there was some kind of light coming from the first floor, down the staircase. There was a bathroom at the end of the hall next to Arlen’s bedroom. Although his door was closed and there was no light under it, Sheridan thought it best to go downstairs to use the guest bathroom.

SHERIDAN PADDED DOWN the stairs in her bare feet, wrapping the blanket around her. She found herself drawn to the Scarlett Legacy Wall, and specifically to the tinted photo of Opal she had seen earlier that night. It was one of those portraits that drew you in, she thought. Something about that woman’s eyes and that confident but mysterious half-smile. She broke away and quickly used the bathroom, washed up, crept out, and shut the door. Since the bathroom didn’t have a cup near the sink and she wanted a drink of water, she followed the light.

The kitchen was empty and stark, and she had the feeling the light hadn’t been left on by mistake. Then she saw the loaf of bread and a knife on a cutting board on the counter, the cold cuts near it, and wondered who had been up making a sandwich but wasn’t there now. And she decided she was in the process of scaring herself silly, so she must stop it. The main house of the Thunderhead Ranch wasn’t simply the home for Julie and Uncle Arlen. It was also the business headquarters of a large enterprise. Employees could come and go. Maybe one of them wanted a midnight snack, she thought. There was nothing frightening in that.

Nevertheless, when she heard a set of deep men’s voices outside approaching the house, Sheridan reached out, grasped the handle of a steak knife from a collection of them near the cutting board, and pulled it inside the blanket. As the front door swung open and heavy boots scraped the hardwood floor in the living room, Sheridan had a choice to make: either dash through toward the stairs and be seen by the men, run out the back door into the ranch yard, or stay where she was.

She quickly reasoned that just as there was nothing wrong with making a snack in the middle of the night, there was nothing wrong with her getting a drink of water from the kitchen sink. But she would also keep the knife under her wrap, and return it later when the coast was clear.

She recognized one of the voices as Arlen’s. The other was unfamiliar, a guttural but syrupy southern drawl. They were coming toward the kitchen. She would be caught unless she made the decision— now—to run out the back door into the ranch yard. She froze.

Arlen was saying, “So he’s got all you boys building fence . . .” when he swung the kitchen door open and saw Sheridan standing there by the counter. He was obviously startled, and what Sheridan took as genuine anger flashed across his face for a brief second. Then his semiauthentic smile returned.

“Sheridan, what are you doing up?” he asked.

“I wanted a drink of water,” she said as boldly as she could.

The man with Arlen squeezed into the kitchen behind his host, his eyes fixed on her. He was medium height, rangy, with pinched-together eyes, a taut skeletal face, and thin lips stretched over a big mouthful of teeth. His brown ponytail spilled down his back from beneath his hat over the shoulders of his denim jacket.

Arlen stepped aside stiffly, as if embarrassed by the situation he was in. “Sheridan, this is Bill,” he said.

“Bill Monroe,” the man said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sheridan Pickett.”

His voice, Sheridan thought, chilled her to the bone—and the way he looked at her, with familiarity even though she was sure she had never seen him before. She was glad she had the knife hidden under the blanket in her fist.

Then it hit her. “How’d you know my name is Pickett?” she asked.

The question made the man blink, as if it startled him. Uncle Arlen looked over, intrigued.

“Why, everybody’s heard of Sheridan Pickett,” the man said, making a lame joke as if he were saying the first thing that popped into his mind while trying to think of something better. “Actually, I believe Arlen here might have said your name.”

Sheridan didn’t reply, and felt threatened the way Monroe looked at her, with a kind of leering familiarity.

“I don’t remember saying anything,” Arlen said. “But whatever . . .”

“Or maybe I heard it from Hank,” the man said with sudden confidence, as if he liked this version much better. “Yeah, I heard it from Hank. You’re a friend of Julie’s, right?”

“Right,” Sheridan said.

Bill Monroe nodded knowingly, then tilted his head to the side without once taking his eyes off her. “That’s what it is,” he said. There was an awkward silence. Sheridan wanted to leave, but the men crowded the door. Obviously, Arlen expected her to go back to bed. Bill Monroe—who knew what he wanted? Whatever it was, he wouldn’t stop staring at her, sizing her up. He scared her to death.

Then she thought: the man knows both Arlen and Hank, and knows them well enough that he could say Hank’s name in Arlen’s house without retribution. What did that mean?

Finally, Arlen said, “Well, Sheridan, did you get your drink? You can take a glass of water upstairs with you if you want. I was about to make a couple of sandwiches for Bill and me while we talked a little business. Can I make you one?”

“No, thank you,” Sheridan said.

“Good night,” Arlen said, stepping aside as she sidled around the counter and headed for the doorway.

“ ’Night,” she replied. She was close enough to Bill Monroe as she passed to smell him—tobacco smoke, dust, and bad sweet cologne.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Bill Monroe said to her back.

As she went up the stairs, she looked over her shoulder to see him watching her carefully, a hint of a smile on his lips, and for a second it felt as if a bolt of electricity had shot through her.

WHEN SHE AWOKE she could hear Julie still sleeping beside her, a burr of a snore in her breathing. Her dreams had been awful, once she finally got to sleep. In one, a vivid dream, Bill Monroe was outside their house, on the lawn, looking through the window at Lucy and her as they slept.

In another dream, Sheridan went back out into the hallway in the dark to where the window was and parted the curtain. A yellow square could be seen through the distant trees, the light from Wyatt’s chicken coop.

She raised the eyepieces of the binoculars to her eyes and adjusted the focus tight on the square. Then something or somebody passed by the window inside, blocking out the light like a finger waved in front of a candle

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