The morning after the fire, the rain came again — not a steady downpour but a drizzling mist that seeped through rotten shingles and slipped under cracked doors. It found its way into the county jail too, dripping cold into the corners where the stone walls never truly dried.
Ikrist Raya lay curled on his narrow cot, knees drawn tight to his chest to keep the chill from crawling inside his bones. His breath came thin, ragged at the edges, each cough echoing off the iron bars like a tiny hammer chipping at the walls.
---
Croft noticed first.
He'd stopped by the cell at dawn to slide a piece of cornbread through the bars, the way he always did when the sheriff wasn't looking. But today Ikrist didn't even lift his head.
"Hey, boy," Croft called softly, crouching low. "You sleepin'? Wake up now. I got you a bit of bread."
Ikrist's eyes flickered open — pale, dull as dishwater. His lips moved, but no words came, only a dry click in his throat. When he tried to sit up, the blanket slipped off his shoulders, showing the bones under his skin sharp as fence wire.
Croft's gut twisted. He reached through the bars, brushed his knuckles to Ikrist's forehead. The heat that met his hand was wrong — not the good warmth of a child curled in bed but a hot, sick fever that felt like trouble with every heartbeat.
---
By midmorning, Croft stood on the stoop of the Raya house, hat clutched in both hands. Anna opened the door to his knock, her eyes hard as a hammer even before he spoke.
"He's sick, Mrs. Raya," Croft said, voice shaking just enough for Anna to hear the truth under the uniform. "Too sick to stay in that cell much longer."
Anna's knees nearly buckled. Caleb stepped behind her, one hand at her elbow, the other clenched at his side.
"How sick?" Caleb asked, the words flat, brittle.
"Fever. Bad," Croft said. "No doctor been let in. Sheriff says it'll pass. Says it ain't nothin'."
Anna's breath came shallow. "Ain't nothin'? That boy's skin and bones in there."
Croft nodded once. "I'll swear it if you need me to. But you got to move fast."
---
That night, Elijah and Silas sat hunched over Reverend Paulson's battered oak desk. The lawyer's papers lay spread like cards in a losing hand — MOTION TO TRANSFER CUSTODY, REQUEST FOR EMERGENCY MEDICAL RELEASE — all words that needed a judge who'd risk his own neck to stamp them.
"He's not gonna sign it," Elijah muttered, raking a hand through his hair. "Not with Hammond breathing down his neck."
Silas tapped a pencil on the margin of a form already smudged with corrections. "Then make him. Drag the press back down here. We find a doctor who'll stand up in court. We knock on the governor's door if we have to."
Elijah snorted, tired and bitter. "You ever seen the governor care about a Black boy in a jail cell two counties down?"
Silas didn't flinch. "You ever seen me stop trying?"
---
By dawn, Anna packed a small parcel — Ikrist's clean shirt, a sliver of soap, his cracked wooden comb. She pressed it into Elijah's hands when he came to her door before sunrise.
"You get him out, Mr. Carter," she whispered. "I don't care if you gotta crawl through that jail window yourself — you bring my boy home."
Elijah closed his fingers around the bundle, feeling its weight — too small for all it had to hold.
---
Inside the cell, Ikrist drifted in and out of shallow dreams — snatches of his mama's voice, Amie's giggle, his daddy's strong hands on his shoulders at the mill gate. The cold bars pressed against his back while his breath rattled soft against the stone.
In his fever dream, he heard a door slam open. He saw the sun spill in. He felt the warmth of someone lifting him up.
---
Outside, the clouds pressed low over Alcolu. Sheriff Hammond sat in his office, the window cracked just enough for the damp air to lick his neck. He tipped his chair back and lit a cigar, the smoke curling around his grin.
"Little crow's almost done flappin'," he muttered to no one.
---
But at the church office, Elijah slammed his hand on the stack of motions so hard the old lamp rattled.
"Not if I can help it," he hissed.
And in the dark cell, Ikrist Raya dreamed of a door swinging wide — and his mama's arms waiting just beyond it.