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night.”
    Winter nodded. He remembered the night as clearly as if it had been weeks before instead of almost two decades back. How many times had he relived it?
    “Why didn’t you call to let me know you were coming?” he asked Alexa.
    “You start hunting again?” she asked. She was frowning up at a deer head mounted on the wall.
    “While back. Rush, Lydia, and I like venison and Lydia said I needed to get off and clear my mind. I have Daddy’s old rifle and I enjoy the woods, the company of friends. Mama bought a cookbook with like nine hundred venison recipes in it. We were working our way through it one season at a time. Sean isn’t as fond of venison as the rest of us are. I missed the last two years and looks like I won’t make it this year. My friends may stop asking me to come if I don’t go soon.”
    “You’re good about remembering your friends. I’m sort of counting on that being the case with you and me.”
    “You need something, Lex, just ask.”
    “I figured maybe you left the service because you wanted to get away from the . . . excitement.” She smiled crookedly.
    “I was a little tired of seeing the darker side of people. Last year Faith Ann’s mother was murdered for no more reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. When Millie was killed, Faith Ann saw the car run her and Hank over. And I was forced to kill someone.”
    “I know the killing weighs heavily on your soul, Winter. Eleanor used to tell me about what the Tampa thing did to you.”
    He shrugged. “You can get a bloody mouth before you know it.”
    “Bloody mouth?”
    “A perfectly good farm dog kills a chicken and he gets a taste for the blood. There’s nothing to do about him because it’s something that becomes part of his nature.” Winter tried to smile, but failed. “The weight a kill puts on your soul is a good thing because it means you’re human. What made the difference—why I really retired—was that last time I killed I didn’t mind it—I didn’t even feel remorse. It’s not that I liked it, but I didn’t feel any more than if that person had been a deer.”
    He smiled, because just saying it had lifted a burden. He smiled, too, because after twenty years of not doing so, he was telling Alexa things he couldn’t bring himself to tell Sean or Hank or anybody else. She seemed to sense that and she smiled, too, and put her hand on his wrist. Time melted away and the Alexa he was looking at was again the skinny sixteen-year-old castoff he had loved with all his heart.
    “Luckily, I’ve never taken my weapon out of the holster except on the range,” she told him. “Winter, I came to ask you for something that you might not be able to say yes to. If you can’t, I’ll understand.”
    “Tell me what’s wrong, Lex.”
    “I need your help for a few days.”
    Winter nodded, still waiting for the request.
    “It’s a job.”
    He was silent.
    “Yeah,” Alexa said. “See, I’m trying to save the lives of a woman and her infant son. In the process there could be the kind of trouble you have dealt with in the past. I need your instincts, your . . .” She faltered.
    “My gun?” Winter felt a hollow burning in his stomach. His ability with a weapon was a natural talent; it was also a curse.
    “Yes, that, but also your instincts, your man-hunting skills. I need what makes you exceptional at this sort of thing.”
    “Alexa, the Bureau has plenty of people who can do what I used to do far better than I can.”
    “Nobody in the Bureau can touch you, Massey. We both know exactly how good you are. I don’t deserve your famous modesty crap. Save it for somebody who doesn’t know you.”
    Winter felt himself bristling at her accuracy. He had been very good at being a deputy U.S. marshal, and circumstances had demanded that he go far beyond the parameters of that job in handling some very sticky situations. His skills had kept him alive, but he’d also been extremely lucky, which wasn’t a