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Everyone turned to look at him, but Browning was preoccupied with freeing a tendril of beef from his teeth.

“Do tell,” Antwan said.

“And the goddamn Great Depression, that was another of Earl's obsessions. That man never got over it. Couldn't take pleasure in anything cause he thought God was going to snatch it away from him any second.”

“Let's hear some more of that good Bible stuff,” Antwan said.

“This is from Numbers,” said Browning. “In Earl's own voice.”

He glanced at Claire with a grin like a kid doing a forbidden parlor trick.

“Cut it out, Browning,” Frisco said. “Show some respect.”

But he went ahead with an uncanny impersonation of Earl Hammond's gruff speech. It was a talent Browning had never displayed before.

“Leviticus five, seventeen. ‘If a person sins and does what is forbidden in any of the Lord's commands, even though he does not know it, he is guilty and will be held responsible.' ”

Antwan put his fork down and patted his hands together.

“Like Earl himself was sitting right there speaking those very words.”

“Here's one,” Browning said, and brought forth Earl's voice a second time. “ ‘Do not pollute the land where you are. Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it.' ”

Browning sent Claire a sheepish smile, shrugging a halfhearted apology. She just shook her head and turned her eyes away.

“That's some god,” Antwan said. “One unforgiving asshole.”

“Show some manners,” Frisco said. “Both of you.”

“What?” Browning said. “What the hell's eating you?”

“Knock it off,” Frisco said. “I'm not telling you again.”

Antwan smiled to himself, picked up his knife and fork, and sliced up a few cubes of beef, speared one, then stirred it in the gravy and tucked it into his mouth.

“Come on now, Frisco,” Antwan said. “You got to admit, boy's got a gift.”

“Your wife is taking this hard,” Frisco said. “In case you and your wing man haven't noticed.”

Antwan turned and looked at Claire, then reached out and patted her on the shoulder. She stifled a cringe.

“No reason to feel bad, Miss Claire. You're the stuff of legend. Walk in with a shotgun, unload on a man in the act of homicide. It's all good. I mean, aside from the loss of Earl Hammond. That's surely an immeasurable sorrow to us all. But there's no blame on you. None whatsoever.”

Claire bent forward at the waist, tipping in her chair as if she'd had the breath punched out of her.

She needed to unburden. She had to stop this churning, get out of the suffocating chambers of her mind. Browning should have been the one to turn to, but hearing him mock Earl Junior and watching him fiddle with that gold toothpick sickened and repelled her. In the overnight hours her mannerly, deferential husband had disappeared. This new Browning Hammond was behaving like some freshly coronated prince cavorting in his throne, taking practice swings with his scepter.

Now Antwan made a production of patting his lips with his napkin. He refolded the white linen square and arranged it beside his plate, and announced that it was a fine meal on a very sad day. Everything spoken with that smile tingeing his lips.

“Tell me about the map,” Frisco said.

Browning pried another fleck of meat from between his teeth, looked it over, sucked it off the gold toothpick, then set the implement down and lined it up neatly on the tablecloth. A mirror image to Antwan's tidiness, as though the two of them were working in tandem, performing some kind of drill from their football days.

“What map you talking about, Frisco?”

“Last night there was a map on the coffee table. It was rolled out flat and there were a dozen red marks on it.”

“Where'd you hear about any map?”

Browning kept his gaze on Frisco, but his eyes made small angry darts her way.

“So you're saying there was no map?” Frisco said. “No map of any kind?”

Browning looked at Antwan, and Antwan shrugged.

“Don't remember no map. No map at all.”

“I don't either,” Browning said.

“There was a map,” Claire said. “I saw it on the coffee table.”

Antwan slid his chair back and seemed to consider putting his feet up on the table. Then checked himself.

“Oh, she means the shopping center,” Antwan said. “My project in Tamarac. That's what threw me off. It wasn't no map. It was a blueprint. The layout of the plaza, the stores, parking lot, the bathrooms. All that shit.”

“A shopping center,” Frisco said.

