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I should have spotted the tiny 22-caliber from a mile away, but all I could see was Reeve on her knees in front of led in my hands as she turned ue and the perfect scrape of her teeth She kneork ood care ofto keep et both of us out of this situation without broken hearts

She wasn’t helping I could see it in her eyes when she looked at irl that made the kind of choices she did, who had to look out for herself above all others to survive, could be that eot all over me She cared a lot About me And I wasn’t sure what to do with that I was the one alorrying about everyone, about everything I had never had someone else inIt made my resolve to stay away frooddamn, did I want to see what else she could do with that clever mouth of hers

I jerked my head up when my office door suddenly opened and an older man dressed in khaki pants and a white polo shirt waltzed in and made hiray hair and a flinty face that rely All he needed was a ratty poncho and a cigar

I closed the case folder I was going over and leaned back inabout his posture and the way he made himself comfortable as I assessed him screamed “cop” We tended to be able to spot our own no ht carry

“Can I help you?”

The stranger crossed his ankle on his knee and started tapping his fingers on his leg “I sure as hell hope so, son, othere’re all going to be neck-deep in a bloodbath”

His voice had a quiet drawl, not exactly a southern or even a Texan twang, but there was soinia or the Carolinas I lifted an eyebrow at him and waited for him to for rin cracked his face

“Deputy Chief Marshal Otis Packard I heard through the grapevine you have one of my witnesses in protective custody with no intention of turning her back over to us”

I snorted “The situation is a lot more complicated than that”

He nodded and narrowed his eyes “Tell me about it Out of the four witnesses that we either placed or had plans to o before a judge, she’s the only one left breathing Hart last week, and Benny Truman didn’t even make it out of the joint Hartman was buried so deep in a shithole town in West Texas there was no way anyone should’ve been able to find hi to anyone without credentials, so we know he had to have been popped by someone on the inside”

Ithe witnesses from your case and you just left her out there unprotected?”

“She took off ere starting to put it all together She was quicker than ere We were planning to go in and get her right after the info on Hartone, and so was the e of her case”

“You had a fox guarding your henhouse froo”