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it. The doors were shut tight and secured with a length of heavy chain and a padlock. Trash overflowed a giant steel can into the parking lot, which held only one vehicle—an old rider mower. A boy of about fifteen was picking up cans, stomping on them to flatten them, and throwing them toward the recycling bin. He had a hell of a throwing arm. Regina wondered if he put it to use on the local high school football or baseball teams.
    Though the tavern was not much to look at in the daylight, the road that ran past it was beautiful. Some flowering species of trees dropped white petals onto the shoulder of the road like confetti. An old, weathered fence was festooned with ivy and flowering vines; a tabby cat watched Regina curiously from the steps of a cottage tucked among the trees. Regina drove slowly past, checking the directions she'd entered on her phone. Just as Chase had warned her, there was no service here. Far in the distance, a farmer rode a tractor in a field of bright green. She could see a picturesque old farmhouse on the other side of the field.
    She drove until the road ended in the middle of a field, but passed no turnoffs or intersections. There was nothing to do but turn around and head back. As far as she could see, there was nothing but fields, barns, gently rolling hills, and blue sky. Here and there, dirt lanes wound between the fields, fresh tracks indicating where tractors had driven. But Regina saw nothing that resembled an actual road.
    When she got back to Buddy's, the boy had finished smashing cans and had moved on to spraying down the steps with a hose. When she pulled into the parking lot, he turned off the hose and ambled over to her car.
    "Morning, ma'am," he said. "You lost?"
    "Not lost exactly, I'm just trying to find the Sugar Hill Ranch."
    The boy's eyebrows lifted in surprise. "No kidding? What for?"
    "I, er, have an appointment with Chase Warner."
    "And he told you to meet him there ?" His tone indicated that he didn't believe her.
    "Yes."
    "Well... okay. You just go about a quarter mile and turn right past the hackberry trees."
    Regina sighed. "I have no idea what a hackberry trees looks like, and I assure you there isn't a road. I've looked twice."
    The boy frowned and dug a toe into the dirt, and Regina could see that he was reluctant to disagree with her. Someone had brought him up well, despite his rather threadbare appearance. His shorts hung on his narrow frame, but they had clearly been washed many of times and left a few inches of tanned skin bare above his knees. His faded T-shirt had a hole in it.
    "How about this," she said. "I'll pay you ten dollars to take me to the ranch."
    His eyebrows rose even higher. "But it ain't even half a mile down the road."
    "Get in."
    He didn't need to be asked twice. Regina had the money out of her purse by the time he got in the car. He accepted it with mumbled thanks and stuffed it into his pocket.
    They had retraced her route halfway to the T when he said, "There."
    "That's not a road," Regina said.
    "Well, maybe not exactly."
    "It's a path , maybe. Or a lane."
    "It's the way to the ranch, though."
    Regina drove over a cattle guard set into the dirt, her tires kicking up pebbles. The "road" had weeds growing between the tire tracks. As she drove slowly into the field, she could hear the weeds brushing against the car's undercarriage.
    "All's any of them drive is trucks," the boy said helpfully, "is why the weeds grow up like that."
    Now that they were in the middle of the field, Regina could see what hadn't been visible from Pedersen Road. The land sloped gently into a hollow and then back up the other side. The North Dakota farmland wasn't flat, like the land surrounding Nashville. It featured rolling hills, as though it was a pie crust that had been draped over a rolling pin. Once they crested the top of the hill, the lane angled off toward the farmhouse she'd seen in the distance.
    "That?" Regina asked.
    "Yes, ma'am. That's Sugar Hill