SLEEP, KRISTY SOON DISCOVERED, was out of the question.
She couldn’t stop thinking about Dylan—reliving every kiss, every caress, every throaty man-sound he’d made in their most intimate moments. She actually considered taking a cold shower, but just imagining icy water pounding against her love-warmed skin, still pulsing with the echo of earlier responses, gave her goose bumps.
“I might as well do something constructive,” she told Winston, who had curled up at the foot of the bed, perchance to dream. She got up, rummaged through a drawer, found sweatpants and a T-shirt reserved for painting and pulled them on.
Winston rose to all fours, stretched luxuriously and meowed.
There was still wallpaper to scrape in the little room in back of the kitchen, and door frames to paint—but somehow, the prospect was about as appealing as watching the wood dry, and television sounded even worse.
When no better ideas came to mind, Kristy padded down the back stairs to brew tea, Winston following, and double-checked that the lock was turned and the chain was on.
The phone rang, startling her, and Kristy reached for the receiver automatically. Who could be calling her at this time of night, besides Dylan? Speculation ran wild: maybe Bonnie was sick. Maybe he wanted to come back.
But the voice on the other end of the line belonged to Floyd Book. “I was driving by on patrol,” he said, “and I saw your lights go on. Everything okay?”
Kristy’s stomach curdled. “F-Fine,” she lied. “Everything is fine.” She forced a cheerful, I-don’t-really-think-you’re-a-murderer note into her voice. “Since when do you, the big honcho, have to work the night shift? Don’t your deputies take turns keeping the mean streets of Stillwater Springs safe for democracy between sunset and dawn?”
Floyd chuckled, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “Right now, one of them is on vacation. The other is on sick leave—he says it’s flu, but I think he doesn’t have the stomach for exhuming bodies. Passed out cold when he saw the girl.”
A shudder went through Kristy, and she closed her eyes against images of crumbling flesh, disintegrating hair and old bones. It didn’t help.
She thought of reporting Freida’s break-in, but since she didn’t plan to press charges and didn’t want to give Floyd an excuse to stop by, she stuck with her original decision. “Has the girl’s family been notified?”
“Yes,” Floyd said, and there was a ring of sorrow in his voice. “There was no point in their viewing the body, but they identified the ring she was wearing. As soon as the forensics report is in, the remains will be released for a proper burial. I guess that’ll bring the Clarkstons some closure, but the bottom line is, they’ve still lost their daughter for good, and nothing is going to change that.” He sighed heavily. “That damn election can’t come too soon to suit me—but there was a time when I sweated out the vote-counting myself. Thought I’d die of disappointment, back when I ran against old Warren Holter fresh out of the army, if I didn’t win.”
Kristy wanted, suddenly and fiercely, to blurt out the question pounding in the back of her mind.
Did you kill that girl?
She bit down hard on her lower lip to forestall the urge. Since there was still a chance that Floyd Book hadn’t figured out what she suspected, it was safer to keep her mouth shut.
“I won’t keep you,” he said, when she was silent. “Just wanted to make sure there wasn’t any trouble at your place.”
“Thanks,” Kristy said. Her palm was moist, where she gripped the telephone receiver, and her fingers ached because she was holding it so tightly. “But I’m okay, really.”
“If the reporters get after you too much, you call me,” Floyd told her.
They said their goodbyes, and rang off.
Dylan had been right earlier, Kristy thought, once she’d replaced the receiver. She was letting her thriller-stoked imagination run away from her. Sheriff Floyd Book hadn’t killed Ellie Clarkston. It was crazy to think he was capable of a heinous crime like that—he’d devoted his entire career to upholding the law.
Except, of course, when it came to the secret of Madison Ranch.
Even less likely to sleep than before, if that was possible, Kristy went into her small study, off the living room, and logged onto her PC.
First, she ran a search on Ellie Clarkston and her disappearance.
Along with newspaper articles, there were a surprising number of private references to the case online, even after all this time. Everything from video clips of the parents, John and Barbara, pleading with the public for any scrap of information that would help them find their daughter, to weird amateur sites offering theories as far-fetched as alien abduction, governmental conspiracies and human sacrifice. There were blogs, too, devoted to probing the psyche of your average, run-of-the-mill serial killer, many with a tone a little too admiring for Kristy’s taste, message boards for “fans” of poor Ellie and other young women like her. And worse, for their killers.
