The bang of the cellar door startled Carly out of her thoughts.

"You're back early," she said without looking up from the reader. "Or is it Gus come to babysit me again?"

"Keep guessing."

Carly spun around and saw Sheriff Montoya standing six feet away.

He didn't look happy to be there.

She felt the same.

"Good morning," she said coolly. "Or is it afternoon?"

"Doesn't much matter. I understand you had some trouble out at the Quintrell ranch yesterday."

Well, that's certainly blunt. "Trouble?" She shrugged. "Something didn't agree with me. I was sick."

"What about your Siamese twin, Duran?"

"He threw up, too." She didn't say any more. She didn't like the feeling of being grilled like a criminal about something she hadn't asked for and nearly hadn't survived.

The sheriff took off his hat and smacked it against his thigh. Snow sifted to the floor.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked curtly.

"Since when do citizens report hurling to the local cops?"

"You can't be as stupid as you sound, Ms. May."

"Oh, you'd be surprised," Dan said from the stairway. "There's a big dose of stupid going around Taos right now."

Montoya stiffened, then turned around to confront Dan. "You must have caught a double dose of it. What the hell were you doing with Armando Sandoval?"

Dan whistled softly. "Quite the grapevine you have, Sheriff. Or did Armando tell you all by himself?"

The sheriff didn't answer.

Dan hadn't expected him to.

"Well?" the sheriff asked.

For the first time in years, Dan wished he had federal credentials again. A gold FBI shield was something the sheriff could understand. But all Dan had these days was a business card that read ST. KILDA CONSULTING. Below that was a toll-free telephone number.

All things considered, Dan doubted that the sheriff was knowledgeable enough about the real world to be impressed by the card.

"Nobody told me you were working on my turf," the sheriff said. "It purely pisses me off how arrogant you federal boys can be."

Federal boys? Carly's eyebrows went up and her mouth stayed shut.

"Nobody told you because I'm not working for the Feds anymore," Dan said.

"Then why were you talking to Sandoval?"

"Why do you care?"

"Listen here-"

"No," Dan cut in. "You listen. Until Armando Sandoval is proved in court to be a narcotraficante and a murderer, he's a citizen in good standing. What we have to say to each other is none of your business."

The sheriff wanted to argue, but he had the losing side and he knew it. "You ever think I might be able to help?"

"Not after the first round of complaints we filed and you forgot," Carly said behind him.

A dull red showed on the sheriff's cheekbones beneath his toast brown skin. "I have enough problems with rich tourists," he muttered, not taking his eyes from Dan. "I don't need whining from a homeboy who sticks his nose in the wrong places and gets smacked for it."

"Carly isn't a homeboy. She didn't deserve what happened to her."

Sheriff Montoya looked over his shoulder at her. "Sounds like somebody wants you to leave."

"Sounds like," she drawled. "Too bad this is a free country. I don't feel like leaving."

The sheriff's dark eyes narrowed. "Ms. May, most times I'm lucky to have one deputy for every hundred square miles. That's how free this country is."

"Is that a threat?" she asked.

"It's a fact. That's why I don't have any patience with troublemakers, and there's trouble written all over both of you."

"What? Armando Sandoval isn't trouble?" Carly asked in disbelief.

"Armando Sandoval is the devil the sheriff knows," Dan said. "If it wasn't for Armando, there would be narcotraficantes killing each other until the next jefe chingon rose to the top of the cesspool and peace returned. With Armando in place, the sheriff knows there won't be any Taos County voters caught in the crossfire of a drug war, which means the citizens are happy, which means the sheriff is real likely to hang on to his job. It's win-win-win, except for the occasional outsider getting ground up between the gears of politics as usual."

Carly grimaced, certain that she was the "occasional outsider" who was caught in the meat grinder.

"You're a lot smarter than you used to be," the sheriff said calmly to Dan.

Dan waited.

"Now show me how smart," the sheriff said. "Take the little lady and go on a nice long vacation in the Bahamas."

"Wait just a-" Carly began.

"I don't have enough deputies to protect you if you stay here," the sheriff said, pinning her with a black glance. "By the time I get to the bottom of the rats and slashed tires and bad food, you could be badly hurt. Or dead."

Chapter 42

TAOS

EARLY FRIDAY AFTERNOON

CARLY PUSHED AGAINST THE PLYWOOD, HOLDING IT IN PLACE WHILE DAN HAMMERED nails in. The result was ugly, but kept the wind out of the little house. And right now, the wind was blowing hard enough to bring tears to her eyes.

"I still think-" Dan began.

"No," she cut in loudly. "Not unless you have something new to say."

"Shit."

"That's not new."

He said something in Portuguese.

"Same word, different language," Carly said.

He drove the rest of the nails in silence, letting the crack of steel on steel express his frustration. The longer he thought about Carly's position, the less he liked it. He didn't need a sixth sense to know that the whole situation was spiraling out of control.

How can anything so sweet and soft-looking be so bloody stubborn?

Carly winced as the final hammer blow drove the nail in so far the hammer left a dent in the plywood. "Feel better now?"

He shot her a jade green glance. Then the corner of his mouth turned up. "Yeah."

She let out a long breath of relief and smiled at him. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"Not hammering on me until I gave up."

"Would it have worked?"

Her smile faded. "I'm scared, Dan."

He tucked the hammer into the back of his jeans and pulled her close. "That's the first intelligent thing you've said in hours." Before she could argue, he kissed her until she forgot everything, even fear. Slowly he lifted his mouth and leaned his forehead against hers. "We'll get through this. There might be some mutual yelling from time to time, but I respect your courage too much to want to hammer it out of you. Okay?"

His eyes were a vivid green blur to her, whether from her tears or being so close she couldn't focus, she didn't know and didn't care. "Okay. But I don't feel real brave right now. I keep thinking about being alone on that ranch road, no one to pull me back and make me walk and…"

"I keep thinking about it, too. I don't want to lose you, Carolina May. I spent too long wondering if I'd ever find someone like you."

Her stomach growled as she kissed him. "You see what you do to me," she said.

"Starve you?"

"Make me feel safe enough to be hungry."

He smiled slowly and took her hand. "C'mon. I've got chili left. I'll heat it while you check out more of those so-called might-be senatorial offspring."

He opened the front door and nudged Carly into the relative warmth of the house.

"The problem is that a lot of those offspring are dead," Carly said, frowning, "others have moved away, and all I have to go on is community speculation. The only way to be certain if they're the Senator's is DNA testing, and for that to be effective, we have to have a DNA profile of the Senator first. Short of exhuming him, there's no way to get a sample for testing. Unless he froze his sperm for the ages, or something like that."

"I'm sure if he had, it would have been front-page news in town." The door closed behind Dan, shutting out the wind. "As for exhumation to take a tissue sample, I don't see that happening short of a court order, and I don't see us getting a court order."