Breaking Point

of wine. Sheridan grinned and asked, “Do you mind if I have a glass?”
    Marybeth hesitated for a moment, then said, “Just one.”
    “You forget I’m in college.”
    “Yes, I do,” Marybeth said softly, placing another glass on the table. Sheridan filled it halfway.
    “What’s going on?” Sheridan asked. “Is Dad home?”
    Marybeth spilled, telling Sheridan about Butch and the hostages, the collapse of the Saddlestring Hotel, the arrival of Pam Roberson. She didn’t want to speak loud enough to wake up Pam in the next room.
    “It’s been a bad day,” Marybeth said, not yet sure whether she regretted saying so much to Sheridan.
    Sheridan simply nodded and sipped at her wine. Although Marybeth knew it wasn’t Sheridan’s first drink—she was soon to be a sophomore at the University of Wyoming, after all—it was the first time they’d shared wine together.
    “I’m worried about your dad up there,” Marybeth said. “And I’m worried about what will happen to Butch, for Pam and Hannah’s sake.”
    —
    M ARYBETH’S PHONE LIT UP, and she glanced at the display. The call was being made by an unknown number. She hesitated.
    “Might as well take it,” Sheridan said.
    She did.
    “It’s me,” Joe said.
    Marybeth said to Sheridan, “Well, speak of the devil.” To Joe: “Where are you calling from?”
    “I borrowed a satellite phone from a guy and I don’t have much time before he wants it back. Do you have something to write down a couple of names? I really need your help with some research.”
    “The girls and I are fine,” Marybeth said, motioning to Sheridan to hand over the pad and pen she used at the Burg-O-Pardner for taking orders. “Thanks for asking.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “It’s okay,” she said, clamping the phone to her shoulder with her cheek and flipping the pad open. “Okay.”
    She wrote down
Juan Julio Batista
.
    “Got it.”
    “I really appreciate it,” Joe said. “Find out everything you can about him and call me back at this number. See if he links up somehow with the Sackett case. I won’t be home tonight, and who knows when tomorrow. But this may be important.”
    “You said ‘names,’ plural.”
    “The second is Pate. John Owen Pate.”
    “Gotcha,” Marybeth said. “By the way, I looked up the Sackett case today, and it’s exactly like you said. I can’t find a connection, though, with Pam and Butch. So maybe it’s this Batista.”
    “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
    “I have the time to do this,” she said, “since I don’t have to spend any more on that stupid hotel.”
    Joe said, “Don’t worry about it. We’ll get ’em next time.”
    She could tell by the way he said it there was something else.
    “Joe?”
    “I got offered a new job today by the new director.”
    As he described it to her, Marybeth jotted down
Cheyenne
,
desk
, and
$18K
.
    “I’d become a bureaucrat,” Joe said sourly.
    Before she could ask for more detail, she could hear another voice in the background.
    “The guy wants his phone back,” Joe said. “He’s waiting for a call.”
    “Have you found Butch?”
    “Not yet.”
    “Is it true about the hostages?”
    “I’m afraid so.”
    “What happened to him, Joe?”
    “He broke. Now I’ve gotta go . . .”
    —
    A T FIVE TO MIDNIGHT as she got ready for bed, Marybeth remembered the call from Matt Donnell on her phone. She sighed, then punched it up to listen.
    Matt said, “Marybeth, I may have a line on something. We might be able to unload that piece of crap after all. I’ll give you a call tomorrow and tell you more. I just hope you don’t completely blame me for what happened. It’s just this damned fire marshal. There’s too many of those types out there. They want to be involved in every aspect of what we do . . .”
    So, she thought, they’d gone from building something good to trying to “unload it.”
    He went on, but she didn’t want to listen to the rest.
    —
    I NSTEAD, SHE PADDED downstairs in her bare feet in the dark. She could hear rhythmic breathing all around her—a house filled with anxious, sleeping females.
    Marybeth slipped into Joe’s tiny office off the living room and closed the door and turned on his desk lamp. She sat down and opened the browser of his computer and called up a website called themaster falconer.com.
    It was an old site, and rarely used. She was surprised it was still up. Joe and Nate had used the comment threads to communicate surreptitiously the previous