“How did this happen?” Joe shouted as he pointed to Carol Ann’s body. “Please tell me that neither one of you had anything to do with this.”

“I already told you we didn’t,” I said. “I got a phone call from Patsy Sue sayin’ she wanted to hire us to clear her name in her cousin’s murder, but I swear, I had no idea she was standin’ over Carol Ann’s body when she made the call.”

“Why on earth did you agree to meet her here?” he demanded.

Neely Kate put her hand on her hip. “We thought she was hidin’ out from the law.”

“This would be the absolute worst place to hide out,” Joe said, now flinging his hand toward the open door. “The parking lot is right off the highway, and everyone knows the look of Patsy’s brand-new Lincoln. How many red Lincolns do you see driving around sportin’ Baby Spice on the back window?”

He had a point.

“Not only that, but Bill Peterson owns the place and is as gossipy as they come. If Patsy had rented a room here, half the town would be whispering about it by now.”

Neely Kate shook her head. “And how would our client know that? She’s a fine, upstanding, church-going citizen.”

Joe gave her a blank look. “Her back window says Baby Spice, Neely Kate, and we both know that’s not referring to a member of a nineties girl band.”

“How do you both know this and I don’t?” I asked.

Joe shot me a dark look. “We’re getting off track here. Patsy Sue called and asked you to meet her here to help clear her name in her cousin’s murder. What happened when you got here?”

“I’ll admit she was acting suspicious,” I said. “She only opened the door a crack. We asked her if she’d called us to a murder scene, then she jerked me inside. I found Carol Ann lyin’ there with the tie wrapped around her neck. Dead. Patsy hadn’t even checked for a pulse. Neely Kate was about to call you, but Patsy managed to wrestle her phone away. She threw it at the TV and ran off.”

He stared at us both for several long seconds. “Have either of you touched anything in this room?”

I shook my head. “Other than Carol Ann’s neck, no.”

“And you have no idea where Patsy went?”

“No,” Neely Kate said. “But even if we knew, we wouldn’t be at liberty to tell you the location of our client.”

“It doesn’t work like that, Neely Kate,” Joe said in exasperation. “You fancy yourself to be a PI, not an attorney, and the truth is you’re neither!”

“Not true!” she protested. “We’re working this case with Kermit Cooper. Just call him and ask.”

He started to say something, then shook his head and made a call. For a second, I thought he had Kermit Cooper on speed dial until I heard him say, “Jennifer? This is Joe. I’ve got a dead body at the Broken Branch Motel. Send a homicide team out.” When he hung up, he pointed toward the door again. “Both of you out, but don’t you dare leave.”

---

More sheriff’s deputies showed up, followed by the coroner and the forensics team. Neely Kate and I sat on the tailgate of my truck, which made me think about all of the times James and I had sat together on my tailgate behind the Sinclair station.

I missed him more than I cared to admit, and it took every bit of willpower not to text him and ask him to meet me at the station later.

Neely Kate was lost in thought too. I’d made several attempts to ask about her day with Jed, but she’d brushed them off. From what I could tell, they’d been up to Little Rock three times now. I still had no idea what they’d been doing there, but her reluctance to talk about it still made me think it was related to Kate.

After an hour, Joe finally came back to talk to us, and I was pretty sure he’d made us stay about fifty minutes longer than necessary just to punish us. He delivered a scathing lecture about how we could have contaminated a crime scene or—worse—been killed or framed by Patsy Sue (thankfully, he had no way of knowing she’d suggested our DNA now linked us to the crime), and that we weren’t private detectives, no matter how deluded we were. That was the tipping point for Neely Kate, who had been surprisingly quiet throughout his lecture.

She hopped off the tailgate and poked him in the chest. “You might not like that we’re working with Kermit Cooper, but we’re not doing anything illegal.”

“I’d call tampering with a crime scene illegal.”

“We weren’t tampering with the crime scene, and you doggone know it,” Neely Kate said.

