He said, “Merlins are pretty little falcons, and they don’t get enough credit. They’re small but fast and surprisingly strong.”

Sheridan shook off the idea. “merlins are birds for beginners. They have short wings and they just kill small things.”

“You area beginner. Besides, Merlins can be trained quickly and flown within a few weeks. They’re more loyal than long-winged falcons.”

Sheridan made a face. “You told me once loyalty had nothing to do with it. You said it was about creating a special partnership between falconer and falcon. You said if one needs the other one too much, the special partnership is ruined and the falconer might as well get a dog.”

Nate looked to Joe for help. Joe shrugged. It was usually him on the receiving end of Sheridan’s arguments, and he enjoyed seeing Nate become prey to his own words.

“Well, I’ve got a dog,” Sheridan said, gesturing at Tube. “Now I want a falcon. A real falcon. You said yourself a prairie is second only to a peregrine as far as you were concerned.”

Nate said, “But a merlin. ”

“Forget merlins,” Sheridan said. “Can you help me get a prairie falcon?”

Nate sighed.

“I thought so,” Sheridan said.

Joe noticed the amused look on Lucy’s face. Lucy had been following the exchange, as well as carefully observing April stare at Nate the whole time. Lucy said to April, “Be careful your eyes don’t pop out and fall on your plate. You wouldn’t want to accidentally eat them.”

April, the spell momentarily broken, flushed red and hissed, “Shut up, Lucy.”

“Girls,” Marybeth said, and smiled a quick smile at Nate and Joe.

Joe thought, There is a LOT going on here.

After the dishes were cleared and cleaned-it was the first time Joe could remember all three girls helping without being asked, apparently to impress their guest-Joe went out on the front porch. The sun had slipped behind the Bighorns an hour before, and because of the elevation, the temperature had already dropped twenty degrees. Although it was barely September, there was already a fall-like snap to the air. He’d noticed earlier that fingers of color were probing down through the folds of the foothills, and the leaves on the cottonwoods of the valley floor were starting to cup. V’s of high-altitude geese soared south along the underbelly of a moon-fused cloud. All were signs of an early winter. Nevertheless, he thought he’d suggest to Nate and Marybeth that they sit outside in the back. He knew Nate had more questions and he wanted to answer them out of earshot of the girls. Marybeth should be there because she so often provided insight he never considered, plus she said she’d spent a few hours earlier that day doing Internet searches trying to locate what she could online about Terri Wade, Diane Shober, and the Grim Brothers.

Joe went back inside the house to check the humidor in his office, hoping he still had some smokable cigars. But because he hadn’t filled the humidor well with water for months, the two cigars that remained crackled drily between his palms and were irredeemable.

He nearly ran into Lucy in the hallway when he came out. She was in her nightgown, and he anticipated a complaint about April when she said, “I think I saw someone in the backyard.”

“Was it Nate?”

“No, Nate’s in the kitchen talking with Mom.”

As she said it, there was a heavy thump against the siding outside, as if someone had tripped in the dark and reached out to prevent a fall. Joe continued down the hall with Lucy padding in bare feet behind him. Sheridan stuck her head out of her bedroom doorway and said, “What was that?”

“I’m not sure, but I’m going to find out.”

There were a number of possibilities. Maybe Nedney had seen Nate and called the feds or the sheriff; one of Nate’s friends or enemies had followed him here; a reporter from the National Enquirerinvestigating the Terri Wade story had located the witness; Camish and Caleb had tracked him down to finish the job. Or maybe something more innocent: high-school boys trying to spy on his daughters. The last possibility made Joe angrier than any of the previous theories.

He looked up to see Marybeth rising from the table and Nate striding across the living room. He’d hidden his.454 on the top shelf of the coat closet.

Joe bypassed the.40 Glock in his office drawer and snatched a 12-gauge Mossberg pump from his gun rack. He used the piece for goose hunting since it took 3-inch Magnum shells, and he jammed three into the magazine and worked the slide to put one in the chamber. His six-battery steel Maglite slipped into his belt.

Joe turned to Marybeth, who hovered in the hallway as if positioning herself between her daughters and any outside threat. He said, “Make sure the curtains are closed in the back bedrooms and the girls are in our room in the front of the house.”

He waited while Marybeth shooed Sheridan, April, and Lucy across the hall in their nightgowns into the master bedroom. April sulked, Lucy went willingly-practically skipping-and Sheridan shot a look at Joe and Nate as if she wished she were with them instead of with her sisters and mom. When the girls were across the hallway, Marybeth leaned out and silently mouthed, “Okay.”

Although the operation had gone quickly and smoothly, Joe thought again of what his mother-in-law had said to him. How his job endangered his family. Here it was again. His girls were usedto this sort of thing, and that wasn’t normal or right, was it?

Nate said, “Let’s go out the front and come around to the back on both sides.”

Joe nodded, said, “I’ll take the left side.”

As they slipped out the front door into the dark, Joe whispered over his shoulder, “Take it real easy, Nate. I live in this place. No shooting or pulling off ears if it can be avoided.”

Nate grunted his understanding. Then: “When we get in position, I’ll make a noise to get their attention. You be ready on the back side and come up behind them.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s take this slow.”

“Of course.”

Joe kept low to avoid being illuminated by the house windows and the lone streetlamp on the corner of the block. He went left, reminded painfully of the injuries in his legs. Once he was on the side of the house, he’d be in shadow. He avoided the concrete path and kept to the grass to avoid making noise. There was a narrow strip of grass between his house and Ed Nedney’s, and he’d turn at a ninety-degree angle at the corner and follow it to a six-foot wooden gate that led to his backyard. There, he’d wait for Nate’s distraction before opening the gate.

He turned the corner. Ed Nedney’s front porch light clicked on and Nedney stepped out on his landing, apparently to light his pipe. A match flared and lit up Nedney’s face, and he turned his head and saw Joe with the shotgun. Nedney froze, the match paused a few inches from the bowl of tobacco. He started to speak, but Joe held his index finger to his lips and hissed, “Shhhhh.”

Nedney’s eyes were wide. Joe thought, he has a decision to make: obey Joe’s command or say what he was going to say. The match burned down in Nedney’s fingers. Another time, two years ago, his neighbor had come outside to find Joe marching another man across his yard at gunpoint. Nedney hadn’t liked the experience one bit.

His neighbor inhaled to speak, but Joe shot his arm out and pointed his finger at him, gesturing for him to go back inside. Although he was clearly angry, Nedney tossed the match aside, turned on his heel, and scuttled into his house. Probably to call the police or start drafting covenants for the neighborhood forbidding residents from lurking around in the dark with shotguns, Joe thought. Joe hoped Nate was in position so whatever was going to happen would happen quickly and he could warn Nate to keep out of sight in case the police were coming.