Kristy’s blood ran cold, looking at all that stuff. It creeped her out to think there were people out there with nothing better to do than post the gleefully macabre dredges of their sick minds on the Web.
She clicked her way out of the cyber-landfill.
Surfing the Net was clearly no cure for insomnia, but she was still too antsy to read or watch TV, and except for a midnight run to Wal-Mart or bellying up to the bar for a tall one over at Skivvie’s, which would certainly delight the gossips, there weren’t a lot of choices.
She could shower, dress and go to the library to catch up on work, except that there wasn’t any work to catch up on, because she was ultragood at her job, and besides, the dark of night seemed threatening, even oppressive.
If Sheriff Book hadn’t killed the Clarkston girl, then someone else had. Perhaps it had been a stranger, passing through—but what if the killer was a local? What if it was a person she spoke to all the time, in the grocery store, the post office, the library?
That idea was even scarier than the evil-stranger scenario.
She blinked when an instant message showed up in the lower right-hand corner of her monitor, as startling, in its own way, as Sheriff Book’s unexpected phone call had been.
Hi, began the message. Why’d you rush off? The screen name, charmingly, was Gravesitter.
Who the hell was Gravesitter?
Common sense and curiosity squared off on the field of Kristy’s mind, and curiosity won, as it usually did in any matter not related to her job. Who’s asking? Kristy typed in response.
Saw your name when you stopped by our message board a few minutes ago, came the immediate and blithe answer, written e.e. cummings–style and full of misspellings. And neatly skirting her question. You should have stuck around. We’re not a bad bunch.
No, Kristy thought grimly, you just sit hunched over a computer in some gloomy basement room, knee-deep in dirty laundry and fast-food wrappers and greasy pizza boxes, chatting about the redeeming qualities of serial killers.
Stopped in by accident, Kristy typed. Not my kind of thing.
Too good for us?
She bristled. Well, yes, as a matter of fact, she thought. Not being a monster and a ghoul, I guess I am. How had this guy—or woman—been able to send her an instant message, or any other kind? She certainly hadn’t registered for any of the message boards she’d visited.
But, then, there were computer geeks everywhere—even in small Montana towns three miles from nowhere. A few patrons, mostly junior high kids, used the donated PCs at the library, and while she’d never tried to pick up their cyber-trail after they logged off and skulked away, she would now, and at the first opportunity, too.
The instant-message window came up again, with a chiming sound. Kristy? Are you still there?
Kristy? Are you still there?
How had this person known her name? It wasn’t in her e-mail address.
WHO ARE YOU? Kristy demanded, punching the keys hard as she typed the demand.
Just a friend, came the response. By the way, it’s good to know you’re sleeping with Dylan Creed again. Some of us thought you were frigid.
Furious—and scared—Kristy logged off immediately—and then wished she hadn’t. Now, there would be no way to trace the messages back to their source—or would there? How many Gravesitters could there be, out there crawling around the Web like spiders stalking flies?
Kristy logged back on. Ran a search.
Thousands. That’s how many Gravesitters there were. Thousands upon thousands.
Kristy pushed back from the desk, got to her feet and paced, Winston matching her step for step.
Just a friend—by the way, it’s good to know you’re sleeping with Dylan Creed again—some of us thought you were frigid.
Freida? Sheriff Book? Julie Danvers?
Or just some high school kid, messing with her head?
It was time to stop playing Nancy Drew, she decided. Make herself a second cup of herbal tea—the first had grown cold—soak in a hot bath, relax.
Relax. Yeah, right.
After the Freida incident.
After Dylan’s lovemaking had turned her soul inside out.
After Gravesitter’s chummy little instant messages.
And with the looming prospect of a media circus, centered around the drifter her dad had killed, in her defense and maybe his own and her mother’s, as well, and the finding of Ellie Clarkston’s body. Not to mention her doubts about Sheriff Book, a man who’d been like an uncle to her, if not a second father.
She tried the herbal tea anyway, and the hot bath, too.
And when the sun rose the next morning, Kristy was on hand to greet it.
* * *
AS IT TURNED OUT, filing the custody papers was sort of anticlimactic, as far as Dylan was concerned. Once it was done, bright and early the morning after he and Kristy had made love, there was nothing to do but wait for the slow wheels of justice to grind into motion.
