"Shit. Pardon my French," he added. "That girl's nothing but a ghost to me, and I'm less than that to her." I t was enormous, sprawling all over hell and back on one story. Portions of i t were painted that same br ight white and others looked to be fashioned

Eve pulled stills out of her field bag. "This is Walter Pettibone. He was nothing to her, either. And Henry Mouton. They had families, Mr.

Parker. They had lives. She destroyed all that."

He looked at the stills, looked away. "Never should've let her out of prison."

"You won't get an argument there from me. I helped put her in a cage once before. I'm asking you to help me do it again."

"I got a life of my own. It took me a long time to get it back so I could wake up in the morning and look at myself in the mirror."

He took a dirt-brown Stetson hat from a stand with pegs just inside the door, fit it on his head. Then he stepped out, shut the door at his back. "I don't want this in my house. I'm sorry not to be hospitable, but I don't want her in my house. We'll talk outside. I want to take a look at the stock anyhow."

As a concession against the white glare of the sun, Eve dug out shaded glasses. "Has she been in contact with you at all?"

"I haven't heard a peep from that girl since she walked out the day she turned eighteen. The day she told her mama what had been going on. The day she laughed in my face."

"Do you know if she's been in contact with her mother?"

"Couldn't say. Lost track of Kara when she left me. Heard she'd taken a job off planet. Farming satellite. Far away from me, I'd say, as she could manage."

Eve nodded. She knew Kara Dunne Parker Rowan's location. She'd remarried four years earlier, and refused to speak to Eve regarding her daughter. Her daughter, she'd informed Eve during their brief transmission, was dead. Eve imagined Julianna had the same attitude toward the woman who'd birthed her.

"Did you rape Julianna, Mr. Parker?"

His face tightened, like old leather stretching over a frame. "If you mean did I force myself on her, I did not. I've done a lot of atoning for what I did, Lieutenant."

He paused at a paddock fence, propped one booted foot on a bottom rung, and stared out at his men and horses. "There was a time I put all the blame on her. Took me a long while before I could spread that out to myself and deal with it. She was fifteen, chronologically speaking anyways. Fifteen, and a man more than fifty has no right touching those kinda goods. A man married to a good woman, hell to any woman's got no right touching her daughter. No excuses."

"But you did touch her."

"I did." He straightened his massive shoulders as if taking on weight.

"I'm gonna tell this my way, just saying up front I know what I did was as wrong as it gets, and I take the blame and responsibility for that."

"All right, Mr. Parker. Tell me your way."

"She'd slither around the house wearing next to nothing. Crawl in my lap and call me Daddy, but there wasn't anything daughterly in how she said it." He set his teeth, looked away from Eve, and out over his land. "Her own daddy was a man hard on women, but he next to worshipped that girl, so her mama told me. Julianna could do no wrong and when she did, he blamed her mama. I loved that woman. I loved my wife," he said, stepping back, flicking his gaze to Eve's face before he began to walk again. "She was a good woman, churchgoing, quiet-natured, sturdy. If she had a blind spot, it was that girl. She has a way of blinding people."

"She behaved provocatively with you."

"Shit. Pardon my French. Fifteen years old, and she knew just how to wrap a man around her finger, get whatever she wanted. She stirred up something in me that shouldn't've been stirred up. I shouldn't have let it happen. I started thinking about her, looking at her in a way that damned me straight to hell. But I couldn't stop.

Maybe didn't want to, not then. I know right from wrong, Lieutenant. I know damn well where the line is."

"And you crossed it."

"I did. One night when her mama's out at one of her women's meetings, she came into the study, slid on my lap. I ain't going into the details of it, except to say I didn't force her into a damn thing.

She was as willing as they come. But I crossed that line, one a man can't ever step back over."

"You were intimate with her."

"I was. That night, and whenever I could manage it for nearly three years after. She made it easy to manage. She talked her mother into going off with friends on a weekend shopping spree. And I lay with my stepdaughter in my marriage bed. I loved her, God is my witness, I loved her in a kind of insane way. I believed she felt the same."

He shook his head at his own foolishness. "Man old enough to know better. I gave her money. God only knows how much over those three years. Bought her cars, fancy clothes, whatever she asked for. I told myself we'd go away together. Soon as she was old enough, I'd leave her mama and we'd go off anywhere she wanted. I was a fool. I've learned to live with that. Harder was to learn to live with the sins I'd committed."

