Ghost Warrior III : Sins of the Father

 

Chapter 6

11:25 AM CST
DFW Airport – Alamo Car Rental

The line moved in the slow, shuffling rhythm of civilian life—carry-ons nudging ankles, paper contracts sliding across laminate, keyboards clicking with bored efficiency. Tucker stood three deep, one hand hooked casually in his pocket, the other resting on the handle of his small duffel. To anyone watching, he was just another traveler: jeans, boots, dark t-shirt under a light jacket, a man between places.

His eyes told a different story.

He mapped the room without thinking. Two exits. One to his left, glass doors back toward the terminal. One behind the counters, badge access only. Camera domes in each corner. Mirrors set high to catch blind angles. The guy at the far kiosk, irritated and loud on his phone. The couple arguing quietly over insurance coverage. The lady at the end with the oversized sunglasses and no luggage, pretending to scroll her phone, weight shifted forward like she was ready to move.

He logged them all and dismissed them just as fast.

The line folded forward. The man ahead of him finished signing, took his keys, laughed at some half-hearted joke from the rental clerk, and peeled off toward the lot.

“Next in line,” the girl at the Alamo counter sang out.

Tucker stepped up.

She was mid-twenties, maybe. Hair pulled into a tight ponytail, nails bright, smile brighter. Her badge read “Megan.” She hit him with the default rental-counter enthusiasm.

“Hi there! Welcome to Alamo. Are we doing a reservation today or walk-up?”

“Walk-up,” Tucker said. His tone was neutral, polite but clipped. “I need an SUV for three to five days. Round trip. Pick up here, drop off here. Nothing fancy. Older model if you’ve got it. Nondescript. Something like an old Blazer or a Jeep Grand Cherokee.”

She arched an eyebrow, smile lingering as she woke up her keyboard.

“Okay, going retro,” she said, fingers flying. “You in town for business or pleasure?”

“Neither.”

That earned him a quick glance. She tried again.

“Well, we’ll get you something solid,” Megan said, head tilting, that soft little extra in her tone that wasn’t about customer service. “You want four-wheel drive?”

“All-wheel or four’s fine,” Tucker said. “Doesn’t need bells and whistles. Just runs.”

She bit her lip, working her monitor, scrolling through inventory. He watched her hands instead of her face. Acrylic nails. No tremor. No stress. Good. Just a kid doing her job.

“Perfect,” she said a moment later, brightening. “I’ve got a 2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee. All-wheel drive, cloth interior, nothing fancy. AM/FM radio, older GPS unit. She’s not pretty, but she runs great.”

“I’ll take it.”

She quoted the rate. It was fair. He didn’t try to shave it down. Time mattered more than money.

He slid his credit card across the counter. His ID. She checked the name, typed it in.

“Nash,” she said aloud. “Cool last name.”

He gave a tight half-smile. “Works.”

The printer spat out the contract. She circled the fuel clause, the return time, the stall assignment.

“Okay, Master Chief Nash,” she said, glancing at his ID again, this time with a hint of impressed surprise. “You’re all set. She’s parked right out that door, four rows down, third car in. You can’t miss it. Have a great drive.”

The extra warmth, the held eye contact—one last probe.

“Thank you,” Tucker said.

No wink. No return flirt. Just clean acknowledgment. He folded the paperwork, slid his ID and card away, and palmed the keys. His posture never changed, but his awareness shifted the moment he turned from the counter.

Transition space.

He stepped out through the glass doors into the layered noise of the rental garage—diesel rumble, suitcase wheels, horns from upper decks, the faint echo of a PA announcement bleeding in from the terminal. The air was warm, laced with exhaust and concrete dust.

His head stayed on a swivel, but the motion was unhurried. Left: a family struggling with car seats. Right: two business guys in shirtsleeves, one hand on coffee, the other fumbling for their fob. Overhead: camera bubbles again. Good coverage. Limited blind spots. No one standing still in the wrong place.

