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“Can I still go to the ranch this weekend? I want to see Tesoro”

Tori hesitated Will had said it would be fine for Erin to spend the weekend as usual But that was before that poorWith the killer still at large, Tori didn’t want her daughter out of her sight

“We’ll see,” she said “Maybe I can get you there long enough to spend a little time with your foal”

Tori’s heart contracted as she watched her child sca a lovely young woe, but for now Erin was anchored to the ranch She had blosso the cattle and horses And Will, despite his issues with Tori, was a good father

A good father

Was that why she’d canceled her appointments and rushed off to the hospital the minute she’d heard he was there? Because he was Erin’s father?

Lute had hitched a ride into toith Ralph He dreaded walking into the Blue Coyote and not seeing Jess there, but he wanted to pick up the fifty dollars that Slade had pro in about the roundup, Will Tyler’s snakebite, and especially the ation Maybe this tiive him a bonus

Slade wasn’t in the bar, but Stella gave Lute a wave and a friendly wink, a sure sign that she had theit cool this time, he sat down at the bar, ordered a beer, and waited for her to coht, prettily plump with lots of uessed she’d probablylike Jess Looking her over, Lute decided to pass on asking her out

Stella ca him the envelope, she whispered in his ear “Wander on back to the office, Lute I’d like a ith you, private like”

The office was down a back hallway past the restrooestion to “wander,” Lute took a moment at the urinal, then came out and sauntered the rest of the way down the hall

There wasn’t much to the office except a locked army-surplus desk with an old desktop computer on it, a spindle of receipts, a couple of wooden chairs, and a dozen cardboard cases of beer and liquor stacked against one wall Lute was standing with his hands in his pockets, wondering if Stellathe door behind her “Have a seat,” she said in a voice that was all business

Fishing a key out of her shirt, she opened a locked drawer and handed Lute the envelope he’d been expecting “Nothing I say leaves this room If it does, I kno to make you very sorry Understand?”

Lute nodded, fingering the edges of the three bills inside the envelope His pulse skittered as he waited for her to speak Was he in so to do with Jess?

“I knohat you do

for Slade to earn this,” she said “Hoould you like to earn more? Say, an extra hundred?”