She seemed smaller, like a bundle of rags instead of a person.

He cursed steadily as he squatted beside her. He’d seen enough bodies to know what death looked like. A simple black-bag job on an old lady’s house had turned into murder.

“What are you-stupid?” he snarled at her. “No way you were going to take me.”

He eased his fingers underneath her head. She still had her glasses on, crookedly, but that no longer mattered. Her eyes were dim from more than cataracts. Beneath thinning white hair he felt a depression in her skull. She must have been dead a second after she hit, because there was no blood.

“Crazy old bitch,” he said, standing up. “Why didn’t you listen?”

With a final disgusted curse, he went to search the pantry.

He didn’t find anything but canned goods and bags of rice and flour, sugar and beans. No trick shelves, no trapdoor, no false ceiling. Nothing but food.

He searched the rest of the house.

Nothing.

He went to the back porch and looked over at the sagging barn forty feet beyond the kitchen. The wind swirled around him, plucking at his coveralls with hard, impatient fingers, then racing away to batter the old barn.

He didn’t have time to search the old building. He’d let the wind take care of it.

He picked up the can of fuel oil from the back porch and went back into the kitchen. It wasn’t the first time he’d dressed a crime scene to look like an everyday accident.

If the paintings turned up, it wouldn’t be the last time, either.

ON THE COLORADO RIVER

AUGUST 27

8:00 A. M.

Holy shit,” Lane Faroe said reverently.

The lanky teenager looked at Jillian Breck, grinned, then realized what he’d just said.