Tucker walked down the aisle toward Row 4.  Three cars in.  The Jeep waited.

Dark silver, a little oxidized on the hood. Stock wheels. No chrome flex, no vanity. A couple of minor dings along the passenger side. Texas plates. An old toll tag half-peeled on the windshield. Perfect.

He did a full slow walk-around, more thorough than the scratch sheet required.

Front bumper: intact. Headlights slightly clouded but serviceable. Hood seams even. Tires—Bridgestones, worn but not bald, sidewalls uncut. No fluid under the engine. Rear hatch: clean latch, no pry marks. Tinted rear glass, standard for the year. Underbody: no freshly scraped metal, no dangling wires. No obvious trackers, but he knew if someone competent had wanted one on, he wouldn’t spot it in a casual sweep.

Still. You looked.

He keyed the unlock, listened to the chirp echo between concrete pillars. No strange delay. No secondary signal.

He opened the driver door, caught the smell—fabric, old coffee, rental shampoo, a hint of stale smoke sunk into the foam.  Normal.

He set his duffel on the passenger seat, slid behind the wheel, and pulled the door shut. The sound was solid. Not loose.  Key into ignition. Quarter turn.

The engine caught on the first crank. Smooth idle. RPMs steady. No idiot lights blinking red. Fuel gauge: full tank. Oil pressure good. Temp normal. Voltage steady.

He checked mirrors, adjusting each with meticulous, unconscious precision.

The GPS unit, an old dash-mounted brick with a faded greenish screen, blinked to life and chirped its canned greeting.  He reached out and killed it.  He didn’t need it.

He’d seen the route in his head as soon as he booked the flight. DFW to Atoka wasn’t complicated, and even if it was, there were things you didn’t entrust to an old corporate GPS with a logging function.

He sat for a breath, both hands on the wheel, watching the airflow ribbon through the garage. A shuttle bus rolled past behind him. A horn honked somewhere on the upper level. A couple laughed too loud as they wrestled a suitcase into the trunk of a sedan.

No eyes lingering on him. No one slowing to take a second look at the plain Jeep with the plain man inside.  Good.  He shifted into drive and rolled out.

He followed the painted arrows toward the exit, stopping at the security kiosk to show the contract. The attendant barely glanced at it, lifted the gate.

And then he was out in the broad sun, merging into the slow, coiled traffic pattern feeding toward International Parkway.

Once he cleared the last cluster of signs for Terminals A through E, his shoulders eased a fraction. Not relaxed. Just set. The way they did with a mission started and variables dropping into their lanes.

From DFW, he took International Parkway South just long enough to slide into the artery. The roadway pitched out in clean concrete bands, the skyline of the terminals dropping behind him in mirrors layered with blue. Overhead, jets clawed into the sky, underbellies flashing white. The rental sticker in the corner of his windshield caught a shard of sun.

He changed lanes early, giving wide berth to a weaving SUV full of college kids, tailgate piled with duffels.

Signs rose ahead: 183 East, 360, 121. It was always like this north of Dallas—interchanges braiding and unbraiding, locals moving on muscle memory, out-of-towners drifting like stunned cattle.

He stayed purposeful.  Follow the markers. TX-183 East toward Dallas.  Traffic thickened, then loosened. Office towers flashed by. Clustered hotels. Sound walls. He kept the Jeep two car lengths back from anyone in front of him, favoring outside lanes when he could—more options, fewer traps.  Every few minutes, his eyes cut to the rearview.

Blue Tacoma that had been behind him out of the rental area? Turned off already. Silver Camry with the busted taillight? Stayed on 183 when he shifted. White work van, ladders on top? Too slow, dropped back.  Patterns. Always patterns.

He bled smoothly onto I-35E North, folding into the spine that ran alongside a city forever under construction. Concrete pillars. Flyovers like stacked bones. Brake lights blooming and fading in waves.

