Sophie turned from the sink when I hit the last creaky stair tread. Her eyes zeroed in on the bag. “How many times do I have to tell you? I can do your laundry.”
“It’s not laundry. I’m going out for a little while to shoot.”
“Good thing Hope isn’t here to see you hauling around a bag of guns, eh?”
“Probably.”
“She still has nightmares,” Sophie said.
My hand momentarily stilled on the shoulder strap of my little black bag of death. I turned away and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. As I uncapped it and drank, my neck burned from Sophie’s hawklike eyes boring into me. I couldn’t blame her for her overprotective instinct when it came to my little sister. We all felt sickened and guilty for what’d happened years ago, and yes, I knew Hope still had nightmares. We all did.
Sophie made a harrumphing noise. “You’re exactly like your father when it comes to dealing with stuff, Mercy. Anyway, I wanna ask you about something else.”
I faced Sophie and couldn’t keep the grumpiness at bay. “What?”
“You thought any more about talking to Estelle? She called me at home last night.”
“About what?”
“About you helping find out what happened to Albert.”
I forced myself to count to ten. “No, I haven’t thought about it. I don’t know why she’s pestering you anyway. Why does it matter that Albert was found on our land?”
“Mebbe she sees it as your land, your responsibility.”
“Have her take her concerns to Dawson. That’s his job-his responsibility-not mine. Besides, it’s not like I don’t have enough to do around here.”
“You?” Sophie’s eyebrows lifted. “And here I thought you was passing everything off to my poor, overworked grandson, eh?”
“You really want to get into Jake’s job description with me, Sophie?”
She sighed. “I don’t know what happened to you, Mercy. Now you and Jake don’t talk about nothing.”
“So?”
“So, you never used to be like this.”
“Like what?”
“Cold. Hard. Mean. Unforgiving.”
Sophie and Hope knew how to push my buttons. Rather than take the high road, I loomed over her. “I’m exactly who I always was, so don’t go coloring the past rosy and painting me as some Pollyanna who turned evil when I left the stabilizing influences of home and hearth. I’ve had darkness and secrets inside me since the day my mother died. The only difference is now I don’t try to hide them.”
A bleak expression flitted through her black eyes.
I didn’t feel like appeasing her. And I sure as hell wasn’t about to explain myself any more than I already had. “Forget it. I’ll be back later.”
Sophie gave me one last wounded look before she returned to the dirty breakfast dishes.
The ATVs were missing, which meant Jake and the ranch hands weren’t around. He’d left my dad’s old Ford 250 diesel backed up to the barn door. Too much trouble to unload the posthole digger, roll of barbed wire, and assorted tools cluttered in the truck bed. I shinnied up the thick nylon rope dangling from the rafters in the barn. From the open hayloft door, I heaved a hay bale on top of everything and rappelled down.
In the pasture, I maneuvered the truck around rock piles and holes, swerving hard to avoid a rusted car door from a ’57 Buick propped up like the start of Carhenge, the quirky tourist spot in Nebraska, where a few enterprising farmers had replicated Stone-henge-not with stones, but with vintage, American-made cars.
Tacky? Maybe. But not nearly as bad as the tourist trap that is Graceland.
Out here the vegetation was fairly high, indicating this section hadn’t been grazed recently. From a distance, pockets of orangish-red and brown soil were laced with drought-resistant tallgrass; blue grama, fescue, prairie dropseed, and the slender green stems of quack grass. Up close, the shorter buffalo grass spread out as a spotty carpet of gray-green sod. Velvety-soft lamb’s ear plants ringed large and small clumps of silver sagebrush. Yucca spikes poked up intermittently. When the fat, dried yucca seedpods shook in the wind, it sounded like dozens of rattlesnakes coiled in wait.
In the grove of half-dead elm trees, I parked beneath the largest one, not for shade, but to stand on the cab roof to reach the branches. Climbing trees wasn’t a hobby left over from my tomboy years; it kept me agile, kept my senses sharp. In my line of work, a clear shot was a rarity. Preparation for every contingency was a necessity.
I unwrapped a package of neon orange targets, small dots the size of a dime. When I’d scattered twenty targets, I cracked the case for my H-S Precision takedown rifle. I swapped out the modified barrel and was good to go.
No sunglasses, no cap to shade my eyes from the morning sun. Just me, my gun, and my scope. If I missed a shot, I couldn’t blame it on anything besides my shitty marksmanship.
That familiar tickle started low in my belly. Fear. Anticipation. Confidence.
It’d taken longer to set up the course than to empty the magazine. My self-assurance deflated when I studied the targets. Berating myself, I disassembled the rifle and packed it away. As I readied my handgun, a 9 mm Browning High Power, I knew my ego needed better than 50 percent accuracy, especially when I was used to 95 percent.
Tires crunching on bone-dry vegetation signaled unwanted visitors. A burgundy Dodge Silverado dually crept toward me. No clue who these people were. With a body discovered a week ago, I wasn’t taking chances. I slammed a full clip in the gun, letting it dangle by my side.
My face remained neutral. My body appeared loose-limbed and relaxed. Inside I was wound tight as a new ball of baling twine.
The door opened. Bluish-white ostrich-skin cowboy boots thumped on the chrome running board. I gave a mental whistle. Those babies were high-end Lucchese boots, if I wasn’t mistaken. I tamped down my envy as my mystery guest hopped down. He kept his back and the brim of his silver Stetson to me as he slammed the door.
When he faced me I groaned. Kit McIntyre. Real estate tycoon wannabe. My gaze flicked over the shiny truck. More than a wannabe if he could afford to drop $65K on a rig and $3K on boots. Still, he was a pain in my ass. He claimed a friendship with my father that Dad hadn’t appreciated or reciprocated.
Old Kit had cotton white hair and a matching goatee. Add in his rotund carriage and he was the bastard child of Boss Hogg and Colonel Sanders-a description Kit wouldn’t find the least bit distasteful. He even wore an off-white western suit with a bolo tie, and a silver-studded white leather belt with a buckle the size of my great-grandma’s prized silver serving tray.
The passenger door opened. Hiram “Hi” Blacktower scrambled around the front end. Hi, a Lakota Sioux man, was tall as a spruce, broad as a barn, and dumb as a turkey. Dad always said Hi would be dangerous if he had any ambition. It appeared his ambition was to be a carbon copy of Kit. Hell, they’d even dressed the same.
Kit grinned at me. “We was wondering if we’d ever find ya, Mercy. Whatcha doing all the way out here by yourself?”
“Target shooting.” I lifted the gun. Neither of them had noticed it. Kit’s name fit: he had the survival instincts of a kitten.
“Is that military issue?” Hi asked.
“Nope. Personal. Why?”
“My brother Josiah was in the Gulf War, and he had a gun like that before…”
Before coming home a broken man in a wheelchair, courtesy of a land mine. My father had been freaked out about Josiah’s injury when I accidentally let it slip I’d been in that exact area right before that particular bloody offensive.
“Anyway, it’s good to see you, Mercy,” Hi said.
“How’d you know where to look?”
“Sophie was kind enough to point us your direction.”
Sophie earned herself a free ass chewing. “So, why are you guys trespassing? No one would blame me if I shot first, given all that’s happened round here in the last month.”