In the darkness, his hand reached from memory, gripped the spare lawnmower blade hanging above the workbench, careful not to let the sharp side dig into his fingers. He swung it without even sighting his target.

It connected with deadly precision, cutting into Dale’s neck. Blood painted the wall like oil gushing from an uncapped well. Dale’s right arm fell limp at his side. The .38 revolver fell to the ground.

Dale reached for Desmond’s throat with his left hand, grasped it, his fingers digging in. Desmond released his grip on the blade, put his shoulder into the man, and drove him out of the shack, into the light. Blood shot out of Dale’s neck and onto the grass like weed killer being sprayed on the side of a highway.

Dale’s grip loosened. Desmond pushed him to the ground, stepped on his left hand. Within seconds, the color drained from the older man, the squirting blood slowed to a pour, then a trickle. He gurgled some words Desmond couldn’t make out, then his eyes went still and glassy.

Desmond stood, stared at Dale Epply’s dead body, lying there like a cowboy at the crossroads of a dusty western town—a gunslinger who’d been outdrawn.

What have I done?

The wind whipped Desmond’s blond hair into his face. Blood dripped from the fingers of his right hand where he had held the lawnmower blade too tight. He had killed a man. In self-defense, but nevertheless, he had taken a life. It had happened so fast.

Desmond expected to feel remorse, but instead he felt nothing. I did what I had to. But he knew that his life was about to get more complicated.

The lawful thing was to call the sheriff’s office and tell them what had happened. He figured they would believe his story: Dale probably had a rap sheet longer than the Missouri River. But Desmond’s record wasn’t clean, either; he’d been arrested in three states, mostly drunken brawls Orville had pulled him into. And Dale might have friends at the sheriff’s office—or folks who might put pressure on the case. Desmond had nobody.

Calling the sheriff meant uncertainty, possibly being trapped in this place, maybe for a long time.

Inside the house, he washed his hands and got his uncle’s truck keys. He backed the truck up, returned to the shed, and gathered what he needed: a tarp (which they used when the roof was leaking and they were too drunk to fix it), a shovel, a tank of gas they had used for the lawnmower, a bottle of Clorox bleach, and several unpainted oak planks they used to patch up the house.