left him might well be compromised by now. They had used it too many times already.
    The ring of the very phone Tom was thinking about stunned him, and his shoulder began to pound, telling him his blood pressure had spiked at the sound. He stared at the phone for two more rings, then answered.
    “Hello?”
    “It’s me,” said a voice that made him sag against the truck’s door. “Are you okay?”
    “I thought you were dead.” Tom craned his neck around to try to see if the hit man had woken up.
    “I didn’t want to put you at risk by calling you. Even now we shouldn’t spend more than a minute on the phone.”
    “Did you have any luck with Colonel Mackiever?”
    “No. And don’t say his name again. He got delayed, but he’s on his way up here now.”
    “Up here” meant Baton Rouge.
    “FK has already moved against him,” Walt said.
    Forrest Knox, Tom thought.
    “I don’t know the details,” Walt continued, “but it sounds like they’re trying to discredit Mac and take his job.”
    “So he can’t get the APB revoked?”
    “Not with a phone call. He needs to hear our side of the story before he can move. That’s the next step. But that’s not why I called. The colonel just told me something you need to know. Brody Royal was killed tonight, in his house on Lake Concordia. That reporter died with him, Henry Sexton.”
    “No.” Tom’s heart began to pound again.
    “Yep. And there’s more bad news.”
    The hammering in Tom’s chest began to solidify into angina. “Not Penn—”
    “No—hell, no. But Penn was apparently there when it happened, and Caitlin, too. They’re alive, but that’s all I know right now. Mac justcaught it over his radio. Royal’s son-in-law died there too, and a black fellow I never heard of. Nobody Mac trusts seems to know what really went down.”
    “Where are Penn and Caitlin now?”
    “In custody. Concordia Parish Sheriff’s Department. State police heard it from firemen on the scene. Alive and in squad cars, only minor injuries. I’ll try to learn more, but you don’t hear from me, they’re fine. If anything’s seriously wrong, I’ll call you. Don’t call me back except in an extreme emergency.”
    “Okay.”
    “How you doing? Melba still there?”
    “No. I’m not either.”
    “What?”
    “FK sent two guys to the lake house, and they nearly got me. I’m lucky to be alive, to tell the truth.”
    “What?”
    “He sent them to kill me. I turned