All of the windows of the cottage are open, and when Carol moves to the sitting room and eases into the armchair, she can hear the men's conversation clearly.

"You can't beat yourself up over it," DeShawn is saying. "Codyvolunteered. You know he loved Merle, too. He thought of him as a brother-in-law of sorts. Whatever he had to do to convince himself his sister wasn't prostituting herself, I guess."

"You know Bonnie offered to blow me the night I came back from burying Merle's shell?" Daryl says.

"What did she ask you to pay her?"

"She couldn't of paid me. Merle was hung up on 'er." DeShawn must make a disbelieving face because Daryl insists, "He was. Merle had a sensitive side."

DeShawn snorts. "Did he cry at Hallmark commercials when no one was around?"

"Joke all you want, but he did like Bonnie. Guess Merle didn't mean shit to her, though."

"You don't know that. Everyone grieves in their own way."

"By sucking cock for corn?" Daryl asks.

DeShawn chuckles. "Is she any good?"

"Fuck would I know?"

"You shared a cottage. I figured you could hear Merle's evaluation."

"I always went for a walk when she stopped by. Why? Is Nadia any good?"

"Hey!" DeShawn barks.

"You started it."

"I wasn't talking about your girlfriend."

"Neither was I," Daryl says.

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Come on, man," Daryl answers. "We find her and her boy cowering in a truck she can't get started with a gun that's empty and a bed full of nothing but whiskey, while a pack of thrashers are devouring that horse, and you bring her back here and offer her fences and a roof over her head and food in her boy's belly, and you think she's your girlfriend just because she didn't say no when you put the moves on her?"

"What the fuck do you know about it?" DeShawn spits. "Nadia likes me. She's very willing."

"All right," Daryl mutters.

"Look, just because you're upset about Cody, don't take it out on me."

"Sorry."

DeShawn lets out a heavy huff. Then, with no more anger, in more of a worried tone, he asks, "You…you don't really think that's why she said yes, do you?"

"Forget it," Daryl mutters. "What the hell do I know?"

DeShawn is silent. Carol can smell the smoke from Daryl's cigarette drifting back in slightly through the open window. She lights the oil lamp on the coffee table because the sun has now almost fully set.

"Did that place have much loot?" Daryl asks.

"Yeah. Lots of guns and ammo," DeShawn answers. "Two reloading presses. Bottles of gun powder. Bullets. Brass. They had a damn arsenal and reloading operation in there. Not much food – maybe two dozen MREs and some canned stuff – but a lot of booze. A small fridge-size humidor with a dozen boxes of cigars. Got you a crossbow press, too."

"That fucker had a press? When he couldn't shoot that thing worth shit?"

"Well, it's yours now, brother. We also brought back that Humvee, of course. So it was worth it."

"Worth it," Daryl mutters. "Man, if Cody dies, a Humvee ain't gonna make up for it. I was a fucking asshole, insisting on that raid. And for what?"

"To eliminate a serious threat, that's what. Those men were murderers, rapists, and thieves, with an entire arsenal. It's good we took them by surprise and took them out. Imagine our supply runners, out there in pairs, running into them over and over on the road. Or worse yet, imagine them rolling up to our stream, while the women are out there doing laundry, and it's just Monty on horseback with a rifle against them. I mean you saw what they tried to do to your sponsee's daughter, how they had her up on that - "

"Shhh! Shhh!" Daryl hisses, and Carol thinks he's figured out she's listening in, until his tone shifts, and he calls, "Hey, Sophia! How was the chess game?"

It's Ivan who answers, from a distance, walking nearer: "We decided to finish tomorrow. We left the board set-up."

"What a young gentleman," DeShawn calls, "walking her home."

"I was looking for you," Ivan tells him. His voice is at the porch now. "I saw the truck pull up, but you didn't come in."

"I just needed to chat with Daryl," DeShawn replies.

"I just wanted to know you're all right."

"Right as rain," DeShawn tells Ivan. "I don't suppose your mother made me dinner?"

