LITMIR.BIZ

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smirk disappeared. “You got nothing to worry about with me, Marshal. Like I told you, I’m an innocent man.”

      “Uh-huh.”

      Harlan popped his door open and climbed out. Resting the palm of his right hand on the butt of the Glock holstered at his hip, he moved to the back and pulled open the passenger door.

      With his own hands cuffed behind him, Billy Boy had to struggle a bit to climb out of the cruiser, but he managed to do it without too much of a fuss. Then Harlan took hold of his arm and guided him toward the convenience store entrance.

      When they got inside, Harlan was surprised to find a woman—a girl, really—behind the counter. Places like this tended to hire males for the late shift on the belief that a lone female offered any potential troublemakers a more vulnerable target.

      But this particular female didn’t look even remotely vulnerable. In fact, despite her youth and obvious beauty, there was a defiance in her expression that was a little off-putting. A look that said, mess with me and find out. She probably had a loaded piece resting somewhere under that counter, just in case the class got unruly.

      Harlan saw her hackles rise as a buzzer announced their arrival and they came through the door, her gaze immediately shifting to Billy Boy’s cuffed hands.

      He didn’t bother explaining the obvious, and didn’t waste any time with chitchat, either. “Restroom?”

      A guy in the potato chip aisle at the back of the store—the driver of the Malibu, no doubt—looked up at the sound of Harlan’s voice. He glanced curiously at the man wearing cuffs, then went back to minding his own business.

      Harlan waited as the girl reached under the counter and brought out a key attached to a wooden paddle. He’d always thought that the necessity for such things was a pretty sad commentary on the state of the world, but he took it from her without comment, then moved in the direction of her pointed finger toward a hallway just to her left.

      The hallway was small and cramped with a single door marked Toilet. Harlan shoved the key into the lock, then pushed the door open and gestured Billy Boy inside.

      Billy frowned. “Ain’t you gonna take these cuffs off?”

      “Once we’re inside,” Harlan said.

      Billy looked surprised. “We? You’re gonna watch me do my business? I told you, I like my privacy.”

      “My mandate is to keep you in sight at all times, whether I like it or not. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I should trust you.”

      “What do you think I’m gonna do? Whack you with my—”

      “Just get inside, Billy. I’ve had about all I can tolerate of you. The sooner we’re done here, the better off we’ll both be.”

      “You ain’t exactly Officer Friendly, are you?”

      “Sorry to disappoint. Now let’s get this over with.”

      Billy Boy scowled but did as he was told, stepping into a room about the size of a broom closet that sported a single toilet and sink. There wasn’t enough room inside for both of them, so Harlan moved forward and uncuffed his prisoner, then stepped back and waited in the open doorway.

      “You ain’t gonna close the door?”

      “I’m gonna close your mouth with my fist if you don’t hurry it up.”

      “All right, all right,” Billy said, stepping up to the toilet. “Don’t get your panties in a wad.” He turned his head slightly. “Speaking of which, what do you think of that counter girl? Kinda cute, huh?”

      “I think she’s way out of your league.”

      “Yeah? I bet if I treated her right, she’d do anything I told her.”

      Harlan almost laughed. “Dream on, Billy. Now will you please get to it already? I’d really like to—”

      Harlan froze as something cold and metallic touched the back of his head.

      “Hands behind your neck,” a voice said.

      A female voice.

      Damn.

      Harlan didn’t have to see her face to know it was the aforementioned counter girl. He also didn’t have to use that big brain of his to figure out that she wasn’t a counter girl at all. She’d no doubt been riding in the battered Chevy Malibu parked outside, along with the potato chip lover. And chances were pretty good that the real counter girl—or more likely man—was either dead or tied up in a closet somewhere.

      Harlan inwardly cursed himself. He’d been at this job for nearly ten years now and he’d just pulled a rookie move. Let the prisoner lull him—or, in this case, annoy him—into lowering his guard.

      How could he be so stupid?

      “Hands,” the girl said again. “Now.”

      As Harlan sighed and laced his fingers behind his neck, Billy Boy Lyman turned around, that infuriating smirk once again adorning his face. He reached forward and removed Harlan’s Glock from its holster.

      “You were right not to trust me,” he said.

      Then he brought the gun up fast, slamming it into the side of Harlan’s head.

       Chapter Two

      They found the burned-out shell of the pickup truck parked on the side of the highway about forty miles south of Williamson. It was still smoldering when a highway patrol officer pulled off the road behind it, thinking it was just another abandoned vehicle whose owner had gotten a little carried away.

      As soon as he took a closer look, however, he discovered it hadn’t been abandoned after all.

      There was a body inside.

      The medical examiner on scene had warned Callie that what she was about to see would not be pleasant—what people in the trade referred to as a crispy critter. And true enough, the sight of that blackened lump on the front seat was one she knew she’d be spending the next couple weeks trying to bleach from her brain.

      Despite the damage, the truck’s rear license tag had been spared—an oasis amidst a desolate landscape—and when she called it in, she found out the pickup belonged to none other than Jim Farber, a local rancher.

      Considering the fact that Farber hadn’t been seen since yesterday morning, the logical conclusion was that he was the lump on the front seat.

      Callie wouldn’t know for certain until forensics did its thing, but she was a strong believer in Occam’s razor—that the simplest explanation was the most likely one. After seven years with the Williamson County Sheriff’s Department, working crimes a lot more complicated than this, she’d come to rely on that dictum as if it were gospel.

      The question, as always, was who had done this and why? Williamson, Wyoming, wasn’t exactly known for its violent crime, and the handful of murders Callie had investigated in the course of her career usually led her straight to a member of the victim’s family.

      That, however, didn’t seem to be the case here. Only careful examination would determine the actual cause of death, but whatever it might be, Callie couldn’t imagine Farber’s wife or either of their two kids pouring gasoline over the family truck and setting it on fire. This was a dispassionate crime, and the Farbers were anything but. It was certainly possible that Callie was wrong about that, but she didn’t think so.

      A groan pulled her out of her thoughts. “I think I’m gonna be sick,” Rusty said, clutching his stomach, his face a couple shades whiter than it had been when they’d pulled up in their SUV a few moments ago.

      Rusty Wilcox was a good number of years younger than Callie and hadn’t been on the job long enough to build immunity against sights like this. Even Callie was finding it more difficult

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