Page 99

DELILAH

When I ask Dutch where Hector is, he coughs before he answers. It's the same wet rattle I heard at the top of the cellar stairs the night I killed his brother. That cough is Dutch.

He takes the cigar out of his teeth and looks me over, from my cropped hair down Knox's flannel shirt to my sneakers. A pistol rides in a holster on his right hip.

The equipment shed throws a long shadow across the caliche, the crushed white rock that paves the whole drive.

"Old man's inside," he says. "You come up, he comes down."

"He comes down first."

"That's not how this works."

"It's how it works tonight." I keep my hands loose at my sides, where he can see them. "I'm not taking one step past this shed until Hector walks out that gate."

Dutch puts the cigar back between his teeth and grins around it. His front teeth are stained brown. "You're a long way from your boyfriend's ranch, preacher's girl."

I turn my back on him and start walking back toward the shut gate.

I'm betting Dutch needs me inside worse than he needs a beat-up old ranch hand. If I'm wrong, I say Bandera at that gate, and Torres comes for Hector without me.

"Hold up."

I keep walking.

"I said hold up, damn it."

I stop and turn around, but I don't walk back.

Dutch has a cheap black flip phone in his hand. He thumbs it on, and the little screen glows green.

Torres has the phone company watching the prepaid number that texted Hector's picture to Audrey. If that's the phone in Dutch's hand, they'll flag it the second it powers on.

Dutch puts the phone to his ear. "Bring the old man down." He listens. "Because I said so. Mr. Whitlock wants her inside before dark, and she's being particular."

Up the hill, a vineyard utility cart comes around the end of the tasting room and bounces down the drive toward us.

A young man in a straw hat drives it with a rifle across his knees. Hector sits slumped beside him on the bench seat, with his wrists zip-tied in his lap.

The cart stops beside the shed, and I walk back up to meet it.

The left side of Hector's face is swollen purple, and that eye is shut. Dried blood crusts his gray mustache. He's wearing a canvas jacket with one sleeve torn off at the shoulder.

He looks at me with his good eye, and his chin starts to shake.

"Ma'am," he says. "You shouldn't be here."

"Neither should you." I look at Dutch. "Cut him loose."

Dutch snaps the phone shut and drops it in his jacket. A folding knife comes out, and he saws through the zip tie.

Hector rubs his wrists and climbs down off the cart, slow, with one hand on the seat back.

"Hector, I'm so sorry," I tell him. "They took you because of me."

"No, ma'am." He says it loud enough for Dutch to hear every word. "You didn't put me in that cell. These men did. I've known those Hollister boys since before they could sit a horse, and I've seen what they do to men who come after their own." He turns his good eye on Dutch. "Whoever did this to me ought to be scared."

"They had me in a cell with a crooked drain," he says. He doesn't bother to lower his voice. "There's three girls down there tonight. One of them's the girl from my ditch. She rode up here with me in the back of the truck they hauled me off in. They made her cry in that ditch so I'd leave the gate to help her."