The workers seemed not to know the location of Chester Lyle's office, and the foreman wouldn't tell. Instep or no. This angered Durwood. He considered beating it from the man. Any wounds could be blamed on the scuffle.

Be fair, Durwood told himself.

He had a feeling he'd fight this man again in time, anyhow.

Instead he tried the company directory, up on the corporate floor. The stairs felt twice as many on his banged-up legs. He found the directory. He looked. No entry for "Chester Lyle" or "Chet Lyle" or "C. Von Bigdeal Lyle the Third."

He found Carol Bridges' card and called her personal number.

She answered, "Mayor Bridges speaking. How can I help?"

"Chester Lyles," Durwood said. "Few of his boys jumped me. I need a word with him."

Carol Bridges suggested before he do anything, they touch base at her office. She was still working, though it was almost seven o'clock.

Durwood agreed.

In the Vanagon, Sue-Ann nosed around his scrapes. He checked the visor mirror. Left eye swollen, gash there at the corner of his mouth.

Not bad.

He was surely black and blue under his shirt and jeans, but Durwood didn't figure on Carol Bridges seeing there.

He parked at City Hall. He let Sue-Ann find a patch of lawn to make water on, then entered the building. A single guard wearing a holstered gun greeted them. The place seemed empty otherwise.

The mayor was seated at her desk. Reading from a binder with her head propped, elbow firm into the wood.

The hall lights were out. Her office's were dimmed.

Durwood said, "Nose to the grindstone."

Carol Bridges saw his steel-gray eyes settle on the binder. "Retraining programs." She dragged her thumb through the stack. "If these Hogan jobs go away, our people still need to feed their families. I have to get them into different lines of work."

Durwood approached. He couldn't read the glossy pageS upside-down, but he caught a picture of an eighteen-wheel rig. "Trucking?"

She nodded. "Those are the companies hiring right now. The retraining isn't bad. Six months and you're ready."

Durwood noted that her lips were still turned down. "Must be a catch."

"Always is. You can retrain everyone to drive, fine, but how long do those jobs last? In five years, half these trucks could be...you know...oh, how do you say it? With the computers?"

"Autonomous," Durwood said.

Carol Bridges smirked. "I was going to say driverless. You got the fancier word on me."

"That's me," Durwood said. "Mr. Fancy."

She sat back and took in the sight if him. Starting at the brim of his hat, down over the swollen eye and crimped shirt. These bluejeans that felt dirty and stiff.

Durwood took the mayor in, too. Handsome still, but tired. Hair tumbled into her cheeks. Eyelids closed over large brown eyes, then opened, reminding Durwood of the pretty mares he'd tended at the Jessup farm as a boy.

Carol Bridges had been working hard for Chickasaw. The work wasn't Durwood's sort, but it was work all the same.

She talked first. "So. Chester Lyle. The people who did this"—she gestured to his eye—"worked for him?"

Durwood said, "They claimed to."

He recounted the fight at the Hogan factory, being ambushed, the foreman with the rum-barrel voice. The men's reluctance to tell him where Chester Lyles' office was.

Carol Bridges held his gaze through most of the tale. Now her shoulders shifted. She looked over his shoulder for just for a moment.

He said, "Is something happening on my six?"

She smiled at the military reference. "Just Deputy Gomez." She crooked her finger out to the hall and called, "Alonso, come in. I know you've been wanting to."

A scrawny man came out from behind the door jamb. He wore a pale-brown uniform, Chickasaw Police Department. Walked stooped forward like he was afraid he'd spook a bunny.

At the sight of Durwood, his eyes went round.

"Hello!" he said. "Mister—mister Oak Jones, wow! The mayor said you came but I guess I—I didn't believe it till now. Till I saw you in the flesh. It's really you."

Sue-Ann had been sleeping. Now the man's busy shoes woke her. She looked at Durwood with one eyebrow cocked.

"It's me," Durwood confirmed.

The men faced each other. The deputy was having trouble breathing. Looked like a guppy out of its tank.

Durwood encountered fans from time to time, folks who'd seen his press clippings. The Military Heritage profile. The feature in Defense News on his legendary sniper shot, taking out a Rivard LLC drone seconds before it was to hit the fuselage of a jumbo jet carrying a dozen heads of state.

Quaid Rafferty was always nudging some media bigwig he knew to run a story about Third Chance Enterprises—over Durwood's objections.

"We're freelance operatives," he would say. "Ain't kids hustling the neighborhood for lawns to mow. Houses to paint."

Quaid would answer that marketing was the universal yoke of entrepreneurship—whether craftsman, middleman, or solicitor, in high times and in low times, forever and anon.

Then Durwood would lose interest.

The mayor said, "Mr. Jones was just explaining he had a run-in down at the Hogan factory. Some men working for Chester Lyles attacked him."

