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Another chair moved.

Then another.

Conversation didn't return all at once. It came in low pieces. A throat cleared. Coffee poured. Somebody shifted to let Josie pass.

Marnie picked up her cloth.

Her eyes found mine across the room.

I gave her one nod.

She gave it back.

Nothing more.

Enough.

Josie came to me.

I put my hand at the back of her neck, thumb resting over the chain beneath her collar.

"You good?" I asked.

Her hazel eyes warmed.

"Ask me after pie."

I looked toward the counter.

Marnie had already cut two slices.

Josie leaned into my side as we walked to the booth.

The room watched us.

This time, I let it.

Chapter 20

Josie

By nine in the morning, Carrow Creek held more people than I had known lived in Silver Bend.

That was an exaggeration.

It was also how it felt.

Pickups lined both sides of the drive, tires sunk into spring-soft ground. Horses stood tied to rails with their heads low. Kids climbed the corral fence in dusty boots while adults told them to get down and made no move to enforce it. Smoke from the branding fire dragged blue across the yard, mixing with dust, manure, coffee, hot iron, and the green smell of grass finally waking along the creek.

Once, a crowd like that would have made me count doors.

Instead, I counted syringes.

"Black cap is eight-way," I called. "Orange cap is respiratory. Don't put used needles back on my clean tray unless you want Doc to rise from that chair and kill you."

"I can still kill people," Doc said.

He sat beneath the shade awning in a folding chair, long legs stretched out, both hands bare now that the cast was finally gone. His right wrist remained stiff. He flexed it every few minutes when he thought nobody watched.