Chapter 15

Once Lolly is back with her Appaloosa buddies, Blake asks, “You looking at me?”

“Have to. It’s my job. I pay your bills.” Enough said. Blake knows not to ask me a second time. I clap him on the back and say, “Wish I had ten of you, Blake. This is how good you are at your job.”

“Thanks,” he murmurs and ambles away in search of more chores to do on the ranch.

Reality hits me because he sounds nothing like Corey Cassidy.

* * * *

I take a long walk at dusk across a portion of the six hundred and fifty two acres. I study the purple-red sun as it falls into the dark-blue horizon, which reminds of Renaldo Livingston and his artwork. A hawk circles overhead, and somewhere in a lonely tree is a hooting owl. I consume other sounds of the evening, which entail a distant coyote, a whistling prairie because of the light wind, and the drawn out echo of thunder splayed over a faraway town, closing in on Hiding.