She listened until she couldn’t hear anything else, then lowered the gun. She stood alone in the fog and silence.

Morgan kept it to thirty-five on the drive back to the motel, watching the rearview, the still-warm Beretta on his lap.

He doubted she’d gotten a good look at the car or plates. DeWayne had used his name, but it wouldn’t do her much good. One more day here and he was gone.

He’d get the money from Flynn, do whatever it took to make that happen. But he couldn’t go back to Newark now. He’d call Cassandra from someplace safe, have her and the boy meet him. He’d have to find a way to get to the bank, empty his safe deposit. Then head west maybe, keep driving.

He thought about the woman deputy. Remembered her carrying her little boy in the park, hitched up on her shoulders. Tonight she’d gone head-to-head with DeWayne rather than run and hide in the fog. Had stood and looked Morgan in the eye as he held the Beretta on her, his finger on the trigger. He’d seen the fear there, but something else beyond it. Something that was stronger.

The fog was starting to break up, the road clearing in his headlights. He turned the stereo back on, pushed the tape in. Sam Cooke wishing someone would come and ease his troublin’ mind.

One more day and gone.

TWENTY-FIVE

Four A.M., and the Sheriff’s Office was abuzz. Off-duty deputies had shown up as the news got out. Sara sat slumped in the chair facing the sheriff’s desk, her right ear still echoing with the shot DeWayne had fired. She ached all over, and the adrenaline aftershock was starting to fade, a stonelike fatigue taking its place.

She could see the sheriff and Sam Elwood talking by the dispatcher’s desk, Sam with his hands on his hips. He turned, met her eyes.

She stretched her legs, rubbed her calf where DeWayne had kicked her. Outside, she could see thin fog drifting past the floodlights, stars starting to appear in the sky.

The sheriff came back in carrying a manila folder and a bottle of water. He cracked the cap, handed it to her.

“Thanks.”

He closed the door and settled behind his desk. “How do you feel?”

“Tired,” she said.

“I can imagine.”

“I just want to see Danny.”

“You will. I talked to Andy Ryan a few minutes ago. Everything’s fine. I sent a deputy out there as well.”

She took a long drink of water.

He opened the folder, took out a black-and-white photo on printer paper, and set it in front of her.

“New Jersey State Police sent that down. Look familiar?”

She pulled the photo closer. It was the man DeWayne had called Morgan.

“That’s him,” she said. “He’s younger here, though. Man I saw was in his fifties, sixties maybe. Like he’d been around.”

“He has. That photo’s a few years old. Name’s Nathaniel Morgan. Fifty-seven, kind of old for this sort of thing. He has a jacket going back to the sixties-assault, attempted murder, manslaughter. Did seven years on the last one, 1980 to ’87.”

“Who were the other two?”

He read from the file.

“Dante and DeWayne Coleman. Brothers. Both have substantial sheets. DeWayne, the big one, just got out of state prison two months ago, for aggravated assault. A couple of princes, those two.”

“Have you found Billy?”

He sat back. “Sam just came back from his place. He’s gone, of course. I left Minos McCarthy and Ed Strunk out there in a cruiser, see if he comes back. I’m doubting he will. Looks like he packed up, hit the road. Any idea where he might have gone?”

She shook her head. “I tried his cell a half-dozen times,” she said. “It’s turned off. I think he’s got a brother in Ocala-”

“We know. I put in a call to the Marion County SO up there. They’re out at the house now. No sign of him, and the brother says he hasn’t seen or heard from him in weeks. No, I’m thinking it’s somewhere nearby, somewhere he thinks is safe. A fishing camp or a hunting cabin or something.”

“If he has one, he never told me.”

“On the other hand, if all this is true, he can go a long way on three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

All of it was catching up with her now, hearing someone else speak it. The signs she should have seen. The things that were in front of her all along she never put together, didn’t want to put together.

Now here you are. What good did you do after all?

“We put a BOLO out on the truck,” he said. “Unless he’s got another vehicle stashed somewhere, we’ll find him soon. My guess is he’s holed up somewhere close, especially if he’s carrying that money around.”

“Maybe he isn’t. Maybe Lee-Anne has it.”

“If she did, someone took it from her.”

“What do you mean?”

“Call came in about an hour ago. FHP found her car abandoned down in Hendry County. Gone off the road, all busted up. Blood on the seat.”

“And?”

“They alerted the Sheriff’s Office down there. Tracks show there were a couple other cars at the scene. They’re trying to chase it down. She had suitcases in the trunk, but someone had been through them. From the amount of blood, the condition of the car, unlikely she walked away.”

“Someone took her.”

“Looks like. And not to a hospital. This thing’s sprawling, Sara, and bad. FDLE’s out at your scene. Tampa FBI’s been notified as well. This whole thing gets taken away from us in twenty-four hours, I’m guessing. Unless we find Billy first.”

“Can you GPS his phone?”

“No luck so far. Either he shut it down or figured out how to deactivate the tracking applet. If he uses it again, we might get lucky. Until then…”

He tapped an unsharpened pencil on the desk.

“Elwood’s got your service weapon,” he said. “He’ll give it to you before you leave. You’ll need to clean it good, though. Some dirt in the barrel and all.”

He touched his left cheek. “You might want to do something about that too.”

She raised a hand to her face, felt the stickiness there. He took a tissue from the box next to his terminal, handed it over. She folded it, dabbed it with water from the bottle, wiped her cheek. It came away red.

“You handled yourself well out there,” he said.

“How’s that?” She dabbed water, wiped again. More blood. “I had my service weapon taken away from me. Twice.”

“You came back in one piece. That’s the main thing.”

“I guess.”

“Maybe this Morgan did you a favor, taking those two out like that. Kept you from having to make that choice. It’s not an easy thing, shooting a man. It can be tough to live with. You can give it all the context and justification you want, but it still goes against human nature. I haven’t fired a shot in anger since the war, and that’s the way I want to keep it.”

She looked at the bloody tissue.

“That’s one of the things I can’t get my head around,” he said. “Billy shooting that boy that way. What makes a good man-a good deputy-do something like that?”

“Money.”

“Did he really think he was going to get away with it? That much money? That someone wasn’t going to come looking for it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he was tired of the way things were. Maybe he saw this as his chance.”

“His chance to get killed.”

“Maybe he thought he could handle it, handle whatever came after, too.”

He tapped the pencil.

“Would have thought he was smarter than that. But money can do that to a person, I guess. Wake up one day, think they deserve something they haven’t earned. Decide to go out and take it. But it never works out. They can never hold on to it.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said.

“Money. People think it’ll cure all their troubles. Then they find out the way things really work.”

“How’s that?”

“Forget about money,” he said. “Pain’s the only currency. And everybody pays their way.”