The guard sighed unlocking Durwood's cell. He sighed again re-locking it after Durwood was out, then sighed more letting Durwood and Mayor Bridges into a windowless interrogation room up the hall.

"Thank you," Carol Bridges told him. "It's clear that was a great ordeal for you."

The guard walked off, lips pressed hard together.

The room had a folding particleboard table and two chairs. Durwood sat opposite the mayor.

She said, "You were going to be prudent."

Durwood rubbed the corners of his steel-gray eyes. "Yes. I'd planned to."

Leaving out the business about Chester Lyles and the studded collar, Durwood told what happened at the hotel. The foreman. The files in the divan.

Carol Bridges listened with a crimp in her forehead. "You forcibly seized their files?"

Durwood confirmed he had. Tried, anyhow.

"That was beyond reckless," she said. "You don't know what was or wasn't in those files."

"Some were black like your deputy said."

"Gomez worships you, Durwood," she said. "He could've told you anything to feel like part of the team. He could've made it up out of whole cloth!"

Her dark red hair was damp, maybe from showering. Durwood hadn't seen a clock but figured it must be five, five-thirty.

"I saw the files, I made a determination," he said evenly. "Tell you what. Lyles sure did jump when I went for 'em."

Carol Bridges exhaled, long and tired and toward the ceiling. "Your soldier's intuition can't trump due process. It simply can't."

Durwood's rough fingers dragged along the particleboard. "I need to get outta here. There's no time. This crooked deal goes final in a day and a half."

"Well, don't look at me," the mayor said. "If I intervened, after what you did last might? My credibility would be destroyed."

"Credibility."

"Yes, credibility." She hunched forward over the table, hot. "I've had to work for every ounce of respect I've received from the people of Chickasaw. They don't trust easy. They were wary of me at first, a Fort Worth transplant who thought she could govern this place."

"You've done well for yourself. Seems to me."

"I have, Durwood. I have." Carol Bridges was standing now, pacing, holding her head. "As much as I like you, as much as I believe in you as a man, I can't just plunge in after you with blinders on."

Durwood could hear her breaths, heavy and deep. Her passion filled the room. She was like some four-star who walks into a barracks and changes everything—the air, the smells, the energy.

Durwood liked her, too.

"All it'd take is steel, get out that egress window," he said. "Steel nail file. Screwdriver. I'd take care of the rest."

Carol Bridges glanced over her shoulder. The guard watched them through the door glass.

"I—that really isn't the point, whether I get caught. I am the mayor of this town. The mayor doesn't break prisoners out of the town jail."

Durwood folded his hands together and nodded. On a tactical level, her answer disappointed him. Made it more difficult to stop these vile lawyers and bankers.

On a personal level, he felt admiration. He felt that Carol Bridges was the woman he'd imagined, three weeks ago when he'd first read her letter.

"Fair enough," he answered. "Where's that put us?"

The mayor twisted her lips around. She stood in a staggered stance, her front shoe tapping the concrete floor. The noise was lonely for several seconds—like a bullfrog croaking at nobody across a pond.

Then her cellphone chimed.

When Carol Bridges checked the message, her eyes went wide. Durwood had known the woman less than a day, but he felt her reaction viscerally. A gut-shot.

"It's...it's from the hospital." She looked up from the screen. "The foreman just died."

—

Follow Durwood's realtime adventures on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram [@]durwoodOakJones