Casey nodded. “Okay.” The baby was in the office—Christine was keeping an eye on her while she did paperwork. Nobody had thought it would be a great idea for Ware to show up and find Casey holding his daughter.
They disappeared down the back hall, and Casey released the chair arms, fingers prickling as the blood rushed back to their tips. He took a deep breath, shoulders shaking as it drained back out. He wanted a beer. Wanted a shot, but his pride was interfering with the impulse—he didn’t care to exchange any words with Ware and have the guy smell booze on him. Which was fucked, really, to care so much about the opinion of a criminal, only he wanted so badly to appear worthy of all the trust Abilene had put in him.
He listened to the office door open and close, caught soft voices. Christine appeared shortly wearing a cautious smile. She held up two sets of crossed fingers.
“She seem okay?” he asked.
“I’d say so. I think she looked relieved. Nervous, but relieved.”
He nodded.
“Coffee?”
“No, thanks. I’m counting down the hours until it’s socially acceptable to hit the bourbon.”
“Don’t blame you. It hasn’t been this tense around here since the last property scout came knocking.” Christine headed for the kitchen.
Casey focused on the clinking of dishes and the rush of running water, trying to distract himself. He wanted like hell to sneak down the hall and listen at the office door. He wanted to know what they were saying. He wanted to know if Ware was holding the baby, and whether or not she seemed to like him. The sharpest, fiercest bit of him bared teeth at the thought, a jealousy he’d never even conceived of before. He didn’t consider himself Mercy’s father by any stretch, but a part of him did identify—and with secret pride—as the primary man in her tiny life. His fingers curled up tight again, forming fists atop his thighs.
A clatter drifted from the front of the house, then a hiss—the screen door shutting, followed by the inner one. He heard Miah call a greeting to his mother; then the man himself entered the den. He looked funny. A touch pale and upended.
“Hey,” Casey said, standing. “They’re in the office now.”
Miah kept his voice low. “That’s not the truck.”
“What’s that?”
“The black truck parked in the lot—that’s not the one I saw the other night. It’s got a faded old bumper sticker on the tailgate, and I didn’t notice that on Tuesday. And I took a look at the plate, to see if it looked like there’d been duct tape on there, any dust stuck to it—nothing. That’s not the truck.”
Casey frowned. “So what the fuck does that mean? That he was telling the truth? That he didn’t come around here?”
Miah shrugged. “That, or he borrowed someone else’s pickup. I dunno, man, but it seems strange. Something’s not right.”
Casey’s mind raced, trying to turn this news into a threat he could wrap his head around. “You think Abilene’s in trouble?”
“Not necessarily. Not unless she has some other shady character from her past who might’ve come sniffing around. I don’t know what the fuck this means, aside from that maybe Ware isn’t the only person we have to be worried about.”
“Who else could it have been?”
Miah shrugged. “No clue. We get poachers, and whoever’s involved in the drug dealing or whatever it is, but not here. Not at the house. Scratch what we said at the meeting, about you asking around town about somebody dealing out here. That’s not what this is about.”
“Burglar, maybe?”
“They’d have some fucking balls on them, with all those lights on, all those vehicles parked out front.”
Casey nodded. “Doesn’t add up.”