“Why do you like to flirt with danger?” Joe demanded, his face turning red.

“What are you talkin’ about?” she said. “We were meetin’ Patsy Sue Clydehopper! Who would have thought it was dangerous?”

“What about Little Rock?”

The anger fell off her face. “What about Little Rock?”

Oh, crappy doodles. Did Joe know that Neely Kate had been seeing Jed? Surely not or he likely would have led with that, dead body or no.

“Don’t play dumb with me, Neely Kate,” he said. “I know you went to see Kate this afternoon.”

For once Neely Kate looked speechless.

“What were you doin’ up there?”

“What does it matter to you, Joe?”

“Because I care about you!”

“Care about me?” She released a bitter laugh. “If you cared about me, you wouldn’t have canceled our plans again through a text so you could go see a movie with your girlfriend of two weeks!”

He groaned and rubbed his eyes before dropping his hand. “I screwed up.”

“You’re doggone right you did!” She looked madder than I’d ever seen her. “Either you want to spend time with me or you don’t, Joe Simmons, and you’ve made it clear as a bell multiple times that you don’t.”

His expression softened. “Neely Kate, it’s not like that . . .”

“We’re leaving. Come on, Rose.” She stomped toward the passenger door of the truck and climbed inside.

I gave Joe a questioning look.

Looking exasperated, he nodded and gave a short wave toward the truck. “Go. I know where to find you.”

I started to walk toward the driver’s door but turned around and said in a low voice, “She’s more fragile than she looks, Joe.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I know.”

---

I let Neely Kate have five minutes to mull things over before I asked, “Why were you seein’ Kate this afternoon?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.” When she didn’t answer, I asked softly, “Are you at least gettin’ the answers you’re looking for?”

She gave me a look of surprise. “No.”

“Then why do you keep goin’?” I prodded gently. “I know she’s goin’ out of her way to hurt you.”

“Just call me a fool,” she said in a bitter tone.

“You’re one of the last people I’d call a fool, Neely Kate.”

She didn’t answer.

“Jed’s been takin’ you?”

“Yeah.”

“After she drags your heart through the muck, does he clean it off and make you feel better?”

A soft smile lit up her eyes. “Yeah. He does.”

“Good. You deserve someone who supports you through the good and the bad.”

Her smile fell. “Where does that leave Joe?”

The look on her face made me want to wring Joe’s neck. “Joe cares about you, Neely Kate. I know he does, but he’s feelin’ his way through this new relationship just like you are. Besides, this is his first girlfriend after what happened with Hilary. He seems happy.”

Tears filled her eyes. “Yeah.”

“He’s caught up in the whirlwind of a new romance. He’ll realize what he’s doing and come to his senses.”

“Funny . . . I’m caught up in the whirlwind of a new romance, and yet I still have time for him.”

There was no arguing with that.

“It’s like I told you. This isn’t the first time he’s canceled on me because of her.” Her chin trembled, but she kept her eyes on the road. “I’m done with lettin’ people treat me like I’m disposable.”

I sucked in a breath. Of course she saw herself that way. I reached out a hand and touched her arm. “Oh, Neely Kate . . .”

She flinched and pulled away. “I don’t want your pity, Rose,” she said in a tight voice. “I just thought you should know.”

“Pity? I don’t pity you. I’m so stinkin’ proud of you.” Tears stung my eyes. I wished I wasn’t driving so I could get a good look at her, but knowing Neely Kate, we wouldn’t be having this conversation if we’d been sitting face-to-face.

“I’m done waitin’ for people’s leftover scraps of attention, and Joe’s made his priorities clear.”

I wasn’t sure Joe saw it like that at all, but now didn’t seem like the time to bring it up.

She lifted her chin, clearly putting her issues with Joe behind her. “We both know that Joe’s gonna go after Patsy as the murderer, so we need to come up with a plan of attack to clear her name.”