He rode it out. No radio. No distractions. Just the hum of the tires and the low growl of the engine.

Past Carrollton.  Past Lewisville.

The glass and steel gave way, mile by mile, to sprawled suburbs, then wider gaps of scrub and pasture. Billboards shifted from lawyers and software to feed stores and gun shows. The sky felt bigger.

He scanned his mirrors again. Nothing consistent in the lanes behind him. Nothing showing the same bad rhythm twice.  Good.

North of Denton, he cut right, angling to pick up US-75 and make his way toward US-69. He preferred those lines—less congestion, enough small towns to mask his movement without trapping him.

The Jeep held steady at speed, engine sitting in a comfortable band. The steering had the vague looseness of age, but no shimmer that suggested misalignment or hidden damage.

His left hand rested on the wheel, knuckles loose. His right elbow on the console, fingers drumming once, twice, then still. His eyes never stopped working.  Road signs.  Cross streets.  Overpasses.  Pull-offs.

Every overpass was a potential choke point. Every exit a place to break contact if someone tucked in where they didn’t belong.

He clocked them all, then let them go.

He remembered Atoka County’s roads without trying. The angles of US-69 as it carved up through the scrub. The way the town of Tushka lay just off the highway—small, worn, stubborn. The place he was named for. The place that wasn’t done with him.

He didn’t dwell on it. Not here. Not yet. Thinking too far ahead pulled you out of the moment, and the moment was where threats lived.

A semi drifted into his lane; he eased off, let it clear, then settled back into position. The sky was high and washed, sun riding a hazy white path, mirage beginning to shimmer on the horizon. The miles unspooled.

He let the rhythm of the drive work on him in a narrow, functional way—never relaxing, never spiraling. Just calibrating. Each signpost another fixed point between what he’d already seen on paper and what waited for him at the end of this line.

Somewhere ahead lay the town.  The graves.  The questions.

For now, there was only the Jeep, the highway, and the precision of forward motion—every sense tuned, every detail observed, every exit mentally marked—as he drove north toward Tushka and Atoka.

 

 

Mid-afternoon light washed through the front windows of the Atoka Police Station, thin and colorless, laying across scuffed tile and gray metal desks. Phones sat in their cradles. A printer hummed idly somewhere. The low murmur of the scanner on the corner counter bled a steady stream of codes and road numbers, none of them urgent enough to draw more than a glance.

At the big rectangular conference table in the middle of the squad room, John Nashoba sat on one side, shoulders squared but relaxed, hands slow and deliberate as he folded the last of the greasy burger wrapper from the diner into a neat rectangle.

The food had been good. Not complicated. Burger, fries, a slice of pie. Real coffee, not the bitter sludge in the station pot. Walker had insisted—said if the man was going to sit and talk, he was damn well going to do it with something better than a vending machine sandwich. They’d eaten together at this same table, elbows out, paper plates and Styrofoam cups and plastic forks, the radio murmuring and doors opening and closing around them.

Now the remains of the meal were mostly cleared. One ketchup-streaked fry boat, one folded wrapper, two coffee cups—Walker’s half-finished, John’s empty except for a dark ring at the bottom.

Walker sat across from him, jacket off, tie loosened. The silver at his temples caught the light when he leaned back. His duty belt creaked quietly when he shifted, pistol and radio and cuffs all settled by long habit. His notebook lay closed beside his hand, pen set diagonally across it. He wasn’t interviewing. Not exactly. Not yet. Right now, he was listening.

“So,” Walker said, his voice measured, local drawl smoothed by years of talking people down. “You said… it’s mostly men your age? At that place? The rehab?”

John nodded slowly.

“Yes,” he said. His voice held that quiet, desert-worn tone of a man used to saving words for when they mattered. “Men like me. Old bones. Long stories. Some of them don’t even know where to start.”

Walker watched him. “And you help them.”

“I try,” John said.

