The friend was sitting at the end of the table drinking whiskey and watching the Lyle brothers like a man waiting for something.
He smoked Camel Wides. Two long drags. Hold. Third drag down to the filter.
I watched him do it three times across the bar that night because something about the way he watched the Lyles wasn't right.
I was twenty-five and didn't have the language for it then, but I had the eyes, the instinct.
Roan called him by name across the table.
The name comes whole.
Kane.
I sit up.
Dakota stirs, but doesn't wake all the way.
Her hand comes off my chest and finds the pillow. I get out of the bed carefully. Boots, jeans, cut.
I leave the Glock on the dresser because I'm walking to the kitchen, not the property.
She murmurs something against the pillow. I bend down and kiss her temple. "Go back to sleep, baby."
She does, and I head down to the kitchen.
Phantom is at the kitchen table with a coffee and a Bible open in front of him.
Phantom doesn't sleep when one of his daughters is hurt.
He looks up when I come in. "You figured it out?"
I sit down across from him. "Kane."
He goes still, sets the coffee down slowly. "Kane."
"The man who used to come around with Roan years ago. The friend Roan brought up to Sharp to prospect. The one you?—"
"The one I voted no patch on."
"Yes, Prez."
He closes the Bible and sets it aside. He's quiet for a long second. The kitchen clock ticks. The refrigerator runs. Somewhere in the back of the house Cal makes a small sleep noise and settles.
"About ten years if my math is correct," Phantom says.
"Yes."
Phantom looks at the wall behind me for a long time. "He wants me to know it's him."
"Yes."
"He's been carrying this for ten years and he wants me to know."
"Yes."
He stands up, goes to the coffee pot, pours a second mug, and slides it across the table to me.
He sits back down. "I figure neither of us are getting any damn sleep tonight. Tell me what you remember."