Dylan had met Logan in front of the tiny courthouse in Stillwater Springs at 9:00 a.m. sharp, when the place opened, wearing his best jeans, polished boots and a freshly purchased white shirt with the folds still in it, only to find his big brother sporting a snazzy lawyer suit, dress shoes buffed to an intimidating shine and a tie.
Logan had read his expression, grinned and slapped his shoulder. “Relax, cowboy,” he’d said. “There’s no need to dress up.”
This is dressed up, Dylan had thought, panicked. What if the judge thought he was a slob, and couldn’t provide an orderly environment for Bonnie?
Except, they didn’t see the judge. They didn’t see anybody but Fred Brill, the bored and balding clerk who’d worked the front desk at the courthouse since Reagan’s first term in office, if not longer. Logan saw that the documents were stamped and shuttled into the system, such as it was, and that was it.
“Now what?” Dylan demanded, as they walked outside again, onto the tree-shaded sidewalk.
“Now, we wait,” Logan answered.
“Why’d you put on a suit, if you knew we didn’t have to go before a judge?” Dylan asked, resettling his hat.
“Sometimes,” Logan said, “I just like to look like a lawyer.” He indicated the Marigold Café, just down the street, with a nod of his head. “Let’s get some breakfast.”
Since practically every parking space on Main Street was filled, an unusual phenomenon in Stillwater Springs at any time of day, they left their separate trucks in the courthouse parking lot and walked to the Marigold. There were vans bearing the logos of several national networks, and the closer Dylan got to the front door of the restaurant, the less of an appetite he had.
“They’re here to get the story on Kristy’s dad,” he mused, worried.
“Yeah.” Logan nodded. “And the Clarkston girl. Damn. Who’d do a thing like that?” It was a rhetorical question, with no answer expected, so Dylan didn’t offer one.
He took hold of the door handle and pulled. He’d woken up on the wrong side of the bed that morning, because things had ended badly with Kristy the night before, after all that brain-bending sex, and because he kept imagining Sharlene and the current boyfriend zeroing in to grab Bonnie. The thought of a pack of newshounds baying at Kristy’s heels did nothing to improve his mood.
The café buzzed with chatter. Dylan and Logan got the last two seats in the place and ordered coffee. When it came, Dylan took a sip and almost spat it out—the stuff tasted like battery acid.
Logan didn’t seem to notice. He sipped away, scanning the crowd, taking people’s measure, in that way he had. “I imagine Kristy’s expecting a blitz, but it wouldn’t hurt to warn her, just the same.”
Dylan was up for an excuse to talk to Kristy. He felt bad about the way he’d acted last night, but the truth was, it scared the hell out of him, the things she made him feel. As teenagers, they’d had cosmic sex and thought they loved each other. Now, Dylan realized neither one of them had had a clue.
Love was a desperate thing, fierce and ferocious, capable of consuming a man like invisible fire.
Logan watched him intently. “Are you all right?” he asked, and he sounded as if Dylan’s answer would really matter to him.
“No.” Dylan sighed, rubbing his unshaven chin with one hand. The roughness matched his state of mind—sandpaper against bare and tender hide. “I don’t think I am.”
“Bonnie?”
“Partly,” Dylan admitted. “I’m scared shitless, Logan. I can’t let Sharlene raise her, but I don’t know jack about bringing up a kid—especially a girl kid.” He paused, at once holding back the question and forcing it past his throat. “What if I’m like Dad?”
“Make the same choices he did,” Logan said quietly, “and you will be.”
“Is that enough?” Dylan asked doubtfully. “Just making different choices, I mean? This hell-raising thing runs deep with the Creeds—all the way back to old Josiah’s day. Even further, for all I know. Suppose it’s genetic?”
One side of Logan’s mouth quirked up in what looked like rueful amusement. “It’s about time somebody tried to find out, don’t you think? Dug in their heels and said, ‘By God, this is it, it stops here, in this generation’?”
“You’re really serious about this.”
“You sound surprised,” Logan said mildly.
The food came. The conversational din surrounding them had long since faded to a buzz, like distant bees droning in the orchard out home.
Logan, clearly hungry, tucked into a short stack with a side of ham. Dylan stared down at his own plateful of bacon and eggs and couldn’t recall ordering it. He left his knife and fork where they were—wrapped up in a paper napkin.
