“Admit it, Dad, you were a coward.”

“Goddamn right,” Glenn fired back, no longer imploring him for understanding. “Wilcox had me sign a pledge, but not before covering all the signatures above mine. You don’t know who he’s got watching you. He says it keeps everybody honest. There was no one—no one—I could trust with this. First person I confided in could be the one watching me, and, like Trapper said, I’d be found looking like a sausage patty under a freight train. Or you. Or your mother.”

Hank looked both frustrated and fearful, but he stayed silent.

Trapper let Glenn catch his breath, then said, “You upheld your end of the bargain.”

“Wasn’t really a bargain, but, yeah, I began conveying information on The Major, but it didn’t feel like spying, because nothing he did or said aroused suspicion. There was never anything noteworthy to report. Months would go by when I’d forget about Wilcox. But he didn’t forget about me. The first time my loyalty was tested was when you joined the ATF.”

“Wilcox was keeping tabs on me?”

“Not until he learned you were with the bureau. Then he was on me for months. ‘What’s this about John Trapper going into the ATF? What does The Major say about it?’”

“You came to see me,” Trapper said. “You brought a bottle of cheap champagne to celebrate my being inducted.”

“I’m ashamed to say that I was fishing. I reported back to Wilcox that your interest in bombs and such was natural, seeing as the Pegasus had so impacted your life. That didn’t pacify him, though. Periodically he would ask me to find out what you were working on. I held my breath, fearing you’d start looking into the Pegasus.”

“Then I did.”

“Then you did,” he said with unnatural huskiness. “I didn’t know for certain, but I had an inkling that was what was causing you trouble inside the bureau. The best day of my life was when you were fired.”

“Yeah, that was a real party.”

Glenn had the grace to look remorseful. “Forgive me, Trapper. It got Wilcox off my back. When The Major retired and went into reclusion, I thought, ‘Thank Christ. I’m reprieved.’”

“Until I appeared on the scene,” Kerra said quietly.

Glenn sighed and gave her a rueful smile. “You didn’t know it, but when you entered the picture, so to speak, you might just as well have put a bullet in my head. It ended my life as I knew it.”

Chapter 30

The more Glenn talked, the deeper Trapper felt the cut.

Maybe he’d never professed it out loud, but he loved the guy. To hear all this hurt. He wished he could be someplace different, doing something different. If he could be someone different, maybe the laceration wouldn’t be so painful.

His heart was bleeding.

But he had to keep at it. Glenn had betrayed not only their close relationship, he’d betrayed his oath of office and the law he was duty-bound to enforce. Trapper wouldn’t let him make excuses for that.

“Sooner or later, Glenn, one way or another, you would have been found out. Don’t put it off on Kerra.”

“I don’t.” When he reached for his glass, Hank said a cautionary “Dad,” but Glenn ignored him and took a drink. To Trapper, “When you told me The Major was going back on TV, I was surprised but not panicked. Dutifully I called Wilcox to let him know. He wasn’t overjoyed, but, like me, he didn’t think it was cause for alarm.

“But when I told him that Kerra Bailey was doing the interview, it was like I’d launched a rocket up his butt.” He turned to her. “That’s when he told me who you were and why he didn’t want you and The Major comparing notes, especially on live television.”

“I interviewed Wilcox barely a year ago,” she said. “He never let on that he knew I was the girl in the picture.”

“I don’t know when or how he made the discovery,” Glenn said. “But he knew, and it made him paranoid as hell that you’d be one-on-one with The Major.”

“But why?”

“He feared that if you began swapping experiences about that day, one or the other of you would realize something was out of joint.”

She looked over at Trapper. He said, “That’s why I tried to warn you off doing it, remember?”

Glenn said, “Wilcox really got nervous when I told him it was Trapper who’d alerted me.”

“That explains why you were so upset the night of the Bible study, Dad.” Hank looked at Trapper. “You sent Tracy in to tell me that he was hitting the bottle pretty hard.”

“I asked her to be discreet.”

“She was. She whispered it to me while someone else was talking. The study concluded about ten minutes later.” Going back to Glenn, he said, “I asked Emma to head off Mom so she wouldn’t catch you drinking. When I came here to the kitchen, you nearly bit my head off. I figured Trapper …” He looked over at Trapper, his implication clear.

“It had to be my fault that Glenn was getting drunk,” he said. “This should be enlightening to you, Hank. Now do you understand what’s been ‘eating me’ and burdening your dad?” He turned back to Glenn. “What was it like for you, plotting with Wilcox to kill The Major and Kerra?”

Glenn made a choked sound that was half belch, half sob. “I swear to God, I didn’t. I told Wilcox to keep his cool, told him I would check into the situation and get back to him. I went out to The Major’s house the following day. You were there,” he said to Kerra. “The Major didn’t introduce you to me as the girl in the picture, just as Kerra Bailey, ‘I’m sure you’ve seen her on TV.’ That kind of thing.

“I reported back to Wilcox that we didn’t have a problem. Y’all didn’t know. Kerra wanted to score an exclusive interview with The Major and had somehow sweet-talked him into it. That’s basically what Trapper had told me, too. But Wilcox was still antsy.”

“That’s why you came to my room at the motel,” she said.

“I wanted to see how you would react when I mentioned the big surprise you had planned for Sunday night’s audience. You didn’t ask me what big surprise, you only acted miffed that I knew about it.”

“I had expressly asked Trapper and The Major not to tell anyone else.”

“In any case, I had my answer, and I had to tell that snake-eyed son of a bitch,” Glenn said. “The Major might not know who you were, maybe the surprise would be on him, too, but we could expect the big reveal come Sunday night.”

Glenn covered a dry cough with his fist. He shifted in his seat. He reached for his whiskey but let his hand drop before picking up the glass. “Wilcox told me to take preventative measures to be sure that didn’t happen.”

His admission dumbfounded Kerra.

Hank’s head dropped forward, and he clasped his fingers together on the back of his neck.

Trapper got out of his chair, rounded it, and gripped the top rung, tempted to pick it up and bash it over Glenn’s head.

“One thing I don’t get,” Trapper said tightly. “Why didn’t you attack before the interview instead of after? How did you even know that Kerra would still be in the house?”

“I didn’t attack anybody.”

“You just said—”

“You didn’t let me finish.”

Trapper spoke over him. “Oh, wait. You wouldn’t have done it yourself. You sent those three flunkies out there to do it.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Jenks and who else?”

“I didn’t send anybody.”

“Ever at the ready, Deputy Jenks—”

“Be quiet, John!” Glenn banged his fist on the table hard enough to rattle the glassware, then took a deep breath. “For once, will you shut up and listen? I talked Wilcox out of doing anything. Or I thought I had.” When Trapper would have interrupted again, Glenn held up a hand. “Let me talk.”

Trapper was seething, but he made a grand, sweeping go-ahead gesture.

Glenn turned to Kerra. “I told Wilcox that you’d shown me the questions you intended to ask. I gave him a run-down of what they entailed, told him they were chatty, innocent, nothing mysterious. They wouldn’t raise eyebrows or red flags or pose a threat to anybody. I urged him to let the interview proceed as scheduled.