“You know,” he grunts with a frown. “The thing none of us are supposed to talk about.” He lets the words drift off with his thoughts.
“Until they start killing cattle.” I pull my cell phone from the back pocket of my jeans, walking upwind of the body.
Not because it stinks, but because it doesn’t.
“Who you calling?” Frank asks, stepping toward me.
“The authorities,” I say, covering the speaker with my hand.
“As in?” He furrows his brow.
“Sheriff Cullen.”
I raise a hand when dispatch answers, reporting my location and the incident. Frank shakes his head, face going sour.
He paces to and fro in front of me, kicking up dust. I swear there’ll be a new ditch by the time the call ends.
After a brief hold, Cullen answers in rumbly tones. Must be quiet in the office. “Miss Eliza, what can I do you for?”
Now, I’m pacing next to Frank, words just out of reach. Silt rises along the path I carve, carried in dusty columns toward the cloudless sky.
“Eliza?”
I take a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Sheriff Cullen, thank you for taking my call.”
“‘Course, darlin’,” the old man says, as affable now as when I’m plying him with coffee and doughnuts at the café.
“We have a situation at the ranch.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
The sun bores into me, rays drilling into my forehead. I press my fingers into my temples, massaging the spot where a headache threatens. “Unexplained dead bull.”
“Sure it’s not from fighting or something else?”
Frank shakes his head in front of me. Face livid.
“Something else. I’m absolutely certain.”
“Rumor has it a wolf’s been sighted over the Nevada border lately. Where there’s one, there’s?—”
“It’s not a wolf,” I cut in, heart thumping against my ribs. “Might be the kind of thing we should have Mags out for.”
The line goes quiet.
“Be there shortly.”
Fifteen minutes pass in silence. Frank’s eyes dart back and forth between the mutilated body and me, as if something’s forming in his head. A plan I won’t like.
Finally, he looks up, removing his hat and swiping at the sweat gathering on his forehead. Flies buzz around us. I swat at them too frantically, like the rogue wisps of thought swarming in my head.
His eyes trail off across the valley to the black ribbon of asphalt that winds through the middle of Raven’s Ridge. Two towers of dust rise like angry clouds of ash as a pair of cars head our way.
One’s white and black with the seal of Starborn County. The other I didn’t factor on—all white, windows blacked out. No markings. Nothing to say who it belongs to.
Frank’s eyes go dinner-plate wide, his face a grimace.
“I asked for Mags,” I say too softly.
