“In the meantime,” the Rev said, obviously coming to his main point, “what are all these people doing in town? The hotel was bad enough.” He’d taken off his dusty hat, and his thinning black hair was combed across his skull, damp with sweat.

“Sit down,” Bobo suggested. “I’ll tell you.” They all sat, except the boy, who didn’t seem much interested in what the adults were saying. He roamed around the shop making scarcely a sound, his big purple eyes taking in all the oddities and peculiarities around him, his mouth slightly open in wonder. Olivia remembered the first time she’d been in Midnight Pawn, and she could understand his fascination.

Four years ago. She’d been on her way to Dallas to get a flight to—where? Somewhere east. She’d completed a job east of Marthasville, an old rancher who wouldn’t sell his land to a man with a lot of money. She almost never left from the same airport she’d flown into, and never under the same name. That day, for the first time, she’d seen the exit for Midnight and Davy on the highway.

A town called Midnight. The name had caught her fancy.

She’d been in no hurry, so she’d taken the exit. And she’d seen the closed storefronts, but the pawnshop . . . stuck at a crossroad in what seemed like to her the middle of nowhere . . . had been fascinating.

She’d had to go in.

And she’d been captivated by the cases full of old things, mysterious things. The shelves had seemed crowded with objects she had to handle. She’d looked for a long time. When Bobo, the new proprietor, had told her gently that he needed to close for an hour to get his supper, she’d driven up to eat in Davy (not trusting the Home Cookin Restaurant, wisely, because then it had been run by an old couple who had never been able to cook as well as Madonna Reed). But after a hasty hamburger and tonic water in Davy, she’d found herself going back to the pawnshop, which was so much larger inside than it appeared to be on the outside. Since it was dark by then, she’d met Lemuel.

She had never met anyone like him before. She didn’t know how he’d felt about her that night, but she’d been drawn to him, powerfully. Olivia had been in the presence of hundreds of men who were better looking and richer and more powerful in a worldly way. And she’d known Lemuel for what he was immediately. But Lemuel . . . something in the age of him, the strength of him, the ruthlessness of him, drew her in.