“What?” I asked. “Are you crazy? We found her in the motel room with Carol Ann’s body lyin’ on the floor. She offered us money to help hide the body, for criminy’s sake! She’s lookin’ pretty guilty.”

“Which is why she needs our help.”

I shot her a look of disbelief. “You’re tellin’ me you think she’s innocent?”

“Why would she call us if she was guilty?”

“For this very reason. To make us doubt what our own eyes saw.”

Neely Kate was quiet for a moment, then said, “It would take someone really brilliant or really stupid to come up with that plan, and Patsy Sue Clydehopper is neither. Which means she’s innocent.”

She had a point.

I pushed out a sigh. “Okay. So what do you want to do? You seem like you already have a plan.”

“Well, first we need to find out who rented the room. I can call Bill Peterson and ask him.”

“You think he’ll tell you?”

“Please . . . ,” she scoffed. “He’ll be dying to tell me. He plays bingo with Granny, and I know he loves a good story.”

“Okay,” I said. “Sounds like a good place to start. That was a men’s tie, so we need to find out who it belongs to.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Bill might be able to help us with that too. I’ll see if he noticed any guys comin’ and goin’.”

“Good idea.”

“I’ll call him when we get to the farm,” she said. “I need to get a notebook. I let Jed borrow mine.”

I grinned. “Jed’s carryin’ around your pink sparkly notebook?”

She laughed. “He looked pretty cute holdin’ it.”

“I really like him for you, Neely Kate. He’s a great guy and I can see he makes you happy. I know you’re frustrated that he’s takin’ things slow, but I think that means you’re special to him, you know?” I couldn’t help thinking that Jed’s care and attention had helped her find this new sense of self-worth . . . even if it was at Joe’s expense.

“Yeah.” A soft smile lit up her eyes.

“And he seems to be tryin’ to go the straight and narrow. That’s a plus.”

“Yeah, even if I have no idea what he’s up to.”

“He’ll tell you when he has it figured out.”

She nodded, not looking so certain.

So many people had hurt Neely Kate in her twenty-five years. I couldn’t bear the thought of someone else letting her down. But Jed was a good man, and from the way he watched her with a mixture of hope, awe, and devotion, it was easy to see he’d never purposely hurt her.

“If we’d been thinkin’,” Neely Kate said, “we should have had you force a vision of Patsy to see if she murdered her cousin.”

We both knew it didn’t exactly work like that. We’d need to find Patsy first, since I couldn’t force a vision without touching the person. Still, I couldn’t deny she had a point. She didn’t know about the change in my visions.

“Things were happening so fast,” Neely Kate continued. “It’s no wonder we didn’t consider it.” Then she sat up straighter, excitement washing over her face. “Hey! When we get home, you can force a vision of me, of what you and I will find out about the murder.”

I gave her a pained look.

“What? You think it’s a bad idea?”

“No . . . ,” I hedged. “It might work.”

Her eyes narrowed. “When was the last time you had a vision?”

I shot her a long glance. “The night I was kidnapped.”

“The night you almost died having a vision?”

“Yeah,” I said softly.

“Have you tried to force one since then?”

“No.” I kept seeing Jeanne’s face in my head, the trusting look in her eyes.

Her death was on my hands. The few times I’d brought it up to Neely Kate, she’d refused to discuss the matter, insisting Merv’s crew was responsible, not us. She would also remind me that we’d tried to get Jeanne to go to the sheriff or even James for protection. And while that was all technically true, there was no denying I’d started the wheels in motion. No denying I’d carelessly put her life in danger by talking to her in a public place where anyone could have seen us. I hadn’t tried hard enough to ensure my vision of her death didn’t come to pass. I hadn’t followed up.

Maybe I would have been more willing to accept Neely Kate’s account of it if I hadn’t seen the guilt in her eyes too.

She watched me for a moment. “Okay,” she finally said in a comforting tone. “We won’t force a vision.” Then she grinned. “We’ll do it the old-fashioned way.”

