Page 313 of Property of Whiskey

“That’s my signal.”

“That’s your signal.”

“Gun loaded?”

I stare at him. “Do you know what I do for a living?”

“Apparently worry me.”

Something trips beneath my ribs.

He says it like an accusation, like I personally invented worry just to inconvenience him.

I kiss him once. “Two streets over.”

“Yeah.”

“No stalking.”

He looks offended. “I don’t stalk.”

“You followed me before.”

“Protective surveillance.”

“That’s stalking with a cut.”

“Sounds cooler.”

“Whiskey.”

“I’ll wait.”

I study him for another moment. And believe him. That might be the strangest development yet.

I grab my actual keys from the counter. My Interceptor, recovered from near the old Pearly Gates access road after Daddy found it abandoned there, has finally been processed, cleaned, and returned to service after Daddy threw enough weight around to make county administration remember how quickly paperwork can move when the sheriff is pissed. Whiskey watches me head for the door.

“Twila.”

I turn.

His expression has changed again. No joke this time.

“Come back.”

It ain’t an order. That’s why it hits differently.

“I plan to.”

He nods. Then lets me go.

The Paradise County Sheriff’s Department looks almost offensively normal at eight thirty in the morning. The flag moves lazily in a light breeze, two cruisers sit out front, and somebody has abandoned half a biscuit on the sidewalk beside the employee entrance, which feels like a crime worthy of investigation all by itself.

Mrs. Talley from dispatch waves through the glass.

I wave back.

Nobody looking at this squat county building would guess records have been gutted inside it for more than a decade. Nobody looking at me would guess I’m deliberately making myself visible to a preacher I now know stood inside rooms where captive girls were forced to kneel while he prayed over them.