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"You stayed with me," he says. "Every second. I watched."

I cry harder. He holds me and lets me cry until there's nothing left. Then he wipes my face with his thumb.

The shaking stops a little at a time. My breathing slows down, and my body goes heavy and warm against him.

Only then do I notice how smoothly he did all of it. He brought that water and that quilt into this room before he ever touched me. He knew what I'd need afterward before I did. He went from the washcloth to the quilt to the water without stopping once to think about what came next. He knew to rub my hands. He knew I'd shake, and he knew to let me cry.

He's done this for other women. A lot of them, from the look of it.

I don't ask him. Not tonight. I lean against him with his heart thumping under my cheek, and he lets me be quiet.

I decided in that truck not to tell him Whitlock's name, and I still won't.

But Dutch is out there. I heard him say it from his truck while I lay hidden in the cedar: 'I want her alive. I want her to know it's me.' If Dutch gets to me first, somebody besides me needs to know where that room is.

I can't swear in any court whose barrels those were. I can swear to what was burned into them. Knox runs cattle, not wine. A brand on a wine barrel shouldn't mean a thing to him, but it'll mean something if I ever go missing again. It gives him a place to start looking without handing him a man to go after.

A ballpoint pen lies on his nightstand beside a notepad covered in feed orders. I reach out of the quilt and pick it up.

Knox watches me pull the cap off with my teeth and doesn't ask.

His right hand rests on his thigh. His forearm is thick and tan, with scars from bulls and fights all over it.

I take hold of his wrist and draw his arm across both of us into my lap. It goes heavy and loose there.

I press the pen to the inside of his forearm and draw a circle. Then I draw a shepherd's crook standing straight up through it, with its hook curled over the top.

The ink sits dark against his skin. Under my fingers, every muscle in his forearm goes rigid.

"That's where they kept me," I say.

8

KNOX

I've seen the drawing on my arm before, burned into white oak. Last spring at the county fairgrounds, a pallet of retired wine casks went on the block at the benefit auction for the volunteer fire department. Every barrel head on that pallet wore the same brand, a circle with a shepherd's crook standing up through it. The man taking bids at the rail, in a pressed shirt with the cuffs turned back once, was Coleman Whitlock.

Bo made all three of us boys learn every brand registered in Gillespie County before we were old enough to drive. He wanted us to know whose cattle we were looking at on another man's land.

A brand reads left to right, top to bottom, outside in. I don't know what Whitlock calls that mark, but any cowman in this county would read a crook standing up through a circle as Circle Crook.

Delilah's ink stands out dark on the inside of my forearm. Her fingers are still wrapped around my wrist.

"Whitlock," I say.

Her fingers go cold against my skin. She lets go of my wrist and pulls her hand back inside the quilt.

"How do you know that?" Her voice comes out hard and low.

"I read brands. Bo beat it into us." I turn my arm in the lamplight so the ink faces her. "That's the brand on Coleman Whitlock's barrels. I watched him sell a pallet of them at the fairgrounds last spring."

Her mouth falls open.

She meant that mark as a lead for later. She never figured I'd put a name to it before she'd capped the pen.

"You weren't going to tell me his name," I say.

"No."