He sat straight-backed in the hard plastic chair, hands folded now in front of him. His knuckles were thick and scarred, dark skin drawn over tendons that still had strength. His hair was long, braided back, ghost white gray. His eyes, deep and steady, held a kind of earned calm more convincing than any certificate on a wall.

He looked down at his hands, thumbs worrying the edge of the folded wrapper for a moment, then let it go and pushed the trash aside.

“We don’t fix anybody,” he said. “We sit with them. That’s the work. We listen until all the lies run out. Then we see what’s left. Most times, it is a ministry of presence. I am just there.  They do the work.” 

Walker’s mouth tugged up at one corner. “Sounds like police work on a good day.”  John’s lips twitched in what might have been a half-smile.

“Difference is,” he said, “they can walk out any time. We can’t hold them. All we give them is coffee, tobacco, a bed if they’ll stay in it, and the truth if they can stand it.”

Walker considered that. “They listen to you?”

“Sometimes,” John said. “Sometimes they just stare at the floor. Sometimes they talk all night. Sometimes they curse. Sometimes they cry. The… young ones.” He hesitated, then shrugged one shoulder. “They remind me.”

“Of Tucker?” Walker asked gently.

John’s eyes lifted, met his.

“Yes.”

Silence spread between them for a moment; not empty, but thick with things neither man had yet named.

Walker took a sip of lukewarm coffee, setting the cup down carefully as if buying time. The squad room moved around them: a deputy at the front desk answering a non-emergency call, the distant thump of a file drawer. No one intruded. Everyone seemed to understand this table, this hour, was not to be casually crossed.

“I remember watching him grow up, a good kid,” Walker said quietly. “Hell of a runner.”

John’s gaze sharpened, then softened.

“You watched him?” he asked.

Walker nodded, the memory drawing a real smile now, small but sure.

“Yeah,” he said. “Cross country meets. Back when I was just a deputy. County sent me to work traffic and keep folks from parking all over the right-of-way. Your boy made it worth being there.”

John leaned in almost imperceptibly.

“How?”

Walker’s eyes flicked up, studying him, registering the careful question. He didn’t rush the answer.

“There was this race over at Wilburton,” Walker said. “Hot September day, dusty course, bad footing. Some of the boys dropped in the second mile. Tired. Whiny.”

He gestured loosely, drawing the course in air with two fingers.

“Tucker, he ran different,” Walker went on. “He didn’t go out wild. Didn’t burn himself up. Just set this pace. Solid. You could see him thinking, even from the fence. Watching the leaders, watching the ground. Third mile, that last hill? Most of ‘em were dying. Form gone. Tucker… he looked like he’d just decided.”

John listened, hands still, breath shallow.

“Decided what?” he asked.

“To take it,” Walker said simply. “He came off that hill like it owed him money. Passed three boys in about two hundred yards. Didn’t showboat. Didn’t look around. Just… finished what he came to do.”  He let that hang there.

John’s jaw worked once. His eyes dropped to the tabletop, to the faint ring left by his coffee cup.

“I never saw that race,” he said softly.  “Never saw any race”.

“I know,” Walker said. No judgment. Just fact.

He trailed off. His hand lifted, fingers opening, as if he might pluck the rest of the sentence from the air.  “You were somewhere else,” Walker finished for him. Still no accusation. Just a bridge.

John nodded once.  “Drunk,” he said. “I was drunk.”

The honesty landed between them like a weight with known dimensions.  He didn’t dramatize it. Didn’t qualify. Just stated it.

Walker let a beat pass.

“He was a good kid,” Walker said quietly. “Smart. Quiet. Never mouthed off like some of the others. You could see… something in him. Not just talent. Control. I remember thinking that.”

John’s fingers moved again, slow, rubbing his thumb over the ridge of one knuckle as if remembering where an old ring used to sit.

“And you were here?” John asked. “In those years?”

