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  "No," she said firmly. "We're both staying here. If they try to come in we'll defend ourselves, but we're not going to start anything."

  "They started it," her son retorted.

  "Cal…” Myra warned, and she felt a whoosh of air as the boy turned impatiently away. She returned her gaze to the window and wondered what, if anything would be stolen tonight. When Darwin died there had been just two studs left on the farm. Now there were none. A mere three days after his funeral the two studs were stolen sometime during the night. Myra called the town law official in, but he'd been nervous and uncertain about what to do, proving her suspicions that he was more of a local figurehead than an actual authority. The next morning she and Cal had awoken to find Darwin's last two brood mares and even the saddle horses gone.

  She decided to bypass the local idiot and call the county sheriff when she discovered the phone lines had been cut. She waited at the box on the road for the mailman and told him about the problem) he called it in for her and the lines were repaired, only to be cut again the following night, along with Cal's dog, a big red Irish setter the same age as her son. Myra never heard back from the sheriff. And she hadn't seen the mailman since.

  She felt as if she and Cal were being toyed with by someone and she wished to God she could just pack up and leave tomorrow. But she couldn't. Darwin had left her twenty thousand dollars in his will, enough to start a new life elsewhere, but she wouldn't receive the money until the maturity date on the C.D. Only then, according to the attorney, would it become hers.

  So she had to wait. She had enough money to feed them until the certificate matured in August, but the radiator repairs would have to wait until then, and how could she feed them if she couldn't get into town because of the radiator?

  Myra wanted to shriek in frustration. For the first time in her life she actually felt the need to depend on a man. Darwin's son would do, if only he would arrive. He was a cop, or an ex- cop, rather. With him around, Myra was certain the terrorist acts of the last seven days would cease. He probably wouldn't stay, once he saw the shape the place was in. The farm had been failing for the last year, along with Darwin's health, and there was little left for Vic Kimmler to inherit but the land, the house, and his father's big black Lincoln Continental, useless in the garage since the accident that caused Darwin's first stroke.

  None of this would be worth much in the sparsely populated prairie-desert of western Kansas. People weren't exactly rushing out to isolate themselves from the civilized world. Why Darwin ever stayed continued to mystify Myra. He'd said his people were born and buried here, but that meant nothing to her. Those who wanted to use his stud services, mostly from New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, had been forced to drive inconvenient and often foolhardy distances to do so. And now that the horses were gone there would be no income from that area. Vic Kimmler knew nothing about farming, livestock, or land management, so his only choice, as far as Myra could see, was to try and sell the place and take what he could get.

  She would even suggest it to him, when and if he ever showed up. She was positive the attorney had given today's date. Of course anything could have happened since then, since her phone had been rendered useless and since she had become a prisoner of sorts in her own home. He may have tried to contact her…but somehow she doubted it.

  She received the impression that she and Cal were looked upon as little more than parasites by the Garden City attorney. In Denke it was no different. Even after two years people still stared at her and whispered as she passed. The women shunned her and the men merely grunted. It was the same in every small town, she realized, but she was sick of being an outsider. She wanted to take Cal and run for the nearest big city. Somewhere Patrick's mother would never find them. For all Myra knew, and she did have her suspicions, her manipulating former mother-in-law was behind all of this. She wouldn't put it past—

  To her left, a door clicked shut. Myra whirled from the window. "Cal?"

  There was no answer. Myra groped for the wall and flicked on the light above the sink. On the bar separating the kitchen from the living area lay Darwin's pistol. Cal and the shotgun were gone.

  "Dammit!" Myra turned off the light and snatched up the pistol. As she slipped out the door she caught a glimpse of white T-shirt, Cal's, moving toward the house. She hurried after him, afraid to call out and attract unwanted attention, but more afraid of what would happen if she didn't catch up and stop him.

  Halfway between the house and her mobile home a pair of blinding headlights froze her in her tracks. When she heard the revving of an engine she shouted for Cal to run. The car shot across the ground toward her, and still blind, she raised the pistol and began firing in the direction of the headlights.

