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She blinked at that, but didn’t say anything.
“What the hell are you doing, Wendy?” Brenda demanded from my right.
“Get back in the barn,” Wendy ordered.
Brenda kept coming.
“Go call the sheriff,” I shouted at her.
She didn’t stop and she didn’t pull out a phone.
“I’ll shoot you, Brenda.”
Wendy swung the gun in that direction.
We couldn’t possibly reach cover before she could swing it back. But Diana and I must have had the same idea for taking advantage of the distraction, because each of us had a hand in a pocket, hitting buttons on our unseen phones.
“Yeah?” Brenda mocked. “You could’ve done that anytime these past decades. What’s it going to get you? What’s any of this going to get you? Somebody’ll get away. And that’ll be the end.”
“It’s my ranch. I can—”
“You can’t. It’s the end.”
The gun wobbled in Wendy’s hold. I didn’t consider that much of an improvement.
Brenda said, “Drop it.”
Wendy didn’t.
She gave a strangled shout and ran to one of the ranch trucks.
Before getting in, she turned back to us and swung the shotgun around like a kid with a hose, as if to hold us all at bay. None had gotten any closer.
In fact, Diana and I moved of one accord toward the tack room doors. Randall tugged Robin to behind him. Sam, Serena, and Brenda stood rooted where they were.
The truck rumbled to life and headed out.
“Shouldn’t we—?” Sam started.
“Go after her? No,” I said. “Call the sheriff’s department? Yes.”
Diana held up her phone, indicating she was fulfilling that duty.
I went to Brenda. “Are you okay?”
“Why shouldn’t I be?”
“You said the sheriff’s department got it wrong for arresting Wendy for killing Keefe, but I’m afraid—”
“They did. Not wrong that she could kill him or did kill him, but that she did it over some supposed romance they had.”
“You... you thought she could have killed him? You thought that all along?”
“Sure.”
The truck rattled over the bridge, then slowed.
It was too far away to see if Wendy Barlow turned back to look at the ranch she loved enough to kill for.
