"Great."
"Are you going to avoid telling me the truth all night?"
I regarded him longer than I probably should have. There was something captivating about his native skin and brilliant eyes, the planed features and intelligence behind his questions that left me feeling both skewered and safe. "I found the other three girls," I said softly and watched for his reaction.
"Found?" he leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "What do you mean, found? Where are they?"
"They're kinda dead."
He frowned.
"Well, not kinda. They are dead." The words were hard to say. For once, I wished to experience the sense of being disconnected, so I could talk about them without my throat tightening and my stomach churning. With the sheriff, I never felt that disconnect. If anything, he grounded me.
"How do you know?" His intensity and curiosity were too strong for him to be faking.
"Their bodies are in the well behind the horse barn," I replied.
"And you found them how?"
"I'm not called Talks to Spirits for nothing," I joked weakly.
He tilted his head, unconvinced. It sounded ridiculous to my ears, too, but it was true, a matter of technology rather than the supernatural.
"Someone killed them," I added. "I've been trying to figure out if I'm next."
"So you ran away tonight."
"Not … well …" I debated telling him more. "Who are you, Taylor?"
"Just the local law."
"Bullshit!"
He smiled faintly. "Miss Josie, now may not be the right time for that."
"How so? You've been trying to corner me since I got here to talk. Why not now?"
"I didn't murder the others, but there's a chance I might kill you, if what you're doing here is … dangerous."
That's not good. We were talking around something again with neither of us wanting to be the first to crack. "It sounds weird, but … I don't think you'll hurt me. I don't know why." I sensed something … not a memory, not a whisper but an instinct, one I barely picked up. It was … warm. Cheerful. "You won't." I shivered. My wet hair was soaking through the shirt I borrowed from him.
"How sure are you?" he asked. He passed me a blanket, and I wrapped myself in it with a grateful sigh.
"This sure." I nodded to the blanket. "You talk mean, but your actions are very different."
"It's the Choctaw side of me."
Another charged silence fell. We gazed at one another.
"So if neither of us wants to talk about who we are and why we're here, then what do we talk about?" I asked.
"Fighting Badger told us why you claim to be here."