QUINTRELL RANCH

TUESDAY AFTERNOON

"WHAT ABOUT JIM SNEAD?" MELISSA ASKED, RESTING HER HIP CASUALLY AGAINST

Josh's desk. "Do you want to keep him on?"

Josh looked at the employment log, hesitated, and shrugged. "Keep him. He doesn't cost much and he's a hell of a shot."

"Blaine?" she continued.

"I didn't know Jim's twin was on the payroll."

"Not full-time. Just whenever we need an extra hand for odd jobs or running ranch errands in town. He's had a tough life. We help out when we can. You don't remember it because you almost never came here, but he pretty much grew up on the ranch. We all did. It was a lot of fun." Melissa smiled, remembering tagging along with the twins for raids on orchards. "Anyway, Blaine can be handy for the small stuff."

Josh frowned and weighed the political consequences of hiring a felon. On the plus side, it polished his liberal image. On the negative side, it polished his liberal image.

New Mexico's voters were a divided lot.

The sound of a helicopter flying up the valley reverberated through the air.

Impatiently Josh waved his hand. "As long as Blaine doesn't show up drunk or loaded, hire him. Otherwise, send him away."

"Of course." Melissa made a note in the margin of the employee log. "What about the maids and the cook?"

Windows rattled lightly as the chopper set down.

"You take care of adding or subtracting people and hours," he said. "That's what the Senator hired you for-running the place. As long as I keep the ranch, I'll defer to your judgment. What's the point of having good people if you don't trust them?"

Melissa smiled. "Thank you, sir. Do you need to see Pete again?"

"Has he found out anything about those charities?"

"He's working on it."

"Good. As soon as he has anything, I want it. Even using Anne's family money, I need every bit of cash I can get my hands on for my campaign."

"Yes, Governor."

Josh stood up and strode out of the room with the vigor of a man half his age. Quintrell blood might throw some wild cards, but the survivors tended to live long and healthy lives. He walked quickly through hallways and rooms without noticing their wealth and tasteful furnishings. Unlike the governor's Santa Fe mansion, which was a showcase for the finest in New Mexican art and artisans, the Quintrell ranch home reflected a cosmopolitan lifestyle not bounded by any local artistic tradition.

He knocked on the door to Sylvia's suite and entered without waiting. Not for the first time, he thought that walking into the room was like turning back the clock. The youngest piece of furniture in the suite was thirty years old. Most pieces were sixty or older, much older. Only the medical equipment was recent.

As usual, Winifred was in the chair beside her sister's bed, holding her sister's limp hand. Sylvia's eyes were open, black, and empty, looking toward the door and focusing on nothing. Slowly, slowly, her head turned to the window and the outside pool's dance and shimmer.

"We're leaving now," Josh said to Winifred.

She just looked at him.

"Be careful what you let your historian print," he reminded her.

"Good-bye, Governor. Ask Melissa to-Oh, there she is."

"I was just coming to check on you," Melissa said. "Would you like tea and cookies?"

"Yes. And some of that soup we had for lunch, if there's any more."

Without a word Josh turned and left.

Winifred's black eyes tracked every step he took until he was out of sight. When the sound of his footsteps faded into the lazy whap whap whap of the idling helicopter blades, she switched her fierce glance to Melissa.

"What is he going to do?" Winifred asked bluntly.

"Nothing yet."

Winifred let out a rasping breath. "He's smarter than I thought."

"Don't count on it staying that way."

"You think he's going to sell everything?"

Melissa nodded.

"Over my dead body," Winifred said, coughing.

Melissa looked at the slack outline on the bed. Or hers.

But Melissa didn't say it aloud.

TAOS

TUESDAY AFTERNOON

AS CARLY CLIMBED DOWN THE STEPS OF THE SHERIFF'S TEMPORARY QUARTERS, THE high-mountain sunlight cut like a knife across her eyes. She stumbled slightly and caught herself, ignoring Dan's hand held out to steady her.

He stopped on the sidewalk, pulled his cell phone out of a jacket pocket, and called a local garage to pick up Carly's car.

She kept walking, not even looking over her shoulder to see if he was following.

Dan finished the call in record time. His long strides closed the distance between himself and Carly before a block had gone by.

"You planning on telling me why you're mad?" he asked.

"You know why."

"Probably, but I'd rather not guess."

"Why didn't you tell me you were related to the Senator?" she said curtly. "You knew I was researching the-"

"Winifred hired you to do a Castillo history," Dan cut in. "I don't see how my mother fits into that."

"She's part Castillo, that's how."

"Winifred doesn't see it that way. She's only interested in past Castillos, not present ones."

Carly wanted to argue but couldn't. He was right. Not once had Winifred showed any interest at all in the governor or his son, even though Castillo blood ran in them as surely as did Quintrell.

"And you're only interested in the present," Carly said.

Dan shrugged and nudged her toward his truck. "The present is where things happen. Like getting your SUV hauled to a garage for new shoes and a bath in paint remover."

"That's such a load of crap."

He opened the truck door. "You don't want your SUV fixed?"

She climbed in and ignored the change in topic. As soon as he started the truck, she said, "You're way too smart to believe that the present just invented itself without any help from the past."

"And you're way too smart to believe that the past is more important than the possibilities of today."

Dan steered the truck down a block, turned onto a side street, and drove toward his little rental.

Carly said something under her breath and leaned back into the seat, feeling twice her age. "Don't tell me you thought I wouldn't care about who your mother is."

"She's my mother and John's wife and a good woman who has helped a lot of kids become worthwhile adults. That's who she is. Period."

He slowed for an ancient pickup truck that was hauling a load of willow poles. Blue-black smoke poured from the truck's exhaust as it turned a corner and headed off at a right angle. The truck's load shifted and shivered beneath the twine holding it in place. The peeled willow poles were between five and six feet tall and one to two inches thick. People in the valley had been using similar poles for fencing for a thousand years.

"The fact that my maternal grandmother was a psychopathic liar and an addict who turned tricks for a fix doesn't mean squat today," Dan added. "Not to me and not to anybody else in town who matters."

He accelerated down the street.

Carly bit the inside of her lip. It was one thing to think of Liza Quintrell as a wild child; it was quite another thing to think of her as a member of Dan's family, his grandmother, the mother of his mother.

An addict who turned tricks for a fix.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Why? It was long ago, far away, and besides, the bitch is dead."

"Whew. Did you know your grandmother?"

"No. Before I was born, she was murdered by a nutcase wired on angel dust. Mom left home when she was fourteen. She married Dad when she was sixteen. I came along real quick after that."