The photo on Dakota's phone is a forty-second-old picture of me kissing the top of her head on the porch of the main house, taken from somewhere up high, somewhere on this property, by a man I haven't found yet.
Iamgoing to find him.
Phantom is in the doorway.
He moves aside, and I walk Dakota past him into the kitchen with my hand at the small of her back and my piece in my free hand.
Phantom shuts the door behind us, kills the bolt. "Show me the picture again, baby girl," he says.
She holds the phone out. He looks at it. His face does what his face does when something on his ranch has gone wrong—nothing visible, but the room knows.
Marlena must be in the bedroom with Cal, who is still taking his nap.
Banshee pounds on the front door once—his knock, three quick beats, two slow.
Phantom unbolts the door.
Banshee comes through. Hat pushed back, breathing hard from the run, his Glock already in his hand at his hip.
He clocks Dakota first from pure adrenaline. "Prez."
"Hayloft, main barn," I tell him. "I'd put money on it. The angle in the photo's a downward angle. The only place on this property tall enough is the loft of the main barn, or the oak line on the north fence. The loft is closer to the porch she was standing on."
"Going alone?"
"You're going with me."
"Yeah, I am."
Phantom looks at us both.
"Sweep starts now. You two go. Banshee—you take the loft. Spur—you take the perimeter. Then we trade and double-check each other's work because this man knows our property, and I don't want either one of you missing something because you're tired or in love."
He looks at me on the second one.
"Yes, Prez," I tell him.
Dakota's hand is still on my arm. "Spur."
"I know."
"Don't —"
"I know. I'm coming back to you."
I kiss the top of her head again.
The same kiss the man with the camera took the picture of, and I do it where he can't see it now because we're inside the main house with the curtains drawn, and I hope he saw that part.
Ihopehe understands he can take pictures of moments, but he can't take them away from me.
I leave her with Phantom in the kitchen.
Banshee and I walk out the back door of the main house instead of the front.
The man with the camera is going to be expecting us to leave through the front.
We go out the back, around the kitchen garden, past the chicken run, and we move along the fence line.
