“Manuel rushed in, shouting when he saw the man and realized …” Melanie gagged a little before regaining control. “The man rammed the knife into Manuel before running out the door. I heard Dad shouting and he shot at the car, but the men got away.”

“The car has a broken taillight now and a broken window,” Judith said. “We saw the glass when we were getting Manuel to the truck to bring him here.” She thought for a moment. “Stewart said the getaway car swerved, and he thinks he might have hit the driver.”

“You’ve never seen the man before?” Jana asked. “Could he be someone who works at another ranch, or someone who used to stop in Bennett and might be doing that again?”

Mother and daughter shook their heads.

Tolya opened the slim leather case he’d brought with him, took out a picture, and set it on the table. “Was this the man who attacked you?”

Melanie stared at the picture. “No. This is the other man, the one who warned him to get out.”

* * *

* * *

Abigail swept and polished and vacuumed. She dusted the blinds and mopped the hallways and cleaned the restrooms in the office building that held a variety of small businesses. She didn’t mind cleaning the offices. At least there weren’t any surprises. The two attorneys who had come to Bennett didn’t keep bowls of tumbled stones on their desks. And the desks intended for their personal assistants didn’t have anything like that either.

Each office was made up of two rooms, and as houses were cleared, the attorneys’ rooms were piling up with boxes that contained documents that might help locate living heirs.

She considered approaching the men and asking if they needed help sorting the mail that was still coming in for Bennett’s previous residents. If someone sorted the personal mail from all the rest, that would be helpful, wouldn’t it?

And seeing the personal mail would help her figure out which cities still had survivors and might be a place where she could disappear if she needed to disappear again.

Out of the corner of her eye, Abigail saw a shape where a shape shouldn’t be. She stumbled back a step, almost getting her feet tangled in the vacuum cleaner’s cord.

“Gods above and below, you scared me,” she said.

Virgil Wolfgard stared at her. “Tolya wants to see you.”

“Why?”

Virgil said nothing.

“I have work to do. We’re all behind today, and I have more offices to clean.” Her heart beat so hard, she wondered if he could hear it.

“They’ll wait. Tolya won’t.”

“I have to tell my boss. I can’t leave work without telling my boss. She’s just down the hall.”

Virgil bared his teeth, revealing fangs that weren’t meant for a human mouth.

Abigail felt a desperate need to pee and wondered what he’d do if she wet herself. Probably wouldn’t matter to him. He’d drag her out of the building and up the street to wherever Tolya waited.

“Let’s go.” Virgil stepped back from the doorway.

She bolted past him, then stopped. “I have to lock up. I have to …”

He grabbed her arm and pulled her down the hallway, down the stairs, and out of the building.

“Why are you angry with me?” she wailed. “I didn’t do anything!”

People—humans—came out of shops and some looked like they might help. Until they saw Virgil, saw the red flickers in the amber eyes—a sign of anger in the Wolfgard. Then they slunk into their shops.

She should have known she wouldn’t get any help from these gutless wonders. Not even Kelley, who came to the door of the jewelry store but didn’t even ask what was going on.

When they reached the Bird Cage Saloon and Abigail saw Jana, she hoped she had at least one ally. But she wished it had been Barb Debany in the saloon instead of Jana. Barb was a sure thing. Jana was still a question mark.

“I have to pee,” she said. “I really have to pee.”

Virgil released her arm and looked at Jana. “Go with her.”

Abigail hustled to keep up with Jana as they headed to the toilets, which were located past the pool table, which she thought was fine for the men, but would the women feel easy about using the facilities when the pool table was in use? In her experience, only rough men—the kind women were smart to avoid—drank and played pool in saloons.

She wasn’t assigned to clean the saloon, so the facilities were an unwelcome surprise. Not individual stalls. It was just a single room with a toilet and sink. She hurried inside and started to close the door, but Jana put her shoulder against it and had a hand on the doorknob.

“I won’t come in with you, but the door has to stay open a little ways,” Jana said.

“What? Why?”

“Abby, if you really have to pee, do it.” There was 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 out and ridden past the newly defined boundaries of the town so that she could look around when she wasn’t alone. And he’d wanted to go out a few blocks beyond the new boundaries to look for any signs that some of that dog pack might have survived. They’d found no sign of dogs. Instead they’d come across two cars full of people who were snooping around some houses, looking for a way inside. The strangers had become wary when they noticed the badge pinned to Jana’s shirt.

She’d been polite about explaining that, despite the civilized trappings, they were standing in the wild country. The strangers hadn’t liked being asked about where they were from and why they were on the outskirts of Bennett instead of coming into town.

They weren’t outlaws or serious looters. For one thing, even the girls—and they were barely old enough that he would call them women—had been half drunk, which meant they’d carried the booze with them or had broken into a house or two already and hauled away some ill-gotten gains. But seeing the way one of the men kept a hand behind his back, Tobias had been sure the man had a gun tucked under his shirt. That didn’t make the man an outlaw, but it did make him a fool’s kind of dangerous.

That was the moment when Mel had begun snorting and dancing and trying to move out despite Jana’s hold on the reins. Having raised and trained the buckskin, Tobias knew the warning signs and knew there was nothing Jana could do, so he had urged his horse forward, leading them to the nearest side street and away from the other people.