Page 37 of Coyote

"I know." Rafe took off his glasses and folded them on the table. "We can talk about Joe after. Right now, we're talking about John Jameson."

My hand tightened around the foil.

Rafe turned the folder toward me. The first page held a photograph of John in a white coat, taken years before. His hair had been darker, his beard shorter. He stood outside a low clinic building with his arms crossed over his chest, already too big for the photograph holding him.

I wanted to keep it.

"He's who he says he is," Rafe said. "John Jameson. Medical license still in good standing. Army, honorable discharge. No warrants, nothing criminal on him anywhere. Nothing that brings more trouble to this ranch than the trouble already following him."

I looked at the picture again. "What else?"

"Some of what's in there isn't mine to hand over, but…" He sighed. "You need to remember he was a person before he met you, Coyote. He's got history, not all of it pleasant. He's got people. Places. Just like we all do. Private lives we don't share with others right away."

I frowned at him. "Why are you telling me that?"

Rafe tapped the folder. "There are things in here that belong to him. If you want them, you ask him."

I didn't like that answer. I liked that Rafe hadn't handed John's life to me on a stack of paper even less. He pulled one page free and slid it across the turquoise. A missing-person report. John's name sat at the top, his photograph beneath it. The report was old enough that he barely had a beard.

The person who had filed it was Sarah Jameson.

"Sister?" I asked hopefully, because I couldn't fathom him having a wife. He would've told me about that.

"Yes. Lives in Socorro."

I read the page again. Eleven months. Five of those had belonged to Zaroff and the pit. The rest belonged to whatever had driven John onto the road before that.

"She's been looking for him the whole time," Rafe said. "Hospitals. Shelters. Police departments. Anywhere a man his size might have been noticed."

My thumb pressed over her name. "Did you call her?"

"Not yet."

The answer loosened something in my chest.

"Winston did," Rafe continued.

Fucking Winston. Once a cop, always a cop. And here I'd started to like him. "What did he tell her?"

"That he had credible information about her brother and wanted to speak in person. He did not tell her that John was here. He did not tell her that this ranch exists."

"Is she coming?"

"To Winston's office. This afternoon."

I looked towards the door. The kitchen was two rooms away. John sat there eating food Sierra had made him, expecting me to come back and tell him what Rafe wanted.

"She'll try to take him."

"Maybe."

"No maybe about it. She's spent eleven months looking. She isn't going to see him and leave without him."

"She doesn't get to make that decision."

"Neither do you." Rafe leaned forward, forearms on the table. "John decides whether Winston calls her back. He decides whether he meets her, whether he leaves with her, brings her here, or never speaks to her at all."

"He's hurt."