“Off and on, mostly on,” Walker said. “I did a stretch in Durant, came back. But, yeah. Long enough to see him run. Long enough to notice when he stopped being just another kid.” When I made Lt. here, Minko worked for me, he was my deputy.  A good man, good cop, and a good father to Tucker.

John swallowed, throat working. His eyes shone, but nothing spilled over.

“I didn’t teach him that,” he said. “The running. The control. That wasn’t from me.”

Walker watched him carefully.

“Does it matter?” he asked.

John blinked, caught off guard.

“It matters,” he said, voice tightening, “that I should have been there. A boy needs a father. Not stories about one. Not a drunk ghost who shows up twenty years too late.”

The admission scraped through the air.

Walker didn’t flinch.

“I’m not arguing that,” he said. “I’m just saying—whatever he built in himself, he built. Sometimes that’s the only way boys like him make it.  And, Chitto and Minko were here. They did right by him” 

John stared at him, searching his face. The muscles in his jaw shifted, then eased.

“At the rehab,” John said slowly, “we talk about amends. Not… not to erase what we did. There is no erasing. But to stand in the daylight and name it. To look the people we hurt in the eye and not turn away.”

Walker nodded. “Yeah. I’ve heard that.”

“Some of the men ask me,” John said. “They say, ‘What if it’s too late? What if they’re gone? Or grown? Or don’t want us?’”

He looked down at the table again. The dark wood veneer was peeled at one corner, cheap particleboard showing through; his thumb moved there, feeling the roughness.

“I tell them this,” he continued. “The truth doesn’t care if it’s late. It’s still the truth. You speak it when you can. You carry the rest.”

Walker’s features shifted—something passing through his eyes that might have been respect.

“Not bad advice,” he said.

“It’s all I have,” John said.

They sat with that for a long breath.

The sounds of the station threaded through—murmured voices in the hallway, a printer spitting a page, someone laughing once at a joke from the bullpen, cut short when they remembered the visitor at the table.

Walker leaned forward, forearms folding on the wood.

“John,” he said. “I brought you that meal for a reason.”

John lifted his gaze.

“You think I don’t know that?” he asked quietly.

Walker’s mouth quirked. “Figured you did.”

“I’ve been watched before,” John said. No anger, only fact. “Courts. Social workers. Tribal councils. Cops. I know the feel.”

“That what this feels like?” Walker asked. “Right now?”

John considered. He brushed a nonexistent crumb away from the plate, buying a moment.

“No,” he said finally. “This feels like…”

He inhaled, exhaled slowly.

“Like somebody trying to carry something heavy without dropping it,” he said.

Walker huffed the smallest breath of a laugh.

“That’s close enough.”

John studied him.

“You care about the boy,” John said.

“I care about this county,” Walker replied. Then, after a heartbeat: “And, yeah. I care about him. You don’t see many like that come through here. And when you do, you remember.”

John’s shoulders lifted, fell.

“I was not a good man when he was young,” he said. “You know that.”

“I know what your file says,” Walker said. “And I know people can be worse than their file. Or better.”

“Which do you think I am?” John asked.

“I think,” Walker said carefully, “you’re the man sitting across from me, working with broken men instead of drinking with them. That tells me something.”

John’s eyes glinted, some flint of old pride sparking, then cooling.

“The running,” John said, circling back as if he needed to touch it again. “You said he didn’t go out too fast. Watched. Waited. Then chose his moment.”

“Yeah,” Walker said.

“That’s not me,” John murmured. “I always went out too hard. Burned what I had. Left nothing for the hill.”

He opened his hands, palms up, as if displaying the emptiness.  “And now?” Walker asked.

“Now I walk beside men in their last mile,” John said. “Tell them the hill’s still worth climbing, even if they crawled the first part on their knees.”

Walker sat back, regarding him. The overhead lights hummed faintly.

“You talk like a preacher,” Walker said.

“I talk like a man who should have listened to one,” John replied.  They fell quiet again.