“Really?” I asked in surprise.

“I know how much you hate them. What if you force one and it kick-starts them into high gear? You’ve got a lot to consider.”

“Thanks for understanding.”

My phone started to ring. Neely Kate snatched it off the seat next to me and looked at the screen.

“Well, I’ll be . . .” She answered it and put it on speakerphone. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, Patsy Sue!”

“I’m sorry!” Patsy said. “I panicked.”

“You left us with one heck of a mess,” Neely Kate said.

“I know. I know. I’m sorry, but I knew I’d get arrested if I stayed.”

“Because you’re guilty as sin?” Neely Kate asked. She was obviously taking the bad cop role.

“No! Because I was set up.”

“Who on earth would have set you up?” I asked in disbelief.

“Trust me, I’ve got a lot of people who would love to see me gone. You have to figure out who did it.”

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You think someone killed your cousin, then invited you to come to her motel room?”

“Carol Ann texted me. So I went to see her.”

“You two had just had one doozy of a fight at the First Baptist Church. Why would you go see her?” Neely Kate asked.

“I had my reasons,” Patsy Sue said with plenty of attitude.

“So if someone set you up, how did they know about Carol Ann’s text? Did they take her phone and pretend to be her?”

“No. I’m sure the text was from her.”

“How do you know that?”

She hesitated. “I just do. And I didn’t kill her. I found her like that when I got there.”

“Look,” I said. “You have to know running off just makes you look guiltier.”

“I’m not comin’ back,” she said. “Not until you clear my name. I can’t afford riskin’ even one night of my skin care regime if they toss me into county lockup.”

I groaned. “If you want us to help you, you need to tell us more than that. We need to know everything that’s happened between you two since she came back to town. And what she sent in that text.”

“We need your alibi too,” Neely Kate said as though Patsy was a simpleton.

“If you two are such ace detectives, you can figure it out,” she said in a condescending tone.

I opened my mouth to tell her thanks but no thanks, but Neely Kate cut me off.

“How much are you payin’ us?” she asked. “We do good work, so we don’t come cheap.”

“I’ll pay you two thousand dollars,” Patsy said, sounding desperate.

“Most PIs get paid by the hour,” Neely Kate pressed.

“I’ll make it three thousand,” Patsy said. “Let me know when you find out something.” Then she hung up.

“You still believe her?” I asked.

“Yeah. I still do. Besides, whether she did it or not, we’re each gettin’ a thousand dollars.”

I considered telling her that I doubted Patsy Sue would pay up if we found her guilty, but Neely Kate seemed dead set on working this case. Nothing was going to change her mind at this point. Given my guilt over Jeanne, I was surprised that I was open to it, but maybe this was exactly what I needed to get over it. “That’s Kermit’s money.”

“And he’ll get a thousand of it. We’re doin’ the work, so it stands to reason we should get paid.”

“Huh.” I took the turnoff to my farm. When I pulled to a stop in front of the house, I was surprised Muffy wasn’t in the front window, waiting for us. I found her in the kitchen, barking out the back window. A family of squirrels had been tormenting her over the past week, and she was obviously eager to make yet another futile attempt to catch them. I opened the back door, and she made a beeline for the barn.

“What’s got Muffy so excited?” Neely Kate asked as she walked into the kitchen with a new notebook. This one was covered in gold sparkles.

“The squirrels, I guess.” But something didn’t seem right. She’d gotten pretty upset a month or so ago when Raddy Dyer had been hiding in the barn. I ignored the flutter in my chest when I remembered that James had been out there too. What if he was waiting for me out there now? “I’m gonna go watch her. She’s awfully close to the woods and it’s starting to get dark. I don’t want her to get lost.”

“Okay. My phone still works even with the cracked screen. I’ll call Bill and let you know what he says.”

“Sounds good.” I headed for the door to the living room.