"She wasn't sure when you'd be back."

"Well, let's see what I can rustle up." DeShawn's cowboy boots click down the stairs.

Carol pretends to be engrossed in an American Rifleman magazine she's snagged from beneath the coffee table when Daryl and Sophia walk in.

Daryl goes to the kitchen, opens a cabinet, stands on his tippy toes, and reaches high to pull down the vodka. "Can't reach it as easy when you put it upright like that," he tells Carol. "That's why I leave it on its side."

"But you can fit more in the cabinets if it's upright," she reasons as Sophia sits down on the loveseat beside her. "Now nothing is way in the back of the cabinets."

"Whatever." He unscrews the top of the bottle and takes a swig. Then he wanders over to the sitting room, drags the armchair from the corner to the coffee table across from the loveseat, and plops down on it. He put both feet up on the coffee table and takes another swig.

Sophia looks at him warily, probably because Ed often got violent after he'd been drinking.

"Why don't you go get my gun and practice your dry firing, sweetie?" Carol asks. "It's on the nightstand. You can practice in our room. Just make sure you fully clear it first."

"Can I take this oil lamp?"

Daryl fishes in his pocket and pulls out a small, black flashlight. "Take this. Press it twice like this…" He pushes the circular button on the bottom once and then twice, "and it stays on. Like a lantern." The flashlight gives off a strong glow for such a small object. He extends it to her and Sophia takes it. "You can keep it. It's yours. I got four more."

"Thanks," Sophia says before she disappears into the bedroom.

Carol is thinking about making an excuse to join her there when Daryl thrusts forward the bottle. "Want some?"

"I thought your booze was off limits?"

"Suspect I'm 'bout to get more as part of my finder's fee."

"I don't drink vodka straight out of the bottle."

"Well ain't you precious." He takes another swig. "Hell, I probably shouldn't either." He swivels his feet off the coffee table and stands. "I'm a mean drunk." He twists the cap back on the bottle and returns it to the cabinet. He walks back in her direction patting the front pocket of his shirt before fishing out his pack of cigarettes. "Gonna go for a smoke."

Like the night before, Daryl's smoking walk takes over an hour. Carol and Sophia are both in bed when he comes back, though Carol still lies awake. Sophia, worried about Cody, has cried herself to sleep.

Carol listens as Daryl shuts the front door and the cottage floorboards creek beneath his feet. Maybe he has a girlfriend he goes to see at night, she thinks, in one of those trailers.

[*]

In the morning, Daryl is gone. His bedroom door is open, as usual. He's not concerned Carol will rifle through his stuff, presumably, and has not noticed the single missing cigarette. Ivan comes earlier today than the day before to walk Sophia to school. The milkman comes earlier, too.

"You lied to me, George," Carol tells him as she draws out a bottle. "About Daryl always tipping you a cigarette."

George looks uneasy. "Did you tell him I said that?"

"Daryl hasn't even noticed it's missing. Do you want to take the gamble again?"

"No. I best not. You have a good day, Ms. Doyle."

Bonnie knocks next, but it's not with eggs. It's just her, looking frantic. "Where's Daryl?"

"He wasn't here when I woke up."

"Shit. He's probably gone hunting."

"Did Cody…" Carol can't bring herself to ask.

"Cody made it through the night. The blood loss didn't kill him. But Jefe still won't authorize starting the antibiotics unless Cody makes it to the evening!" She shakes her head. "But Dr. S thinks we need to start now, that every hour that goes by increases Cody's chances of infection. Daryl's outer circle. I was hoping he could persuade Jefe…" She sighs. "I don't know."

"That's absurd. He's been shot! What higher priority for the antibiotics could there be?"

"Jefe's a goddamn pack rat," Bonnie mutters. "Always worried about the future."