She imagined him sitting in the witness chair at Julianna's trial, speaking in just that no bullshit way. Things, Eve decided, would have gone differently if he had.

"After her arrest, during her trial, she claimed you had raped and abused her, and used that to bargain for a lesser sentence. You made no attempt to set the record straight, to defend yourself."

"No, I did not." He looked down at Eve from under the wide brim of his hat. "Have you ever done anything, Lieutenant, something that shames you so deep it puts fear in your throat and ice in your belly?"

She thought of Dallas, and what lurked there. "I know what it's like to be afraid, Mr. Parker."

"I was afraid of her. I was afraid of what I became with her. If I'd testified about how it was, I'd still have been a grown man who'd committed adultery with the minor child of his own wife. That's about the time I went into counseling, starting working at accepting my responsibility. Nothing I could do for the men she'd killed. And the fact was, it would've been her word against mine. If I hadn't been there at the time, I'd've believed hers."

"Did she demonstrate violent behavior during the time she lived with you?"

"Hell." He snorted out a laugh. "Had a temper like a whiplash, struck out fast and sharp, cut straight through. Then it was done. Easier to see now what I couldn't then. She's cold, right down through the bone. She hated me from the moment I starting seeing her mother. I see that now, too. Hated me in that icy way of hers because I was a man, because I was a man who could step in and have some say over her. So she twisted that around until she had all the say. Then she humiliated me because I was weak, humiliated her mother because she'd loved me. She strutted out that door and left us broken. Just the way she wanted us."

"You didn't stay broken," Eve pointed out. "You rebuilt your life. She'd know that. She's cleaning up old business, Mr. Parker. Odds are strong that you're part of that."

"You think she'll come after me?"

"Yes, I do. Sooner or later. You're going to want to alert your security. Thoroughly screen any new employees at your place of business, at your home. It would be wise for you to speak with the local authorities, as I will, so they'll know who and what to look for."

"That girl couldn't wait to kick the Texas dust off her heels." He looked down at the toes of his boots, shook his head. "Can't see her coming back here to try killing a man who meant less than that dust to her." He blew out a breath. "But I'm sixty-six years old, and that's old enough to know you don't sit scratching your butt waiting for a snake to crawl up your pant's leg. Been meaning to take me a little busman's holiday, go over to Europe and look at some studs. Might do it sooner than later now."

"I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know where you go and when."

He studied Eve again. "You're going to get her, aren't you, city girl?"

"Yes, sir. I am."

"I believe it. But I don't know if anything I've said here's a help to that, and I can't see her wasting time on me. I wasn't the first for her." "How do you know?" Eve asked.

"She wasn't a virgin when she slid on my lap that night. At least that's one sin off my plate." "Do you know who she'd been with before you?"

Parker shifted his feet. "Telling tales on myself, and telling them on somebody else-" "This isn't gossip. This is a murder investigation."

"No point getting riled," he said mildly, and puffed out his cheeks. "I suspect she'd been tumbling with Chuck Springer. I know her mama had some worries about that. But then as I recollect, he started seeing one of the Larson girls. Maybe it was the Rolley girl. They were kids," he added. "I didn't pay much mind to it. Then when I started up with Julianna, I didn't pay mind to much of anything but her."

"Do you know where I can find this Chuck Springer?"

"He's one of my wranglers. Look no, he's a married man, got a little boy and another on the way." "Wrangler? Would that be a cowboy?"

Parker snorted out another laugh, adjusted the brim of his hat. "New York City," he said with a shake of his head. "What the hell else is a wrangler but a cowboy?"

"I'd like to speak with him."

Parker sighed. "Then let's go hunt him down." He circled the paddock, jerked a head in the direction of the horses prancing inside. "Got some fine stock there. You ride?"

"Not on anything with more legs than I have," Eve answered and made him hoot with laughter. "You?" he asked Roarke.

"I have done."

That stopped Eve dead. "On a horse? You've ridden a horse?" "And survived. Actually, it's exhilarating. You'd probably like it."

"I don't think so."

"Just gotta let 'em know who's boss," Parker told her.