She looked up in surprise. “Why are you goin’ that way?”

“I need to pee first,” I lied, then let the swinging door close behind me. I grabbed my Taser from my bag before heading out the front door.

The sun was about to set, but a crescent moon was out, lighting my path across the open field to the barn. As I got close, I heard Muffy snarling. I’d been down this path before, but it wasn’t any less scary this time.

One of the large double barn doors was slightly ajar, and I almost called Joe, but he was already busy with Carol Ann’s death. Besides, as crazy as it was, I wanted to see who was in the barn before bringing anyone else into the situation.

I moved away from the doors and called out, “Who’s in there?” When there was no answer, I said, “I’m gonna call the sheriff if you don’t announce yourself.”

“Wait!” I heard a guy call out. “Don’t call ’em!”

My heartbeat picked up. I didn’t recognize the voice. “Who are you and what do you want?”

“My name’s Marshall Billings, ma’am. I only wanted to talk to you.”

“Then what are you doin’ skulkin’ around in my barn, Marshall Billings, instead of waiting on my front door?”

“I didn’t know when you were gonna be home, and I didn’t want to bleed all over your porch.”

That stole my breath. Why had a bleeding stranger showed up in my barn? But in my gut, I already knew. He wasn’t here to talk to Rose Gardner. He was here to talk to the Lady in Black. “Do you have a gun?”

“Yes, ma’am, but I swear to God I won’t use it on you. I’ve only got it to protect myself.”

Call me foolish, but I believed him. “Okay, I’m alone, and I’m coming in. Fair warning, if you’ve hurt my dog, you’re gonna regret stepping foot on my land.” When he didn’t respond, I walked over to the double doors and pushed the unlocked side open enough to slip through the crack.

The barn was pitch dark, so I said, “I’m gonna turn on a light so we can see each other.”

“Okay,” he said in a shaky voice.

I walked over to the cabinets on the right and flipped on a light over the work station, keeping my eye on the center of the room. Muffy, who’d followed me in, let out a quick growl.

My little dog had the guy cornered, although it didn’t look like he was going anywhere based on the bloody towel wrapped around the right thigh of his dirty jeans. He was sitting on the floor with his legs outstretched. He looked young—late teens or early twenties—and terrified.

Seeing the blood-soaked towel made the hair on my arms stand up, and anxiety washed through me like a rolling tide. Get a grip, Rose. I’d seen so much worse than this. I could handle it.

“What happened?” I asked as I slowly moved closer. His gun lay on the dirt floor next to him, but it was close enough to reach. I’d been around enough scared animals to know they lashed out when they felt cornered. He might not be a threat, but he could become one.

“I got shot.”

“By who?”

He pressed his lips together and gave a slight shake of his head.

“Why’d you come to me?” I asked.

He looked surprised. “You’re the Lady in Black, ain’t ya?” Then he looked uncertain and even more scared.

I saw no reason to deny it. “Yeah,” I said softly. “That’s me.” Or rather, my alter ego—the woman who’d started working with James last November out of desperation. I’d needed help to protect my then-boyfriend, assistant DA Mason Deveraux, and James had needed my visions to help him ferret out turncoats. Win-win. Then the whole J.R. business had gone down, and I’d retired the Lady in Black . . . until last month. I’d resurrected her to help make peace in the underworld.

“Can you help me?” he asked.

“I take it you don’t want to go to the hospital?”

“No. I can’t. They’ll tell the sheriff.”

It was obvious he needed medical attention. The question was who to call for help. “Who do you work for?” I asked. “And why didn’t you go to them?”

“I don’t work for no one,” he spat out angrily. “Not anymore.”

“Okay,” I said. “Then who did you used to work for, because that’ll make a difference in who I call.”

“You can’t call Skeeter Malcolm,” he said, his eyes wide in panic. “I heard that you’re neutral. Is that true?”

