“Hi,” Emily said, beginning to step around me. But I stopped her with a hand on her arm. She glanced down at my hand and gave me an impatient look. I was glad to see that, at least for the moment, she’d shaken off Leonard’s showdown. But I wasn’t certain yet that that was a good idea. Leonard had been a good reminder that societal rules had recently changed. These looked like a group of normal townsfolk with their sheriff, but who knew how they felt about strangers walking into their midst?

I let go of her but stepped in front of both her and Charlie. “My name is Tucker Mattice, and I’m traveling with Charlie Cannon and Emily Swanson,” I said, gesturing behind me.

The sheriff stepped forward as well. He was an older man with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and a short beard that was more salt than pepper. I noted that the man’s hand had gone to the holster on his belt and was now resting there, and that, like me, he’d stepped in front of the people he was with. I held my hand out. He looked at it for a beat before reaching out and shaking. “Sheriff David Goodfellow. Where are you traveling from and why?”

“Sir, if you have a way to reach people—” Charlie started to say, but the man held up his hand, his gaze still on me as he waited for the answer to his question.

“We were in a plane crash,” I answered. “It was a three-day walk to the outskirts of Springfield, Illinois. From there we hitched a ride and were dropped off at the exit to Silver Creek.”

“Then a man who gave us a ride shot and killed a…a bandit who tried to take his car,” Emily blurted. “It was murder. But it was also self-defense so, yeah, we should report that because there’s a dead body lying out there near the turnoff to your town.”

“Christ,” someone muttered from behind the sheriff. “The world has lost its mind.”

Sheriff Goodfellow looked at Emily. “I’ll have you write out a statement. But there’s not a lot I can do right now.”

“Okay, well, his name was Leonard and he’s driving a green car named Bridget. His brother has a trailer somewhere near a lake in—” she waved her hand backward “—that direction somewhere, and and—” She stopped talking, pulling in a big breath as an older woman came over to her and put a hand on her shoulder.

“Breathe, honey.”

Emily sucked in a big breath and nodded as Charlie stepped forward.