Mason offered me an apologetic grimace. “Detective Pearson wanted me to stay in Little Rock and be placed in witness protection.”

“Mason!”

“Did you really expect me to stay when I’m following leads to help save you?”

Skeeter groaned. “This is touching and all, but we have another way.”

Mason and I turned to look at him.

Skeeter looked me in the eye. “Rose, I take it I have your word.”

“I’m insulted you thought you had to ask. I keep your secrets, Skeeter Malcolm, even when it rips my soul apart. I’ll keep this one as well.”

His jaw tightened and he gave a slight nod, then turned his gaze to Jed.

Jed’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not a turncoat.”

Skeeter nodded.

He turned his chair to face us, his forearms on the table. “When I was fourteen, I met J.R. Simmons at the Sinclair station where I worked.” He nodded to me. “Where we meet.”

Mason shot me a look, but I ignored him.

“I impressed him and he told me to look him up when I grew up. So I did. The day after I graduated, I took the business card he had given me all those years ago and drove to El Dorado. I spent the next six years working my way up his ladder. Until he made me one of his Twelve.”

“What’s The Twelve?” Mason asked. “I’ve never heard of them.”

Skeeter worked his jaw. “You wouldn’t have. It’s Simmons’ core group of top men, and there’s a reason most people don’t know about them. They’re all successful in their own right, but Simmons played some role in getting them where they are today. Usually with money. It’s how he controls them. But some, like me, he trained.”

“But he gave you money,” I prodded. “Was it a loan?”

“Seed money. Like I said, it came with a price.”

“What’s the purpose of The Twelve?” Mason asked.

“It allows Simmons to have feelers all over the state. The Twelve are strategically positioned, and they answer only to him. Somehow the person who covered this area was eliminated twenty-five years ago. But after I got to know J.R., I started putting things together. I met him at a gas station in Fenton County around that same time. What was he doing in a nothing county in a nothing gas station only about five miles from a plant that burned down a few weeks later?” He nodded to me. “I suspect he was in town on business with that factory. And I suspect one of The Twelve was eliminated because it all went south.”

“Atchison?”

He nodded again. “I have no idea who my predecessor was, but after he was gone, the three neighboring sections covered the area for a while, not that there was much to cover.”

“What about Crocker?” Mason asked.

“He was too unstable for Simmons. J.R. was biding his time, waitin’ for the right person to take over. He planned for it to be me.”

“After you came back from El Dorado, where did you go when you disappeared for days at a time?” I asked.

“I would go do his bidding.” He sounded bitter. “Jobs he only trusted to his top men. And since I was the greenhorn, a lot of it fell to me.”

“What type of jobs?” Mason asked.

Skeeter released a short laugh. “Most had to do with his son.”

My stomach spasmed.

Mason gasped and turned to me. “Rose, he has what we need. You really don’t need to go through with this meeting. Malcolm can turn state’s evidence and testify against both J.R. and Joe. We can use it as leverage to get him to drop your charges.”

Skeeter lifted his hands. “Whoa! I’m not testifyin’ about anything.”

“Are you kidding me?” Mason demanded. “You can destroy this man and save Rose in the process!”

“Do you really think I’d make it to trial?” Skeeter asked, incredulous. “Why the hell do you think you’re in Fenton County?”

Mason sat back in his seat. “What are you talking about?”

“You had to wonder why you were here, in Fenton County, of all places.”

“I’ve always figured J.R. Simmons orchestrated it, but I could never put together the how or why of it.”

“It was a warnin’ for me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I was one of The Twelve up until five years ago. J.R. figured out I was gettin’ tired of bein’ called away from my own work and forced into doin’ his. So he called me to El Dorado and gave me a file to look over. I figured out what he wanted me to do, but there was no way in hell I was doin’ it.”

“Doin’ what?” I asked.

He took a long, lingering look at Jed, then turned back to face me, his eyes dark and furious. “There was a hit-and-run case in Little Rock. A guy reneged on his payments to a loan shark after multiple warnings. The loan shark was one of The Twelve. So The Twelve in the area had him taken care of by making it look like an accident.” He waved his hand to the side as if that was nothing. “Only Mooney, the moron who was told to take care of it, fucked it up. There was a witness.”

“Oh, my God,” I gasped. “Mason was the prosecutor. The witness was a kid. An eight-year-old boy.”

Skeeter cocked his head, his eyes glittering with suspicion. “How do you know that?”

“Kate Simmons.” I cast a glance to Mason, and he stared back at me with a mixture of horror and anger. “I told you. I found a table full of information about Mason in her apartment, which happens to be across from the courthouse and facing the DA’s offices.”