a hurtful sharpness in Jana’s voice.
“I guess being a friend doesn’t count for much here.”
Jana didn’t respond to the verbal jab, confirming that the deputy wasn’t as gullible as her housemate.
She did what she had to because she really had to. When she tugged on the door to exit, Jana released her hold on the doorknob but looked ready to ram the door if Abigail tried to lock herself in.
“Why is everyone being so mean?”
“No one is being mean,” Jana replied. “Just cooperate, okay? We believe you can answer some questions about an attack on a ranch early this morning.”
“An attack? But I was home until I reported to work. Ask Kelley. He’ll tell you.” He might not have come to her rescue just now, but he wouldn’t lie to get her in trouble. Not with the Sanguinati or the Wolves.
“No one thinks you were there, just that you have some answers.”
Jana escorted her to the table farthest from the saloon’s entrance, where Tolya waited. Abigail sat in the chair opposite the Sanguinati while Jana took the seat beside her. Virgil stood behind her, and every breath he took felt like a threat.
She’d been this scared at other times in her life, but she’d always managed to keep her nerve enough to get out of trouble. She’d keep her nerve this time too.
A sheet of paper lay in the center of the table. Tolya turned it over and pushed it toward her, saying nothing.
He didn’t have to say anything. She’d seen a drawing like this before when Jesse Walker had been asking about fortune-telling cards and she’d shown Jesse and Shelley Bookman her decks of tarot cards.
“The blood prophet drew this, didn’t she?” Abigail said, her voice barely loud enough to be heard by sharp ears.
“Yes,” Tolya replied.
Bitch. No denying that she was the woman in the drawing.
Tolya leaned forward and tapped the other figure. “Who is he, Abigail?”
Do you know what we do to traitors, to anyone who talks about the clan?
She remembered the man her father and uncle had brought in to do a job with them. She remembered what had happened to him after the job because he’d drunk too much and talked too much, telling secrets to the whore he’d bounced on that night.
She remembered her father’s hands on her shoulders, holding her in the chair, while Judd McCall—the one some of her father’s associates called the Knife, the one she had feared even more than her father—unwrapped a stained handkerchief and showed her the traitor’s tongue.
“A man who was with him attacked a young woman and stabbed a ranch hand who came to her aid,” Jana said. “You can’t protect him, Abby.”
Do you know what we do to anyone who talks?
“They’ll kill me if I tell,” she whispered.
“Based on this picture, we can guess who he is, but we need a name,” Jana persisted. “We need his name, Abby.”
She could claim she didn’t know, couldn’t be sure. He’d been nineteen the last time she’d seen him and still had a bit of a baby face. That softness was gone now—at least in the picture.
“You can tell us, or you can be on the next train out of Bennett,” Tolya said.
“To where?”
They didn’t answer.
Abigail shuddered. She’d already told them some things about her family, but naming individuals, identifying individuals …
The Knife, the man she feared more than her father, had rubbed that severed tongue over her lips, pressed it against her mouth—then stepped away as she vomited on herself, her father’s hands not allowing her to lean forward and puke on the floor.
“Dalton,” she finally said. “That’s my brother, Dalton Blackstone.”
* * *
* * *
Businesses were blooming like flowers after a good rain.
Tobias put the large pizza and sandwiches on the passenger seat of his pickup, then looked around the town square.
Was the town blooming too fast? A month ago there had been fewer than a hundred people, mostly young men looking for adventure and opportunities. They had ignored any squeamishness they had felt about coming to a place like Bennett and had focused on the chance to learn a trade or run their own businesses. Bennett was an empty place that could be filled, and it seemed like there were new people arriving by car or train every day—and humans were quickly outnumbering the terra indigene who were, in a very real sense, the only protection these newcomers had against what lived beyond the town’s lights.
Just that afternoon, he and Jana had taken the horses