Of course Leonard would have to add that. He couldn’t miss an opportunity to embarrass her. But she didn’t react to the “tits” comment. The past—the divorce, the new marriage, her brother’s absence at college, Starkey, her real father’s decline and subsequent death when she was only twenty-five—it all came rushing back. She’d felt so vulnerable in those days. She’d promised herself she’d never be that vulnerable again.

Yet here she was, feeling completely exposed. Not that she’d let him know it. Whether or not she could defuse the situation depended on this very moment. “I’m afraid I’m going to need you to take a Breathalyzer test, Leonard.”

“What?” He seemed shocked that he hadn’t set her back the way he’d intended.

“You’re not making sense. My stepfather couldn’t have any such picture, because I’ve never been naked in front of him. You must be drunk.”

“I’m not drunk!”

“Then you shouldn’t mind proving it.”

His eyes glittered in the darkness. “God, I hate you. You are such a bitch!”

“Hating me doesn’t change anything.”

“Leave me the hell alone.” He turned to get in his truck, but she grabbed his door when he tried to close it and drew her gun.

“If you won’t submit to a Breathalyzer, I’ll arrest you,” she said. “I can’t let you back on the road until I know the rest of us are safe.”

He laughed loud and long at that. “Fine, I’ll prove I’m not drunk. But don’t think you’ll ever be safe.”

“Are you threatening me?” she murmured.

“Just making sure you know not to count me among your friends.”

“I’d never make that mistake.” She went to the car to retrieve the Breathalyzer.

She’d almost cost him this job, too. Leonard couldn’t believe it. For a few minutes last night, he’d had the upper hand. He’d enjoyed wielding some power. And then Sophia had nearly hauled him off to jail. If he hadn’t passed the Breathalyzer, she would’ve locked him up and impounded his car. As it was, she’d given him two tickets he couldn’t afford, one for running a red light and one for speeding.

Although things could’ve been worse—if she’d impounded his truck and found the receiver he used to eavesdrop on her—he’d been so angry by the time he got home he couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t until dawn that he’d finally dozed off, and then he’d overslept.

He’d called ahead to tell Dwight he’d be late, said it was because he woke up feeling ill. He couldn’t admit to getting pulled over in the middle of the night for breaking traffic laws while driving his employer’s truck. But it was obvious that Dwight wasn’t happy to hear another excuse. Since Leonard had returned to animal husbandry, which was what he’d done before his uncle had encouraged him to try his hand at law enforcement, he’d had one problem after another. He couldn’t seem to climb out of the mire he’d fallen into the day Sophia had heard about the Mexican girl who’d ratted him out to her loser brother.

Frowning, Leonard watched a tumbleweed roll across the flat desert landscape. He felt just as dead, just as disconnected, as that wind-tossed weed. And it stemmed from one mistake. That was all it took to destroy his life—one mistake and a vengeful, power-hungry fellow officer who’d never liked him to begin with.

“¿Qué quieres que hagamos?”

Saul, one of the migrant workers who helped out at the ranch, approached him.

Lowering the brim of his hat to protect his skin from the broiling sun, Leonard replied in Spanish because none of the men who worked with him could understand English. “Move all the birds from house number one to house number two,” he told him. “It’s time to rake out the droppings.” Which they would sell to a fertilizer company, but the laborers didn’t need to know that. They just needed to do the raking and leave anything that required a brain to him.

Saul passed the word to two other migrant workers who waited nearby, wearing their usual sweat-stained baseball caps and filthy work clothes. Then they all walked to house number one.

At least they were obedient. And they worked hard. Their women were well trained, too. The ones he’d met could really cook and clean. They knew how to take care of a man….

Dwight would be along shortly to see how the transfer was progressing, so Leonard needed to join the crew. But he couldn’t dredge up the energy to overcome his resistance to such lowly work. Not after his latest indignity at the hands of Sophia “the Bitch of All Bitches” St. Claire. And what was all that business his bug had picked up about Rod being in his trailer? What right did Bruce’s bastard have entering anyone’s place of residence without permission?

Lingering under the spray mister near the corrugated metal shack where two women—one Mexican, one white—made sure the eggs produced on the ranch were clean and contained no dark spots or blood, he gazed off into the distance. Here he was, overseeing the removal of chicken shit instead of driving around Bordertown in an air-conditioned cruiser, enjoying the envy of the men and the respect and admiration of the women. Lorna, his wife, was gone. His girls were gone, too. For the most part, they refused to talk to him. Lorna said it was because he couldn’t say anything nice. She claimed the children were suffering enough, that they didn’t need him making them feel guilty every time he called. But they couldn’t be hurting as badly as he was. And it wasn’t as if he was asking for the moon. He just wanted them to convince their mother to forgive him and come home so they could go back to life as it was before.

Lorna said she wanted to give their separation a while before she filed for divorce, as if there was a chance she might reconsider, but there were moments he feared those happier times were gone for good. Every day seemed harder than the one before. Staring at the trailer they’d once shared, with its missing furniture and the dog and cat the family had left with him because their new place didn’t allow pets, had changed him, hardened him.

He thought about the guns he had at the trailer. Lately, his mind returned to them constantly. Until the past six months, he’d never understood those guys who felt compelled to shoot up their workplace or school. But he understood now. He wanted to walk into Bordertown and kill Sophia, the council members who’d supported her and Bruce Dunlap, the worst of all hypocrites. Bruce had pulled his support the minute he’d learned about the Mexican girl, and then he’d coaxed his bastard half-breed home to help solve a crime Sophia couldn’t solve on her own. They even had a cigarette butt from which they were hoping to get a DNA profile. That could mess up everything.




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