Chapter 4

The cruiser came up the drive and stopped at the end of the barn, and the deputy who got out was a man Hollis knew. Ellis Boatwright, forty-one, raised two miles from here, had ridden ponies at the county fair with Hollis's nephew. He walked into the aisle with his hat in his hand and looked at the crowd of buyers and then at Coyle.

"Got a call about a theft in progress," Ellis said.

"I made that call," Coyle said.

"I figured." Ellis looked around. "So what am I looking at?"

For one second - Hollis would remember this for the rest of his life - the whole aisle waited to see which way the deputy would turn. Coyle was the manager. Coyle had the folder, the credentials, the phone that rang with seven-figure numbers on it. Hollis was a night groom in a torn jacket with a hoof pick in his back pocket.

Coyle stepped forward. "This man was found with a stolen halter tag in his possession. That's theft of farm property, that's attempted fraud on a sale -"

"Whose tag?"

"Lot 114's."

"And where's Lot 114?"

Coyle's mouth worked. Alma held up the consignment sheet without being asked.

"Barn C," she said. "Chestnut filly."

Ellis Boatwright looked at the sheet. He looked at the tag. He looked at Coyle for a long moment, and Hollis watched the deputy's face change the way a man's face changes when he realizes he's been called out on a Sunday for nothing, and then realizes it isn't nothing at all.

"Mr. Coyle," Ellis said. "Where'd you get that tag?"

"Out of his jacket pocket."

"Which pocket."

"The left one. The torn one."

"Did you see it in there before you reached in?"

Coyle's jaw tightened. "I don't have to answer that."

"No, sir, you don't." Ellis put his hat back on. "But I'd like to talk to you about it. Outside."

Hollis stood in the stall with his hand on the colt and watched the two of them walk out into the morning light. The buyers didn't leave. That surprised him. He had expected the aisle to empty the moment the word thief was said, and instead here they were, forty of them, standing in the straw dust with their sale books, watching an old man and a horse.

Sonny Delacroix came over and leaned on the stall door.

"You want to tell me what you were doing in that stall at three o'clock?" Sonny asked. Not unkind. Just asking.

Hollis looked at the colt's neck, at the spot where the scanner had passed.

"Not yet," he said.

Sonny nodded slowly, like that was an answer he could live with for now, and walked back toward his buyers. But Alma was watching Hollis, and she had the binder open in her hands, and she had found something in it ten minutes ago that she hadn't said out loud.

"What," Hollis said.

"After," Alma said. "Not in front of them."

And that was worse than the accusation. Because Alma Reyes didn't hedge. If she was holding something back, it was because it could hurt him, and Hollis had spent forty-four years on this farm without ever once needing to be protected from the truth.