Page 93

"You had what you had."

"That is not the same as having enough."

I signed.

He collected the paper.

"File's closed," he said. "Both of them, as far as you're concerned. Should've been sooner."

Closest thing to an apology the county had ever given Boone Calloway.

I put on my hat.

"Find Derek," I said.

"I intend to."

"Find Josie."

His gaze held mine. "The moment I can put a vehicle on that road without burying it."

Not enough.

Cash opened the outer door, and the storm took the rest of the conversation.

Snow moved sideways down Main Street in hard white sheets. The Bluebird across the road existed only when the wind eased, its neon a faint red blur. Marnie's small shape crossed once behind the front window, coffee pot in hand, back at work.

Cash had brought one of the ranch trucks. Chains lay in the bed.

I drove.

The town limits disappeared before we reached them. Reflector posts appeared one at a time, bent under snow, then went out behind us. The wipers worked at full speed and still carried a ridge of ice along the passenger side.

Cash leaned forward, one hand braced on the dash.

"Fence."

I corrected left.

Thirty seconds later, the truck dropped a tire into the shoulder rut and climbed back out. No edge to the road. No sky. Headlights reached twenty feet and struck nothing but white moving fast.

Josie was somewhere in the same blindness.

Every dark shape became her Ford.

Every break in the wind became headlights.

Nothing stayed long enough to be real.

At the cattle guard, I nearly passed the ranch entrance. Biscuit appeared first, gray shape leaping beside the fence, and I swung toward her bark.

The yard had lost its geography.

Snow buried the usual tracks and flattened every distance. Trucks sat nose-out with chains on all four. Men moved through the white leading pairs toward shelter, faces wrapped, bodies bent into the wind. A newborn calf bawled from somewhere near the barn, thin and angry. Another voice answered from the close-up pen.

Wyatt stood beneath the barn light with a yellow pad in one fist and snow packed along the brim of his clean hat.

He shouted before I got the door open.