“Yeah. I’m neutral,” I said, and my heart sank. If he was hiding from James, this was bound to stir up trouble between us. “It’s a little late to be asking that now, isn’t it?”

He stared at me wide-eyed. Now that I was closer, I could see that he looked even younger than I’d first thought.

“How old are you, Marshall?”

“Eighteen.”

I had serious doubts about that. “I’m gonna call Tim Dermot. Are you good with him?”

“He works for Buck Reynolds. Buck don’t like me neither.”

How had this kid made the bad list of the two top criminals in Fenton County? I knew I should be more worried about being alone with him, but he didn’t look dangerous at the moment. He only looked scared. “There was a change of guard. Dermot’s in charge now and he’s a nurse.” The kid didn’t try to stop me, so I pulled up Dermot’s number and he answered quickly.

“Lady. I’m surprised to hear from you.”

“I have a medical situation I need your help with.”

“Are you hurt?” he asked, sounding concerned.

“Not me. Someone else, but I can’t take him to the hospital.”

“Malcolm?” he asked in surprise.

“No. Someone else.” I considered telling him Marshall’s name, but decided to wait until he got here. For all I knew, Buck and James weren’t the only people the kid had pissed off. “I found him hiding in my barn looking for the Lady in Black. He has a gunshot wound in his leg and refuses to go to the hospital.”

He was silent for a moment, then said, “Have you stopped the blood flow?”

I glanced down at the kid’s leg. “He has a towel wrapped around it. I haven’t checked.”

“It’s not bleeding through the towel?”

“It’s bloody, but I don’t think it’s bleeding through.”

“Try to get him into your house without taking the bandage off. I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”

“Don’t you need my address?”

“I already know it,” he said before he hung up.

Did the whole county know where I lived? But I had more immediate issues. “Dermot’s going to help. He wants me to move you to my house. Are you good with that?”

Worry filled his eyes. “I hear your farm is like Sweden.”

“Sweden?” What? Then I realized what he meant. “You mean Switzerland?”

“Yeah, one of those places.”

I shook my head. This was news to me, but I’d touted myself as neutral back at the parley I’d set up for Buck Reynolds and James a month ago—an impression I’d done my best to reinforce. It stood to reason my land would be considered neutral too. The real question was if all the criminals would honor that. I wasn’t sure being in the thick of the Fenton County crime world was smart, but I’d jumped in headlong a month ago.

I was still confused about where the boy in front of me fit into the Fenton County criminal world, but we’d sort that out later. “Can you walk?” Then a new thought occurred to me. “How’d you get here, anyway?”

“I had a friend drop me off.” He tried to get to his feet, then let out a loud cry of pain and fell back to the floor.

“I have another idea.” I called Neely Kate.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Why do you think something’s wrong?”

“Why else would you be calling me from just outside the house?”

“Actually, I’m in the barn, and I have a situation.”

“Who’s out there this time?” she asked.

It was a logical conclusion. “His name’s Marshall Billings, and he has a gunshot wound in his leg. Dermot is on his way to fix him up.”

“Dermot?”

I knew it was a lot to take in at once. “I don’t think he can walk, so I need you to drive my truck back here. We can put him in the back and haul him down to the house.”

“On it.” I knew I’d have plenty of explaining to do later, but she hung up.

Marshall didn’t look convinced this was a solid plan, but he kept quiet as he watched me. “Are you gonna turn me in?” he asked. “I know you’re friendly with the chief deputy sheriff.”

“I don’t even know what you did,” I said. “So what would I turn you in for?”

He gave me a tight nod, not volunteering any information.

“I’m gonna need you to push that gun away from you,” I said. “Out of reach. I don’t have a weapon, and I’d feel a lot better about helpin’ you if I wasn’t worried about getting shot.”

He looked surprised, but he shoved the gun away willingly enough. Then, as though exhausted from the minimal effort, he leaned his back against the wall and closed his eyes.

So many questions floated through my head. “What made you think to come here?”

