Line of Fire by Stephen White

but . . . soon. Living out here, it’d be nice.”
    “Ah,” Izza said. Her cell phone rang. “Puppies and horses aren’t always a great mix.” She stepped a few feet away from me before she answered her call. The gusty breezes were coalescing into a steady wind; she used her free hand to corral her hair. I could tell from the bits of conversation I could hear that she was making arrangements to show the cottage again that evening.
    “Some competition,” she said to me, wiggling her phone as she stepped back toward the door. “You may have to act fast. Shall we go inside?”

13
    W hile Izza was on the phone I had been trying to imagine how Sam had chosen to approach the cottage the night that Currie had died.
    I couldn’t see Sam driving onto the property in clear view of the ranch’s main house, knowing what he was about to do. Nor could I see him parking his Cherokee on the lane in front of the ranch and then sauntering in the open toward Currie’s home. Not with suicide and homicide on his mind.
    The cottage backed up to the edge of the huge cultivated field, separated from the crops only by a narrow dirt road that provided farming equipment access to the fields. If Sam had chosen an inconspicuous location to park out on the county road near town, he could have walked the third of a mile or so to the dirt access road, which would have taken him directly behind Currie’s cottage.
    I decided that’s what he did. With the big barn providing a visual barrier blocking the cottage from the main house, Sam had approached Currie’s place on the field access road, without ever becoming visible to anyone in the ranch’s main home.
    He had probably exited that same way once his ex-girlfriend was dead.
    • • •
    I followed Izza inside, eager to visualize what had happened between Sam and Currie in between Sam’s arrival at this house and his departure a while later.
    “Partially furnished, as you know,” Izza said.
    I didn’t know. I forced my attention back to the moment. “You never know what that means,” I said. “Sometimes ‘partially furnished’ means a beat-up old couch and maybe a wobbly table in the kitchen.”
    Izza stopped two steps inside the door. I stopped beside her.
    “With us, it means no bed, but almost everything else. I don’t like used mattresses. It’s just not sanitary.” Izza exhaled in a way that accentuated the discomfort she felt about the old-bed issue. “If you don’t have your own bed, you’re going to have to get one. There’re ads in the Sunday papers almost every week. Decent deals. They all deliver. Couple hundred bucks for a full. More if you want a queen. Bedroom really can’t handle a king. If you’re that type. The king type.”
    I was tempted to ask what type that was, but I didn’t.
    The front door opened into an L-shaped combination living room and dining room. A slice of the kitchen was visible on the far side of the room.
    Currie died in this room.
    “Oak floors, like the ad says. Good windows, like I said already. The fireplace works, but it’s not very efficient. Keep that flue closed or you’ll have trouble staying warm on cold nights. There’s some firewood out back, been there a couple of years. Elm, I think. Maybe some ash. Nice and dry. You’d be welcome to it.
    “We replaced the dishwasher about—oh, I don’t know—six months back. Not top-of-the-line, but not a cheapo, either. Do you cook?”
    I was distracted. My attention was focused on the circuitous route that Izza chose as she walked from the front door toward the kitchen. She bypassed what would have been the most direct path from where we were to where she was headed.
    “I do cook,” I said. “It’s kind of a hobby.”
    Currie died right there,
I thought
. In the area between the dining room table and the sofa and chairs in the living room. The part of the room that Izza circumnavigated.
I wondered where Currie had been standing. Where Sam was. What direction the barrel