The Lost Ones by Ace Atkins Page B

suit.”
    Donnie and Campo laughed a little bit more. Campo reached around his shoulder and patted his back like a football coach.
    Man, it was gonna be a bitch of a ride back to Tibbehah.
    QUINN GOT BACK TO THE FARM at sundown. Hondo was on the front porch but stirred when he heard Quinn’s truck and ran out to greet him, shaking the dust from his coat and offering his head for Quinn to pet. The cattle dog followed him up inside the old house, which was stark, bare, and airless as a church, Quinn leaving the front door open and letting the screen door thwack behind them. He’d spent most of the summer gutting the place and whitewashing the walls and sanding the heart pine floors. By the time he went through all his Uncle Hamp’s junk, there wasn’t much to keep besides a big kitchen table and chairs, a couple iron beds, and an old dresser that had belonged to his great-grandmother. He gave away about everything else or burned it. Now the house seemed empty and hollow but at least clean. Quinn set up an iron bed for himself and a little pillow for Hondo. He’d affixed a metal pipe against the bedroom wall for his pressed blue jeans, work shirts, and such. His cowboy and hunting boots were polished with saddle soap and waiting on the floor below.
    He kept most of his guns in a hiding hole he’d bored into the center of the living room floor that he covered with a rug he’d shipped home from Afghanistan. He kept his service revolver on the nightstand after work. A Browning “Sweet 16” rested between a set of deer antlers above the fireplace.
    Quinn took off his shirt and tossed it in a laundry bag. Now dressed in an undershirt and jeans, he removed his Sam Brown and cowboy boots and retired to the front porch. He lit up a La Gloria Cubana and brought out a rawhide for Hondo.
    They sat on the porch for a long time, watching the sun drop over a small orchard of new and old pear and apple trees. The light grew gold and pleasant as it slid across the skeletal frame of a new barn Quinn was building. Hondo made a lot of noise as he chewed.
    His mother never understood why he’d kept the old place. Johnny Stagg tried to buy it from him for a more than decent price. But he couldn’t sell a piece of land that had been in his family since 1895, especially to a shitbag like Stagg. Besides, he liked it out here, a good ten miles out of Jericho, and on a good piece of acreage populated with turkey and deer. He expected to have a full freezer by the end of hunting season and had already been able to put up a nice bit of beans, corn, and peppers from his small garden. The idea of home such a strange concept after living life in Conex containers, airplane hangars, and tents for the last decade. One of the first things he’d learned as a Ranger was make the most of your downtime. Quiet your mind and rest. You never know what’s around the corner.
    A young doe wandered into his orchard and began to eat some rotten apples that had fallen long ago. He watched with interest as she scoured for the remaining apples, ears pricked for the slightest sound. Bats filled the sky as it turned to night, picking off mosquitoes in the quiet hum of the country. There were frogs chirping in the creek. He’d roll onto duty at four a.m. and would enjoy the last little bit of night left.
    Hondo lifted his head from the porch.
    Quinn put his hand on him and stood, looking down the long gravel road to the main highway. A red SUV turned onto his road and bumped up his circular drive. Hondo trotted out and barked at his visitor.
    Anna Lee stepped out, Hondo sniffing at her hand as she turned up the path to the old white house. Quinn met her at the screen door, letting her onto the porch and inviting her to join him.
    He hadn’t seen her since Johnny Stagg’s Good Ole Boy, but the same feeling hit him in the pit of the stomach, something that he wished he could control but couldn’t. It had been that way since they were fifteen, taking it all slow and