He opened his eyes to a squint. “Everyone’s talkin’ about the Lady in Black. How you brought down J.R. Simmons and brokered a peace between Skeeter and Buck. I figured you were my only hope.”

I heard the truck engine roar to life, and Muffy turned her attention to the barn doors. I swung the already-ajar door open wider and then walked back toward Marshall, trying to figure out how to get him on his feet.

“You’re not what I expected,” he said, watching me.

“And what did you expect?”

“Someone tougher. Meaner.”

My truck headlights bounced on the field between my house and the barn as the truck got closer.

“Well, you can’t always believe what you hear,” I said, although what he’d heard sounded pretty accurate.

“A lot of guys are nervous about you,” he said.

“Why?” I asked. “Because they think I work for Skeeter Malcolm?”

“No, because it looks like you don’t.”

That surprised me—first, that they finally believed I was neutral, and second, that it made them nervous.

Neely Kate made a U-turn and then backed up so that the tailgate was close to the barn door. The driver’s door opened, and she was out in a flash.

“Where is he?”

I gestured to the back corner of the barn. “Neely Kate, meet Marshall. Marshall, Neely Kate.”

Neely Kate gave him a perplexed look. “How’d you end up here?”

“I was looking for the Lady in Black.”

Neely Kate’s mouth dropped open. The fact that our address was so widely known had clearly caught her off guard too, but that was a conversation for later.

We quickly got him up on his one good leg, an arm over each of our shoulders, and helped him hobble to the truck bed. He cried out when we hauled him up and slid him back enough so his legs weren’t hanging over the tailgate. I stayed in the back with him while Neely Kate drove to the house, pulling up to the back door.

When she emerged from the truck, she said, “There are fewer steps back here, and I figured we could put him on the kitchen table.”

I hadn’t thought of either of those things. “Good idea.”

I hopped down, and after some maneuvering, we got Marshall down from the truck and up the steps into the kitchen.

He leaned on my shoulder while Neely Kate hastened to clear off the table. We had just gotten him positioned on top of it when I heard a knock at the front door.

“I’ll get it,” Neely Kate said. “I’m gonna go grab some towels anyway.”

Marshall’s face was covered with sweat, and his shirt was pretty damp. All the jostling must have irritated his wound because his towel was soaked with more blood than it had been before.

My anxiety shot up again, catching me off guard and making me feel panicky and out of control. But I told myself I didn’t have time to dwell on it. I needed to attend to Marshall.

“I’m gonna get you a drink of water,” I said, worried about dehydration. He’d lost an awful lot of blood and he was starting to shake.

“Hold off on that,” Dermot said as he walked through the swinging kitchen door.

I spun around to face him, relief washing through me. “Thanks for comin’.”

He gave me a tight grin as he pulled out a kitchen chair and set his black bag on it. “I can’t turn down a request from Lady.”

He could and we both knew it. “Well, thanks anyway. We just got him settled on the table. All the jostling around made his wound start bleeding more. Neely Kate went to get some clean towels.”

“Good thinking,” Dermot said, looking the boy over. “Do I know you?”

Marshall watched Dermot with fear-filled eyes. “No, sir.”

“What’s your name?”

“Marshall, sir.”

I noticed he didn’t offer his last name this time. Was it a purposeful omission?

“What are you doin’ at Lady’s farm, Marshall?”

“Lookin’ for Sweden,” he said, his voice growing faint. His face was pale, and his eyes started to close.

“Sweden?” Dermot asked absently as he pulled on a pair of gloves before he took an IV pouch and tubing out of his black bag.

“He means Switzerland,” I said, getting really worried. “Is he going to be okay?”

“We’re about to find out, but I want to start an IV first.” He looked up at me. “I’m gonna need your help.”

“I’m not a nurse, Dermot.”

Dermot held my gaze. “And I’m not a doctor, but we’re both gonna do what we need to do to save this boy. Together.”