Page 4

I never decided to come here. My feet brought me. Now I have to decide.

I could turn south, steal a truck, and disappear. My father's house is out, because his debts put me in that cellar. Town is out. That leaves Devil's Acre, the one place I remember feeling safe.

But Dutch is out there hunting me. If I go to Devil's Acre, I might lead him straight to Knox's door. And Knox is a Hollister. When he finds out what was done to me, he won't call the sheriff. He'll go after them himself, and they'll kill him for it. I won't let anybody die for me.

The first time I saw Knox Hollister, I was seventeen and sitting on the arena fence at a rodeo in Bandera. He was behind the bucking chutes taping his riding hand. He was all broad shoulders, with his jaw set like he wanted to hit somebody and was making himself wait. I knew right then that he and I were alike. It scared me worse than any sermon my daddy ever preached.

Standing on the side of the road with a dead man's blood under my fingernails, I think about his voice, and heat pools low in my belly. My stomach heaves right behind it. My body did the same thing in that cellar for men I'd gladly kill, and I can't tell anymore what that heat means.

I grip Royce's knife until the handle digs into my palm. I wanted Knox's voice at nineteen, before any of them touched me. I don't know if I can still want it. And I'm not going to his barn so he can give me orders. I'm going because it's the only place left.

I follow the road, keeping to the cedar along the shoulder. An hour before dawn, I come over a rise and see the fight barn below me. It sits alone in a clearing in the cedar, its tin roof pale under the stars. The gravel lot is empty, and the barn is dark.

I pick my way down the hill. Up close, I find the big front doors by feel, chained and padlocked. Around the side, my hands find a smaller door with only a latch, and loose hay crunches under my boots in front of it. Inside, it's pitch black. I feel my way along the wall until my hands hit square bales stacked higher than I can reach.

I'll rest an hour, I tell myself, and then I'll find the house. My knees buckle before I finish the thought. I go face-first into the hay.

When I open my eyes, the light through the gaps in the barn wall has turned orange. I slept the whole day. Three nights ago I killed a man and walked out of that cellar, and now I can't lift my head out of the hay. My mouth tastes like dust and blood. Royce's knife is still in my right hand, pinned under my body where nobody can see it.

A truck pulls up outside. A gate chain rattles. Then boots cross the gravel, an older man's light step with a hitch in one knee. It isn't Dutch. This man doesn't walk like he's hunting anybody.

The side door opens, and the boots stop dead.

"Ma'am?" It's a careful voice. "Ma'am, can you hear me?"

"Yes," I tell the hay.

"I'm not going to touch you."

I turn my head in the hay until I can see him. He's an older man with a gray mustache, crouched by the door with a pair of hay hooks at his feet and his straw hat in both hands.

I know him. He used to come into the feed store on Main every couple of weeks to pick up feed and ranch supplies on the Devil's Acre account. He'd tip that hat to whoever was behind the counter. Last year that was me.

"What's your name, ma'am?"

I've spent a year refusing to give my name to any man who asked for it.

"Delilah Ruth King."

He goes still, and his eyes widen. He knows me now, the girl from behind the feed store counter.

"The preacher's girl," he says quietly. "They said you ran off."

"They lied."

He stands, backs up a step, and pulls out his phone. "It's Hector. 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." He listens. "Yes, sir. That Delilah King. I chained the gate. Nobody else is here. I'll stay right with her till you get here." Then he turns toward the open door and lowers his voice. "Boss. You need to get back here. Now."

He doesn't have to tell me who he called. Hector sits down on a bale by the door, well out of my reach, and doesn't say another word.

After a while he gets up, walks out to his truck, and comes back with a bottle of water. He sets it in the hay where I can reach it and returns to his bale. I drink it lying on my side. The orange light in the cracks turns red, then gray, then black. Hector never turns on the flashlight clipped to his belt. He just sits in the dark by the door and waits with me.

It's full dark when I hear the truck. It comes down the ranch road too fast, gravel spraying, and skids to a stop outside. The door slams. Then boots hit the gravel, heavy and fast. A big man, coming at a dead run.

The side door swings open so hard it bangs against the wall.

Knox Hollister fills the doorway. He's broader than I remember, and he's dressed for a fight, in a black tactical vest with a pistol strapped to his thigh. He's breathing hard. Hector unclips his flashlight and switches it on. In its light, Knox's eyes sweep every corner of the barn, then find me in the hay and stop.

They go over my cropped hair and my bruised face. Then they drop to my feet, to the dead man's boots laced tight on them and the dried blood on the leather.