his sides, shaking his head. “No, I don’t need anything like that. How’d you know I was here?”
“I’ll ask the questions! Tell me who you are and what you’re doing in this house.” She was pushing it, she knew, but so far she had him fooled. How she would manage to get him out, she didn’t know.
He glanced out the front window, as if searching for her car—or maybe looking for his buddies? Who was Willy?
Somehow, the kid didn’t seem like a tweaker. In fact, he didn’t seem dangerous at all, and he had obvious respect for the teensy weapon in her hand. Good. It needed to stay that way. “Answer me!”
His attention refocused on the pistol. “I’m Gavin Farmer, and I live across the lake at the boys’ ranch. I’m not doing anything bad over here, honest. I’m sorry, I thought nobody lived here.” His gaze swept past her, out the window again. “You’re alone?”
“I’m never alone.” She fingered the small pistol of pepper mace. “And I plan to live here for a while. As I said, you’re trespassing.” It had been a long time since she’d knocked a man to his knees, but she still knew the moves, even for a big, tough kid. Still, something about him didn’t seem tough.
“They said this place wouldn’t ever sell, that it was tied up in some dead woman’s estate,” the kid said. “Austin Barlow send you here?”
“No.”
“The sheriff, then. He send you?”
“Do I look like a deputy?” she asked.
“I don’t know many deputies.” There was some familiar emotion in his voice, in his movement. It wasn’t anger so much as resentment. Despair, even.
“I’m not under arrest, then?” he asked.
She studied the shadows of his face for a moment. “Why would you think you were under arrest?”
“Well, for one thing, you’re still holding that gun.”
“I think I’ll hold it a little longer, if you don’t mind. Are you cooking meth in this house?”
His eyes widened. “Meth! You mean drugs? No way!”
Her instincts said he was telling the truth, though she didn’t know how far she could trust her instincts these days. She lowered the mace slightly, and heard him release a quiet sigh.
“Ardis Dunaway sent me here,” she said.
“Don’t know him.”
“Obviously not,” Cheyenne said dryly. “You climbed through the bathroom window?”
He nodded. “It wasn’t latched.”
“Just because a door isn’t locked doesn’t mean you have a right to trespass on someone else’s property. Who’s Austin Barlow?”
He lowered his hands to his sides. “The mayor of Hideaway, population a thousand plus some change.”
“Who’s Willy?”
“Another ranch boy like me.”
Okay, things were beginning to make a little more sense. Not a lot, but some.
“So what are you doing here?” Cheyenne asked. “And why would the mayor call the sheriff on you?”
“Because he doesn’t like my hair and he doesn’t like my nickname, and he likes to blame the ranch boys for everything that goes wrong around here.”
“In that case, don’t you think it’s time you got back to the ranch?” she asked.
“You going to tell Dane about this?”
“I don’t even know Dane.” She waited for him to make for the door, but he just stood there in the middle of the living room. Something about this kid intrigued her—and he was definitely stalling for some reason. Were the police actually looking for him? “You never told me what you were doing in my house.”
“Thought you said it was Ardis Dunaway’s house.”
He had a good memory for names. “It is, and I’m going to sleep here tonight, so if you don’t mind—”
“No electricity.”
“Good. I like to camp out.”
“You won’t like the ghosts.”
“Right.” Ghosts?
“And you’ll have to use the old outhouse, because without electricity there’s no water.”
“That’ll be my problem, won’t it? Go home.”
Still he hesitated.
Her internal tension meter kicked back up a notch. Why wouldn’t he leave?
He glanced at the pistol she still held in her hand. “That a twenty-five caliber?”
“No.”
He nodded and gazed around the room.
“Is there something else you need to tell me?” she asked.
“This place has cockroaches.”
Lovely. “Do you plan to do something about that?”
“No, but ol’ Bertie Meyer says all you have to do is throw a few hedge apples under the house and the bugs’ll leave.”
“Who’s Bertie Meyer?”
“Your nearest neighbor. She and Red are eighty-something and going strong.”
“What’s a hedge apple?”
He frowned at her. “You sure you want to stay here? You got a lot to learn about farm life.”
“I didn’t say I was a farmer.”
“You’re moving in here? All alone? You just came out here to live all by yourself?”
She glared at him. Her hand automatically tightened around the pistol. What was his game?
“All I’m saying is, don’t you need some help carrying your things in?”
“No.”
Without turning her back to him, she reached for the front door and shoved it open wide. She hadn’t completed the task when she heard the slap of shoe leather on concrete behind her on the porch. The long spring on the screen door twanged as it opened.
“Blaze, I guess you know you’re dead.”
Cheyenne pivoted with her flashlight and her pistol as a hulking, short-haired Santa Claus in denim filled the doorway like a mafioso hit man.
He looked at the gun, then looked