Deputy Gomez twitched upright. He took a fresh look at Durwood, lingering on the ex-marine's wounds.

"Bet they got the worst of it, didn't they? Bet you whipped 'em good."

Durwood ignored this. To Carol Bridges: "Where can I find Lyles?"

The mayor's bosom rose in a breath as she seemed to consider different answers. "I do know where his office is. Before I give you that information, we need to discuss rules of engagement."

Durwood said, "His men engaged me. Few places."

"No. No." Carol Bridges's eyes hardened. Looking less a mare's than a stallion's—a mean one. "You will not storm the chief operating officer of Hogan Consolidated like Rambo, hellbent on revenge. Not in my service."

Sue-Ann shuffled closer to Durwood.

Durwood smiled innocently. "I'll ask some questions. That's it."

The mayor pinned her hands to her hips. Off to the side, Deputy Gomez breathed in short huffs.

Finally she said, "Lyles is downtown. In the new industrial park."

Durwood said he'd come through downtown earlier on the bus, didn't recall a park.

"Industrial park," she repeated. "No, it's not much honestly. We're trying to revitalize down there. Create some mixed-use space, offer tax breaks."

Durwood said, "Saw the one hotel."

"The Sawyer House, yes. The industrial park is right next door. Chester and Jay Hogan made a stink about Chickasaw not having a 'top-tier hotel' to accommodate out-of-towners. So we built the Sawyer."

"Looked nice."

"Oh, it's spectacular. There's a garden atrium, two inner courtyards. State-of-the-art fitness and business facilities. Four-star steakhouse. Solar panels on the roof."

"Solar?" Durwood said.

Carol Bridges seemed to take this as a criticism. "We're trying. The tax base had been eroding for fifteen years running when I took office. We're playing catchup."

Her face flushed as she spoke.

Durwood had meant nothing by the comment. Born and raised in coal country, he didn't think much of alternative energy. Wind, solar. Everyone starts riding a bike and all of a sudden, no more global warming.

"I've seen dying towns," Durwood said. "Folks give up, place goes to seed." He pushed his hat up his head. "There's a will here. That will starts with you."

Carol Bridges moved a strand of hair off her cheek. "Thank you."

"I head over to this park now," Durwood said, "will Chester be hard to find?"

"I wouldn't imagine," she said. "Hogan's offices are just next door to the Sawyer, all you—"

"The lawyers!" Deputy Gomez stepped between them quick as a cricket. "The lawyers're all staying at the hotel—you could see them, too. Interrogate them."

Durwood's skin crawled at the word lawyers.

He said, "Now what's the lawyers' angle?"

Carol Bridges seemed about to answer.

The deputy beat her to it. "Money, what else? They're cheating us blind—they are, Mr. Durwood! Er, Mr. Jones. Mr. Oak Jones. I heard they're charging us double, sometimes triple the usual hourly rate."

"Triple?"

The man nodded eagerly. "A thousand dollars an hour, I heard. This top lady, I guess the bigshot partner? She's fifteen hundred."

Durwood let those figures knock around his head. You read the news, you get used to the excess.

But fifteen hundred. To push paper and dream up excuses.

He asked, "Why would Hogan allow such a thing?"

"They're in on it! It's all a racket, Chester Lyles wants a job with them after Hogan goes belly-up, all he's doing—"

"Deputy Gomez," the mayor interrupted. "Let's allow Mr. Jones to gather his own facts—without hearing the gossip. Perhaps you'll give us a moment alone."

This shut down the deputy. He crossed his wrists and left.

On his way out, though, he nodded and bugged his eyes suggestively at Durwood.

Durwood hitched his thumbs in his bluejeans' belt loops. "I guess we'll git then." He showed Sue-Ann two knuckles, and she started picking herself off the floor.

Carol Bridges rushed around her desk. "Wait! We didn't have our talk about rules—rules of engagement. If you go at Chester Lyles guns blazing, he'll just clam up."

"I've opened a clam or two."

She gripped his arm, hard around the bicep. "I know your history—Deputy Gomez explained. Tikrit. How you obliterated that terror cell against your C.O.'s orders."

It was Durwood's turn to cross his wrists now.

"Chickasaw, Texas is a tough place," Carol Bridges continued. "We know eggs get broken when you cook omelets. But there is a limit, Mr. Jones. There is a limit."

Durwood said he understood.

She didn't release his sleeve. "I brought you here—I wrote that letter. Which means your actions reflect directly on me."

Feeling rippled through her words. Durwood heard power there, and doubt, and the start of trust.

Maybe.

"I respect that," he said. "I won't forget."

He reached across his body to pry Carol Bridges' fingers off his arm. They didn't want to come—like sticky heat in the Appalachian summer.

--

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