“I don’t mind admitting,” Dylan said, at some length, “that I have my doubts. After all, you’ve been married twice already, and I’ve never known you to stay in one place long.”
Logan chortled at that, chewed and swallowed. Took a sip of his coffee. “I guess I can’t blame you.”
“What happened, Logan? What made you even want to change?”
Logan mulled his answer over for a while before giving it, which was like him. “I got curious about our distant cousins, the McKettricks, after one of them—Meg—sent an e-mail via a half-assed Web site Cassie set up one time, when she was on a ‘save the Creed heritage’ kick. There are McKettricks all over the place, but the main bunch lives outside a little town in Arizona, called Indian Rock, on the Triple M Ranch. They’re a rowdy crew—a lot like us in some ways—but they’re a family. With all their differences, and their disagreements, they’ll stand back-to-back to defend each other, when trouble comes. It struck a chord in me—I wanted that for the Creeds.”
“We’re related to the McKettricks?” Dylan marveled. “I knew a Jesse McKettrick on the rodeo circuit.”
Logan grinned. Nodded. “Yup,” he said.
Dylan shoved a hand through his hair, dared to dream, if only for a moment, that Logan’s vision—a thriving ranch, a solid family, a new course for future generations of Creeds to follow—could be fulfilled.
Bonnie, growing up proud of her name, secure on a piece of ground she could always call home, no matter where she wound up living as an adult. Folks there, ready to take her part if she needed help.
The thought made Dylan’s eyes burn. Suddenly, he wanted to print out that disk full of pictures Logan had given him a couple of weeks back. He wanted to see the people he came from—misguided, yes, but tough as hell. What were their stories? What had they hoped for, dreamed of? Who had they loved—and hated? Was there nothing left of them, save the dusty skeletons moldering in the old cemetery on the other side of the orchard, out there on the once-famous Stillwater Springs Ranch?
Logan seemed to read Dylan’s mind, though most likely everything he was feeling in that moment showed plainly in his face. “There are letters, Dylan. Pictures. Even a few diaries. And because Josiah published a newspaper, there’s microfilm, too, at the library. Kristy can help you access it.”
All his life, Dylan had felt like a lone link from a rusty, broken chain. Now, he knew he was connected, not only to Logan and Tyler, and to the land itself, but to all those Creeds who had gone before and, more important, to those who would come after—starting with Bonnie.
And for Bonnie alone, whatever his misgivings, he knew he had to try.
“I’m in,” he said quietly.
Logan smiled, nodded. “Good.”
That was all. Just “good.”
But it was enough.
* * *
THE REPORTERS WERE WAITING on the library lawn when Kristy, wan with dread and lack of sleep, showed up for work that morning. They were crushing the grass, trampling the flower beds, blocking the sidewalk.
Kristy thought about turning her Blazer around and simply driving off, but sooner or later, she’d have to face the music, and the longer she waited, the harder it would be.
A man with a slick hairstyle and capped teeth immediately shoved a microphone into her face. “Did you know all along that your father had murdered a man, Ms. Madison? Were you a witness?”
Kristy squared her shoulders, shifted her handbag from right to left, flipping through her key ring for the one that would open the library’s front doors.
Business as usual, Madison, she told herself.
“There is no proof that my father murdered anyone,” she said, with freezing dignity, pushing past him.
A woman she recognized from a morning show out of Missoula stepped directly into her path. “Can you confirm that there was a second body found on your family’s property? That of Ellie Clarkston, the missing teenager?”
“I think that’s a question you should ask the sheriff, not me,” Kristy said. She and the newswoman engaged in a brief glaring match, and Lois Lane finally stepped aside.
Kristy got as far as the steps in front of the entry doors before another question hit her, striking from behind, with the impact of a stone.
“Is it true that you’ve sold the rights to the story to a major movie studio?”
Kristy didn’t turn around. Her keys felt slippery in her numb fingers. “Nothing definite has been decided,” she said. If she could just get inside, among the books—she always felt safe, surrounded by books.
The reporters would follow, of course. The library was a public building; she couldn’t keep them out.
Her stomach rolled. She managed to open the door, cross the threshold. White-teeth and Lois Lane were right behind her.
She turned to face them. “I have a library to open,” she said. “If you wouldn’t mind—”
“Just give us a statement,” Lois pleaded. “Anything.”
