Chapter 13: Midnight at the Faulk Barn

The Faulk ranch sat on a rise four miles past the arena, behind a gate with a lit sign.

I left Carys's truck at the bottom of the hill and walked up the drive alone.

I carried nothing but the burner phone.

Carys was somewhere on the ridge behind me, flat in the grass with her husband's rifle.

Her phone was open on speaker in my shirt pocket.

"I have the front yard," her voice said, tiny against my chest. "I can't see behind the barn. Two men on the porch. One in the hayloft."

"Which window?" I asked.

"The left. He has a long gun."

"The arena guard's rifle," I said.

"Probably. Do I take him?"

"Not until he points it."

"I know how to wait, Wyatt."

The barn was a hundred feet long, with one lantern burning in the doorway.

Cassidy stood under it in her gray hearing dress, holding up her phone to film me.

I stopped thirty feet away.

"You came," she said, in the soft voice she had used on the stand.

"You promised me an hour with Poppy."

"After I have the phone."

I held up the burner.

"Come and take it."

She did not move.

"Tell the camera why you're here," she said.

"I'm here to see my daughter."

"You're here to hurt me."

"No."

"You came to my family's land against a court order," she said, loudly, to her phone. "I'm so scared, Wyatt. Please don't hurt me."

She was making a tape for a judge.

I looked at the court order in my head, and I saw the whole trap in one line.

Five hundred feet from my daughter.

If Poppy was anywhere on this ranch, every step I took toward the barn was a crime.

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