"I know."
"I want you to hear me say it."
"I hear you, Spur."
"He's going to come at us between now and Friday. I want you to know the man you went to bed with last night is going to put him in the dirt before he gets near you."
She looks at me. "You scared, Spur?"
I think about lying to her. Think about it for a full second. "Yeah."
"Of him?"
"Of losing you. Not of him."
She closes her eyes again and leans into me harder. "Stay with me tonight," she says.
"Wasn't planning on leaving."
The afternoon light on the back porch goes orange the way it does in the spring, and I sit there with her with my arm aroundher shoulders, my hand on her arm, and her head against my collarbone.
Her hair smells like the shampoo from my cabin.
Her body is warm against my side.
It’s the first moment of peace I’ve had in quite a while.
But for the first ten minutes of the rest of my life, I sit on a porch with a woman whose head is on my shoulder, and I let myself have it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Spur
The cigarette butt is on my kitchen counter in a sandwich bag, and it’s been nagging at me since yesterday.
I'm up before the sun rises.
Dakota's in my bed, hair loose on my pillow, one of her hands curled near her face the way she sleeps.
I haven't slept much. Three hours, maybe four.
The patrol shift I took at midnight didn't end clean—Banshee's check-in came through at two, mine at four, and somewhere in between I lay on my side watching her breathe and thinking about a man who was in the hayloft yesterday afternoon.
I get up without waking her. Coffee in my kitchen. The morning light coming gray through the window over the sink.
I pick up the sandwich bag.
The cigarette butt under the kitchen light is the same Camel Wide Banshee bagged in the loft yesterday—filter ring brown and black, the burn taken down close to the paper, the way a man smokes when he's been waiting on something.
Phantom recognized the brand. Said it was the same kind his brother smoked.
He pocketed the bag yesterday in the office and gave it back to me last night because he wanted me thinking about it.
I'm thinking about it.
Something about the burn pattern. The way the filter is creased on one side. I have seen this somewhere before.
Not the brand—the way the man smokes it.