“In Tamarac,” Antwan said.

“You're building a shopping center?”

“One of my projects, yeah, me and a couple of skin doctors. Don't tell me, Frisco, you're one of them tree huggers can't abide progress.”

Browning was silent. He'd picked up the toothpick again and was holding it between thumb and index finger as if measuring its length. He was staring down at the tablecloth like he was waiting to see if Antwan's shopping center story held up before he was compelled to join in.

Claire wasn't sure how flawed her perception was. Above all, Browning had always seemed an honorable man. Though like anyone he had his flaws. A temper that could flare unpredictably. More than once she'd had to tug him out of a restaurant or bar when he'd locked eyes with a local cowboy who grinned too knowingly at Claire. That was familiar territory, boy-men finding their way. But the person who sat across from her at the table seemed a sudden stranger. A man who'd somehow managed to shrug off any trace of remorse or horror from the night before and was sporting with a plaything he would never have touched with Earl alive.

“I want to see this map,” Frisco said. “This blueprint. Where is it now?”

“Out in my car, I believe. You want me to go get it?”

“It wasn't a blueprint,” Claire said. “I know what a blueprint is. This was a map, some kind of survey map. It wasn't any damn blueprint. Don't treat me like a child.”

Antwan raised both hands in defense, mimicking a chastened look.

“I'll go get it if you want. It's in the Mercedes.”

“How about the Faust brothers?” Frisco said.

Browning was admiring the gold, angling it so it glinted in the sunlight.

Antwan pushed his plate forward and stretched his arms straight above his head and yawned.

“What about them?” Browning glanced at his brother, then cut a look at Claire.

“Were the Faust boys here last night?”

“Not that I know.”

“Their car was here,” Frisco said, fingers still laced, wrists against the table edge. Same steady tone of detachment.

“Those two boys come and go. I don't have tracking devices on them,” Browning said. “What're you after, Frisco?”

“So they weren't here last night?”

“I said they weren't.”

“How about Gustavo? Why was he fired? Or was he?”

Browning stared indifferently at his brother.

“I don't want to hear that man's name mentioned in this house ever again.”

Frisco's eyes were still cocked down.

“Earl mention anything about some big changes coming to the ranch? Some radical changes?”

Browning dropped the toothpick and pushed his chair back.

“Goddammit, Frisco. Cops been grilling me all fucking day, now I got to take a load of shit from you. No way. You don't have any right to harass me. You don't have a fucking clue what goes on out here. You think it's all fun and games. Man, I'm busting my ass trying to stay even. Feed grain costs doubled last year, and same with fertilizer for the grazing pastures. You have any idea what a bag of clover seed or purple top turnips goes for? And Christ, our fuel bills are through the roof. We're lucky to clear one percent on the cattle operation, and we haven't started making money on the safari. I could put the same amount of cash in a T-bill and make four times the profit this ranch turns. Earl ran this place like a hobby farm. Every idea I had about improving things, he'd shoot it down in a heartbeat.

“But you wouldn't know about any of that, because you're off in your dream world, playing with your horses, riding around Miami like the Lone Ranger. So don't come out here and bully me with that law-enforcement third-degree bullshit. Don't pull that big-brother garbage on me. You know what I'm saying? I'm not a kid anymore. I'm not your goddamn punching bag.”

Frisco smiled down at his hands.

“Been polishing that for a while, have you?”

“Stop it, you two.” Claire rose and scooped up Antwan's dish and held it out to him till he got the message and picked up his napkin and dropped it onto the plate.

Her husband's cupid cheeks were blotched, and that vein angling toward his left eye was so swollen it seemed on the verge of rupture.

“And you, Antwan?” Frisco said. “Earl mention anything to you about a radical change around the ranch?”

Antwan produced the toothy grin he used to flaunt on the gridiron when a clear path to the end zone opened up before him.

“Much as I do love coming out here to Coquina,” Antwan said, “the affairs of this ranch ain't no business of mine. I got no skin in this game.”

“Good to hear,” Frisco said. “Let's try to keep it like that.”

