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I don't remember crossing the porch, but I'm at the front door with my fingers wrapped around the knob and my shoulder set. It's a cheap lock in a cheap door, and one kick would take both off the frame.

If I kick that door in, I'm one more man coming through a door she locked.

I let go of the knob and call Hector at the back gate. "Padlock it and come up to the house. On your way, grab the first-aid kit and a roll of vet wrap off the shelf by the saddles in the tack room."

Vet wrap is the stretchy bandage we wind around a horse's leg, and it'll hold on a hand just as well.

"Then go by my kitchen," I tell him. "Heat up the beef stew in the fridge and bring it with the cornbread and a bag of ice."

The pounding goes on while I'm talking. Hector has to hear it through the phone, but he doesn't ask a single question.

She's been at it for most of an hour by the time he carries everything up the porch steps. He hands it over and heads down to sit on the main gate, where the drive meets the county road.

When the pounding finally stops, I wait for any sound at all from inside. Eventually the bathroom door opens, and the bed creaks under her weight.

Most of an hour of bare knuckles on tile will split a prizefighter's hand wide open, and she's half the size of any man whose hands I've ever taped before a bout. She's carried that knife in her right hand all night, so that's the one she'd hit with. I'd bet the ranch it's torn open.

I ladle a bowl of stew and set it on the step with the cornbread and a bottle of water. The first-aid kit goes next to them, vet wrap on top and the ice on the boards. Then I knock twice. "Delilah." It comes out rough as gravel. "There's food on the step. Water, too. You don't have to open the door. You don't have to talk to me. But you need to eat."

Nothing. I back off to the far end of the porch so she won't have to open the door with me looming over it. Then I pace the boards end to end, boots loud so she'll always know exactly where I am. With each pass, the last year comes back at me.

I see the gravel lot behind the Cattle Guard honky-tonk in the dead hours after closing. I've got a drunk oil-field roughneck pinned against his own tailgate, because he bragged that he knew where the preacher's girl went. He didn't know a damn thing.

Harlan's office door shuts in my face again, right after he tells me a grown woman has a right to leave town. Her father's coffee cup rattles against his kitchen table while he tells me his girl was always restless.

And there's a ledger page from a while back, with Preacher King's name on one line and my initials at the end of it.

I shove that one down hard and keep pacing.

Last night a dark-haired woman showed up at Devil's Acre and cornered Ozzie, the bookie who works my gate and takes the bets. She asked him who runs my fights, who fights in them, and how to get in. She wouldn't give him her name. Ozzie told me she looked like somebody who's been in a ring herself.

Nobody finds my fights by accident. On a card night, when I've got a full slate of fights lined up, nobody gets through my gate unless somebody I already know brings them the first time. Nobody brought this woman, and Ozzie had never seen her before. Somebody pointed her at my barn, and I don't know who.

Tonight Delilah turns up beaten half to death in my fight barn. That's two women in two nights, both tied to my fights, and I'm done calling it luck.

I text Beckett.

When you're done bleeding, pull last night's gate camera. The woman asking about the fights. Every frame.

I send Hector one, too.

First light, walk the back fence line. Find where Delilah came through. Don't touch anything.

I set the rifle within reach of the stairs and keep my eyes on the road.

Deep in the night, I sit down on the boards with my back to the wall beside her door, next to the food she won't touch.

Nothing moves out there except a chuck-will's-widow. The night bird calls its own name from the cedar, over and over, and then quits. The air turns damp and cool as morning gets close.

The sky over the east pasture goes gray, and then the sun clears the cedar. She hasn't made a sound since the bed creaked.

Before the sun's full up, I've made two calls. A doctor in Fredericksburg owes me a favor, and the vet who sees our horses doesn't ask questions. Both are waiting to hear from me. Delilah can pick which one, but one of them is coming up those steps before noon.

Out on the step, the stew has gone cold with a skin across the top. The ice has melted through its bag and soaked the boards.

Sometime after sunup, the curtain in the window beside the door pulls back a few inches. Her right hand holds it open while she checks the drive, and in the daylight I can see her knuckles. They're split open and still bleeding at the edges. Then the curtain falls shut.

By midmorning the bowl still hasn't moved, and I text Jesse.