They both loved U of C basketball, good bourbon, bad jokes, and the Commonwealth of Kentucky—and were essentially positive guys.

At least until recently.

Mack glanced at Beth again, who seemed likewise subdued, and then he held the door wide so that one by one they could file into the laboratory’s anteroom. All around, white suits hung on pegs, and there were boxes of blue booties to slip on your footwear. Goggles, masks, and hairnets were also organized on shelves and on hooks.

The BBC’s master distiller ignored all that and walked right through the glass door and into the lab space beyond. There, stainless-steel counters, bright lights, and microscopes made the place seem like an IVF lab or maybe part of the Centers for Disease Control.

“She’s over here.”

Mack stopped by a relatively innocuous glass container with a slip of tinfoil across its top and a fat belly full of a dark, thick liquid that had a frothy, cream-colored head.

“Meet my new strain. Or, shall I say, our new strain.”

Lane popped his eyes. “You’re kidding me. I didn’t even know you were working on a new yeast?”

“I wasn’t sure I’d find anything worth talking about. But it turns out, I did.”

The rules and method that governed bourbon making were very clear: The whiskey had to be made in the United States and the mash had to be a minimum of fifty-one percent corn, with the balance being from rye, wheat, and/or malted barley. After the mash was ready and at the right pH, yeast was added and fermentation occurred, and that fermented mash had to then be distilled to a given alcoholic percentage in the stills. The resulting “white dog” was placed in new, charred, American oak barrels for aging, a process whereby the caramelized sugars in the charred wood colored and flavored the alcohol. After maturing, the bourbon was filtered and balanced with water and finally bottled at at least eighty proof.

What affected the taste was, essentially, three things: the composition of the mash, the length of the aging . . . and the yeast.

Yeast strains were the top secret for bourbon makers, and for a company like the BBC, they were not just patented, they were kept under lock and key, the mother strain carefully tended to, DNA’d, and checked every year to make sure there were no contaminations.

If the yeast changed, the taste changed and your product could be lost forever.

The strain used for Family Reserve, for example, had been brought over from Scotland to Pennsylvania during the early days of the Bradford family. And there hadn’t been a new one since about fifty years after that.

“Right before Dad died,” Mack said, “I had started working on this. You know, traveling throughout the South, getting soil, nut, and fruit samples. And this one . . . she just started talking to me. I’ve analyzed her thoroughly and compared her DNA to everybody else’s. It’s proprietary, and more than that, it’s going to make a hell of a bourbon.”

As Beth came up to the man, he put his arm around her and kissed her.

Lane shook his head. “This is downright historic—”

“Yeah, in, like, ten years,” Jeff cut in. “I don’t mean to be a downer here, but we need to generate cash now. Even if this results in the best bourbon on the planet, it’s still going to have to be aged before we can distribute it.”

“That’s my point.” Mack focused on the beaker. “We can sell this yeast strain today. Any other bourbon maker—or whiskey maker, outside of the United States—would kill for this, and not only because it’s going to make a great liquor. They’d pay a premium for it just to get it out of our hands.”

Jeff’s affect changed on a dime. “No fucking kidding.”

“It’s got to be worth . . .” Mack shrugged. “Well, you tell me we need about a hundred million to pay off all those banks, right? Something like this—it’s practically invaluable. Hell, I’m not even sure how to put a dollar figure on it. But it’s at least that much. Or more. Think about it, a proprietary blend, never before on the market, and a competitor who will be diminished by its sale.”

“Priceless,” Jeff murmured.

Lane focused on Mack. Master distillers were usually much older than Mack’s thirty-something years, and for him to not only be his father’s son, but to discover something like this? It would make his career, put him in the big leagues—and break his heart if someone else got to claim the bourbon that flowed from his discovery.

“I can’t let you do it,” Lane said. “No.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Jeff barked. “Seriously, Lane. We’re in beggars-not-choosers land over here. You’ve seen the hole we’re in. You know what’s at stake. A cash infusion on that level is what could save us—assuming we can get the money in time.”

In the silence that followed, Lane thought about Sutton Smythe.

The Sutton Distillery Corporation was sitting on a boatload of cash—because, hello, they hadn’t had some jackass in the top office stealing money.

She was the CEO. She could make decisions like that, and fast.

And as the BBC’s biggest competitor?

Mack extended a finger and tapped the tinfoiled beaker. “If it’ll save the company, I’ll be a hero of sorts, right? And I’ll be saving my job while I’m at it.”

As all three of them stared at Lane, he hated the position he was in.

That his father had put him in, he corrected.

“Maybe there’s another way,” he heard himself say.

Although if that were true, he thought, why was he hearing crickets in his head?

After a moment, he cursed and headed for the door. “Fine. I know who to call.”

All things considered, Max thought as he dismounted from his Harley, it was a surprise that he hadn’t had more experience with jails.

Looking up at the Washington County Courthouse, he marveled at the many floors and wondered exactly where the jail was located in the complex. The building had to be an entire block long. And wide.

As he walked up the series of steps and levels, he braced himself to get profiled as a criminal. Beard, black leather, tattoos. He was the poster child for a certain kind of folks who tangled with the legal system, and sure enough, the sheriff’s deputies around the metal detector you had to walk through gave him the hairy eyeball.

He put his wallet and its chain in the black basket along with his cell phone and went through the trellis of a sensor. On the far side, he was wanded. Twice.

They seemed disappointed when nothing went off.

“I’m looking for the jail check-in?” he said.

“For prisoners?” the woman asked.

“I want to see one, yes.”

Of course you do, her eyes said. “Go up to the third floor. Follow the signs. They’ll take you into the next building over.”

“Thank you.”

Now she seemed surprised. “You’re welcome.”

Following her directions, he found himself waiting in line at a check-in desk, in front of four people in sheriff’s uniforms typing requests into computers.

He would have glanced at his watch. If he’d had one. Instead, he relied on the clock on the wall behind them all to assess the time. At this rate, he wasn’t going to be able to leave town until noontime—

“Max?”

He turned at a familiar voice and then shook his head. “Hey, man. How you?”

As he and Deputy Ramsey clapped palms, he kind of wanted to explain the beard and the tats. But whatever, he was an adult. He didn’t have to be accountable to anyone.

“You here to see Edward?” the deputy asked.

“I, ah, yes, I guess. Yes.”

“He hasn’t been much for visitors.”

“I’m pulling out. Of town. I wanted to see him before I go, you know.”

“Wait over there. Lemme see what I can do.”

“Thanks, man.”

Max went across the linoleum floor and parked it in a lineup of plastic chairs. But he didn’t sit back and relax. None of that happening, nope. He just put his hands on his knees and passed the time checking out the other people milling around. Not a lot of white-collar types.

Yeah, his dad, with all his fine-bred bullshit, wouldn’t have liked it in here. Then again, William would have been in the federal system, not this local one. Would that be any classier, however. No.