Browning came to his feet, he tapped one end of the toothpick on the tablecloth as if gaveling the meeting to a close. He looked down at Frisco, at Antwan, saving Claire for last, giving her a dim meaningless smile.

“I'm going into Clewiston. Got a meeting with Lee White, Earl's attorney at First Federal. And the accountants will be there, too. We'll be opening Earl's lockbox, going through the papers, whatever's in there. You're free to come, Frisco, this might concern you, too.”

“I'm not in the will.”

“I can't believe that,” Claire said. “You need to go.”

“I'm the prodigal son,” he said. “Except I'm the one that never got around to making amends. I'm not in the will. And that's just fine.”

Browning gave his brother a long level stare, then pocketed the toothpick and motioned at Antwan. Antwan rose, nodding at Claire.

“Please accept my most sincere condolences in this time of immense sorrow, Miss Claire.”

She carried the plate to the kitchen, and when she returned the two of them were gone. She stood in the doorway, looking at Frisco. He still sat with his wrists against the table, eyes down.

His gray T-shirt fit snug across his compact torso. Almost a foot shorter than Browning and leaner by a hundred pounds, Frisco had the ideal body for a bronc rider. Low center of gravity, wide shoulders, narrow hips, strong legs. For all Browning's physical advantages and his brute superiority, her money would be on the older, slimmer brother in any kind of brawl. A David to his Goliath.

She wasn't sure where all that came from, this sudden awareness of Frisco's physicality. But for all the years she'd hung around jocks and observed their fixation on size and the potency it implied, and for all the time she'd watched the endless one-upsmanship they engaged in, she'd never seen a man of Frisco's modest stature who so clearly had the intimidating edge.

“Care to take a ride, Claire?”

She blinked and came into the room. He was watching her with curiosity.

“A ride?”

“Horseback.”

“You want to go riding? A time like this?”

“Swing by the Pintos' place. Pay our respects. That interest you?”

She drew a long breath and directed her gaze toward the living room, where the same two crime-scene techs were huddled in conversation.

“I'll need to change.”

“So change,” he said. “Meet you in the barn.”

 

 

THORN WAS STOOPED OVER, HANDS
on his knees, gasping. He'd run flat out for at least three miles, half an hour traveling east across open plains and rocky pastures and weaving through sparse stands of pine, coming to rest in a dense grove of cabbage palms, stumpy palmettos, and a few oaks and pines.

What stopped him at that precise spot was the patch of rare shade, and a herd of elegant antelopes that was grazing nearby on the yellowed grass in a narrow stretch of meadow. The last thing he wanted was a stampede of antelopes giving away his position.

In the grass, mingling with the herd, were a few white cattle egrets feasting on the bugs kicked up in the antelopes' passage. At least he thought they were antelopes. Their long horns corkscrewed up and back. From their withers to their rumps they were jet black, while their underparts were snowy, as if they'd once waded in a shallow river of bleach. White fur circled their black eyes. Exotic as hell. From Asia or some mountain grassland on the other side of the globe. Not more than a yard tall at their shoulders. As close to a flock of unicorns as Thorn was ever likely to see.

There were around forty in the herd. They turned as one to look
him over, decided he was fine, and continued their happy snack. They seemed as docile and innocent as a troop of Brownies on a picnic. A man who would shoot such an animal for sport should be strung by his testicles to a sturdy branch and left for the rodents and insects.

He sat and rested his back against a palm. When the barrel of the Glock stabbed his crotch, he drew it from his pocket and set it beside him on a pile of leaves.

For the last half hour the midafternoon sun had been his only guide in that disorienting landscape. He'd tried to keep his shadow before him as he ran, accomplishing at least a straight line. Though he might as well have been on the Australian Outback, the pampas of Argentina, or some equally far-flung spot. Heading east was a flip-of-the-coin choice. He had no map in his mind of the shape of Coquina Ranch. He knew only that it was immense, and even if he managed to come to one of its boundaries, the land beyond it was also largely uninhabited.