The storm outside the Volvo had turned vicious. He seemed to see it through a pulsing, bile-yellow scrim. Ratner was the Edge Adventures employee who had been on the beach at Candlestick Point—the newbie, whom he hadn’t been able to see clearly. Ratner. The unmitigated gall.

Sabine and Stringer sat like crash-test dummies, dumfounded and unsure of how they should react.

Haugen shoved the phone at Sabine. “Call Von. Tell him we have a freelance thief attempting to commandeer the mission.”

She punched the number. “Ratner’s got a head start on us.”

“Tell Von to eliminate him at the first opportunity.” He put the vehicle in gear and floored it up the highway. “And tell Von to eliminate everybody besides Autumn. Don’t wait for us to arrive. See one, shoot one. He needs to do whatever it takes to get Autumn now.”

She put the phone to her ear. Haugen pushed the Volvo faster.

Why had Kyle killed Dustin and the rancher? Again she seemed to hear the eerie voice on the cell phone of the dead lawyer, Wylie, promising punishment.

She had to presume Kyle had killed Wylie and dumped his body in the abandoned mine. How had Edge Adventures managed to get mixed up with Kyle, beyond hiring him to replay Autumn’s childhood encounter with the Bad Cowboy?

Who the hell was he?

And if he was headed to the rancher’s house, what did he want—money, a phone, a vehicle? Kyle had shot the rancher and Dustin without mercy. She thought of the snapshot in the rancher’s wallet: the woman, the smiling children. The image drove her to keep up her pace.

The rain scoured down on a gust of wind and caught her flat across the face.

Ahead, an orange glow flickered to life. It rose and pulsed and backlit the trunks of the pines. It was a fire, a big one.

Behind the wind and spatter of the rain, she heard an engine. She ducked into the trees. The engine sounded loud and heavy—a pickup truck. Headlights picket-fenced through the forest ahead. The truck was coming this way, jangling over the rutted cow path.

Jo dodged deeper into the trees and flattened herself against the ground. The headlights drew nearer. The crooked lights of an old Chevy truck veered into sight. It was ancient and rusty and its suspension groaned as it ached its way over ruts in the trail. It swerved past her and kept going.

The orange glow blossomed vividly and the ground shuddered. A moment later the explosion boomed, flat and hard.

She got up. Sticking to the trees, she ran toward the fire. Soon she saw a ranch house fully engulfed in flames, a jet-black shell screaming orange and red from within, black smoke boiling from the roof.

Her hopes of finding people and a phone and help were futile. She ran around the burning structure, calling out, hoping that nobody was trapped inside. She got no answer.

The burning garage was empty. No car, no motorcycle, no bike. And the dirt driveway, it became apparent, meandered deeper into the forest—the house was nowhere near the highway. She was still cut off from civilization.

She made a full circle of the house and stopped, shoulders heaving, on the verge of tears. The heat became a radiant wall against her body. It felt like life and death all at once. The crackle grew to a roar that overcame all else.

Until she heard a frightened whinny.

She found the rancher’s horse in its corral, shying away from the flames, too skittish to run toward the open gate.

He checked his diver’s watch. He looked up the gorge, wondering where Jo had gone.

She put up her hands. “Easy, boy. Easy.”

The horse tossed its head and danced away from her. It was saddled and had on its bridle. The reins hung free, draped in the dirt. She approached slowly, keeping her voice low.

“Whoa, boy. Whoa.”

The horse stopped and lowered its head. In the reflected firelight, its eyes were liquid. She walked toward it, her hand trembling.

“That’s it. Whoa.” It was the only thing she could think to say, and apparently it actually, really worked with horses.

“Whoa, boy. It’s okay.” She stroked the horse’s flank, felt its muscles twitch. It smelled of sweat and dust and leather of the saddle. She took the reins.

“Make you a deal. Let me up, and I’ll get you out of here.”

Carefully she put a foot in the stirrup. She grabbed the saddle horn, pulled herself up, swung her leg over, and settled into the creaking saddle.

She checked her balance. The stirrups were too long for her; she could barely keep her feet in them. But she had no time to figure it out. She jammed her hiking boots as far in the stirrups as she could get them.

She saw the empty scabbard. She didn’t need to be told that it was designed to hold a long gun.

Gripping the reins and twisting her fingers into the horse’s mane, she said, “Okay, let’s go.”

She kicked the horse in the ribs. It took off like a stone thrown from a slingshot and raced out of the corral.

“Dammit.”

She gripped its mane, pitching crazily backward, as it galloped through firelight up the trail. She pulled herself forward. The animal bunched and rolled beneath her. In the gusting rain, she could barely see.

She had to get back to the Hummer. If Kyle got there first, God knows what he would do. And nobody knew he was coming.

Two minutes later, she approached the wide spot where the bodies of Dustin and the rancher lay on the path. The horse was going at a hard canter, and she was squeezing the reins and its mane, the saddle horn, everything she could. She had barely gotten into the rhythm of its gait, beginning to feel that she wasn’t going to fly off, when it veered away from the track.

“Whoa,” she called.

The horse dug its back legs into the dirt and stopped sharply. Jo’s inertia carried her forward. She slid up the horse’s neck like it was a Slip ’N Slide. She tackled it, held on, bumped back down half out of the saddle.

The horse tossed its head. It sidestepped and tried to wheel. Jo pulled on the reins.

“Whoa, boy. Whoa.”

It didn’t want to approach the bodies in the path. She pulled on the reins and kicked her heels into its sides and managed to get it to dance half sideways toward the site. As she did, lightning scored the clouds. Her skin wriggled. The rancher’s body lay in a different position than she’d seen earlier.

Kyle had driven straight over him. The force of the blow had flipped him over. He lay side-on to poor Dustin, hand draped over his back.

It looked as though the rancher had tried to pat Dustin on the shoulder, to say, Ain’t this a low blow. Thunder warbled, hard and close. Behind it, above the wind, another sound twisted in the air. It was a keening, broken sobbing.

Jo blinked, her skin prickling, and tried to hold the horse still. The night had gone dark again, the bodies indistinguishable from the ground, even with the clouds blowing past, the moonlight cutting through the rain in piebald patches.

The horse threw its head up and down and whinnied.

The keening increased. And a swatch of moonlight passed over the bodies. Out of the trees, hands gripping her head, staggered Autumn.