Moonglow, Texas

Dan was up on the roof with a mouthful of nails when Molly came out the door wearing her floppy hat, with her straw bag hooked over her shoulder. She lifted a hand to shade her eyes when she called up to him. “I’m going into town. Need anything?”

He spat out the nails. “Hang on. I’ll go with you.”

“Oh, that’s okay. I won’t be gone long. You just keep on keeping on.” She gave him a sprightly little wave and started down the driveway.

Dan muttered a curse, shoved the hammer through his belt loop and started a controlled slide down the pitch of the roof toward the ladder. He realized immediately that loose and rotten shingles precluded any notion of control, and the next thing he knew he was hanging on to the guttering for dear life while his legs flailed in empty space.

Okay. Damn. He loosened one hand and reached for the ladder, only to send it sliding down the sidewall to hit the ground with a distinct thud.

“Molly,” he yelled.

“I’m right here, Ace.” Her voice drifted up from below, accompanied by something close to a chuckle. A fairly nasty one.

“You wanna pick up that ladder for me?”

“This ladder?”

“Aw, come on, Molly. I really don’t want to break my neck.” As soon as the words left his mouth, the guttering gave a horrible groan and began to buckle. “Molly, get the goddamned ladder. Now.”

“I’m getting it.” There was panic in her voice now rather than amusement. “Here. Let me just…”

“Dammit. Never mind.”

Dan tried, not all that successfully, to launch himself away from Molly and the useless ladder as he and ten feet of metal guttering came crashing down.

“The last time I saw you, Danny, I think my dad was treating you for a broken nose.” Dr. Richard Pettigrew Jr. shoved the X ray into a slot on the light box and studied the black-and-white picture that emerged. “Well, you’re lucky this time. It’s not broken.”

“Lucky me.” Dan looked at his throbbing ankle. Bullets didn’t hurt half as much, he thought.

“I’ll just wrap it,” Rich Pettigrew said, “lend you a pair of crutches and let you go. You’ll have to stay off of it for a few days, though. Keep it iced and elevated as much as possible. And stay away from roofs.”

Molly flew out of her chair in the waiting room as soon as he angled the crutches through the door.

“Is it broken?” she asked.

“Sprained,” he answered through clenched teeth.

“Oh, that’s good. Well, I don’t mean it’s good. I meant sprained is a lot better than broken.”

“I know what you meant.”

She was fluttering around him like a gnat.

“Look out. You’re gonna make me trip over the damned crutches now.”

She stepped back, hands on hips, her chin thrust up into his face. “Are you implying that I made you fall from the roof?”

Dan hobbled past her. “You just could have been a mite quicker with that ladder, is all,” he grumbled.

He could hear her muttering all the way to the parking lot, mostly about handymen with a pretty snide emphasis on the handy.

“What are you stopping here for?” he asked when Molly pulled into a parking space on Main Street.

“I’ll just be a minute.” She reached around his crutches for her handbag in the back seat.

Dan looked out the window. This stretch of Main Street didn’t have a single store. It was mostly offices, real estate, insurance and—hello!—the telephone company.

“You need to pay your phone bill?” he asked innocently.

“Yes. That’s right. It’ll just take me a second.”

Dan watched her disappear through the door. “People in WITSEC pay their bills through the regional offices, babe. But you don’t know I know that. Who called you last night, Molly? Who?”

Chapter 3

“Here, Hopalong. Take these.” Molly jammed two capsules into his left hand and a glass of water into his right. “And don’t look at me like I’m trying to poison you. They’re pain pills.”

“Shackelfords are suspicious by nature,” Dan said, tossing back the capsules while casting another bleak look at his throbbing ice-packed ankle on Molly’s foot-stool.

She hadn’t said much after their stop at the phone company. She was being a good little witness, keeping her own counsel. He guessed that she’d run into a bureaucratic brick wall trying to find out where that phone call had come from.

“Hand me those crutches, will you?”

“Why?”

“Because I need to go out to the trailer and get something, that’s why.”

“I’ll go,” she said. “What do you want? A beer?”

Dan felt a shameful anger rip through him. It wasn’t even noon, for God’s sake, and she figured he was ready for a bender. What he wanted from the trailer was his gun. He leaned sideways and snagged the crutches himself.

Just as he managed to get them comfortably under his arms, the phone rang. Molly jumped as if she’d just put her foot down on a hot coal, then simply stood there, staring at the ringing hunk of plastic.

“Are you going to get that?” Dan asked.

“I wasn’t expecting a call,” she said nervously, stepping back to put a little more distance between herself and whoever was on the other end of the line. She had every reason to fear the terrorists of the Red Millennium. Did she know that most or all of them were dead?

Dan made a mental note to pick up a caller ID box just as soon as he could get into town. It surprised him that she didn’t already have one, actually. But then maybe the powers that be in the service had told her and assured her that she was safe.

“Do you want me to answer it?” he asked on the seventh ring.

“No. That’s all right. I’ll get it.” She approached the phone as if it were a rattlesnake. “It’s probably a wrong number, anyway. Nobody ever calls me.”

Somebody, baby, Dan thought as he watched her pick up the receiver and whisper a tentative hello. Her whole body relaxed then and she turned to him, smiling.

“It’s Raylene.”

“Good. Give her my love,” he said, gripping the crutches and stabbing his way toward his temporary home.