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She opened the bathroo, "E to buy you a duffel bag, just like us Raiders duffel? Yours looks like a soldier’s"
"Okay, Mingus Raiders it is" She said over her shoulder to Raus cartoon good girls They’re hot stuff"
THEY drove all that day and night, spelling each other, and reached Truckee the next evening at just after six o’clock They spent that night at a Best Western Motel
The nextRamsey went to a local realtor’s office and looked over the rental houses available They didn’t want a condo, too many people around, they told the woman They were a family on vacation They’d saved their money for this and didn’t want to use credit cards
If the woue, just showed them properties Emma fell in love with the third one, a sainst a forest and fronting a small creek Tree-covered mountains rose all around it Lake Tahoe was only about four miles distant It was safe Everyone was pleased
They paid five hundred for the week, including the security deposit They stocked up for a week at Food Giant
When they returned to Nathan’s Creek, it ell into the afternoon Emma was asleep in Molly’s arer of the two bedrooms
When he lass of iced mineral water
"Coht," she said "You’re right It is ti"
He waited until she sat down in a big recliner that orn, a real guy’s chair, then said, "Now, nofromhas anything to do hat you don’t know"
"Molly, I’aret Lord before I married"
He just stared at her, then breathed out hard His leg started hurting
"Shit," he said "Your daddy is Mason Lord?"
JOE Elders loved those few preciousbarren hills just ain the fifty-degree air, filling his lungs, letting the silence and soft air fill hiht and he s them He heard Millie moo She was soon joined by half a dozen of her cousins It was tiirls He whistled as he walked to the cow barn, brand-new, just coy they told hi dairy outfits And he’d had the money to pay for it all He’d been se of him, no they hadn’t After his deal, he hadn’t had to borrow anything He paused, sniffing the air
He could swear it was the sweet clinging scent of oat’s favorite old chewing gloves out of his path He cursed It was pot he sain, and after she prohten up Pot, of all things She was sixteen years old, popular at school He hoped she wasn’t that popular No, she was too young to really have the hots for any of the boys he’d seen around But pot, hell and dareeted with a chorus of , a couple pissed, he could tell They didn’t like all the new equipment that relieved them of their milk
Shirley was the one who hated the irls, he’d decided just the week before toher head to look at hiot all the other cows set up It still took hiet better and faster at it soon Then he took his old stool down to where Shirley was standing, still and fat with irl," he called out, giving her a wink like the one he’d given her every dawn for the past seven years
He began to whistle as he set the stool down beside her "Now, let’s hter"
He heard a soft whooshing sound It was close, real close He wrenched around on the stool There was aover him He was black, his eyes hard and wide, his head bald Joe never even had a chance to ask the man who he was