Page 1 of Cowboy Heat
PROLOGUE
“Don’t do it,” he says, water soaking into his pants. The rain already slacked off, but the marsh he’s stepping back into is overtaking him.
I wonder if he already knows I’m going to kill him no matter what he says. I at least give him the mercy of knowing.
“You know there’s no way to make this work,” I say. “Gun in my hand now or gun in my hand later, the bullet’s still going to find you.”
He’s smaller than I thought, slight in a way. Like the world beat him down while the town did nothing to build him up.
Funny how that’s part of the reason I’m holding the gun on him now.
Hope is what’s killing this man, not me.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about going on here,” he says, finally stopping his backward trek. His hands drop to his sides. “Killing me is only going to make it all the more complicated.”
I shake my head. Laughing would be cruel, but I do it a little. “The only complicated thing that happens next is my making sure no one cares about how you went. That’s it. After that? Well, we can finish what we came here for.”
He must feel his death before it comes. He throws his body backward into the water.
It’s deep enough to give him cover, sure, but he’s miscalculated something mighty.
I’m a fast shot.
He’s dead before the water can take him all the way under.
If he were a true Robin’s Tree local, he’d know I was killing him in the only marsh in the parish without a gator in it. Which means it might be the perfect place to keep him for a while until I can make sure his death works out our way.
But he’s not a true local.
He’s not even living anymore.
A voice pulls my attention from his sinking body. There’s no humor in it, just facts. “He has no wife, ex or otherwise, and no kids. No family or close friends at all. No one’s going to miss him, far as I can tell.”
I look back behind us. There are trees, fences, and untended land between us and the house the man used to live in.
The whole reason we’re doing this.
“Let’s hope you’re right,” I say. “But if not, we’ll deal with them too.”
A bead of sweat rolls down my forehead.
I can’t see the man anymore.
If he has any loved ones, I hope for their sake that they stay far away from Robin’s Tree, Louisiana.
CHAPTERONE
Beau
I can still seeher face sometimes, shadows and dirt across it, fear too. She’s always waiting there, beneath the floorboards, wondering what took me so long. I try to tell her that I was afraid myself, twelve and living with a foster family who’d rather me keep my mouth quiet than tell them about something I thought I saw.
It doesn’t matter to her, though.
She’s been under the floor for so long, she just wants to know why I spent a day and a half thinking about her but not doing a damn thing.
She’s there now, next to the stairs leading into the basement, looking at me and shaking. No matter that it’s been almost twenty years since we got her out. No matter that the monster who had her beneath the floor has long since been gone.
No matter that we’re both free now.
