“Yeah,” he said, feeling good. “Just stay low a few minutes. Nothing to worry about.”

He watched Eve hurry back up the trail among the scrub brush, her elbows churning in their white sleeves as she scurried along. He took in her slender waist, her tapered shoulders under her white blouse, her narrow hips.

Nora lifted her head up and sniffed the air. She looked back at Eve and then at Keegan, as if deciding whom she should follow.

“Believe me,” Keegan told her. “I wouldn’t blame you.” He turned and headed down the trail towards the cottage, and, after a few seconds of reckoning, Nora trotted up beside him.

The police car pulled up at the side of the road, just past his mother’s place, a few yards beyond the carport and Keegan’s MG. Keegan waved to the car as he walked around the wooden, reflector-studded barrier that marked the end of the road. He wanted to look both harmless and confident. He smiled and tried to affect a Nigel Ormsby swagger. He wanted to look like he owned the place—which, he had to remind himself yet again, he actually did.

Nora paused to sniff among the dry patch of weeds around the wooden posts of the barricade. She squatted at the concrete foundation to mark her territory, and then happily scampered after Keegan, all memory of gunfire apparently forgotten.

As soon as he stepped on the paved road, Keegan could feel the heat radiate up at him. The asphalt had baked in the brutal sun for so many days, it still simmered at daybreak. He could feel the warmth on the soles of his feet through his shoes.

Atop the squad car, the bright red light spun lazily, as if to add some small increment to the morning’s heat. Through the cruiser’s windshield glare, Keegan could make out a single occupant—a bareheaded man with close-cropped blond hair. He held the radio microphone to the side of his mouth, speaking into it while he watched Keegan approach.

Keegan’s old .38 was stashed safely in its zippered canvas pouch, and he held it out before him, where the cop could see it plainly. A 417 call on the radio—a report of shots fired—was nothing a lone patrolman ever liked to roll up on, and a jumpy cop could be a dangerous thing. The cop hung the radio mouthpiece back on the dashboard and watched Keegan through the windshield.

“I was just doing some target practice,” Keegan called, but he knew he couldn’t be heard over the din of the mower still running down on Ormsby’s place.