Again, it was probably part of the job description. But sometimes, sometimes, he imagined she was standing there waiting for him to say something more. It was the way she looked at him over the rim of her glass, over that chewed end of her straw stained with her lipstick. It was a look they both held for a few seconds too long, just before it became uncomfortable and one of them would have to say something to fill that silence. Just before she was always called away to serve someone else.

That look would stay with him for hours . . . for days.

Like those tattoos and their stories.

—

OF COURSE, they already shared a story together, although they never talked about it. Her former boyfriend, a man named Billy Bravo, had been killed by Jesse Earl, and it was the Earls—Jesse and his father, John Wesley, and some others—who’d started the fires that cost Marco’s brother, Emiliano, most of his eyesight. It’s what had brought Marco home again and to the Big Bend County Sheriff’s Department, and to Earlys on those nights like this one when he wasn’t helping Emil.

One thing leading to another . . . to another . . . on and on. You never knew the start of something important—often never realized its importance at all—until it was over; until you had the benefit of hindsight, although sight of any kind was something Emil Lucero was never going to have again.

Like Marco’s decision to drop out of UTEP and come back home and join the department. Had that been a good thing, or foolishly shortsighted? Had he derailed his college career—his dreams of becoming a doctor—to become a second-rate deputy? And if Sheriff Cherry lost the upcoming election (which Marco was pretty sure was going to happen), what future was there for him in the department?

What future was there, really, for him here in Murfee?

That’s what he imagined passed between them when he and Vianey shared those too-long looks.

She was simply waiting for him to tell her: Let’s get the hell out of here.

—