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“What are you doing on my land?” I breathed.

“Watching them use it.”

“Who are they?”

“Nobody you want to meet.”

“That’s not an answer.”

His head moved an inch. All I got was the edge of his jaw and one eye catching the light. “It’s the only one you’re getting while they’re close enough to hear you.”

Below us a man swung toward the hill. He stood there a long time with his head up, the way Whiskey stood when a coyote was working the fence line. Switch held his breath. So did I. Then the man spat in the dirt and climbed back in, and both trucks rolled east toward the county road with their lights off.

We waited until the engines were gone. Switch stepped back first.

The chill found me where he’d been standing.

“Cartel,” he said.

The word sat between us.

“Tomas Rivas’s people. I picked up one of those trucks east of town tonight and lost it on the county road. Found its dust again coming off the mine road.” He looked toward the wash. “Nobody’s driven that road since the mine shut.”

“Somebody has. They’ve been opening my back gate and chaining it after.”

“One link tighter?”

I stared at him. “How the hell do you know that?”

“Because it’s what I’d do.” He gathered Whiskey’s reins off her neck and held them out to me. “How long?”

“Two weeks. Maybe three.”

“Long enough to learn when your place goes quiet.”

My hand was shaking when I took them. I blamed the night air.

“I’ll follow you up,” he said.

“I’ll follow you up to the house,” he said.

“You’re not coming anywhere near my house.”

He looked at me for a long moment. “Wasn’t asking, Savannah.”

He called Preacher from my yard with his bike ticking beside him and the porch light turning his face yellow. I put Whiskey away and listened from the barn door.

“Two trucks. Four cases, maybe more. Mine road, McGuire’s back section.” A pause. “No, she saw.” Another pause, longer. “I’m staying out here.”

“Like hell you are,” I said as I emerged from the barn.

He finished the call without looking at me and put the phone away.

“They made a trade on your land tonight,” he said. “If they figure out somebody watched them do it, the first place they’ll come asking is up this drive. You want to be on your own when they do?”

“Then send somebody else.”

“Nobody else knows that back section like I do.”