Outside the windows, the Oklahoma sky had shifted to a harsher brightness, sun angling westward, throwing longer shadows across the street. A pickup rolled past. A dog barked once, muted by the glass.

Inside, the dull air conditioner rattled to life, shuddered, and pushed a thin draft across the back of John’s neck. He didn’t move.

John’s answer came slower this time, like each word had distance to travel.

The tension in the room had tightened into something fragile and sharp-edged. Walker could feel it, the weight of a man sitting still in a hard chair and reliving, without dramatics, every mile he hadn’t driven, every race he hadn’t watched.

In that silence, the scanner crackled.  A voice read out a traffic stop on the highway. Routine. Distance.  Neither man turned.  John broke the quiet first.

“Thank you for the meal,” he said. “For the coffee.”

“You’re welcome,” Walker said.

“It has been a long time,” John added, “since a lawman sat and ate with me without suspicion first.”  Walker gave a small shrug.  “Maybe I’m getting soft,” he said.

“I don’t think so,” John replied.

Walker met his eyes.

“No,” he agreed. “Me neither.”

 

 

Late afternoon light slanted low across US-69 North, flattening colors and throwing long blue shadows off the roadside pines and rusted fence lines. The air had that late-day haze to it, dust and heat mixing just enough to blur the distance. Tucker sat easy behind the wheel of the Jeep Grand Cherokee, one hand at twelve o’clock, the other resting loosely, fingers quiet, gaze never still.

Traffic had thinned to light flow—oilfield trucks, the occasional cattle trailer, a faded family sedan, a few locals moving in muscle memory between towns. Nothing bunched. Nothing pacing him long enough to feel wrong.

He rolled past the small green sign as he approached Tushka.  City Limit. Population: smaller now than whatever the sign claimed.  Tushka.

The word always landed a certain way in his head.  Tushka. Choctaw for warrior.

What he’d been named after before papers and teachers and easy mouths had turned it into Tucker. The English version stuck; the old one never left. It lived under the surface, in bone and instinct, where no one could mispronounce it.

A brief, private smile found one corner of his mouth, gone as quickly as it came.

He eased through Tushka, eyes sliding across the worn-out facades—the old school, low and brick; a gathering of pickups outside a small café; a gas station that hadn’t changed its sign font since the eighties. Weather-beaten, stubborn, familiar in ways he wouldn’t say out loud.

His attention stayed on the mirrors.  Rearview: a silver compact two cars back. Before that, a white half-ton with a cracked windshield. The compact turned off without signaling. The half-ton lagged, then peeled into a driveway.  No pattern.

He tracked the side mirrors, checking blind spots, noting each vehicle that came up, passed, or dropped away. A maroon SUV rode behind him for a mile, then took an earlier turn into a gravel road. A logging truck he’d picked up in his rearview at Durant never materialized again.

He cataloged, dismissed, rechecked.  Nothing.

Northbound, the land opened up, rolling into patches of scrub timber and pasture. A billboard advertising a casino farther up bled color into the horizon. The Jeep hummed steady, tires drumming a low, even rhythm over patched asphalt.

The sign for Atoka rose ahead—green, plain, unpretentious.  He felt it in his chest before the town itself: a tightening, a narrowing of focus. Mission weight settling into its natural place.

He dropped his speed a notch under the limit before he hit the first light. Safe. Normal. A man returning to a nowhere town for reasons no one needed to know.

He entered Atoka.

Storefronts slipped by on either side. Low brick buildings, feed stores, small shops with signs that had seen too many summers. The courthouse dome visible to the west. An aging Sonic with two cars under the awning, teenagers inside leaned over their phones. A tired motel. A church marquee offering a verse and a softball promise of hope. The kind of place people drove through without seeing, unless they’d been shaped here.

Tucker saw everything.  He rolled through the main drag with calm precision, eyes constantly working.  Right side mirror: a silver Toyota slid out from a side street, fell in behind him for half a block, then ducked abruptly into a convenience store lot. No interest.

