Chapter 9: Heartbeat

Boone walked up to the gray pickup and stopped an arm's length from the man in the suede jacket.

"Dalton's half is his half," he said. "I don't answer for it."

"Don't have to, son." The man smiled. "He told me you would."

"Did he."

"Said by spring this whole place would be his."

"A man in my business likes to be paid by a man who owns things."

Beside me, Boone went very still.

It was a small stillness, and nobody else would have seen it.

I saw it.

"By spring," Boone said evenly.

"That's what the boy says."

"Then you can ask the boy for your interest. You'll find him in Livingston, begging a banker who just stopped being his father-in-law."

The man's smile slipped a quarter inch.

"I'll be back Friday," he said. "With a lawyer."

He climbed into his truck and backed out of the lane.

I turned to Boone.

"What did he mean, by spring?"

"I don't know," Boone said, and for the first time I thought he might be lying.

Then he looked at me, and the look was so tired and so gentle that I let it go.

"We have a doctor's appointment," he said. "In forty minutes."

The clinic in Livingston smelled of floor cleaner and lavender.

I lay on the paper-covered table with my shirt rolled up while the technician squeezed cold gel across my stomach.

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