Cimarron Rose (Billy Bob Holland 1)

Then headlights shone in my driveway, bounced across the chicken run, and filled the barn and horse lot with shadows.

The three men were motionless, like stick figures caught under a pistol flare. I rolled sideways, stumbled and ran into the barn, my arms cupped over my head as one of them aimed and fired a pistol, a .22 perhaps, pop, pop, pop, in the darkness and I heard the rounds snap into wood like fat nails.

I thought I saw L.Q. Navarro, his tall silhouette and cocked ash-gray Stetson and gunbelt and holstered .45 double-action revolver superimposed against an eye-watering white brilliance.

Moments later Mary Beth Sweeney squatted next to me in Beau's stall, her nine-millimeter pushed down in the back of her blue jeans. My nose was filled with blood and I had to breathe through my mouth. She ran her hand through my hair and wiped the straw and dirt out of my eyes. My face jerked when she touched me.

'Oh Billy Bob,' she said.

'Where are they?'

'They took off in a four-wheel-drive through the back of your

property… Let's go inside. I'll call the dispatcher.'

'No, call Marvin Pomroy.'

I got to my feet, my hands inserted between the slats of the stall. The high beams of her car were still on, and the inside of the barn was sliced with electric light. She put her arm around my waist, and we walked together toward my back door as the wind twisted and bent the branches of the chinaberry tree over our heads.

* * *

chapter seventeen

I stood shirtless in my bedroom on the third floor, the cordless phone held to one side of my head, a towel filled with ice held against the other. My shirt was on the floor, the collar flecked with blood. I could feel a burning in my lower back that I couldn't relieve, no matter which way I moved.

'You never saw them before?' Marvin said through the phone.

'No… I don't think.'

'You're unsure?'

'The guy who watched, the one who dropped the knife on the ground… Maybe I'm imagining things.'

'Where'd you see him?'

'It's like you remember people from dreams. I'm not feeling too well now, Marvin. Let me get back to you.'

'I'll put a deputy on your house.'

'No, you won't.'

'No faith,' he said.

'You're a good guy, Marvin. I don't care what people say.'

I heard him laugh before he hung up.

I clicked off the phone and set it down on the table by the window where Mary Beth sat, her violet eyes close set with thought.

'You think you saw one of those guys before?' she said.

'L.Q. Navarro and I went up against this same mule down in Coahuila three or four times. I always saw him in the dark. Sometimes I see people at night who remind me of him, like you see people inside dreams. A therapist told me—'

'What?'

'That it was unexpiated guilt. It's the kind of thing therapists like to talk about.'

'I worry about you.'