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Willow cleared her throat, and they broke eye contact. Maria turned a little bit and lowered her head, so nobody would notice her trying not to smile. It got Harry’s attention, though, and he said, “This feels like it’s getting dangerous. For you, all of you, the whole… clan.”
“Not as dangerous as it might be for you, out there on your own,” Maria said. “There’s strength in numbers. You just hold on with us, Harry. Things are fixin’ to improve. I just know they are.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Harrison and Maria were standing in a clothing shop in downtown Quinn. She wore jeans, a light blue tank top with a lightweight plaid button-down over it, unbuttoned, and a straw cowboy hat. Her coppery hair hung in a thick braid on one side.
An hour ago, Harrison had received a text from Carrie’s phone.
Carrie: Meet me at the corner of Main and Austin, 7 pm. I have the prototype.
It was only six fifteen, but this shop had a clear view of the vacant brick building on the corner of Main and Austin. There was aFor Sale or Leasesign on its lawn.
“It’s a hot one, even for Quinn,” Maria said. “You’ll be swelterin’ when we go back outside. I think we came to the right place.”
He looked around the blissfully cool shop. There were racks of cowboy boots on one wall, clothing on the other. Somewhere outside, Willow surveilled both them and the meet site along with Maria’s father and uncle. Quinn’s finest. Harrison andMaria had been told to kill time in the shop until five minutes before nine and then head across the street to the meeting site.
“You’re not gonnaPretty Womanme, are you?” he asked.
She grinned at him. “You’ve seenPretty Woman?”
“My sister made me.”
“I thought she was younger.”
“Meaner, though.”
Something changed in her face. It softened. “You’re close to your sister. I can tell.”
“After Mom died, we pulled together, the three of us. It got us through the loss, you know?”
She nodded.
“We’re a lot like your family, only smaller,” he said. “Are they that way all the time? Protective? Close?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “And more. Always up in each other’s business. Always meddlin’. Nosy as all get out. Everybody thinks they know best.” She rolled her eyes. “Like I should complain. In my case, they were right.”
He let her soft accent soothe him. “After a while, I had to get back to the project, and things have… I don’t know… changed. I feel like we’re drifting. That’s one of the reasons I can’t think about?—”
She plucked a hat from a shelf, pirouetted, and dropped it onto his head. Then she turned him to face a small mirror. It was a cowboy hat, straw, well made. It had a beaded band he thought was Native.
“The artist is Comanche, a local. She wins art prizes, gets written up in magazines all the time.” She adjusted the hat on his head at an angle.
He looked into the small mirror set near the hat section, while Maria read from the dangling tag. “The green turquoise beads represent mountains. The blue ones above and below are water and sky.”
He looked at the price tag that hung from the brim then blinked and looked again. “There are too many digits in this for a hat.”
“It’s on me. And don’t argue.”
He blinked and for the first time thought about her family, the ranch, the size of it. “You’re wealthy, aren’t you?”
“Don’t they teach you good manners back east?”
“Sorry. They don’t let me out among people much.”
“You don’t socialize?”
“Been too busy with the project.”