"Well that's absurd. Cody needs those antibiotics." Who the hell does this Jefe think he is, to let the kindest person she's met here risk death? Carol's seen too much death, at the quarry, in the CDC, at the farm. She's watched her daughter cry herself to sleep far too many nights, over far too many losses. She's tired of it. "I'm going to go up there right now and give Jefe a piece of my mind!" She thunders down the two stone stairs.

"Carol!" Bonnie calls after her over the porch rail as Carol marches toward the mansion. "Carol! I wouldn't do that if I were you! You aren't authorized! Carol!"

But Carol is already past the walnut tree.

[*]

Carol blows right past Jeeves when he opens the door. She practically spins that butler one hundred and eighty degrees walking in to stand by the entryway table beneath the great chandelier.

"Madam!" he cries, clearly astonished by her impunity.

"I demand to see Jefe!" Carol jabs a finger down on the table. "I want to be taken to Jefe this second."

"As I told you previously, Jefe does not take impromptu meetings."

"Well, that policy is going to change effective immediately. I want a meeting. Now."

A gunshot sounds from behind the mansion, and Carol reaches instinctively for her handgun. She pulls it from her inside-the-waistband holster before realizing the sound probably came from the firing range behind the mansion because they're doing weapons training for school.

The butler, however, has reacted to her reaction by throwing his hands into the air. "All right, all right!" he cries, voice quivering. "I'll take you to the library. I'll inform Jefe you're here."

"Thank you," says Carol, and lowers her gun. This time, when another gunshot sounds out back, she doesn't react.

She holsters her gun as she follows the butler to a large room with floor-to-ceiling bookcases. It even has one of those rolling ladders to reach the higher shelves. The dark paneled wood floor is covered in part by an oriental rug. There are three armchairs with lamps situated throughout the library, and in the center, a few feet in front of one of the bookcases, is a massive oak desk.

"Please, have a seat," the butler says as he points to a dark wine-colored leather chair opposite the much larger chair behind the desk. "And I'll inform Jefe of your presence." He bows slightly, backs out of the library, and closes the French doors.

Carol doesn't sit. She looks around at all of the books filling the shelves. Some are leather-bound and neatly organized with dust on the pages, while other are worn and stacked and jammed in to fill every available space. She walks along the bookcases, fingering the spines, pursuing the titles.

Carol passes a circular, dark wood table on which stands several little file boxes with note cards. It's a card catalogue of sorts. And there's a basket full of library cards, too, with titles, multiple lines for sign out, and a column for the date. She rifles through a few. Ryan has signed his name on one, for a Stephen King novel. Garrison has checked out a Jackie Collins title. She didn't take him for a romance reader. Maybe he just skims for the raunchy sex scenes.

Nobody told her they had a library. If she had just told the butler she wanted to go to the library yesterday, would he have let her inside the mansion? Carol eventually settles into the chair the butler indicated for her. As she sits there waiting and waiting, she grows increasingly nervous. Maybe she's made a terrible mistake bursting into the mansion like this. Maybe she and Sophia will be kicked out of Copper Creek Pastures now. Maybe she's just thrown away the safest and most abundant camp she's ever had since this whole thing started.

The library door creaks open and clicks closed. Carol turns in her chair to look. A forty-something, long-haired Latina woman struts in. She wears fashionable, wire-rimmed glasses, a short black skirt that hugs her curves, high heels, and a white, button-down blouse with ruffled sleeves. The top two buttons are undone to reveal a hint of cleavage. Carol wonders if that's how Jefe requires his secretary to dress. He probably gets off on it.

The secretary says, "You must be Carol" as she walks to a black metal filing cabinet, enters a push button combination, and rolls out a drawer. She rifles through the files and pulls one out before rolling the drawer shut again with a clang.

"Do you know when Jefe will be here?" asks Carol, trying to sound more assertive and self-confident than she actually feels. "I've been waiting quite a long time."

"Jefe is here," the woman replies coolly.

Carol's confused by the response until the woman clacks her high heels around the huge desk, drops the file folder atop the surface, sits in the great leather chair, and rolls it forward. "Who did you think I was? The secretary?"