An Accidental Family. Darlene Graham

an even tinier TV. But nobody ever goes up there, not even the mailman. She picks up her mail at a post office box down in Wister. The only way to talk to Gran is to drive right up to the door of her cabin. I doubt that thing will even work up there.” She nodded at his cell phone.

      Seth made an annoyed face and flipped the phone shut. “Won’t it freak your grandmother out if you show up at her door in the middle of the night with a strange cop and three delinquent boys in tow?”

      “Gran? Nah. She raised four sons up on that mountain.”

      Rainey paused and looked up at him, sizing him up fully for the first time. She couldn’t figure this guy out. He was all male and undeniably handsome, that was for sure. But he needed an attitude adjustment in the worst way. That or a boot to the behind, as her gran used to say. Was he just another macho, overbearing cop with the guarded emotions and the love ’em and leave ’em attitude that Rainey had detested all her life, or was he some kind of white knight?

      And there was something else. She had sensed it when she had told him about Aaron’s past. It was something that put a look so secretive and deep in Seth Whitman’s eyes it was hard to look there for long.

      Didn’t matter. Whatever he was and whatever was eating him, Gran could handle it. Rainey had never seen any man her gran couldn’t put in his place. “Nothing could shake up Granny Grace,” she said with a note of challenge. “Not three delinquent little boys. And certainly not a strange cop like you, Seth Whitman.”

      CHAPTER FIVE

      THE “ROAD” THAT CLIMBED to Rainey Chapman’s Gran’s house was hardly worthy of such a name. Seth had made it his business to become familiar with every dark, twisting backwoods track in Le Flore County, but he’d never been near the rocky rutted lane that Rainey directed him to, rising to the south off the highway out of Wister. This road was buried deeper in the Winding Stair than even the roughest logging trail.

      Despite the light of a full moon and the fact that Rainey assured him she had been here many times, they missed the turn. Seth was forced to switch on the deer lights mounted high on the cab of his Silverado pickup. He’d been driving with only the fog lights out on the highway, and for good reason. Anyone sitting up on a ridge with a set of high-powered binoculars could spot headlights after they left the main road. When Rainey found the turnout on the second pass, Seth slammed on his brakes, turned, and they bumped onto a narrow gravel path that veered sharply upward in the dense underbrush.

      “I warned you, it’s bad,” Rainey said.

      “Cool!” Dillon shouted from the rear seat of Seth’s double cab pickup.

      The boys were crammed shoulder to shoulder, with Aaron and Maddy, predictably silent, looking increasingly anxious. But Dillon was acting loud and boastful enough to make up for the other two.

      “I wish I could drive this road,” he shouted in Seth’s ear. Seth knew the boy was masking some serious anxiety.

      “I wish you could, too,” he replied dryly as the pickup bucked up the steep, rocky path. He switched off the high beams.

      “Are you crazy?” Rainey clutched the darkened dash as if she could hold them onto the side of the mountain that way. “This trail skirts a hundred-foot dropoff!”

      Even by moonlight, Seth could make out the grim downturn of her delicate mouth.

      “Unfortunately, the Slaughters know every high point for miles. They could be watching for us right now. You can spot headlights from quite a distance out here. It wouldn’t take them long to pin down our location. They know the roads out here as well as I do.”

      “Well, you didn’t know about this particular road,” Rainey challenged.

      “This doesn’t exactly qualify as a—”

      “Road.” Dillon finished Seth’s sentence as the truck jostled over a sizable slab of buried sandstone. “This is more like a roller coaster!” The boy leaned forward in the seat like a kid on a carnival ride.

      “It would be stupid to lead the Slaughters right to us.” Seth glanced at Rainey and downshifted. “No headlights.”

      “I hope you know—ugh!—” Rainey clutched the dash tighter as the pickup bounced down off the slab of rock “—what you’re doing.”

      He hoped so, too. He hoped he was doing the right thing by these vulnerable boys and this delicate woman. He flicked a glance at her, then concentrated on his driving. Rainey Chapman was way, way different from the women he was used to.

      The pickup jolted over another mound of rock. “Yee-haw!” Dillon yelled. “Ride ’em, cowboy!”

      “Dillon,” Rainey snapped. “Be quiet. Officer Whitman is driving.”

      The boy sat back in a pout, but when the truck bucked again, his cracking young voice erupted, high with excitement. “I’m tellin’ ya, Sheriff! I could handle this dude!”

      Seth glanced in the rearview mirror and could see that the boy’s bravado was phony as a three-dollar bill. The other two looked plainly terrified.

      Dillon’s expression became defiant when he caught Seth studying him in the mirror. “I can handle a stick shift good as anybody.”

      “I don’t doubt it.” Seth downshifted as the tires skidded and ground in the rocky ruts. “But right at the moment—” he shifted one more time “— I’d appreciate it if you’d settle down, pardner.” Dillon answered with a resentful squint.

      Seth turned his attention back to the treacherous road. “How long does this go on?” he asked Rainey.

      “Eight miles.”

      The place was beyond remote. When they started to climb the narrow track of Granny Grace’s rocky drive, Seth spotted the profile of a tiny log cottage tucked high up in the trees. Perched on stilts at the peak of a sheer rocky incline that looked out over a valley, the structure appeared to list to one side, looking like some long-forgotten fairy cottage punctuated by several sagging, steep-pitched gables. All of the tall windows were dark.

      “We aren’t gonna stay here, are we?” Dillon grumbled. “This place looks creepy.”

      “’Fraid so,” Seth said dryly. “For now this is home sweet home.”

      “Home sweet home,” Dillon echoed sarcastically, as he signed something presumably derogatory to Maddy.

      A cacophony of barking broke out as they pulled into the gravel clearing and up to a rickety-looking wooden staircase that rose to the dark house. Before Seth had even braked to a stop a couple of mixed mutts came barreling out from under the stilts.

      A light winked on inside the house, followed by a weak bulb flicking awake next to the door on the screened-in front porch.

      Seth leaned forward to peer up through the windshield. “So. You want to go up alone and explain things first?”

      “No. You guys can come on, but stay behind me. Those stairs can be tricky in spots.”

      “I hate dogs,” Dillon shouted above the barking. “If one of ’em comes near me, I’ll kick his teeth in, I swear.”

      “You will do no such thing. The dogs know me,” Rainey explained. “They’ll be fine as long as you behave yourself.”

      The animals had charged the pickup, scratching at Seth’s shiny door handles. “Whoa, now,” he said.

      Rainey rolled down the window and shouted, “Quiet!” When the dogs quieted and touched paws to the ground, she turned to the boys. “These dogs aren’t vicious.” She got out and threw the passenger seat forward and signaled for the two mute boys to get out of the back seat. “You, Dillon, will be nice to my gran and to her dogs.”

      “Or what?” The boy slumped in the seat defiantly.

      “Or you’ll answer