Page 5 of The Bright Lands

“You’re as bad as your brother,” Jason whispered.

Clark went cold. She felt a sudden urge to slam the man into the truck again. “What did you just say?”

Deputy Jones patted her shoulder. “Want me to book him?” he asked her.

Her mind shifted gears. With the sheriff’s department’s small staff the general rule with booking paperwork wasyou caught it, you clean it.

“You’ll miss the second half,” Clark said.

Jones shrugged and slid the knife’s sheath off Jason’s belt. He squeezed Jason’s scrawny arm until the little man yelped in pain. Jones’s flat face didn’t register the sound. “I seen enough of these games.”

Clark hesitated, but only for a moment. Whatever Jason had to say about her brother she could pry out of him at the station. She thanked Jones. She let go of Jason’s arm.

When she and the two other deputies stepped into the glare of the parking lot’s sodium lamps they were greeted with polite applause. A small crowd—housewives in baggy Bison T-shirts, men under ball caps and Stetsons—watched as Jason was loaded, shouting and cursing, into the back of Jones’s cruiser. Clark wore her most stoic face.

You’re as bad as your brother.

Pulling the dented cigarette from behind her ear, Clark finally regarded her audience. She saw that their faces were turned not toward Jones’s departing police cruiser but to something over her shoulder. A little charge of anticipation still hung in the air, as if everyone were expecting some kind of encore.

She spotted the black convertible first, a sleek little Mustang she had never seen around town. A man stood next to it, watching her. He was implacably urban: tall, well built, sharply dressed in dark clothes of the sort no one in Bentley ever wore.

Clark recognized the man’s bashful smile. Only one man in her life had ever smiled at her that way.

Her lighter froze on its way to the cigarette. “Son of a bitch.”

JAMAL

Jamal Reynolds, the Bison’s second-string quarterback, followed the rest of the team into the locker room and kept his head down. Deputy Clark might not have remembered the last time Jamal had played in a game but he certainly did. He knew, down to the minute, the total length of time he’d ever had the good fortune to strap on his helmet and step onto the field: forty-six minutes. Forty-six minutes after almost four years on the team. And that number didn’t look likely to go up tonight.

Talented as he knew he was, Jamal never complained about this. He’d learned long ago that in Texas there were some things you just had to accept.

“Do you feel the wind out there yet?” Dylan said, sidling up beside Jamal to open his locker and check his phone. The game’s first half had ended moments before, just as the Bison defense had (miraculously) prevented another Cougar goal.

“You made the right call at the toss,” Jamal said, thumping Dylan on the shoulder, because that was another thing Jamal had learned: the true role of the backbench player was to be a cheerleader in the places the girls couldn’t reach.

KT Staler, the Bison’s skinny tight end, opened his locker. “You hear the way that kid was choking?”

Dylan raised his phone, pushed his hair out of his eyes, pulled KT and Jamal into frame. “Cheese to my brother.” He smiled deftly. The screen flashed white.

“My eyes look funny.” KT peered at the photo.

“He’s here?” said Jamal.

Dylan typed something. He didn’t look up. “Landed an hour ago.”

“About fucking time,” KT said.

Coach Parter’s voice came booming from the doorway. “Aches? Pains? Whitley, how you faring?”

Dylan hardly glanced at him. “Fine, Coach.”

When Parter was out of earshot, Dylan murmured to Jamal, “I’ll try and get you some field time in the fourth. The Fat Man’s barely looked at you all season.”

An unwelcome voice came from behind them. “If this wind turns around it’ll be right in our faces.”

Luke Evers, the team’s muscled running back, approached them with his gloves still on.

“It won’t turn,” Dylan said.