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A glance in the ht confirlass or other debris from the collision would have been cleared off the road by the troopers But if the driver had meant to kill Prescott, it et out, and check to make sure he’d finished the job If he’d done that, he would have left tracks

The trouble was, there were plenty of other tracks at the scene Sky identified the standard-issue boots the troopers wore The paramedics usually wore sneakers There’d be no way to tell what footgear the trucker had been wearing except by elimination

The tinder-dry grass on the slopeBut the car had come to rest on a bed of sand, washed down the barrow pit by stor a few feet back, Sky studied the sand

Most of the prints would have beensneakers as well, picking out his tracks would involve calculating which had been made first But no—there would have been two paramedics, and Sky could see now that there were only two sets of sneaker prints, which left—

His heart slammed as he saw it—the narroboy boot print with the pointed toe Here was another one, and another, all but covered by the larger sneaker imprints He’d seen boot tracks like those before, near where Jasper had been shot, and it wasn’t hard to guess who ht have left them But how could the truck driver have been Marie?

Sky forced his sleep-starved mind to concentrate Lauren had mentioned a brown truck The Haskell trucks were brown Stella Rawlins owned Haskell Trucking, and Marie worked for Stella But did Marie kno to drive a see trucks as a murder weapon?

There was a lot he didn’t know about his cousin, Sky reirl he’d left crying in the kitchen the night he ran away

Butabout the boot prints So feet Some were even women He needed more evidence And even if he found it, there were still a lot of questions to be answered

Using his cell phone as a camera, he snapped photos of the tracks, then walked a cautious circle around the Cadillac, taking pictures of the wreck from all sides That done, he headed back up to his pickup

Halfway out of the barrow pit, his eyes glirass There, at his feet, was a cheap cigarette lighter encased in pink plastic, exactly like the one he’d seen Marie use After snapping a photo, he took out his handkerchief and picked it up It was clean and free of dust, which

How hter? It wasn’t final proof, but if Marie had dropped it, the fingerprints should tell the tale

With the lighter safely wrapped in the handkerchief, Sky clihts churned like black dust in a twister as he started the engine and pulled onto the road

He’d been cutting Marie slack froht he’d seen her in the Blue Coyote When she’d bla Jasper, he’d chosen to believe her, and he’d looked the other hen he found the marijuana patch Even when Coy’s body turned up, he’d kept his suspicions secret, telling hiainst her and that the wistful little girl of his childhood memories couldn’t be a murderess

But it was time to face the truth—and time to act on it

Twenty minutes later he arrived at the Rimrock and parked next to Beau’s Jeep He found Beau alone in the kitchen, drinking hiscoffee