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“Gun?” Marie looked blank “What kind of gun? Was I supposed to knoas there?”

Stella gave a huff of impatience “Did you see anybody near that drawer? Anybody opening it or taking anything out?”

“No Nigel’s always right there How could anybody even get close?”

“What about when the bar’s closed? Have you heard any noises downstairs? If you’ve let anybody inside, so help me—”

“No!” Marie was all wide, innocent eyes “I’d never do that But I’o under So for un”

Stella scowled, deepening the creases in her heavy makeup “A fine lot of help you are! Letas you’re up, you et dressed andbefore we open, and you can wash the s, too I’ood money to sleep”

“Bitch!” Marie muttered as Stella sashayed back down the hall toward the stairs For two cents she’d tell the woman where she could shove this crappy job But the stakes had beco what she wanted She would have to be patient a little longer

So far she’d been lucky If the gun led the cops to Stella or N

ick, and if either of them was arrested, the door would be open to h She would need to be tough and sht, and she could have it all Make one mistake, and she could end up as dead as her two brothers

Four days after Coy Fletcher’s body was found in the bog, Will sold off two hundred head of Rimrock cattle The buyer was a feed lot owner out of Lubbock, the price so low that it made Will heartsick But at least the money would help feed the rest of the herd for a few extra weeks—ht broke, if it ever did

Was he just throwing good money after bad?

Will asked hi after the sale, sipping his coffee and watching the cruel sun rise over the plains to the east The summer’s heat had sucked every last drop ofsince crumbled to yellow dust Even hardy, deep-rooted trees like the cedars were turning brown and dropping their foliage at a passing touch

Thebreeze stirred the vanes of the old windround well At least there ind But how long would the water last with nothing going down to replenish it? How long could they hold out here if the place beca out of Oklahoma in the 1930s?

A hundred yards beyond the house he could hear the thrum of the backhoe and see the firebreak Beau had put the cowhands to clearing The ht, fro sun beca toil, the eight-foot strip of bare earthsos The ouldn’t be finished until it fronted the eastern approach to the barns and sheds On the west, they would depend on the escarper was even greater But God willing, no fire would be able to jump the rocky, bare escarpment in either direction

On thenews, Will had seen more wildfires, one of them in the next county to the east Ranches had been destroyed, stock lost, and two people killed trying to save their property Would the firebreak be enough to hold back leaping fla out at the seared landscape, he murmured a half-voiced prayer