“He didn’t call you about the meeting place this afternoon, so why is this a surprise? Besides, it wasn’t J.R. who called him. It was Kate.”

“Kate? Why would she call Skeeter?”

Jed took off before I could get my seatbelt fastened, and I had to put my hand on the dashboard to brace myself.

“We just saw Sam Teagen stuff Hilary into the back of a car,” I said.“That is too coincidental.”

“Agreed. But is Kate workin’ with her daddy, or is she helpin’ lead us to him?”

“This is nonsense,” I said, pulling out my phone. I called Skeeter and put him on speaker. “Skeeter,” I said as soon as he answered. “What did Kate say?”

“She said the timetable had been altered. She told me to bring the Lady in Black and meet her at 7:45—at the Atchison plant, outside Henry Buchanan’s office. I take it you know where that is?”

I cast a glance at Jed. Considering that the Atchison plant was where he’d been shot in the arm, he probably didn’t have warm and fuzzy memories of the place either.

“Is she working with her dad?” I asked. “Or does she have her own dog and pony show goin’ on?”

“I don’t know,” Skeeter said, “although it would certainly appeal to his sense of drama. What I do know is that there won’t be a meeting at this barn south of town. There’s no way J.R. Simmons would be stupid enough to announce the location so far ahead of time. He likes the element of surprise, and he knows any meeting we have won’t end well. He’s gonna stack it to his advantage.”

“Well, we just saw Sam Teagen stuff Hilary Wilder into the back of a car and speed away, so I can’t help thinking Hilary is part of this meeting, too.”

“None of this makes sense,” Skeeter said. “Why would Hilary be involved?”

“I don’t know, but I have a terrible feeling about all of it.”

“You need to have a vision,” he said.

“I had one of Jed earlier that was fuzzy and indistinct. I couldn’t tell where we were or what was goin’ on. The future was uncertain.”

“Well, have one of Jed now.”

I knew this. I’d had dozens of them the week before, but I’d resisted them all day. I suddenly realized why I was being so resistant. I didn’t want to see the future because I wasn’t sure I could change it.

“Is she forcing a vision?” Skeeter asked over the speaker.

“No,” Jed said, then grabbed my hand. “It’s okay, Rose. Just do it. We need to know.”

Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and focused on the meeting tonight and felt variations of darkness and cold and heat and bright lights. My vision was blurring as though I was in a sand storm, only there wasn’t any sand—the vision was too obscured.

“You’re caught between darkness and light.”

I opened my eyes, and Jed was staring at me. “What does that mean?”

“It felt like two very different futures were at war with each other. One was dark and cold—a lot like the visions I had of Mason for a time period he would have been dead in the unaltered future, but the other was all heat and bright lights, like a fire. And I was surrounded by sand, only there wasn’t any sand.” I paused. “I think it was fire.”

“So two choices,” Skeeter said. “One choice leads to Jed’s death. The other one ends in a firestorm. Which one is the path to Kate? Which one do we choose?”

And wasn’t that the biggest irony of them all? I’d finally harnessed my visions to make them work for me, but when I needed them the most, they failed me.

Deep down, I’d known that the outcome of this night would ultimately rest on my shoulders, that I couldn’t rely on my visions. I could only rely on me.

But I glanced over at Jed, at Neely Kate in the backseat, and then down at my phone, knowing Skeeter was there waiting for an answer.

I wasn’t facing this alone. As much comfort as that gave me, maybe that was the problem.

Chapter 31

My friends were waiting for me to answer, to decide our fate, so I finally sighed and said, “I’m gonna be honest, I don’t want to go out to that place, but I still think we should meet Kate. I want to know what she’s up to with Neely Kate and what she plans on doin’ with that gun.”

“What gun?”

Crappy doodles. I hadn’t told him about our meeting with Neely Kate’s grandmother. I took a minute to fill him in on everything. As I rehashed it all, I snuck glances at Neely Kate, but she remained silent, her face a blank mask.

“Well, shit,” he grumbled.

“Any idea who J.R. killed with it?” I asked.

“That was twenty-five years ago. It could have been anyone.”

“Jenny Lynn must have known, though, don’t you think?” I asked. “Otherwise, why would she have taken it?” I paused. “Maybe it was a stab in the dark.”

“She must have seen or heard something.”

“Neely Kate’s granny said that Allen Steyer was killed the week before Thaddeus Brooke showed up asking for the gun, and that was after Jenny Lynn told Dora she was runnin’ off with the musician. What if she saw J.R. kill Allen Steyer? What if he was one of his Twelve?”

“I think you’re onto something,” Skeeter said. “But how would Kate know all of that?”

“Does it matter?” I asked. “Murder has no statute of limitations. J.R.’s murder weapon will be a lot more useful to us than a ledger full of twenty-five-year-old crooked deals.”

“The statute of limitations is pointless since he’s not goin’ back to jail,” Skeeter growled. “Not to mention that the chain of evidence has been destroyed.”

“Maybe so, but Kate doesn’t care about that, does she?” Or did she? Was she protecting him or trying to bring him down? “So we meet her?”

“Yes, but wait for me. Let me move my men into position before we strut in.”

“Are you gonna be there in time?” I asked, my stomach in knots.

“She can wait,” Skeeter said, then called out, “Jed.”

“Yeah.”

“Wait for me behind the Sinclair station.”

“Got it.”