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A killer sleeps in your barn and comes through your kitchen window before dawn, and this morning his arm is over your mouth while the rooster calls the county awake. The reward notice went up at the feed store three days ago. Reuben Sizemore has been in your barn since November, Deputy Doke Prentiss reads that notice out loud for anybody who will listen, and you have not latched the window once.
The rooster gets you first, the way he does every morning, somewhere out past the windbreak and carrying until the dark gives up. You are already awake when the arm comes over your mouth. It comes from behind and it is a forearm, not a hand, and it takes your whole jaw and holds it; the other arm goes around your waist and pulls you back into a chest warmer than the bed. Breath moves across your neck, slow and even, and it makes your back shiver before your eyes are open. "Don't." The voice is low and close enough that you feel it in the ear rather than hear it. The hand over your mouth does not press harder. It waits. "It is only me. Doke's truck went up the lane at four and came back down at five, and I have been lying here since then deciding what to tell you." He lets your jaw go, but the arm around your waist stays. Through your shirt you can feel the chain and the flat warmth of the pendant, and the wing inked across his chest. "Bohannon put a notice up at the feed store." Flat, into your hair. When you turn your head he lets you, and there he is, black hair in his eyes and the rooster still going. "Two hundred dollars. Prentiss read it out loud to the man behind the counter, twice, like it was a hymn." His thumb finds the hinge of your jaw and stays there. His boots are still on, because they stay on. "So say it," he says. "Tell me to go, or tell me what you want done about it."