I lock the gate.
I crouch down so I'm level with Nash, tell him I'll see him at dinner, and Nash hugs me—quick, the way kids hug, all elbows—and runs back across the yard toward his cabin.
I watch him the whole way.
He climbs the porch steps. The screen door bangs open.
I hear Hadley's voice—muffled, warm.
The screen door bangs shut.
I'm at my monitors three minutes later.
The right one comes up first.
I pull the plate from the morning's surveillance file.
Run it through every database I still have access to.
Cross-reference it against the cold-file watchlist I've been maintaining since the night Phantom dragged me out of that motel in Lubbock half-dead and told me I was gonna live whether I wanted to or not.
The plate comes back to the same Hertz in San Antonio.
Paid for in cash.
Different fake name than last week.
I sit back in the chair.
I look at the time in the corner of the screen.
Five-forty-three.
I pull up Hadley's file on the left monitor.
I scroll to the bottom and look at the yellow tag next to Todd Whitley's name.
I tap two keys. The tag goes red. I close the file.
I take a long, slow breath, lean back in the chair, and look out the window at the cabin behind the bunkhouse where the kitchen light has just come on for the dinner hour.
Hadley is moving in front of it, the small dark shape of her son sitting on the counter beside her swinging his legs.
I watch her for a minute.
Then I say the thing out loud, the thing I've been saying in my head every morning since the day she walked across the gravel in a blouse she couldn't afford to lose.
"That woman is gonna be my ol' lady."
The dogs at the kennel are quiet.
The mockingbird quit hours ago.
Somewhere out past the western fence, a black sedan is sitting on the county road watching the ranch, and I'm sitting at three monitors watching it back, and I'm gonna find out who sent it before the week is over.
For now, I close the laptop, stand up, and reach for my hat.
It goes on last.