White-teeth watched her eagerly, ready to thrust the microphone at her again.
“I’m not at liberty to comment,” Kristy answered, because that was what people always said on the TV news. “Sheriff Book is conducting the investigation. Why don’t you ask him about the case?”
A figure appeared in the doorway behind them, rimmed in sunlight, too bright to identify.
Another reporter, no doubt.
Kristy’s heart skittered. She felt trapped, cornered—in this, her sanctuary, of all places.
“But you did sell movie rights to Zachary Spencer,” White-teeth persisted.
And then, blessedly, the figure in the doorway solidified into Dylan. Wearing a deceptively easygoing grin, he came to Kristy’s side, slipped an arm around her. She blinked at the whiteness of his shirt, fresh out of the package if the creases were anything to go by.
“The library’s closed today, folks,” Dylan said.
Before Kristy could protest, he’d shuffled her back through the library and onto the porch. Left with the choice of following or being locked in—since Dylan had taken the keys from Kristy’s hand and given them an eloquent jingle—Lois Lane and White-teeth trailed after them, blended in with their colleagues waiting on the lawn.
Dylan locked the doors, nodded affably to the startled throng and squired Kristy to his truck.
“Dylan Creed,” she sputtered, “what do you think you’re doing?”
“We’re going to a cattle auction,” he said.
“To a what?” Kristy gasped when he opened the passenger-side door, gripped her around the waist with both hands and hoisted her into the seat. “I’m supposed to be working—”
“You really think you can work with that rat pack hanging around?”
Kristy sighed, settled back in the seat, closed her eyes. “Running away never solved anything,” she said.
“Sometimes,” Dylan replied, snapping her seat belt into place, “it’s the better part of valor.”
“That’s discretion,” Kristy said. “Discretion is the better part of valor.”
“Gosh,” Dylan teased. “Thanks for clearing that up.” With another grin, he shut the truck door, rounded the front end and got behind the wheel.
“They’ll only come back, and back again, until they get whatever it is they want.”
“No sense in making it easy for them,” Dylan replied, gunning the engine and giving the horn a merry farewell toot as they sped away.
“I can’t just go to a—a cattle auction.”
“Sure you can.” Dylan grinned. He didn’t speak again, until they were past the city limits, headed toward Missoula. Then, his expression changed. “I’m sorry about last night, Kristy.”
Great. The best sex of my life, and he’s sorry.
“Still worried I might be pregnant?” Kristy asked, with a little tartness to her tone. “Forget it. I checked the calendar. Not ovulating.”
She had checked the calendar, so that part, at least, was the truth. Whether she was ovulating or not was anybody’s guess.
“Too bad,” Dylan said. “I think we’d make a great baby together.”
Kristy stared straight ahead, because if she looked at Dylan, he might see what she was feeling in her face. “Do me a favor,” she said. “Don’t mess with my head. I’m on overload as it is.”
“Which is why you need a distraction. And a cattle auction is nothing if not distracting.”
“A cattle auction,” Kristy said, a little less tartly, because deep down, she was glad Dylan had decided to play white knight back there at the library, “is dusty, loud and boring.” She paused. “And where is Bonnie?”
“With Briana,” Dylan answered easily. “Logan and I had breakfast together this morning, after we filed the custody papers, and we got to talking about bringing the ranch back to its former glory. The next logical step is to buy more cattle. He’s meeting us at the auction, after he changes out of the monkey suit.”
“The monkey suit?”
Dylan grinned. “The one he wore to the courthouse. Said it made him feel more like a lawyer.”
“Oh,” Kristy said. One of her exchanges with Freida Turlow came to mind. “Have you ever heard of a company called Tri-Star? They made an offer on my folks’ place, and Freida’s sure the bank will accept it.”
Dylan shook his head. “Doesn’t ring a bell,” he said.
She studied him, out of the corner of her eye, still too proud to look directly at him. “Something’s different about you,” she remarked, at some length.
“Is that so?”
“Yes, it’s so. What are you up to?”
“Besides kidnapping the town librarian?”
Dylan laughed, and buzzed down his window, and the wind danced in his golden hair. He had changed, and just since the night before, too. He seemed more substantial somehow, less transient, more of a reality and less of a dream. “I’m still me, Kristy. The guy who’d like to get you naked, right now, if we weren’t on a public road, and unwind some of that tension coiled up inside you with a good old-fashioned—”
“Dylan, stop.”
