He gave her half a dropper of the medicine. “Maybe it’ll ease the cramping so you can sleep. I won’t be long.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.” He kissed her forehead. Her eyes drifted closed. It scared him how fragile she looked. Almost lifeless.

Shaking off that thought, he left the bedroom and had almost reached the front door when the telephone rang. He went back to answer it and could tell by the background noise coming through the earpiece that his long and strenuous day wasn’t over yet.

Sixty seconds later, he strode to the car and climbed into the driver’s seat. “Thatcher, do you have a gun belt?”

“At the boardinghouse.”

“Then we’ll stop there first.”

“What’s happened?”

“That moonshine war I knew was coming? Well, it’s here.”

Forty-Eight

Thatcher was putting the frisky mare through her paces in the corral when he saw Laurel come around the corner of the stable. She stopped there.

The sight of her made his heart jump and everything below his waist go tight, which didn’t improve his dark mood this morning. He wanted to strangle her for being the damnedest woman he’d ever met. He wanted to make love to her for the same reason.

The mare was being her uncooperative self, but he stuck with the training for five more minutes, then, with a subtle motion of his right knee, directed her to the paddock gate where he dismounted. He led her out and over to the water trough near the stable.

He said to Laurel, “You’re out early.”

“I need to talk to you and figured I would find you here.”

Her hair was hanging down her back in a long braid beneath the straw hat he recognized, the one with the wide brim that cast a crisscrossing pattern of shadows over her cheeks, her pert nose, her plump lower lip.

To distract himself from thoughts of biting that lip, he ran his hand along the horse’s neck as she drank from the trough.

Laurel said, “What’s her name?”

“Serena.”

“Pretty.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t fit her personality. She’s high-stepping and willful, doesn’t pay attention to anybody.”

He could tell by Laurel’s peeved expression that she knew he wasn’t referring strictly to the mare. In a crisp voice, she said, “I wouldn’t have bothered you, except that I need to tell you something the sheriff ought to know.”

“Then why don’t you go see him?”

“Are you going to be civil and talk to me or not?”

“I’ll be civil and talk to you, but I can tell you right now that you won’t want to hear what I have to say.”

“And what is that?”

“Stay and find out.”

He made a nicking sound with his mouth and gave the reins a gentle tug. The mare fell into step behind him as he led her into the stable. Laurel trailed behind.

The shade was welcome, but the air inside the building was stuffy and hot and added to his overall grouchiness. Only after the mare was unsaddled, unbridled, and munching oats in her stall did he turn his attention to Laurel, who’d been standing in the center aisle, tapping her hat against her leg with annoyance for having been kept waiting.

“You don’t like horses?” he asked.

“I don’t mind them.”

“Do you ride?”

“Not with any skill. On the family farm, we had plow horses and one mule. I could sit astride and hold on. What is it you wanted to say that I don’t want to hear?”

“Have a seat.” He motioned to a bale of hay. She backed up to it and sat down. He took off his hat and hung it on a nail as he wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “I’ve got a bucket of well water. Are you thirsty?”

“No thanks.”

He went over to the bucket, ladled himself a tin cup full, and drank it down. She set her hat on her lap. When he came back to her, he propped himself against a post between stalls. “Ladies first.”

“There’s something worth Sheriff Amos’s knowing, especially after what happened to Elray Johnson.”

“Why don’t you tell him directly?”

“Because you’re privy to certain things that he isn’t.”

“Like what?”

“My visit to Lefty’s. Have you mentioned that to him?”

“No.”

“Or that I’ve taken Corrine under my wing?”

“No.”

She wet her lips, pulled that enticing lower one through her teeth, making it difficult for him to concentrate on what she was saying.

“…so last night, I tested my memory of what Corrine had told me before. She described again how furious Gert was with Wally over the beating. Not because she had any sympathy or concern for Corrine, but because she was going to lose money while Corrine was out of commission.” She paused to take a breath. “It occurred to me that Gert might have killed Wally over it.”

“Huh.”

“You sound skeptical. Don’t you think she’s capable of murder?”

He thought back on his single experience with the woman and the fury she’d unleashed during the raid. “I don’t doubt it for a minute.”

“But what?”

“A lot of people are capable of murder. Gert has her own suspect in mind. She thinks Wally was killed by the woman who has put a cog in the local moonshining machine. Remember that’s what Elray told me seconds before he got shot.”

“Of course I remember. But does this mystery woman even exist? Gert probably made that up to deflect—”

“Laurel, stop. Just stop.” He walked over, grabbed her hand, and pulled her to her feet, sending her hat into the dirt and shocking her into silence. “Do you think I’m just a cowboy too dumb to know what you’re into?”

“What do you mean?”

“Fucking hell,” he ground out, not caring if she was scandalized by his language. “Finding that hair clip where the still had been clinched it, but I already knew that you and Irv weren’t living off pies and his handyman business. I know the O’Connor twins wouldn’t be delivering baked goods—baked goods, for crissake—to the oil fields if there wasn’t more at stake.”

“They—”