Page 5

His jaw sets the same way it did behind the chutes at Bandera, like he wants to hit somebody and is making himself wait. I'd know that look anywhere. Back then I didn't know who he wanted to hit. Now I do. It isn't anybody in this barn. It's whoever put these bruises on me.

"Hector." He doesn't take his eyes off me. "Get that light off her face. Then go sit on the gate, and nobody comes through it."

Hector points the beam at the floor and goes without a word.

One Saturday night, years ago, he caught me watching him from my hay bale by the back door. He looked straight at me across the ring for a long moment. From his face, I could tell he knew I hadn't snuck out for the fights. Then he turned his back and didn't look my way again all night. Now he's looking at me the same way he did that night. This time he doesn't turn his back.

He stays in the doorway, out of my reach, and stands perfectly still. The scars across his knuckles stand out white from years of fighting.

"Delilah," he says.

It's the voice. Low and even and rough at the edges, the same voice that made a barn full of violent men go quiet. My body answers it before I can stop it, and I can't tell if that answer belongs to me, to them... or to him.

2

KNOX

Iput my shoulder through a shed door on the east side of Sheriff Harlan's compound, and it bangs open on feed sacks and a rusted tiller. Behind me, Hawk sweeps the corners with his rifle up. He came out of my brother Jesse's old black-ops unit, and tonight he's covering my back.

Jesse's voice comes over the comms, flat and cold. "Harlan has Raven. They're in a vehicle and accelerating."

Then my phone buzzes against my vest. Nobody calls me in the middle of an op, because everybody who matters is already on this channel.

I step behind the shed wall with my pistol still in my right hand, dig the phone out with my left, and the screen says HECTOR.

Hector Saldaña has worked Devil's Acre for years, and in all that time he's called me after dark maybe twice. One was for a young heifer dying while she tried to push out her first calf. The other was for a grass fire along the east fence.

"Yeah."

"It's Hector." He's talking low and careful, the way he talks to a horse that might kick. "Somebody broke into the back barn. There's a woman in the hay, and she's bad off. Real bad. She says her name is Delilah King."

My knees nearly give. I'm standing in packed dirt with Hawk at my back, and for a second I can't feel the pistol I'm holding.

"Delilah King?" It comes out wrong, too rough to sound like me. "The preacher's daughter?"

"Yes, sir. That Delilah King. I chained the gate. Nobody else is here. I'll stay right with her till you get here." The line goes quiet, and then he drops his voice even lower. "Boss. You need to get back here. Now."

Hector once found a colt that had run through barbed wire in the dark and laid its chest open to the bone, and all he told me was that the colt was tore up some. If Hector says real bad, it's worse than anything I want to picture.

I picture it anyway while I key the comms. "Jesse." His name is all I can get out at first, and beside me, Hawk turns his head.

I make myself keep going. "I just got a call. Devil's Acre. Someone broke in. There's a woman on the property, and she's hurt." My throat closes, and I force the rest out. "One of our hands found her in the barn, says she’s in real bad shape. Her name is Delilah King."

I know what I'm asking. Raven Bishop is the federal agent Jesse loves. Sheriff Harlan, the most crooked lawman in Gillespie County, has been helping a cartel move guns, and right now he has her in a moving truck. I'm supposed to be beside my brother when he goes after her.

"Go," Jesse says.

Hawk jerks his chin toward the gate. "I've got your side. Move."

I sprint for my truck behind the tree line and tear out with the back end fishtailing. Jesse's voice follows me over the comms, ordering roadblocks on every paved road around the compound.

At the federal checkpoint, an agent shines a flashlight in my face and reads my name into his radio. I sit there strangling the wheel until Robert Carmichael, Raven's uncle and the man running the federal side of tonight, comes back on and swears I'm one of theirs.

Up ahead, two federal SUVs are pulling across the pavement for a new roadblock. I swing onto the caliche county roads, crushed white rock that boils up behind me in a chalky cloud, and take the washboard ruts so fast my teeth rattle. Somewhere along the way the last orange drains out of the sky.

It's full dark when I unhook Hector's chain from the back gate. I take the last stretch to the barn too fast and hit the door at a run.

I say her name from the doorway, and she looks straight back at me.