"I know," she said. "And that is exactly why you shouldn't be the one deciding what happens to him tonight."
Wyatt closed his eyes. The muscles in his jaw worked, then relaxed. He sat on the edge of a low crate beside Evan and stared at the bunker floor. It might have been the hardest thing Sarah had watched him do.
Graham's voice drifted up the hillside one more time. "You going to hide up there while strangers do your fighting, Wyatt? You think they're going to save you from what you've done?"
Wyatt did not answer. The silence carried farther than any threat he could have made. Sarah wondered whether Graham understood that his brother's refusal to come down was not cowardice but the first boundary he had ever successfully drawn.
A siren sounded from the western road. Then another. Red and blue lights appeared beyond the diner, flashing against the rusted cars and the pale dust in the air. The riders near the highway stepped back from their machines, and Dutch raised both hands to make clear he was not approaching the officers.
Graham turned toward the lights. His men began talking over one another, some walking toward their vehicles, others standing still as if the idea of leaving had not occurred to them. The man whose pickup had struck the scrap pile was kneeling beside the ruined front wheel, his hands pressed against his face. The whole scene looked less like a criminal empire and more like a collection of frightened men whose leader had finally run out of places to send them.
A deputy's voice came over a loudspeaker, ordering everyone to stop moving and make their hands visible. Sarah watched Graham hesitate. His shoulders seemed to rise inside his leather vest, and the weapon hanging at his side shifted as he turned toward the patrol vehicles.
For one terrifying second, Sarah thought he would force somebody to shoot him. Then Wyatt stood beside her at the bunker entrance, keeping himself behind the heavy concrete wall. He called into the night with a voice Sarah had not heard before, deep enough to carry over the sirens but free of the menace he had used with Billy.
"Graham. Don't make this the last thing you do."
His brother turned toward the hillside. The light caught his face, and Sarah could see that he was older than Wyatt by more than the six years between their birthdays. Anger and exhaustion had worn deep lines around his mouth, and fear had stripped away the confidence that made other men follow him.
"You did this," Graham called back.
"No," Wyatt said. "I didn't put that device on my own bike. I didn't come here with men carrying weapons. I didn't threaten the woman who kept me alive. You did those things."
Graham seemed to search for an answer that could restore the order he understood. Before he found one, the deputies gave another command and moved to secure the scene. Graham lowered his weapon to the gravel and stepped back, his hands raised.