She caught her breath and walked back to the kitchen, shotgun in right hand, for a cold drink of water. The wind blew violent as hell outside, Diane wishing she’d never collected so many of those damn chimes, people always bringing them to her now from vacation spots. There were wind chimes from New Orleans, Gulf Shores, and even a set from New York City, with little chimes hanging beneath the Empire State Building. Now all she needed was a goddamn cat to let the town know she’d gone crazy.

She laid the shotgun on the kitchen table and drank the cool water. The wind knocked hard outside, tree limbs brushing the window. And then there was a sharp buzz and flickering of light and her damn power was out.

“Son of a bitch.”

She lit a candle, finished her water, and had turned back to the bedroom when she saw the bearded man looking through the back door window straight at her.

She dropped the glass, it shattering to the floor. Diane reached for the shotgun as she heard the rattling and twisting of the knob.

Quinn slipped out of bed with Ophelia at midnight, finding his creased Levi’s and stiff khaki shirt folded across a chair. She stirred from the bed, ran a hand through her dark hair, and rose up to look at the clock. She was still naked, the covers only concealing her from the waist down.

“Stay,” she said. “It’s raining.”

“I got to be up in five hours.”

“What happened to your toothbrush?”

“I already brushed my teeth.”

“Or razor?”

“You told me to hold off on the razor.”

“God damn you, Quinn Colson.”

Quinn pulled into his jeans and slipped on his shirt with the star stitched on the sleeve. He sat on the bed as he worked the buttons. The rain pinged the tin roof of Ophelia’s house and wind shook the shutters. In the dim light, he could see his badge and gun on the nightstand. The television still flickered in the living room, where they’d watched about five minutes of Man of the West before making their way back to her bedroom and getting down to business. The routine of it all had been quite pleasant.

“You really pay fifty dollars for a pair of panties?” he asked.

“You think they’re worth it?”

“Didn’t keep ’em on that long.”

Ophelia smiled at him, not trying to cover up her full breasts with their large dark nipples, and watched him. She lay sideways, elbow on mattress and head crooked in hand.

“Until a few months ago,” Quinn said, “I never knew about that ruby in your belly.”

“I’ve had that since high school,” she said. “You wouldn’t know because you were already gone.”

“Maybe I would’ve come home more often.”

“Maybe so.”

“You probably had lots of women at Fort Benning.”

“I knew a few girls in Columbus,” Quinn said. “One girl in Phenix City wasn’t too bad.”

“What happened?”

“She took little pride in her underwear.”

Ophelia rolled on her back and laughed, tucking a pillow up behind her head, stretching her arms high. “Come back.”

“Five hours.”

“I thought Rangers could work on little sleep, no food.”

“That’s true.”

“Why don’t you consider me a test?”

“Kind of like doing PT?” Quinn said.

“Exactly.”

The wind was pretty damn violent and the rain sounded like pennies hitting the metal roof. He started to unbutton his shirt again when he heard his phone buzz by his gun. The screen flashed on, lighting up the room. Ophelia just shook her head and said, “Shit.”

Quinn picked it up and got Kenny, who was on night patrol. “Sheriff, dispatch just got a call from Diane Tull. She’s got a creeper around her house. I’m headed that way now, but I’m clear up to Fate.”

“Roger that,” Quinn said. “Meet you there.”

Quinn stood and rebuttoned his shirt and scooped up his gun, badge, and pair of cowboy boots as he walked to the living room. Ophelia followed, slipping into the tight black T-shirt she’d had on earlier with those high-dollar lace panties. She kissed him at the door and he walked out into the rain.

He paused for a moment.

Six houses up, on top of a hill, was Anna Lee Stevens’s big Victorian, the low green light shining from her screened-in porch, half the house ripped away and now rebuilt with unpainted wood and brand-new windows. But that side porch was the same. And that damn green light that shined every night all night.

Quinn looked away and sped off in the opposite direction. Glad not to have to study on that too long.

•   •   •

She saw the man and he saw her. And then he was gone. In the darkness and by candlelight, she lifted the phone off the hook and called 911, saying she had a creeper, a fucking pervert, wanting to see her naked. But as soon as Diane put down the phone, she was filled with such a goddamn almighty rage that some son of a bitch had invaded her space, her home, her yard, that she went out into the wind and the rain with the J. C. Higgins to make sure the bastard damn well knew.

She followed the short steps off the door from the kitchen and out into her backyard, turning to the right and left, shotgun tucked up under her right armpit, raised and ready to scatter some buckshot.

The wind chimes were going wild on the front porch, rain coming down hard now, falling sideways, making things tough to see in the night, as she took a wide berth around the side of her old house, looking from the tree line to the crepe myrtles and azaleas. Even thought it was deep winter, some of her daffodils had started to barely poke from the front lawn, now crushed under her bare feet as she moved onto the driveway, which seemed a lot longer than usual. She didn’t see a thing along the street, all the other houses in darkness, as she made her way to the mailbox. She dropped the shotgun down for just a moment to use her forearm to wipe the rain from her eyes.

She knew all the cars and trucks on her little street. She worried for a half second about what she looked like, in pajama bottoms, a man’s tank top, barefoot, and cradling a gun.

She was turning back to the house when she saw the man dart from the hedges on the other side of her house, running for the road, as she picked up the gun, leveled it at him, and yelled for him to “Stop, you stupid son of a bitch!”

Of course he didn’t listen.

“I said, fucking stop, you fucking bastard.”

She squeezed the trigger, the man running off from the blast from forty, fifty feet away. Diane felt like she was in a trance, moving past her black mailbox hand-painted with curving colorful flowers. She jacked another shell into the breech and leveled the shotgun again and fired again. And then again. The shotgun ramming hard into the crook of her shoulder.

The man was gone. Diane just stood there in the rain, on the road, trying to catch her breath. Lights flicked on in all the houses down the little street. Dogs barked.

From down the road, two little streets down, she heard a motorcycle kick to life, making a great noisy racket, kicking into gear, the engine growling as it turned into her street. Diane just saw that single taillight as the rider rushed past, too far away for another shot, and made it up and over the hill.

She walked back toward her house, waiting on the police, when she noticed what he’d done. The son of a bitch had slashed her tires, the rims lying flat and hard on the ground.

And the fella had also decided to spray-paint a few words on the driver’s door and the truck bed.