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I don't give them Sandy's name, or Penny's, or the information Sandy made Delilah learn. Those aren't mine to hand out.

Raven goes still when I say livestock barn.

"There's an FBI agent on a multi-agency trafficking task force," she says. "Torres. From what I hear, her people took down a cattle operation out west not long ago that was moving women in stock trailers."

She tears the flap off a bill envelope beside her laptop, writes a number on it, and hands it to me. "If Delilah has anything that puts her on those routes, Torres will want to hear it. Nobody around here owns Torres. Whitlock can't buy her."

"It's Delilah's call who hears what she knows."

Raven nods. "Good answer."

Jesse's been looking at my split knuckles. "What are you keeping from her?"

"That's between me and her."

"That's what I figured," he says.

I didn't drive out here to have my own brother read me. "I need a second man in the cedar. Whitlock's got two gates. If his partners drive in the front while a trailer comes in the back, one man can't watch both. Beckett's on the back, and Hector's on mine."

Jesse doesn't even look at Raven first. "When?"

"Every night till a trailer comes. We trade off. I take two nights, and you take the third. You've got a woman here to come home to."

Raven keeps typing. "He does."

"I'll take the front gate, then," Jesse says. "Starting tomorrow."

That's Jesse. He doesn't ask what's in it for him.

I put the envelope flap in my shirt pocket next to Audrey Treadmore's card.

Raven sets the pan of stew in front of me with a spoon in it. "Eat. You look like something Jesse would drag in."

"He looks like me after a bad week," Jesse says.

"That's what I said."

I eat. She's right, and I haven't had a hot meal I didn't cook in days.

When I'm halfway through, Raven sits back with her arms folded. "Can I tell you one thing about your preacher's daughter?"

"You will anyway."

"I will." She doesn't smile. "Your brother decided once that I needed protecting. He hid me out in this cabin to do it, and I let him know exactly what I thought of that."

"I remember," Jesse says.

"If you keep her safe by keeping her in the dark, she'll find out what you kept from her," Raven says. "And she won't care why you did it. She'll care that you decided for her."

I think about the green ledger on the seat of my truck outside. "Noted," I tell her.

Jesse snorts. He knows that's all she's getting out of me.

It's full dark when I get home. Hector's truck blocks the main gate with the dome light off, and he lifts two fingers off the wheel as I pull up.

"Anything?" I ask through my window.

"That gray rental came back by around four. Same plate you sent me. Didn't slow down." He scratches his gray mustache. "No heavy man with a cigar. No preacher. Nobody but Ozzie this morning, and a salesman peddling mineral tubs for cattle, who wanted to know who you buy from now."