“Only one employee here,” Chili said, nodding at the Jeep.

He slowed us to a crawl and rolled his window down. Chili’s tires stirred up surface dust and crunched on the gravel scattered across the hard dirt. The cold, dusty air made my throat want to close up.

Chili studied the bar’s back door, the dumpster, and the way the field ran off into the darkness past a barbed-wire fence behind the building. Then he pulled around front and parked next to the Toyota, rolling up his window as he went.

“Let’s play,” he said.

He checked the thirty-eight he kept in a shoulder holster inside his jacket.