STONE CROUCHED LOW with his pistol out. He didn’t like doing this alone, but with Tyree now implicated in whatever was going on here, he didn’t have many options for assistance. The trucks were already lining up. The methadone pop brigade. Rusty trucks and rustier miners looking for their joy juice. Only they wouldn’t find it here. The men came out of the old barn at the rear of Abby Riker’s property carrying large boxes. They were loaded in the back of each truck with a tarp over them. After that, the drivers pulled off.

Stone mentally kicked himself for not realizing the truth sooner. The very first night he’d arrived in town and seen this caravan of miners heading to the methadone clinic, Danny had told him that they got up this early because they had to get back in time to start the seven a.m. shift at the mines. Yet it was only a two-hour round trip from the clinic back here. Stone had made the trip himself to the hospital several times. He’d actually seen the men roll into the methadone clinic at nearly five in the morning.

At the courthouse he’d seen the manifest for the delivery of legal documents. It had listed eighty boxes, but there had only been sixty there. Six high, ten across. That had meant nothing to him until he’d thought of the discrepancy in time with the miners going to and from the clinic. At least three extra hours, missing boxes and one more thing.

He glanced at the grass in front of the barn. He’d seen it while he was here working, yet had really thought nothing of it. The carpet of grass was worn down and blackened, blackened by the filthy tires of the coal miners’ trucks as they came here to pick up their cargo. Just like the road in front of the snake-filled mine from which he’d barely escaped. Black dirt, black grass; he should have seen it sooner.

So the big question was, what was in the boxes?

After connecting all the dots Stone thought he knew the answer to this too. But would he get the chance to find out for sure?

There was one truck left. The boxes were put in the cargo bed. Right before he tied the tarp over them, the driver opened one of the boxes and pulled out what looked to be a small black bag. Stone had seen each of the other drivers do the same thing. He closed the box and was about to secure the tarp when one of the other men who’d been helping load the boxes called to him. They went into the barn together.