Uncle Martin won't listen to me. He stands there, his shoulders shaking, and won't turn around. The trucks and SUVs are cresting the hill now, headlights cutting throughthe darkness, and I know what's coming. I know, and I'm screaming for him to run, to please just run.
Jesse's grip tightens as he hauls me into his truck. "He's dead," he says roughly in my ear. "And if we don't move right now, we will be too."
The first vehicle slides to a stop. Bo Hollister steps out, and even from this distance, I can see the casual violence in the way he moves. Uncle Martin raises his shotgun.
"No!" I thrash harder, but Jesse's already slammed the truck into gear and rocketing away from the ranch.
The first gunshot cracks through the night.
A horn blares behind me and I jerk back to the present. I've stopped dead in the middle of the road, my breath coming too fast, my hands locked on the wheel. The car behind me swerves around with a screech of tires, and the driver shoots me a look that I probably deserve.
I flip the visor down and stare into the small mirror. The woman looking back at me is almost a stranger. The red hair still catches me off guard, even though I'm the one who bought the box of dye at a truck stop outside Fort Stockton and stood in a gas station bathroom for forty minutes, watching dark brown turn to copper in a cracked mirror. I have to admit it doesn't look half bad, which is more than I expected from a nine-dollar box.
Dark eyes, pale skin, hair the color of autumn leaves. It's different enough that someone searching for Raven Bishop and her dark brown hair might walk right past me without a second glance. The thought should bring some comfort, but all I can think is that I'm running from the wreckage of my new lifestraight into the ruins of my old one, with nothing but a cheap dye job standing between me and whoever comes looking.
I force myself to accelerate and put the Blue Fork Ranch sign in my rearview mirror where it belongs. Uncle Martin died on that property while Jesse Hollister dragged me away kicking and screaming. They sedated me, shoved me on a plane, and shipped me off to an uncle I'd never met while the only home I'd ever known burned behind me. I spent the next ten years trying to become someone strong enough to make sure that kind of thing never happened to anyone else.
Look how well that turned out.
The highway carries me north, and Fredericksburg materializes on the horizon as the sun begins its descent. Church steeples break the skyline, and the town unfolds around me exactly as I remember it. There’s the same German-influenced architecture lining Main Street, the same unhurried pace, the familiar feeling that everyone in this place knows everyone else's business and always has. A decade has passed, but Fredericksburg doesn't seem to have noticed.
I slow down as the GPS guides me toward the safe house, and it’s exactly what I expected. It's small, two blocks off the main road, with enough distance between neighbors that my comings and goings won't draw attention. I pull the gray sedan into the carport, grab my bag, and let myself inside. The house is clean but stripped of anything personal, furnished for function and nothing else. I don't bother unpacking, just drop the bag on the bed and walk back out the door.
Time to get to work.
Maria's Bar sits on Main Street, the kind of place where locals drink and tourists avoid. The neon sign flickers in the growing dusk, and I can hear country music bleeding through the door before I even push it open.
Inside, it's warm and dim, with wood-paneled walls and pendant lights casting amber across the bar. A jukebox in the corner plays something slow and twangy, and about a dozen people are scattered around the room, most of them nursing beers and minding their own business. The bartender is a woman in her fifties with sharp eyes and the kind of weathered face that doesn't miss much.
I slide onto a barstool and wait. She finishes pouring whiskey for a cowboy at the other end of the bar, then makes her way over to me.
"What can I get you, hon?" Her voice is friendly but carries the quiet assessment that small-town bartenders develop over years of sizing up strangers.
"A Shiner Bock, please."
She pours the beer and sets it in front of me. "Haven't seen you around here before."
I take a sip and offer a small smile. "Just passing through. Thought I'd stop and see what Fredericksburg looks like these days."
"Where you coming from?"
"All over, really." I keep my tone light, steering the conversation away from anything personal. "I'm actually doing some research on ranching practices in the Hill Country for an insurance conglomerate. Comparing how different operations handle their land management."
It's a weak cover story, but it's the kind that's nearly impossible to verify on the spot. It's certainly better than telling her I'm investigating suspicious deaths.
Maria's expression shifts toward genuine interest. "Ranching, huh? Well, you picked the right town for that. This whole area's been ranching country for generations." She leans against the bar and settles in, the way people do when they'vefound a topic they actually want to talk about. "I'm Maria, by the way."
"Sarah." The alias Uncle Robert built for me rolls off my tongue without hesitation. The driver's license and supporting identification he put together are flawless, a clean identity. "Sarah Davis."
Maria nods. "Well, Sarah, if you want to know about ranching around here, you're talking to the right person. My family's been running cattle for seventy years."
I let her talk, asking questions that sound curious without pushing too hard. She tells me about the drought three years back, about which families are still holding on and which ones finally gave up and sold out. I listen carefully and steer the conversation toward more recent events.
"I heard something about a rancher dying recently." I keep my tone sympathetic, conversational. "Some kind of accident?"
Maria's expression falls. "That was Tom Pritchard. About three weeks ago now. It was a terrible thing."
"What happened?"
