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“This is Unholy Few ground,” he said. His voice carried the length of the street. He meant it to. “Ava-Rose Bolton belongs to this club, and so does everybody standing here watching. Nobody collects in Salvation. This is our town. You go and tell Tomas he still isn’t welcome here.”

“He’ll just send someone else,” she said.

“Tell him to send somebody he won’t miss, then,” Preacher said.

Ava-Rose let go of my cut. She walked back into her shop, and she came out with a green dress over her arm. There was a boot print on the bag.

“Mrs. Cordero. Your dress is ready.” Her voice shook. She kept her chin up. “Twenty dollars. I take cash.”

Shade was leaning on the Lexus. He laughed and nodded his approval.

Inés opened her purse. She put a twenty in Ava-Rose’s hand and took the dress.

I held out my own hand. It was still dripping with blood.

“Keys.”

She stared at me. “Excuse me?”

“This morning you burned down my shop.” I kept my hand where it was. “I’ve never raised it to a woman, and I won’t start with you. I used to steal things with wheels, though, back when I was young and stupid. For you I’m coming out of retirement.”

She put the keys in my hand.

My sister came down off the laundromat step with her lip still bleeding. She walked right through the middle of my brothers.

“He’s got a rule about hitting women,” Brynn said. “I don’t.”

She hit Inés Cordero in the mouth so hard the green dress landed in the road.

“That’s my best friend,” she said. “You don’t get to hurt her and walk away.”

Nobody on Main Street bent to pick up the dress.

I’d kept my word to my sister for nine years. Now the whole town could see why.

“Switch has your Charger, and the boy who lit the match,” Preacher said. “Smoke will drive all of you to the county line in it. After that you walk. She walked home in the dark with your car on her heels. You can do it in daylight.”

Lock followed them the first mile past the line on his bike, at walking speed, with his headlight on.

He said it was the best afternoon he’d had all year.

We went back into her shop so we could get the first aid kit for the burn on her wrist.

“You’re shaking,” she said.

“I left you.” My voice was wrecked. “I came through that curtain and he had his hand on your throat, and I thought I was too late. All those years I wasted. I thought I’d run out of time.”

She stepped into my arms, burned wrist and all. I held on to her with my ruined hands, as careful as I’ve ever been with anything, and put my face in her hair.

“I told you to go,” she said against my chest. “And you came back. You were right on time.”

She tipped her head back and looked me in the eye. “I saw what you did out there. You did it for me. I know that. I’m not scared of you, if you’re wondering.”

My sister came across the shop with a bag of ice held to her mouth. She walked straight past me to Ava-Rose.

“I told you I needed to be mad for a while,” she said.

“You did.”