Page 240 of Property of Whiskey

Something eases around his eyes before he disappears down the hall.

I pick up the evidence bags and start after him, but something beyond the glass in the back door catches my attention.

The porch is empty, wet boards shining beneath the light. Then I see the mark near the bottom step. One small cloven print pressed into the muddy water.

A hoof.

I move closer, heartbeat picking up as I search the boards and steps for another impression.

There isn’t one.

No second print. No trail crossing the porch. No logical path showing how an animal came up or went away.

Just one muddy little hoof mark where there shouldn’t be one. I stare toward the black tree line.

Nothing moves.

“Twila?” Whiskey calls from down the hall.

I keep watching another moment before reaching for the porch light.

“Coming.”

Darkness swallows the yard. I take the evidence with me.

The hoofprint can wait until morning.

Whiskey’s bed can’t.

Chapter Eighteen

Whiskey

Twila’s already dressed when I wake up.

That’s the first sign she’s fixing to piss me off.

The second is the black duffel sitting by the front door. The third is the look on her face while she ties her hair up, that stubborn, already-decided expression she gets right before doing something she knows I ain’t gonna like.

Her service pistol is back at her hip too. I gave it back after we came out of the woods before dawn because keeping a free deputy’s gun started looking too much like another fucking wall she talks about. Should’ve done it sooner.

I stop in the hallway and look from her to the bag. “No.”

She keeps tightening her ponytail. “I didn’t ask.”

“You ain’t wrestling today.”

That gets her attention.

Twila turns slowly, and I hear my mistake before she says a word.

Her eyebrows lift. “That sounded dangerously like you deciding for me again.”

Fuck.

I close my mouth.

She waits.