Alice raised a trembling hand. “Is that who…who killed Petunia?”

Frank thought it might make them feel better. “Yes.”

They were silent for a moment. “We’re going up to the lake to bury her, Frank. Would you like to come?” Alice asked.

“I can’t,” Frank said and focused on Annie. “Last night. I told you. Why didn’t you take the safe and leave?”

“Leave to where, exactly?” Edie asked. “This is our home.”

“I don’t think it’s your home anymore.”

“That’s not for you to decide,” Edie said.

“I don’t think you understand. Things have changed. Sturm—”

“We’ve dealt with Sturm for years. We can handle this.”

“Yeah, but once Jack and Pine and Chuck find—”

“You leave Jack and Pine to us, Frank. They’re family.”

“What?”

“Annie didn’t tell you? Jack and Pine don’t like to admit it, but they’re still our sons, even if they don’t come around much anymore.”

Frank remembered Chuck telling him not to bring up Annie around Jack and Pine, their resentment over not being invited to dinner, and their unrelenting hatred of the Glouck family. Now, looking at the mothers, the resemblance was faint, but it was there. Jack was Alice’s son, and Edie had had Pine. Looking back on everything, it made a weird kind of logic, but Frank had a feeling that if things got bad, real bad, if it came down to it, the clowns would take Sturm’s side over their own mothers. Being a family clearly meant more to Edie and Alice.

“You had no business volunteering Annie to go get that safe,” Edie continued. “We didn’t raise our children to be thieves. No, this is still our home, and it will be our home for a long, long time. We’re not looking to push Sturm into a fight.” She looked at the dead man on the fence and shook our head. “Our dog is gone. That’s enough. No more. You seem like a good boy, Frank, but you’ve gone too far. You should clear out before things get worse.”

Annie touched his hand. “Goodbye, Frank. Please take care of yourself.” And with that, Edie put the car in gear and they pulled slowly away. The few boys and Amber in the back, knees drawn up around the shrouded figure of Petunia, watched Frank with wide eyes.

He went back and sat in Chuck’s pickup. His head was starting to throb and he wondered if he should take another pill. Maybe Edie and Alice were right. Maybe he should just leave. This was their home. He had a little cash, not much, but enough that he wouldn’t have to spend the first few nights in the car. He could head west, see the ocean. He had a full box of rum in the trunk, after all. It might not be so bad, just sit on the beach and watch the waves for a while. He’d caused enough damage this morning. If nothing else, the remaining animals would most likely be shot, and wouldn’t be forced into fighting for their lives. Their deaths would be quick.

He watched the sun climb higher and made up his mind. He would go back to the long black car and drive away and never look back. It was over. He had done enough. The Gloucks knew where the gun safe was if they didn’t get paid. It was up to them now.

He twisted the key and stomped on the gas. Something about the animals nagged at him, like an infected tooth, but he couldn’t figure it out. He had done everything he could. He had turned them all loose. Sturm would have his hands full with over a dozen cats, a tiger, a few wolves, one lone hyena, and a goddamn Komodo Dragon running loose through town. If Frank’s luck held, he would make it back to the car without anyone seeing him and he could leave this valley forever.

Frank was nearly out of town when it hit him like a punch in the gut.

The rhino. He’d forgotten the rhino.

Last night, he’d turned the cats loose from the vet hospital, but hadn’t thought to go out to the barn. Goddamnit. He punched the steering wheel, pissed at his own stupidity and thirst for rum. It had gotten in the way. He pulled the truck in a wide U-turn and shot back into town, back to the vet hospital.

* * * * *

The rhino was gone.

The gate stood open, a few handfuls of grain scattered across the floor. “Shit,” Frank said, gritting his teeth. The drugs were really kicking his heart into high gear now, marching double-time through his limbs, making him flail and shiver and jump. He scratched his scalp with trembling hands and paced up and down the barn aisle.

The sudden urge to simply grab the .45 and start shooting at anything, everything, seethed through his veins, just unload his rage and guilt on the barn, the vet hospital, Chuck’s truck, the trees, the sun. But that wouldn’t get him anywhere.

As much as he tried to tell himself that all he had to do was jump back into the truck and drive out to the long black car and he would be free, he knew, deep down, that this was different. No matter how many bottles of rum he had, it wouldn’t be enough to blot the memory of the rhino’s warm breath on his hand. It wasn’t like the horses. Not that the rum had helped his nightmares much.

It didn’t matter that the rhino was damn near dead to start with. He was responsible. And if didn’t try, that wrinkled gray beast would haunt his nights for the rest of his life. “Shit,” Frank said again.

He went outside and stood in the sun. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet, but already the air was hot enough to singe his skin, his eyes, his lungs. Sweat boiled out of his pores, trickling down his temples and back and collecting in the insides of his elbows and knees.

He turned in a slow circle, wondering which way to head. Sturm’s ranch was probably the most logical place to start, but he sensed that it would probably be the last place he would have a chance to look. Sturm might be there, and even if he wasn’t, the place was undoubtedly crawling with hunters with guns.

So on the chance that the rhino was somewhere else, he decided to circle the town, check out some of the other fields where’d they been shooting. Then maybe swing by the auction yard again. If he got lucky, he would find the rhino and be on his way.

But as he drove into town, he wondered what the hell he was going to do if he found the rhino. It wasn’t like he could take it away with him. Shit, it wasn’t like he had really helped any of other animals out, not really. They were going to die, just the same. If you wanted to get right down to it, it was his fault these animals were here in the first place.

* * * * *

Frank had just unscrewed the cap on a fresh bottle of rum when he came upon a bunch of pickups at the town park. He slowed down, pulled Chuck’s hat lower over his face, and got a better look. Six or seven hunters gathered around one of the picnic tables out near the sidewalk. A bunch of small caliber rifles were laid out on the table. Theo walked along the bench seat on the other side of the picnic table, throwing his arms out in grand gestures and laughing.

And there was the rhino, tied to a tree in the middle of the park.

Frank hit the brakes. He pulled in next to the pickups and shut off the engine.

Theo’s voice drifted in through the open windows. “Fuck, it’s easy, ya’ bunch of pussies. Fifty bucks a bullet. That’s it. Just fifty bucks. You decide the target. Head or heart. It’s your call.” He had seen Chuck’s truck, assumed it really was Chuck, and just ignored him.

“We been shooting for half an hour,” one of the hunters said. “It ain’t going down.”

Theo snorted. “I s’pose you’re the kind of pussy that goes to Vegas and whines when you don’t hit the jackpot after giving a slot machine one pull. You never fucking know. Could be your bullet’s the one that cracks that skull. Or punches through that heart. Or it could be that the fucker finally just bleeds to death and you happen to have had the last shot. That’s the kind of game this is.” Theo checked his watch. “And in, oh, thirteen minutes, the price of the bullets go up to a hundred bucks a pop.”