She took him inside the barn, the same barn the moth-eaten dog had disappeared into all that time ago. To Cole it seemed a lifetime since he reined in his horse at this lonely, cold place. So much had happened since. Death mainly. Mrs Rickman’s husband, the maid, two gunmen and Parrot. Parrot whose treachery and trickery had almost cost Cole his life. If it hadn’t been for Mrs Rickman. “My name is Julia,” she’d told him before she took his hand and led him to the barn. And another death.
The body swung grotesquely from a frayed, ancient rope, the eyes bulging, and the tongue blue with the neck stretched impossibly long. Flies buzzed around the corpse.
“My son,” she said simply, betraying little emotion.
Shaking his head, Cole looked around. “I’ll cut him down.”
“No,” she said. Her voic