Left mirror: a dark blue pickup parked half on the curb, driver smoking, staring at nothing. No ignition, no movement as Tucker passed.

Rearview: a white SUV a few lengths back, steady, not crowding. Oklahoma plates. Older couple up front, slow talking between themselves, hands gesturing. Fine.

He drove past the station without turning in, catching only a brief glimpse—brick, glass, the county emblem on the door, a pair of units parked out front. He might as well have been one more out-of-towner cruising past.

At the next intersection, he took a right.  The move was casual. Unforced.  He followed the side street two blocks, then took another right. Houses here were small, some kept up, some surrendering to time. Kids’ bikes in yards. A dog chained to a tree. Curtains shifting where people watched the world go by out of habit.

He checked his mirrors.  The white SUV had continued straight on the highway, never turning with him. Good.

He went another block, turned left. Another quiet street. Old growth trees pushing buckled lines in the sidewalk. A mailbox hanging crooked off its post. He let the Jeep crawl, no rush, just a man uncertain of his exact destination.

He watched for repetition.  Any vehicle appearing at two turns too many.  Any set of headlights drifting into frame again.  Nothing.

Two more turns, varying distance, paralleling then crossing his own earlier path without retracing it perfectly. His routes made careless shapes that weren’t careless at all.  Every stop sign, he used like a mirror check. Every glance backward measured more than traffic.

He saw the same rusted Ford on blocks. The same old woman on a porch swing, not looking at him. No new vehicles syncing with his movement. No one on a phone watching him twice.

After a careful loop, he eased back toward the edge of town, satisfied.  Not absolute certainty. That didn’t exist. But the patterns were clean enough.

He guided the Jeep through the last grid of residential streets and out where houses thinned, pasture and timber taking over. The light shifted again as the sun dipped lower, turning everything a deeper gold.

He found the old county road without needing to think.

It broke off from the main route quiet and narrow, a ribbon of gravel and shale lined with ditch grass and unfussy barbed-wire fence. He put the signal on out of habit, even though no one was behind him now. The Jeep’s tires bit into loose rock, humming a different tune.

He took it slow.  Dust rose behind him in a soft plume, caught late light, then drifted back down.

Old growth pines flanked the road in sections, tall and solemn. Pin oaks tangled among them, leaves whispering as a small breeze worked its way through. The air cooled by a degree as the trees thickened, the canopy bending the light, breaking it into strips across the hood.

He knew this road.

Every bend. Every washout where rains had chewed at the edges. Every place kids used to park and drink. Every spot you could hide a truck and wait.

He checked them all.  Eyes mapped shade pockets, culvert mouths, tree lines. The half-mile he needed played out longer by intention, every yard an assessment.

The driveway appeared on his right like it had been there forever; long, narrow, marked only by the memory of those who knew it. Two leaning fence posts, the top rail broken and never replaced. No sign. No name. He turned in.

The drive wound deeper through the trees, more gravel and shale, the ruts packed by years of one man’s truck. It was over half a mile of twisting, shaded path, curving just enough that you never got a full clear line until you were almost there.  He kept the Jeep at a crawl. Ten miles an hour. Sometimes less.

Windows up, heat on low, he could still feel the closeness of the place. Hear the soft patter of rock under tread. See, in the shifting shadows, old impressions of another pickup’s tires, older, faded, long ago.

The further he went, the more the world outside the tree line disappeared. No highway noise. No town sounds. Just his engine, the tires, the breath he kept steady.  Another bend.

He saw the break in the trees ahead. The small clearing opening up like a held breath finally released.  Minko’s cabin.

It sat tucked at the far end of the drive, low and sturdy, weathered wood silvered by sun. Not a ruin. Not abandoned by neglect. Just waiting in the quiet the way it always had between visits—practical, squared, resolute.

Off to the right stood the large metal garage, dull with age but intact, its doors closed. He knew what was inside without needing to look. His uncle’s old Ford. The one that should have been in this driveway the night everything went sideways.

