Page 49

"When?"

"I'll tell her. Me. Not you." I close the ledger. "Not today."

"Why not today?"

"Because this morning I found out Delilah called my name where Whitlock's men could hear it, and she never said a word to me about it. I'm too damn angry to say any of this right, and she deserves it said right."

Beckett holds my eyes. My little brother doesn't dig in often. When he does, he means it.

"You're not protecting her," he says. "You're protecting you. Don't wait until she hears it from somebody else." He picks up the thermos and goes.

Ozzie slides both boxes back into the closet without a word and shuts the door.

"One more thing," I tell him. "A Fredericksburg lawyer named Stanley Rusk does Whitlock's work, and he's hiring bounty hunters. Find out what else he does for him. Ask quietly."

"Half the men who bet with me have needed a lawyer at one time or another." Ozzie gets up off his knees with a grunt. "Somebody'll know. Nobody'll know I asked."

I take the green ledger with me. I'm not leaving it anywhere Beckett can pick it up and carry it to her.

I drive out to the fight barn with the ledger on the seat beside me. I unlock the chain on the front doors and drag one open.

Light comes through the gaps in the walls in long stripes across the dirt floor, and the ring stands in the middle, ropes sagging. My heavy bag hangs from the beam beside it, for nights when a card goes long and I need somewhere to put my temper that isn't a man.

I don't wrap my hands. I don't take my shirt off. I hit the bag until the chain rattles against the beam and the leather goes slick. My knuckles split and leave red on it. With every punch I see Whitlock's hand held out over the pew, Harlan on my porch warning me off him, and my initials in Ozzie's book.

When I finally stop, my shirt's soaked through and my right hand is bleeding into my palm.

Nobody hit back. It's not a fight. My rule covers it anyway. I lost my temper on that bag, so I don't lay a hand on Delilah tonight.

On my way back past the house, I stop at the horse barn. Delilah's in Sadie's pen, working a curry comb over the mare's shoulder in slow circles.

She doesn't turn around when she hears my boots. I walk heavy on purpose, so she always knows who's coming.

"Going to Jesse's cabin," I tell her. "Alone. Back after dark."

She lowers the curry comb and looks at my knuckles, at the blood drying in the creases. She doesn't ask about it.

"Thank you for telling me," she says.

She's still mad about this morning, but she thanks me anyway. I nod once and go.

Jesse's cabin is at the end of a turnoff most people miss even in daylight, two ruts through scrub oak and limestone down into a dip in the hills. The siding's bare and weathered, and the tin roof has rusted brown.

My older brother's on the porch with a cup of coffee, watching my truck bounce toward him as if he expected me.

Raven's at the table inside with her laptop and a cast-iron pan of green chile stew. She points a fork at the chair across from her. I sit, and Jesse comes in behind me and takes the chair at the end.

"I walked out on you mid-op," I say. "Harlan had Raven in his truck."

"I told you to go."

"I'd have gone anyway."

"I know." Jesse sets his coffee cup on the table. "You went where you had to. So did I, once."

He lets it go. Jesse can set a thing down and walk away from it. I never could.

I tell them what I can without handing over what's hers. Women held in a livestock barn out west and moved by trailer, then a cellar here. Whitlock's brand on the barrels and his voice from the corner. A man called Dutch. The bounty hunter at my north fence, and what her file said.