  After firing four rounds she felt the air leave her lungs as someone rammed into her and sent her rolling across the gravel drive. The left front tire of the car passed within a foot of her worn running shoes as she rose up, gasping and blinking. Cal scrambled to stand beside her and pointed the shotgun as the car spun around in front of the house and headed back toward them. The kick of unleashing both barrels sent his wiry frame crashing back into Myra, causing her to nearly bite through her lower lip. One headlight gone, the car swerved and sprayed both of them with gravel as they scooted back on hands and feet over the sharp-edged rocks. The car continued to swerve, as if it were out of control, then it suddenly straightened and sped down the drive toward the road.

  Mother and son watched breathlessly, waiting for the next assault. When it didn't come, Cal got slowly to his feet and extended a hand to help Myra.

  "Did you see who it was?" she gasped.

  "No. Did you?"

  "I was too busy peeing my pants," she said. "What kind of car do you think it was?"

  "I don't know. A big one. Maybe a Cadillac?"

  Myra shook her head and filled her lungs. "Don't ask me. I don't know cars." She turned to look at the house. "If they weren't here to steal Darwin's satellite dish or things in the house, what do you suppose they were doing?"

  "I didn't say they were in the house," Cal clarified. "I said they were by the house. I don't know what they were doing. Just sitting in the car and watching, I guess. I wonder why they came after you and not me."

  Myra thought she knew the answer, but she said nothing. If Patrick's mother was indeed behind this, then Myra was the target, not Cal. Once she was out of the way...

  "Let's go in now," she said suddenly. "I really did pee my pants and I'm bleeding in a dozen different places from that gravel. Are you okay?"

  "Fine," Cal said. He took her by the arm and began walking toward the trailer. "I think we surprised 'em with the firepower. I know you busted the windshield, but I got the headlight."

  That reminded Myra. "I ought to kick your behind for going out in the first place. I said no and I meant it. Both of us could've been killed."

  "You're shaking," Cal observed.

  "No kidding," Myra said. "I mean it, Cal. No more playing commando with these people. This isn't a game."

  "I know that, Mom. But I feel better. I feel like we did something. Don't you?"

  Myra hurried their steps. "I feel like we took a stupid risk and barely escaped being fly fodder in the drive. I've got strawberries all the way up my thigh and I think I bit my lip in two."

  Cal chuckled and she turned and lightly smacked his arm. "Don't you dare laugh at me."

  He opened the trailer door for her and stood back to let her enter. "I wasn't laughing at you. I was just thinking of how you looked when you were facing down that car and firing that pistol. I wish I had it on camera. You reminded me of..." He paused as Myra turned on the living-room light and drew a sharp breath. When she didn't say anything, he pushed her aside.

  Myra was already backing away from the blood and trying to wipe it from her feet at the same time. The goat's entrails were everywhere. She glanced instinctively at the phone on the kitchen bar and saw that the Formica surface of the bar was smeared with blood. Someo
ne had sliced open the nanny and dragged the bleeding carcass around her home, making sure that everything, even the walls, was splattered with blood. And they had done it in the short time that she and Cal had been outside.

  How? Her horrified mind asked. Why?

  "Mom," Cal whispered. "Are there any rounds left in the pistol?"

  She blinked. Of course. The person responsible could still be inside her house, hiding somewhere.

  Sucking the fresh blood on her lower lip, Myra stepped over the carnage on the floor and made her way across the living room and through the kitchen to the hall. Cal came behind her, holding the empty shotgun in front of him to swing like a club if necessary.

  The bathroom and both bedrooms had been subjected to the same bloody treatment. Myra looked immediately at the mirror above her dresser, half-expecting to see a message written there. There was nothing but blood, blood, and more blood. While bending down to look under her bed, nausea caught up with her. She stayed bent over for several minutes, while Cal made sympathetic noises and held her hair away from her face. When she was finished, he said, "I don't think anyone's here. If you're going to be all right I'll start cleaning some of this up."

