LITMIR.BIZ

      Then Peter came and said to Him,

      “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and

      I forgive him? Up to seven times?”

      Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you up to

      seven times, but up to seventy times seven.”

      —Matthew 18:21–22

      To my mother who has been there

      every step of the way for all four of her girls.

      ONE

      The heat shimmered up from the asphalt as Bill Cloudman drove the pickup, Tank barking enthusiastically in the back. It had taken eight months away from Rockvale for him to realize he’d actually missed the ferocious heat. After two days back home, he felt as if he’d never left. This small town, snuggled up next to the Eagle Rock reservation, was undeniably a part of him, as much as he’d tried to escape it. He eased off the road that led away from his aunt Jean’s dilapidated trailer, deep in reservation territory.

      Aunt Jean was the reason he’d returned, her nasty fall the only thing that could draw him back to this place filled with bitter memories. Thankfully, she was recovering well, already back in her trailer making every guest feel welcome. Sharing a glass of iced tea and listening to her chatter had taken his mind off the past for a little while. Even though she was not his aunt by blood, he never thought of her as anything else. With her, he could pretend things were fine, that his sister, Leanne, was alive and they were a family, that his partner, Johnny Moon, hadn’t been murdered.

      That game got him only so far. Leanne was dead. Johnny was dead. No amount of wishing would bring them back again. His tension increased as he drove away, losing himself in acres of sunbaked trees and dry grass that surrounded him.

      He breathed deeply as he drove the five miles to the small home he’d left in the months following his partner’s death. It was remote, far from the nearest reservation neighbor, and he liked it like that. Working as a Tribal Ranger, one of twelve officers who protected life and property on the reservation and surrounding areas, he’d appreciated the distance sometimes, the quiet. It had been a sanctuary—until Johnny was killed. Then everywhere he looked he saw friends and neighbors who knew how he’d let his partner die. Bill had packed his bags and resolved never to come back—and he hadn’t, until Aunt Jean had her fall.

      Bill exhaled slowly, trying to quell a sudden feeling of unease. The tingle of alarm grew stronger even before he crested the last ridge and his house came in sight. There was an unfamiliar tang in the air, an odor that caused Tank to growl as they crunched up the winding driveway.

      Wrong.

      Something was wrong.

      He eased the truck to a stop, breath tight in his chest.

      He got out and ordered Tank to stay. The dog barked his displeasure, but obeyed.

      Broken glass littered the ground, blazing in the sunlight. All the front windows were fractured into bits except for sharp teeth of glass that remained stubbornly in the frames.

      Vandals with nothing better to do. Teens, he told himself. Who else would cause such destruction?

      Who else?

      Muscles tight, he moved closer. A bucket of crimson paint had been thrown at the walls. It stained the stucco like the red spurt of blood. Angry, hateful.

      The note was impaled to the wall by the blade of a knife, plunged to the hilt into the wood.

       Coming for you.

      It needed no signature.

      Oscar Birch’s rage seeped through the scrawled letters.

      Oscar, the man he had imprisoned.

      The man who murdered his partner.

      He didn’t know how Oscar had wrecked his place when the man was supposed to be in jail, but he might as well have signed his name in the vicious smears of paint.

      Paint that was still wet.

      “You’re not welcome here.”

      Bill Cloudman knew it, felt it, long before he found himself on Charlie Moon’s gritty doormat

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