Indelible

"That's right," Hoss said. "How'd you like it if I let it out that you and Robert were more than friends?"

Jeffrey snorted a laugh.

"For all I know," Hoss continued, "maybe you were."

"Right."

"You two fuckbuddies?" Hoss goaded, desperation pouring off him. "You want everybody in town to hear that? You want your mama to find out? Maybe somebody'll tell your daddy down at the prison?"

"You can tell my daddy yourself when you see him, you pathetic old fuck."

"You watch that mouth."

"Or what?"

"I protected you!" Hoss yelled. "You think your father would have done that? You think that worthless bastard would've helped you?"

Jeffrey slammed his fist into the desk. "I didn't want your help!"

"You sure as shit needed it!" Hoss screamed back. Blood dripped from his nose, but he kept screaming, his face turning red with anger. "I raised you, boy! I made you the man you are today!"

Jeffrey jabbed his thumb at his chest. "I made me the man I am today. I made myself despite you." He felt dirty being this close to him. "I thought you were a god. You were everything I wanted to be."

Hoss's lip quivered, as if he wanted to take Jeffrey's words as a compliment.

Jeffrey made himself clear. "You molested a teenage girl. You took a mother from her child."

"I didn't -"

"You make me sick," Jeffrey said, walking toward the door.

Hoss put his hand on his desk as if he needed the support. "Don't leave like this, Slick. Come on." His tone took an edge of desperation. "What are you go

"The truth," Jeffrey said, feeling his calm return. What he saw before him was no longer his mentor, his surrogate father, but a criminal, a lying old man who had destroyed the people he was meant to protect.

"Come on, now," Hoss said, begging. "You can't do this. You'll ruin me. You know what'll happen if you go out there and…please, Slick. Don't do this." He took a step forward as if to stop Jeffrey. "You might as well put a gun to my head." He tried a weak smile. "Come on, son. Don't look at me that way."

"Look at you?" Jeffrey asked, putting his hand on the doorknob. "I can't even stand to see your face."

He did not slam the door behind him, but in his mind, Jeffrey heard a resounding crash. Sara stood up, wringing her hands.

He did not know what to tell her. There would never be the right words to describe how he felt. Rudderless, that was a good one to start with. He had lost the thing that gave him direction.

"Are you okay?" she asked, and the concern in her voice was better than anything she had ever done for him.

"He came to see me after Dad was arrested," Jeffrey told her.

"Hoss?"

"I was at Auburn, just about to graduate. I remember everything about it," he paused, picturing the multicolored leaves on the trees that beautiful fall day. Jeffrey was sitting in his dorm room, trying to figure out how he would pay for his doctorate if Auburn accepted him into the program. He wanted to be a teacher, something respectable with a steady paycheck. He wanted to give something back.

"He knocked on the door," Jeffrey continued. "Nobody knocked. They usually just came in. I thought somebody was playing a joke." He leaned against the wall. "He kept knocking, and I finally opened the door and there he was with this look on his face. Told me Dad had taken a plea. Turned on his friends so he wouldn't get the death penalty. You know what he said?"

Sara shook her head.

" 'Some kind of coward,' " Jeffrey finished. "He told me I had to be a man now, that playtime was over. Playtime, like that's all I had been doing in college, just having fun. He handed me this application. It was already filled out."

"The police academy?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "I just took it and signed it and that was it." For the first time in his life, Jeffrey found himself wondering what would have become of his life if he had told Hoss no. He would not have met Sara, for one. He would probably still be living here in Sylacauga, dealing with the same snide remarks and secretive looks that had chased Robert away.

He said, "I don't know how I'm going to do this."

"I'll be here as long as you need me."

"I can't even think about it," he told her, and that was the truth. How could he do this? How could he repeat what Hoss had told him?

"It'll be fine," she said, just as a gun exploded in Hoss's office.

Sara must have opened the door. Jeffrey did not feel like he could move. Yet, somehow, he managed to turn around. Somehow, he was facing Hoss's office.

The old man sat in his chair, one hand on the flag from his brother's coffin, the other holding his revolver. He had put the muzzle of the gun flat to his head and pulled the trigger. There was no question in Jeffrey's mind that Hoss was dead, but still, when Sara went around the desk and pressed her fingers to his neck, he managed to form the question with his eyes.

"I'm sorry," she told him. "He's dead."

Chapter Twenty-Five

3:50 P.M.

Shit," Lena hissed, trying not to jerk her hand back as Molly stuck a needle into the cut.

"I'm sorry," Molly apologized, but she was looking over her shoulder at Sara and Jeffrey, not Lena.

Lena watched as Jeffrey was loaded into the ambulance. "Will he be okay?"

Molly nodded, though she said, "I hope so."

"What about Marla?"

"They've got her in surgery. She's old, but she's strong." She looked back at Lena's hand. "This is going to sting."

"No shit," Lena answered. The knife slicing open her skin had not hurt as much as the freaking needle.

"It'll block the pain so I can suture you."

"Just hurry," Lena said, biting her lip. She tasted blood and remembered her split lip. Molly jabbed in the needle again. "Christ, that hurts."

"Just a little more."

"Christ," she repeated, looking away from the needle. She saw Wagner talking to Nick, both of them staring at Lena and Molly as they sat in the back room of the cleaners.

"There," Molly said. "It should start numbing up in a few minutes."

"It'd better," Lena told her, feeling phantom pains from the needle. She looked through the front windows again, seeing the mess in the street. There were at least fifty GBI agents swarming around, none of them knowing what the hell they were doing. Smith was dead and So

Lena watched Molly open the suture kit she had taken from the ambulance. "Where are the kids?"

"Back with their parents," Molly said, laying out the kit. "I can't imagine what it was like for them. The parents, I mean. My God, when I think about it, my blood runs cold."

Lena realized she had been clenching every muscle in her body, and she relaxed as her hand started to numb.

"Better?" Molly asked.

"Yeah," Lena allowed. "Thanks for doing this here. I hate going to the hospital."

"That's understandable," Molly said, using a syringe to wash out the gash. "You only need three or four sutures. Sara's a lot better at this than I am."

"She's tougher than I thought."

"I think we all are," Molly pointed out. "You had me fooled when we went into the station."

"Yeah," Lena said, though the compliment rang false. She had been terrified.

Molly used a pair of long tweezers to pick up a curved needle. She dug it into Lena's skin, and Lena watched, thinking how odd it was to see her flesh being pierced and feel nothing but a dull tugging as the thread went through.

"How long have you been dating Nick?"

"Not long," Molly said, tying off the thread. "He kept asking Sara out. I guess I was the door prize."