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Beckett sleeps in my spare room so he can take Whitlock's back gate after dark. I take the main gate from Hector and sit in my truck with the windows down, and every vehicle on the county road gets a long look.

Friday, the day after tomorrow, a Devil's Acre truck is due at Whitlock's restaurant kitchen with a load of beef. I call the kitchen and confirm it like any other delivery, because cancelling would tell him she talked.

The kitchen manager puts me on hold. When she comes back, she says Mr. Whitlock wants to know if I'll be bringing it myself.

"Tell him I wouldn't miss it," I say, and hang up before I say anything else.

A little after noon, my phone buzzes with a text from Audrey Treadmore.

Quit Rusk this morning. Sent his retainer back. I kept a copy of his file. Something in it doesn't sit right.

She quit him and kept his file. She's still working the case, and I don't know yet whose side that puts her on.

I text back.

Bring the file to my gate. Daylight. Alone.

Midafternoon, Nell Yarbrough calls my phone and asks for Delilah. Not me. Delilah.

I walk the phone up to the guest house and knock twice. Delilah opens the door just wide enough to take it, then shuts it in my face and talks to Nell on the other side. When she hands the phone back out, her eyes are wet.

Through the gap, I tell her about Audrey's text, the way I promised. Jesse and Beckett have Whitlock's gates tonight, so I'm staying right here on the ranch.

"Thank you for telling me, “she says, and shuts the door.

A few minutes after Hector takes the main gate back at dusk, Delilah comes up my back steps, punches in the code, and walks into my kitchen. She's in the jeans and the long-sleeved shirt from Beckett's Kerrville bag. Her cuffs are buttoned tight at her wrists.

She goes to the counter, picks up the feed store's carbon order book I keep there for supply orders, and drops it on the table in front of my chair. The store's name is printed across the top of every page.

MAIN STREET FEED & SUPPLY. FREDERICKSBURG, TEXAS.

"I wrote stacks of these behind that counter," she says. "Sit down. I want the paper."

I sit. She sits across from me and pulls the pen out of the spiral at the top.

"Those women at the Farrier wrote down what you can't do. Now I'm writing mine. And I'm not doing it on their form."

"Write," I tell her.

She writes in block capitals, pressing hard enough that the carbon underneath will come out as dark as the top sheet. She turns the book around and slides it across to me.

NO ZIP TIES.

NO GAGS.

NO MASKS. NOT ON ME. NOT ON YOU.

NO RIDING CROPS.

NOBODY WATCHES. NOBODY ELSE TOUCHES ME.

DON'T CALL ME PROPERTY.

NOBODY TOUCHES THE SCARS ON MY WRISTS.

NEVER FACE DOWN. NO WEIGHT ON MY BACK OR MY NECK.

NEVER TELL ME TO KEEP MY EYES DOWN.