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Did she detect a note of malice in his tone? Probably, but ignoring it was her best option. She had to play this right.

“We didn’t make it to Tucson. Turns Out Mr. Doyle is a liar and worse.” Tears prickled behind her eyes and, for once, she welcomed them, hoping her real feelings would help him buy the story.

Amos paled, looking uncertain, but Sadie approached the desk with a wail that may have been a bit over the top.

“There, there, miss Sadie, just settle down and tell old Amos what happened.” He offered her a kerchief from his desk, and she took it to blow her nose. “What exactly did he lie about?”

Sadie had rehearsed the story in her head a thousand times, though she’d still harbored hope Wally would intervene. Clearly, that wasn’t happening.

“He might be a relative of James, but not the way he said,” she hedged, knowing how crazy it was going to sound. “More like a great, great, great, great grandnephew.”

Amos’s brows puzzled together forming a third hairy muttonchop on his face. “I don’t follow, Sadie.”

“Amos, you’ve known me a long time.” She looked in his oily eyes.

“Your whole life,” Amos said, a flush climbing up his face.

“At one time, you even wanted me for a wife.”

Amos’s eyebrows shot into the air. “Now, Miss Sadie, I have Eleanor to think about…” he stammered.

“I’m not offering,” she said quickly, “I simply want to be sure I can tell you anything, no matter how crazy it sounds.”

“Don’t be silly, girl. Out with it. What’d that man do? Does it have to do with Eli?”

Sadie drew in a breath. Eli was a subject she wanted left buried. It was now or never. “Wally’s from the future.”

For a moment, silence fell upon the office. Then Amos sputtered and coughed. Sadie resisted the urge to slap his back and instead wept loudly again. “I told you I’d sound crazy, but I followed him, Amos. He has a contraption of some sort in the desert he went back to. I saw it with my own eyes.”

Amos’s face purpled then faded to red. “I’ve been worried about your welfare out there on your own, Sadie,” he finally said, speaking carefully as though to a child throwing a tantrum.

She resisted rolling her eyes like Teddy and instead leaned forward, giving him a good glimpse of the cleavage he always stole glances at despite ‘having Eleanor to think about’. “Sheriff, I don’t know what I’ll do if you don’t believe me. I need your help. You’re right, I’m just a woman out there with a child running a whole damn ranch, and here you are a big, strong, capable man.”

Bile rose in the back of her throat, but she swallowed it down, pleased with how well this approach worked as he stared openly at the tops of her heaving breasts. Still, she hesitated before driving in the stake. Once she said it, there was no going back. She still had a chance to manipulate him into believing her without giving up Wally’s ship’s location. She could say she was lost and wandered for hours in the storm.

Or she could lead them straight to the potential threat.

Wally may be an unreliable sidewinding, yellow-bellied, high-binder, but he isn’t a threat, that small voice in the back of her head said. Was he really worse than the man in front of her?

Damn you, Wally. This is your own fault for standing me up.

As Sadie opened her mouth to offer to be a guide to the ship, Otto’s shadow fell across the room and over the desk dividing her and Amos. “Seems I’m interrupting something important.”

That didn’t stop him from ducking through the doorway and walking right up to the desk to glower down at Sadie, who drew her short cape together over her chest as though a cold draft had just entered the room.

“Sadie here was just telling me about space people that landed in the desert,” Amos said then chuckled.

“No. I was tellin’ you about people from the future. Humans.”

“Oh sorry, Sadie. One seems about as possible as the other.” Amos shook his head and stood to offer Otto a hand to shake.

Otto hawked a mouthful of tobacco into the corner spittoon instead, causing a dinging sound to reverberate through Sadie’s head. She cringed. Maybe this hadn’t been the best idea. But she couldn’t take on an entire invading force herself. Who knew what kind of guns they had in the future? At least she knew they weren’t immune to bullets, based on the way Wally treated her shotgun with a healthy dose of respect.

“And how long you known ‘bout these space folks?” Otto asked, leaning over her.

“Time travelers,” she corrected in a small voice, the cool metal of her Derringer reassuring against her thigh. “Just since the monsoons the other night. I followed Wally into the desert and saw the ship.”

“Take us to it, and I’ll believe you had nothin’ to do with Eli’s disappearance,” Otto said, yellow stained teeth grinding together.