  "No," Myra said quickly. "We can't stay here tonight, Cal. I can't stay here. We'll sleep in the big house and come back in the morning."

  Cal nodded and wiped a line of perspiration from his forehead. Myra saw that now he was taking this seriously, even more seriously than when his dog had been killed.

  "Why, Mom?" he asked. "Why are they doing this?"

  "I don't know, Cal," she said in a quiet voice. "But I've changed my mind about one thing. Starting tomorrow, I think both of us should be armed at all times."

  CHAPTER 3

  It appeared Nolan had been suckered after all, Vic thought, but not by him. Sometime between last night and this morning Christa had managed to wrap the grumbling bastard around her little finger. Nolan actually offered to pay for a trip to Boot Hill and the other attractions before heading west. That had been Vic's first clue, but the real evidence of Nolan's suckered state revealed itself when he acted out a noisy shoot-em-up with the girls in front of the Long Branch Saloon. When he offered to buy the girls cowboy hats, Vic had to put his foot down. He owed his ex-partner too much as it was. The favors had to stop somewhere.

  While watching Nolan's comic gun slinging antics it occurred to Vic that beneath the hard-muscled chest of the ex-college athlete beat the heart of a prankish, fun-loving kid no older than Andy. It was difficult to reconcile that image of Nolan with the stone-faced, brick-fisted cop Vic had worked with on the force. Now, as he eyed the relaxed profile and the bandaged hands on the wheel of the Buick, he wondered if it was the kid in Nolan—the one who played dead so convincingly after Andy shot him at crotch level—that resisted commitment and responsibility and enjoyed being an all around screw-up.

  Nolan had a lot of fun, and there were times when Vic envied him his life, but more often than not he couldn't understand it. Nolan seemed to enjoy being a lone Wulf. He loved women, but he also loved to punish them. He was a prince until they were in love with him then he either dumped them or screwed someone else until they found out about it and dumped him. Vic had seen it happen a dozen times. The only thing he wasn't sure of was whether Nolan's behavior was conscious or unconscious. After Nolan shat on two of Connie's friends, she refused to let Vic introduce him to any more of her buddies. Vic hadn't blamed her.

  Still, all idiotic tendencies aside, Nolan Wulf was the man to call when you needed a friend. And Vic needed one. There had been low points in his life before, but for the last two years he'd been buffing floors with his ass in hell's basement. He had broken the habit of telling himself things couldn't get much worse. His life was living proof that they could.

  And okay, he had made some stupid mistakes—the coke, especially—but in the account books of karmic debt he thought he should be nearing the black any time now. He hoped he was, anyway. There had been a few rays of light to give him such hope. His father for instance. He and his dad had hardly been what anyone would call close, but the old man had left the farm to him in his will. And the attorney's call came the same day the bank announced foreclosure proceedings would begin on his and Connie's house. If that wasn't the hand of fate, Vic didn't know what was. The attorney mentioned that his father wanted him to sell the place and take the money, was in fact adamant about it, but Vic couldn't see it. He couldn't see anything but a way to escape.

  After calling Nolan he quit his job as chief of security in a central shopping mall and told the girls' babysitter he wouldn't need her anymore. Leaving the house wasn't a problem; there were too many memories there to drag him down and fill up his chest every time he woke up in bed alone or opened the wrong side of the closet. Leaving the city was even less of a problem. He couldn't survive on what the mall paid him, and unlike Nolan, his dismissal from the force carried a stigma that told all prospective employers: Don't trust this guy.

  It was terrible being branded, but it was his fault. Now his father had unwittingly given him the means to start with a new slate. Nobody in Denke knew him. The house was paid for, was his. The attorney even mentioned something about a car. But most important, be wouldn't see Connie's face in every corner of every room, he wouldn't hear her voice, smell her smell, or remember how thin and pitiful she was in the last months of her life. Everything but a few personal items he was saving for the girls had been sold to cover debts.

