The good news, though, was that everyone he cared about was going to be all right now. His youngest brother, Lane, had taken over the BBC and was going to run the bourbon business appropriately. Their mother, Little V.E., was so addled by age and medication that she would live out her remaining days, perhaps at Easterly, perhaps not, blissfully unaware of the change in the family’s social standings. Gin, his sister, was married to a man of great means whom she could manipulate at will to her ends, and his other brother, Max? Well, the black sheep of the family would stay what he had always been, a drifter content to live outside of Charlemont, a ghost haunting a legacy he neither valued nor cared about sustaining.

And as for himself? Perhaps when he was transferred out of this county holding pen to a proper prison, they would have some physical therapy that could help him. He might get another master’s. Reconnect with his love of English literature. Learn to make license plates.

It wasn’t a life to look forward to, but he was used to hopelessness.

And more importantly, sometimes the only solace one had was to do the right thing. Even if it required great sacrifice, there was peace to be had in knowing that loved ones were finally safe from a nightmare.

Like his father.

In fact, Edward decided, the reality that no one mourned William Baldwine seemed a defense enough to the murder charge. Damn shame that it was not a legally recognized justification—

The footsteps that approached were heavy and purposeful, and for a moment, the present shattered apart, the past rising up like a monster out of the swamp of his consciousness, his brain no longer clear on whether he was in the jungle bound with rough rope, about to be beaten again . . . or if he were in the judicial system of his city of birth—

A loud clanking at his door sent his blood pressure through the roof, his heart pounding, sweat breaking out under his arms and across his face. Frozen by fear, his fingers clawed into the pad beneath him, his broken body trembling so violently, his teeth clapped together.

The sheriff’s deputy who opened the door made the confusion worse instead of better.

“Ramsey?” Edward said in a thin voice.

The African-American man in the tan and gold sheriff’s uniform was enormous, with shoulders so wide they filled the jambs, and legs planted as if they were bolted into the floor. With a shaved head, and a jaw that strongly suggested argument was a waste of time, Mitchell Ramsey was a force of nature with a badge—and this was the second time he had come to Edward in the night.

In fact, the only reason Edward was alive was because the deputy had gone into the jungle looking for him. As a former Army Ranger, Ramsey had had both the survival skills and the contacts down at the equator to get the job done—he also routinely played the role of “fixer” for issues within wealthy families in Charlemont, so the rescue was in his wheelhouse.

If you needed a bodyguard, an enforcer, a P.I., or someone to interface with law enforcement, Ramsey was on the short list of people to call. Discreet, unflappable, and a trained killer, he dealt with the dicey nicely, as the saying went.

“You got a visitor, my man,” the deputy said in his deep Southern voice.

It took some time for the words to process, the fear-scramble in Edward’s mind causing him to lose traction on his command of the English language.

“Come on.” Ramsey indicated the way out. “We got to go now.”

Edward blinked as his emotions threatened to overspill his chest and come out on his face through his tear ducts. But he could not allow himself to drown in PTSD. This was the present. There was no one coming with a bat to break his legs. There were no knives about to dig into his skin. Nobody was going to punch him until he vomited blood down his arm and his head lolled off the top of his spine.

Ramsey came forward and offered his bear claw of a palm. “I’ll help you.”

Edward looked up into those dark eyes and spoke the exact same words he had two years before: “I don’t think I can stand up.”

For a moment, Ramsey, too, seemed caught by what they had shared in South America, his lids closing briefly, that great chest expanding and contracting as he appeared to try to steady himself with a deep breath.

Evidently, even former Army Rangers had memories they didn’t care to revisit. “I gotchu. C’mon.”

Ramsey helped him off the bunk and then waited as Edward’s legs took their own damn time to unknot, the hours he’d spent in a sit having turned his deformed, badly healed muscles into stone. When he was finally ready to ambulate, the hobbling was humiliating, especially next to the deputy’s incredible strength, but at least as he limped out of his cell and onto the parapet, a clarity came, reality reasserting itself through the morass of his trauma.

As their footsteps clanked across the metal weave to the stairs, Edward looked over the railing at the common area below. Everything was clean, but the steel tables and benches were hard worn, the orange paint jobs faded where games of cards had been played and prisoners had slid on and off. There was no debris anywhere, no magazines or books, no articles of clothing left behind, no wrappers from candy bars or empty soda cans. Then again, anything could be a weapon under the right circumstances, and nothing was expected to be respected.

Edward was halfway down the stairs when he stopped, his higher reasoning finally kicking in. “I don’t want to see anyone.”

Ramsey just gave him a nudge and shook his head. “Yes, you do.”

“No, I—”

“This is not a choice, Edward.”

Edward looked away, everything clicking into place. “Do not believe them. This is much ado about nothing—”

“Let’s keep walking, my man—”

“I already met with the psychiatrist this afternoon. I told him there was nothing to worry about.”

“FYI, you are not the one qualified to make an assessment as to your mental state.”

“I know whether or not I’m suicidal.”

“Do you?” Ramsey’s stare was direct. “You were found with a shank—”

“I told them. I picked the thing up in the mess hall and was going to turn it in—”

Ramsey grabbed Edward’s forearm, pulled it out, and yanked up the sleeve of his prison uniform. “You used it here. And that is the problem.”

Edward attempted to get his limb back, but the deputy wasn’t having any of that until he was good and ready to let go. And in the bright fluorescent lights, the raw wound at his wrist seemed like a scream.

“Look, do us both a favor, my man, and come with me now.”

Ramsey shifted his hand to Edward’s elbow and gave a nudge that was so insistent, it was clear the deputy was prepared to pull a fireman’s hold on the situation if he had to.

“I’m not suicidal,” Edward muttered as he re-gripped the rail and resumed his awkward, shuffling descent in his prison-issue slippers. “And whoever it is, I do not want to see them. . . .”

Out on Easterly’s terrace, Lane immediately lowered the muzzle of his gun, the brilliant red laser sight sweeping free of the man’s chest and then disappearing as the trigger was fully released.

“I could have shot you! What the hell?”

Gary McAdams, the head groundsman, removed his cap and held it with both his work-worn hands. “I’m sorry, Mr. Lane.”

In the moonlight, the man’s wrinkled, perma-tanned face had grooves so deep, they were like tire tracks in mud, and as he smoothed his flyaway hair, his apology was everywhere in the jerky movements.

“Dint mean to disturb nobody’s sleep.”

Lane went to tuck the gun into the small of his back—and then realized he only had boxers on. “No, you’re welcome anywhere on the estate. I just don’t want to put a hole in you.”

“That there pool filtration system in the pump house been shorting out. I ordered the part, but then remembered I dint turn the damn thing off. Came here through the back gate and shut it down. When I got out, I noticed that.” The man pointed to the back of the house. “Middle gas lantern’s out. I was worried it was leakin’ and was fixin’ to turn off the feed.”

Sure enough, there was a black hole in the lineup of those old-fashioned brass fixtures, like a row of teeth with an incisor missing.