Wild Country (The World of the Others #2)- Anne Bishop Page 0,31

humans, both as customers and employees.

—Simon and Vlad

Messis 9

To: Tolya Sanguinati, Urgent

The Hope pup drew the attached picture. I don’t know what it means, except that it is a warning meant for you and Virgil.

—Jackson Wolfgard

CHAPTER 11

Thaisday, Messis 9

Abigail made her voice and hands shake a little as she set the plate of scrambled eggs and toast in front of Kelley. She’d spent two days pleading with him to look at the house she wanted, and when he finally did go with her, all he’d said was, “If that’s what you want.”

He still loved her—or his memory of her—enough to move into the house. But she’d read the tarot cards last night and they indicated that he wouldn’t be staying very long.

“Do you want me to pack you a lunch?” she asked after fetching him a glass of orange juice.

He watched her, the food on his plate untouched. “Why are you doing this, Abby? Why do we need a house this size?”

They didn’t need a house this size. She didn’t need a house this size. But she did need her friendly neighbor who would unwittingly help her solidify her sweet Abigail persona, regardless of what Kelley might tell people.

“Why are you volunteering to sort through other people’s things? You always claimed you were extrasensitive to the residue other people left on objects, and that was the reason everything we owned, even stuff that was brand-new, had to be washed and set out in the sun before you could stand having it in the house. Books you got out of the Prairie Gold library were ‘aired’ before you could read them. And now you’re going to put in forty hours a week pawing through things owned by strangers who were killed by the terra indigene?”

“It has to be done.”

“A few days ago, you were willing to clean any kind of commercial building in order not to clear out private residences, and suddenly you’re okay with it?” Kelley pushed aside the plate of food. “I can’t tell if you’re lying to yourself as well as to me, but I’m pretty sure you’re lying to me, if not now, then before when you made such a fuss about things.”

“I’ve never lied to you.” Well, he hadn’t caught her in a lie until now.

“Fine. You’re not lying; you’re just being less than truthful. Does that sound better?” His voice had an edge it had never had before. “The point is, I’m not sure I want to live with less than truthful anymore.”

“We were happy in Prairie Gold!” she cried.

“You were.” He pushed away from the table. “I have to get to work.”

“But you haven’t eaten anything!”

He didn’t reply—and he didn’t kiss her before he left the house.

Abigail stared at the eggs and toast a full minute before she sat down, pulled the plate over to her place at the table, and began to eat with a gusto she couldn’t have shown if Kelley were still there.

Fetching the jar of strawberry jam that she’d opened the other day, she slathered jam generously over one piece of toast.

She had used her real name when she and Kelley had married, just in case she needed the marriage to be legitimate, and when she’d realized the name had meant nothing to him, she’d felt staggering relief. He’d seen himself as the hero rescuing the maiden from her abusive father. He would have started questioning things a lot sooner if he’d known her father was the leader of a clan of Intuits who gambled and swindled and conned everyone they met. They would roll into a town, pluck all the prey they could, and then move on before the law got a little too interested in them and their deals. And they always had a feeling about when it was time to move on, just like one or another of them knew who to play for the biggest score.

No one knew they were Intuits, because they had avoided Intuit towns. But anyone who did learn that little secret …

She never found out how her father had arranged the evidence to finger a man addled by drink as the person who killed a deputy in a small West Coast town. The man was a drunk who could barely hold a knife to cut his own dinner and certainly didn’t have the skill to do … what the newspapers said had been done to the deputy. The lawman had died because he was sweet on her—and she’d told him the family’s