Chapter 7: The Girl at the Door

Jarrett was out the back door before I had finished looking at the photo.

He took a flashlight and a pair of boots and no shirt, and I took the other flashlight and followed him.

The night was cold and smelled of cedar.

We walked the fence to the county road with our breath smoking.

At the gravel shoulder there were fresh tire marks and a cigarette butt still warm.

"Somebody sat here an hour," he said.

"Desmond's man."

"Or Desmond."

"He doesn't do his own errands."

"No," Jarrett said, and he picked up the butt with two fingers. "He pays for them."

Odessa met us at the gate in a quilted coat over a nightgown, with a shotgun in the crook of her arm.

"I saw a car," she said. "I've been wanting to shoot at something since August."

"Gran."

"I didn't. I'm very proud."

She looked at my face, and then at his bare chest, and then at the red mark I could feel on my neck.

"Mm," she said. "I'll put coffee on."

We were halfway back up the drive when headlights turned in at the gate.

Jarrett stepped in front of me.

A white sedan rolled to a stop on the gravel, and the engine died, and for a full minute nobody got out.

Then the door opened.

Kiera Tolan stood beside the car in jeans and a grey hoodie, with her chestnut hair down and her face scrubbed bare of makeup.

She looked about nineteen.

She looked terrified.

"I came alone," she said. "I swear it."

"Stay where you are," Jarrett said.

"Let her talk," I said.

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