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The horse, which I could see in the moonlight midway across the pasture, picked his head up.

I held out the hay for him, and he slowly started to amble toward me.

He got to me, then started eating as if his life depended on it.

I stayed with him for a long time, allowing him to eat all the hay out of the bucket.

However, the longer he ate, the more nervous that I got.

He did, however, allow me to loop the rope around his neck.

When he’d eaten all the hay that I had for him, I gave him the bucket of water. Which he sucked down, too.

It was just as I started to coax him out of the gate that a light flicked on in the house, making my heart skip a beat.

“Come on,” I said as I gathered the buckets and the rope. “We gotta get out of here.”

He allowed me to get him out of the yard, then followed me dutifully down the road.

But he was slow as molasses.

I guess that was what happened when you were starved.

I was patient with him, but soon I realized that I had a predicament.

I couldn’t take him back to my place.

To do that would almost certainly mean that I’d get arrested. That would be the first place they would look.

However, if I took him to a certain Dixie Warden president’s house…

I pulled out my phone and started the direction back to Denver’s place.

I winced when I saw that it was a two-hour walk.

But since I didn’t have a damn trailer, there wasn’t an easier way.

Plus, based on the sirens that I could hear in the distance, we’d been discovered.

I looked behind me, making sure we weren’t leaving a trail, and breathed out a sigh of relief.

At least it hadn’t snowed since the road had been plowed.

Otherwise, they’d know exactly where I’d gone.

Sixteen

Not to suck my own nipple or anything, but what you have with me is rare, and you’ll never do better.

—Text from Jessamy to Black

Black

I’d never gone home.

First off, I’d had a homicide to investigate and a hit-and-run that had happened right before I’d planned on going to Jessamy’s place.

And I would be going to Jessamy’s place…eventually.