Even hurt, Sophie is thinking about Amelia.
“You can’t choose your guard while walking away from me,” I say.
“I ain’t walking away from you. I’m walking to my home.”
“Feels the same from here.”
That breaks through her.
I see it.
For one second, she almost comes to me.
Then her phone buzzes again on the table.
We both look down.
Another unknown message.
This one has no words.
Only a photo.
The front gate of Paradise Falls.
Taken today.
Sophie’s hand flies to her mouth again.
My rage goes clean.
Not hot.
Clean.
That is the kind that gets men buried well.
I pick up the phone and study the picture. The angle. The distance. The visible stretch of fence. Whoever took it was near the main road, not inside.
Yet.
Sophie whispers, “My father is there.”
“Then he ain’t alone anymore.”
I look toward the room where my brothers wait just out of sight.
“Whiskey,” I call.
He appears immediately, Twila behind him because apparently not even God is moving that woman off a scent now.
I hold out the phone.
Whiskey reads the screen, then looks at me. “I’ll trace what I can.”
Twila looks at Sophie. “Is your father at Paradise Falls right now?”
Sophie nods.