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Her porch light stays on. Nothing moves in her window.

At three in the morning, I'm still on the step. She let me inside her, but she turned her face away the second my mouth came near hers. I don't know why. I want to know, and I'm going to earn the right to ask.

5

DELILAH

Iwalk the yard fence barefoot at first light with my left hand trailing along the top rail. Moving is easier than lying in that bed remembering last night.

The fence is white pipe, welded at the joints, and it runs in a long rectangle around the main house and the guest house. The grass is soaked and cold under my feet. The dew on the rail wets the sleeve of Knox's flannel to the elbow.

He spent what was left of the night on his back steps with the rifle across his knees. I know, because I watched him through the gap in my curtain until the sky went gray. When it did, he stood, rolled his shoulders, and drove down to the main gate to take it over from Hector. I'd bet my last good rib he knew I was watching.

My mind keeps going back to his bed anyway. He was inside me, and I was wet and pushing back against him. I wanted every second of it. Then he leaned in to go deeper, and his chest came down on my shoulder and pressed the side of my face into the pillow. The next thing I knew, he wasn't inside me anymore, and he was asking me where I'd gone.

I've had all night to work out the answer. On the worst night in the cigar room, the masked men held me facedown on the stone floor with a hand flat between my shoulder blades. Knox's weight on my shoulder pushed my face down the same way. Before I could think, my body froze and went blank, just like it did on that floor.

He didn't do one thing wrong, so I can't even be mad at him. I can only be mad at them, and at myself.

While I walk, I look for ways out. The guest house has one door, with a window beside it. The bathroom window is painted shut and too small for anything bigger than a barn cat.

The yard fence has one gate, where the drive comes in, and it stands open. Knox's truck will be across the main gate by now, where Hector's was. The back gate past the fight barn is padlocked. That leaves the barbed-wire pasture fences, and anybody willing to climb one can get out. I came over one to get here.

My second time around, I leave the fence and stop at the foot of his back steps. A few hours ago I climbed them in the dark and opened that door without knocking.

In daylight I see what I missed. A black metal bar is bolted across the top of the door frame, and a steel plate on the door lines up with it. A wire runs from the bar into the wall, and a keypad sits beside the knob with a small green light. It's a magnetic lock, which holds a door shut until somebody punches in a code.

When I walked in, that door opened under my hand without any code at all. Knox must have left the lock off so I could get in.

On my way down his hall, I passed a gun safe as tall as I am, dull black, with a keypad of its own. I was holding his hand at the time and didn't stop to look at the safe, but I noticed where it stood. It's on the left, just past the bathroom door.

I go back to the fence. From the corner nearest the horse barn, I can see into the pen built off its side. A bay mare stands with her head hanging over a hay rack that's still half full. While I watch, she lips up a mouthful, chews it a long time, and lets it drop out of her mouth in a wet green wad. The dirt under the rack is littered with them.

Knox's rule was the yard and his back door, and not the barn. I stand at the corner post with my hand on the cold pipe and argue with myself. The rule loses. That mare is sick, and I'm going in.

Then I head to the guest house for boots, because nobody with sense walks barefoot into a pen with half a ton of horse in it. The only boots I have are Royce's. They're in the bottom drawer of the dresser, where Knox said they'd go. I pull them on with no socks and lace them tight. The blood on the toes has dried nearly black.

I take Royce's knife off the table and slide it down the inside of the right boot, against my ankle. On the way out, I lock up and push both keys into the pocket of my sweatpants.

Back at the fence, I have the pen right in front of me. The yard gate is all the way around by the drive, where anybody coming up from the main gate would see me.

The yard fence only comes to my waist. I climb it the slow way, with my left hand on the top rail and my right forearm clamped over my ribs. Halfway over, I say "damn" loud enough that Daddy would have preached on it for a whole Sunday.

Eve broke the only rule she had over a piece of fruit. At least I've got a sick horse for an excuse.

The mare lifts her head when I let myself into the pen and drop the latch. She's a nice-looking bay, brown with a black mane and tail, black legs, and a white snip on her nose. Dried hay is crusted at the corners of her mouth, and her left cheek is puffy.

Someone has screwed a little whiteboard to the gatepost, and it doesn't say a word about her not eating.

SADIE. 2 FLAKES AM. 2 FLAKES PM.

I peel a flake off the hay in her rack, one slab of it, and hold it under her nose. She lips at it and turns her head away. I drop it back in the rack.

"Hey, sugar." I hold out my left hand, and she sniffs my fingers. "Let's see what you've got in there."

I stand at her head on the left side with my wrapped right hand resting on her nose. I don't put my fingers in her mouth. A horse hurting that bad can crush a finger between her back teeth before she knows she's done it.

Instead I run my left hand along the outside of her jaw, slow, from the corner of her mouth back toward her ear. Halfway back, the cheek is hot and puffed up over her upper teeth, and when I press there, she jerks her head away.