“I’m sorry if my question was inappropriate,” Mary Jean said as Len frowned.

“No, it’s okay. Obviously this is on my mind a lot.”

“Let us know if we can help, if there’s anything we can do,” Mary Jean told her.

“Thanks,” Shallie said.

After the serious part of the conversation, they shared the occasional joke or anecdote. Len was particularly fond of real-life “stupid criminal” stories, a number of which he was happy to share. Like the one about the idiot who’d locked his staff in a storage room while he made off with the company’s profits; he’d collected everyone’s cell phone—but hadn’t realized the room had a landline!

As they all prepared to leave, the Lewises for their nephew’s place and Shallie for Russell’s, she told them she’d met Ted at the Classic Country Night recently and had liked him. Mary Jean and Len didn’t have kids themselves but were close to their nieces and nephews. Shallie invited them—on Cord’s behalf, confident he’d be fine with it—to join them on the porch at four thirty or five for a drink and more conversation. About smart animals…and stupid criminals. She hoped their current criminal, the creep who went around releasing animals, would prove to be as stupid as some of the idiots in their stories, idiots who’d gotten themselves arrested…

CORD LEANED BACK in his chair at the conference table in Eli’s office. Eli sat at the head. Amos Edwards and Oliver Boone, two of his deputies, were on either side of Cord, while Mitch and fellow horse rancher, Miles Carey, sat across from them. Several others had joined the group, and the expression on every face was grim.

Eli briskly called the meeting to order, as he was wont to do. Cord had long figured Eli craved that sense of control, that way of encouraging (or more accurately, demanding) discipline. He summarized the situation, while Amos took notes on his laptop, then asked for any other information. A few people added their own evidence: the gate to Miles’s property was broken but his security system had sounded an alarm, and that was the end of that attempt, reminding Cord to recheck the effectiveness of his own alarm; Ellis Rogers mentioned empty beer cans on the road by his place.

Cord couldn’t help remembering Eli’s suspicions about his nephew—and desperately hoped Eric wasn’t involved.

“Okay,” Eli said. “We need to organize patrols. Deputy Edwards, can you take care of that?”

Amos nodded.

“We need to invest in more cameras and security equipment—all of you privately, if you haven’t already. Your property insurance should cover at least some of that. We’ll buy surveillance cameras on behalf of the department, too.”

Everyone murmured agreement.