Page 5

“It’s not mine. I mean, I don’t even know what it is. I was just looking at the funny buckets. I was wandering through the area, taking a hike.”

“Strange, because you were here last night.”

“Camping,” she said.

“This is private property.”

“I didn’t know,” she said. “I’m really sorry. I... I’m not in trouble, am I? I’ve never been in trouble before.”

Her eyes went glassy. Her lower lip trembled.

He didn’t buy it.

There was something wholly disingenuous about the saccharine tone she said that in.

“Stand up,” he said.

She looked around wildly, and for a second, he felt bad.

She seemed terrified.

But it only took a moment for him to realize that it was a facade. She wasn’t terrified. This was an act, and he was getting irritated.

He reached down and grabbed her upper arm, hauling her to her feet.

She screeched and jerked backward. “You get your hands off me! I’m not doing anything wrong.”

That feral outburst, he realized, was closer to the truth of it. Of her. She wasn’t scared. She was mad.

“Tell me your name, and what the hell you’re doing here,” he said.

“Itold you. I was taking a walk in the woods.Camping. Taking a walk while I was camping.”

“You can’t even keep your story straight, ma’am.”

“Ma’am?” She wrinkled her nose. “The hell is that?”

“Manners,” he returned. “Are you not familiar? Well, clearly you aren’t, as I’ve introduced myself to you, but you haven’t introduced yourself to me.”

“I’m a woman,” she said, making her voice small again. “Alittleone. You might be a police officer, or you might be impersonating one, but either way, a woman has to be careful. And not just trust men because they say they are trustworthy.”

“That is true,” he said. “But the difficulty is, ma’am, you’re on my land. So not only am I an officer of the law, I’m the landowner. I have every right to know what you’re doing here, and what your name is. I need to see some identification.”

“Identification?” she scoffed. “It’s a hell of a thing that a person needs a piece of paper to prove they exist. Another way for the state to earn money bydoing nothing.”

“Then tell me who you are.”

“My name is Bix,” she said. “And I’m just passing through. I’m not here to make any trouble.”

“But you were here to make a still?”

“I don’t even know what a still is,” she said, defaulting to that blandly innocent tone again. “I just thought it was a bucket. With some hoses. I stopped to have a look at it.”

“It looked like you were inspecting it, and pretty competently too.”

“Look at me,” she said, gesturing toward herself. “Do I look like I would know what to do with one of these things?”

“You absolutely do,” he said, his voice flat.