Page 6 of Ransom
It was a Remington 700, bolt-action, .308 Winchester. I wrapped my hand around the stock and took my time running my thumb up the grain from heel to comb. Someone had sanded it down and oiled it back up by hand. The barrel had years on it. Decades, maybe. I brought it up slowly, settled it against my shoulder, and stroked it out toward the window until the scope found the ridge through the glass.
Ransom rose off his heels at the stove.
"Good glass," I said. "You can see all the way to the ridge from here." I held the position, cheek to the stock, one eye closed. "Long shot from up there to the fence line. Four hundred yards, maybe more. Wind off the mesa would pull it left." I worked the bolt. The action was smooth as butter.
I lowered the rifle slowly, turned it over in my hands, and ran my palm along the underside of the barrel. Took my time about that, too.
"Custom stock," I said. "That's not a ranch rifle. That's somebody's rifle. Somebody who's had it a long time and knows what they've got."
He tracked my hands the way I'd been tracking his.
I leaned the rifle back against the wall where I'd found it. Then I looked up.
He'd turned around. Back against the wall beside the window, arms crossed, eyes on me.
"Good rifle," I said.
"It gets the job done."
I went back to my chair and sat, knowing I should focus on the dead judge and the murder I was supposed to be solving.
I turned my hat over in my hands, thinking hard about how I wanted to spend the next half hour. The way I figured, there were two options. The first was to sit, talk shop, get what I could about the judge, ride back with my head clear. The other way was the one I was already leaning toward, which I was pretending was for the case, and we both know it wasn't.
I told myself it was useful either way. A man who'd let me close once would let me close again. That was how the work went sometimes.
"I had a husband once," I said. "Briefly. Vegas, which should've been the first sign. Forty-eight hours later, we did the divorce too. Marriage was a mistake. The sex wasn't."
I left it there.
Most men, when you drop husband on them instead of wife, do something. Look away. Shift in the chair. Get real interested in the middle distance. The ones who aren't built that way have a tell: a careful neutrality that's just slightly too careful.
Ransom didn't move.
He held my gaze halfway and folded the look up before he could finish having it.
"Your turn," I said.
"I don't have a husband."
"Didn't ask about a husband." I set the hat on the table. "Asked about a mistake."
He worked his jaw and looked away again.
"Everybody's got one," I said. "Some people got several. I find it's better to know a man's early. Saves time."
"You always run your mouth like this with people who might be suspects?"
He glared at me when he said it. Marshals had tried that look. Cartel lieutenants. A judge once, right before I arrested him.
It didn't stop me. It did make me lean in.
"Only the interesting ones." I held his eyes long enough to make sure he knew I wasn't moving. "You from here originally? New Mexico?"
He held the look another beat, then let it go without making a show of it.
I was in trouble. I knew it. I was doing it anyway.
"Close enough."