  Vic wanted to remember only the good things about his life with Connie. Somehow, far away from familiar streets and familiar faces, he knew there would be no more bad dreams. No more falling apart in the middle of a sentence or during a favorite song. No more aching, wondering, and worrying if he was doing right by his girls and being an acceptable if not necessarily good father. He wanted to be good. He wanted to make this farm thing work and rebuild their lives again. He wanted—

  "Fuck," Nolan spat. "I think we're lost."

  Vic frowned at him and inclined his head toward the back seat. "Watch the language, pal."

  "Sorry," was the muttered reply. "Get the mother freakin’ map out and tell me where the hell I am. I think I missed our turn back there."

  He did, and they were forced to backtrack twelve miles until they found the right county road. There weren't many of them to choose from; the isolation was in fact overwhelming, but Vic assured him it was an honest mistake. Nolan blamed it on Andy's gibberish about the big fat cloud in the sky that looked like an old man walking a dog. He'd been looking for the dog, he explained.

  Vic glanced at the sky and found it filled with white-topped, pewter-bellied thunderheads. There was a lot of sky to see out here with no mountains, no hills, and very few trees to obstruct the view. The prairie, he thought, and for a moment he imagined a plodding band of horses and wagons trekking across the flat expanse. Men, women, and children with dirty faces rocked against the rumbling crawl of the wagons and flared their nostrils at the smell of sweating horses and their own heated bodies. A small boy hung out of the back on one wagon and stared with dark, dreaming eyes at the sky above.

  He blinked away the vision and looked at the land with new interest. The colors were surprising. Bright yellow sunflowers bordered the road, and the buffalo grass, dying in the drought, seemed to turn a dark cinnamon color when a cloud obscured the sun. Even the sky seemed bluer here, the kind of blue the word-makers had in mind when they'd come up with the word azure. It was clean and clear and infinite.

  "Pretty, isn't it?" he said aloud. "This is where the buffalo used to roam, girls."

  Nolan smiled and sang a few bars of "Home on the Range."

  "Go on," Christa said when he stopped. "What's the rest of the song?"

  "You mean you don't know it?" Nolan asked. He scowled and looked at Vic. "What the hell are they teaching 'em to sing now?"

  Andy promptly launched into a tuneless version of her favorite pop song, until Nolan promised her a candy bar to shut up.
/>   "I hate that shit," he said. "I—" Nolan paused when he saw Vic glaring at him. "Sorry. I keep forgetting."

  Andy made a face. "Does that mean we shouldn't like songs on the radio?"

  "No," Vic said, still looking at Nolan. "Like what you want, Andy. Don't let other people influence you. Make up your own mind."

  "I like what Uncle Nolan likes," Andy responded and Nolan grinned at Vic.

  Vic shook his head and turned his gaze back to the road. He immediately started and gave a yell as Nolan nearly drove past the weather beaten sign and the turn off for Denke.

  "Relax," Nolan said after an axle-grinding turn. "I'm on top of it."

  Christa sat up. "Can we take the car top down? I want to ride through town with the top down. Can we?"

  Vic shrugged at Nolan's look. "It's up to you. It's your car."

  "Okay," Nolan said. "I need to get rid of some Pepsi anyway."

  "What?" Andy said as the Buick slowed and rolled onto the side of the road.

  "He has to pee," Christa translated.

  "Oh." Andy was disappointed. "I thought he was going to throw away some Pepsi. I'm thirsty."

  "Maybe we can stop somewhere in town," Vic said. "I could use something cold myself." He was hoping against hope that there was still some canned food in his dad's house. He had exactly five hundred dollars to get them started out here. He thought he might sell one of the studs for seed money and go from there, just playing everything by ear until he knew what he was doing. If worse came to worse, he could always try to hire on somewhere in town or on someone's farm until he was on his feet again. He was still under forty and in relatively good shape. Not as good shape as Nolan, perhaps, but he could hold his own.