“Orgasm,” he finished. “Damn, if I hadn’t promised Logan I’d meet him at the stockyards in Missoula—”
Kristy squirmed. She felt hot and achy—and wet. Now, she’d be on the ragged edge, all day, anticipating another round of lovemaking with Dylan. Exactly as he’d intended.
She sighed again. Rolled down her own window. “Don’t.”
“Don’t,” Dylan repeated.
“Stop.”
“Don’t stop,” he said. “Where have I heard that phrase before?” He cocked his head to one side, pretending to think hard. “Oh, yeah. It was last night. I went down on you, and you said, ‘Don’t stop—oh, please, Dylan, don’t stop.’”
The reminder made Kristy blush—and want him to go down on her again, right there in the truck, in the broad light of day.
She groaned.
Dylan laughed.
By the time they reached the stockyards, where the cattle sale was to be held, he had her so riled up that if he’d pulled into a motel parking lot instead, or even into the bushes alongside the road, she’d have been begging before he got her jeans unsnapped.
Dylan signed up for a bidding number and examined the livestock as calmly as if he hadn’t been seducing her with words all the way from Stillwater Springs. When Logan arrived, wearing jeans, boots and a T-shirt, he didn’t seem at all surprised to see Kristy there on a day when the library should have been open for business. After studying her face for a few moments, Logan grinned in a way that made her blush even harder.
Then he laid a hand on her shoulder. “It’s good to see you, Kristy,” he said quietly. “Briana’s frying up a couple of chickens for supper, after the Great Debate, and we’re both hoping you and Dylan will join us. Jim Huntinghorse will be there, too.”
It sounded nice. An ordinary, sane, country thing to do.
Sure, Kristy imagined herself saying. As soon as Dylan finishes what he’s started, and gets me off, we’ll be right over.
“I’d like that,” she said.
Dylan, busy checking out cattle until then, spotted Logan and started in their direction.
“Have you ever heard of a company called Tri-Star?” Kristy asked Logan, as an afterthought.
She saw something in his face, so subtle and quickly gone that she immediately concluded she’d imagined it. Without replying, he turned to greet Dylan with a handshake, and the moment passed.
Attending a cattle auction brought back a lot of memories for Kristy—as a child, she’d been to dozens of them with her dad. They’d sat in the bleacherlike seats, Kristy sipping a soda, Tim drinking coffee, with the hard Montana sun beating down on their heads, even through straw cowboy hats. In the early years, Tim Madison mainly bought calves. Later on, when things started going sour, he’d begun selling off his small herd—the heifers, the yearlings, and finally the bulls.
The bidding was brisk, once it got under way, but Logan and Dylan, sitting on either side of Kristy, held their own. By the time the auction was over, they’d bought some fifty head of cattle, between them.
Checks were written. Arrangements were made to transport the animals to Stillwater Springs Ranch.
“Want to stop someplace and have lunch?” Logan asked, when the three of them stood in the gravel parking lot, preparing to leave.
“We’ll hold out for Briana’s fried chicken,” Dylan answered easily.
Amusement glinted in Logan’s eyes. “See you at the debate,” he said. “Jim needs all the support he can get.”
Dylan nodded. “See you there.”
Kristy waited until Logan had walked away, headed toward his truck, before giving Dylan an elbow in the ribs. “You might as well have told him straight out that we’re going somewhere to screw our brains out!” she whispered.
Dylan laughed, but his eyes were solemn as he looked down at her. “Aren’t we?”
“Aren’t we what?”
“Going somewhere to screw our brains out?”
Kristy gave a strangled scream of frustration.
Dylan laughed again. “My place or yours?” He folded his arms to await her answer, eyes dancing. “Your place is closer, but mine is more private,” he finally added.
“You are impossible!” Kristy stormed over to the truck and got in, after Dylan opened the locks with the fob on his key ring. It was mostly bluster, though, and he surely knew that.
Dylan nodded to a passing acquaintance, then climbed in to start the engine.
“Your place,” Kristy relented, stubborn to the end.
Dylan leaned toward her, widened his eyes and exuded innocence. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you. What did you say?”
“Your place,” Kristy repeated, through her teeth.
Dylan chuckled and put the truck in gear. “That’s what I thought you said. My place it is.”