He rolled the Jeep to a stop a good distance back from the cabin, not crowding it. Engine idling.  His eyes swept.

The porch. Steps solid, boards worn, the railings straight. Two wooden chairs where his uncle used to sit evenings. Cobwebs strung between posts and in the upper corners near the eaves, fine and undisturbed.  No fresh tire tracks aside from his own.  No prints in the dirt notable against old impressions.  No scuffed gravel suggesting recent turning.  He watched the windows.  Glass intact. Curtains still, no movement, no shift like someone inside had reacted to the sound of tires on stone.

He cut the engine.  Silence dropped in heavy and immediate, thick as the trees around him.  Tucker sat.

One minute.  Five.  He watched.

A chipmunk darted from under the porch, sat up, then vanished back into the gloom. A bird hopped along a branch, shook its feathers, took off. Leaves moved high up where the air shifted, but nothing stirred near the cabin itself.

Spider webs remained unbroken at the porch corners.

He leaned slightly, scanning the metal garage. Lower panels dusty, a fine settled coat, no handprints dragged through. No bright marks on the handles, no scratches fresh enough to catch his eye.

Ten minutes.

He listened for anything: a snapped twig where it shouldn’t be, a breath, a shuffle.  There was only the forest. The faint ticking of the Jeep’s cooling engine. His own heartbeat, steady.

Fifteen minutes.  The cabin stayed what it was: untouched. Or at least undisturbed long enough for nature to reclaim its edges.

He let the weight of that settle.  No watchers.  No vehicles sliding in behind him.  No distant engine idling.  Twenty minutes passed in measured increments, each one another small confirmation.

Finally, without opening the door, without touching the key in the ignition yet, he took a last long look.  Cabin.  Garage.  Porch.  Cobwebs.

He committed the undisturbed stillness to memory—baseline for later.  Then he started the Jeep again, the sound low and controlled in the hush. He shifted into reverse, backed along the drive with smooth, practiced care, using his mirrors, not needing to rush.

As soon as the curve swallowed the cabin from view, the place existed behind him only as coordinates and intent.

He reached the county road, paused, checked both ways—habit, always—and turned back toward town.

The sun had fallen lower, painting the edges of Atoka in harsher contrast when he rolled back in. Long shadows stretched across parking lots and sagging awnings. The traffic was still thin, end-of-day swirl just beginning.

He drove straight this time.  The Atoka Police Department came into view on his right: squared brick, modest glass front, flag out front stirring in the breeze. A couple of marked units sat in designated spaces, dust on the wheel wells, antennas catching light.

He signaled, turned into the lot, and let the Jeep glide into an empty space near the side, nose out.  He killed the engine.

For a moment he sat there.  Hands loose on the wheel.

Then he opened the door, and stepped out, slid the keys into his pocket.  The late afternoon air met him, cold and bitter. Gravel popped under his boots as he crossed the lot. He rolled his shoulders once beneath his jacket, everything about his posture controlled, measured.

He reached for the glass door, pulled it open, and stepped inside.

Warmer air, recycled and faintly tinged with cleaning solution and burnt coffee, washed over him. The station interior was modest: front counter, a couple of chairs against the wall, bulletin board layered with flyers, an open view through to the main squad room beyond.

He stepped in, letting his eyes adjust, scanning without appearing to.  Desks. Radios. Whiteboards. A familiar layout; small-town law carved in predictable lines.

His gaze moved.  At the big table in the middle of the squad room sat Walker, recognizable, leaning in a chair.

Across from him sat an older man.

Long ghost white gray hair, braided back in a pony tail that hung to the middle of his back.. Shoulders straight despite the years. Skin weathered. Hands still in front of him on the table.

Tucker’s stride didn’t break, but something in his chest did a precise, internal shift.  He turned, angling his path toward them, boots soundless on the worn floor.  No words yet.  Just steps closing the distance.