The Sheriff Of Sage Bend. Brenda Mott

his. “Just help me find my sister.”

      Minutes later, they located where Poker’s tracks veered off into a meadow. A trail of trampled grass clearly showed where he’d traveled, and from the looks of things, he’d been running hard. He’d come back in the same manner, his beaten-down path through the knee-deep grass crisscrossing his original route.

      Without hesitation, Miranda loped to the far side of the meadow, then pulled up to study the ground again.

      “She stopped here,” she said when Lucas caught up with her. “Shannon! Where are you?” The mountains echoed her words, and a pair of blackbirds flew up from a nearby pine, squawking in protest. Scattered rock and boulders, pale gray, brown and white, dotted the landscape.

      Miranda leaped from the saddle. Jaw clenched, she examined the surface of one of the rocks, some five feet in diameter. Lucas could see the blood from where he sat. “She was right here,” Miranda said, swallowing visibly. “So where is she now?”

      He sat his horse, studying the surrounding mountains. “Her horse have any claw marks on it that I missed?”

      “Not that I saw—but there was blood on the saddle.”

      A cougar could have knocked Shannon from the back of her horse. But it seemed Poker would be clawed if that were the case. And if a mountain lion had dragged her off, there would be signs of that. His stomach churned at the thought.

      He reached for the radio clipped to his belt, but all he got was static. “Damn battery’s weak.” He looked down at Miranda. “Come on. We’ll ride back to meet Garrett. Organize a search party.”

      She shook her head and swung back onto her horse. “I’m going to keep looking.”

      “Don’t be stubborn.” Lucas gestured around them. “You’ve got rock face going off in twenty different directions. Shannon could be anywhere. You’ll never find her trail going it alone.”

      Miranda raised her chin. “She’s my sister. She’s hurt and we’re wasting time.” With that, she spun the gelding around and headed up a trail fit only for mountain goats.

      Lucas shook his head. He started to call to her to come back as the gray shifted beneath him, then decided not to waste his breath. “Danged stubborn, fool woman.”

      Still, he couldn’t help but admire her strength and courage. Just like her mom’s. He wished his own mother would’ve had some.

      Maybe then she’d still be alive.

      CHAPTER TWO

      MIRANDA VOWED TO RIDE until hell froze over, if that’s what it took to find Shannon. And Lucas Blaylock could eat skunk and die if he didn’t approve. He’d been a thorn in her side since she was fourteen. And at twenty, he’d broken her heart and humiliated her in front of all her friends and family.

      She should’ve listened to her mother.

      With a younger brother who always managed to find trouble, and an alcoholic father who liked to use his fists, Lucas had fought his way through life with a go-to-hell attitude. He’d been three years older than her and twice as wild.

      When Miranda was a teenager, her mother’s biggest fear had been that her daughters would fall for one of the Blaylock boys. Miranda had fallen, all right. Head over heels crazy for Lucas Blaylock, with his sandy hair—worn a bit too long—and icy blue eyes. She’d defied her mom and went after him.

      He’d gradually outgrown his bad habits, and hadn’t turned out anything like his jailbird father or his wife-beating brother. Instead, he’d become a lawman.

      Yet his white-knight syndrome hadn’t stopped him from leaving Miranda.

      She halted Sundae on a rocky plateau. Around her, the mountains rose abruptly, too steep for a horse to climb. But not for a person. Had Shannon hiked out of here for some reason? Logic told Miranda her sister couldn’t climb these rocks injured. But what if she had a head wound that had left her disoriented? She could’ve wandered off and gotten lost.

      “Shannon!” Miranda gathered her reins as Sundae fidgeted, eager to go. Had Shannon ridden to higher ground and fallen off her horse? Was she lying unconscious in a ravine? Refusing to admit Lucas had a point—that it would be smarter to wait for search and rescue—Shannon turned the gelding and headed back down the trail. Halfway to the bottom, she veered off in a different direction, looking for tracks, blood, any sign that Shannon or Poker had been here….

      She checked everywhere she could think of that she and Shannon had ridden in the past, and explored a few places they hadn’t. Frustrated, she headed back down into the valley and stopped to let Sundae drink at a stream. She looked up at the sound of hoofbeats.

      Paige. Her mother pulled her sorrel mare to a halt. “No luck?” The expression on her wan face was as hopeless as a lost child’s.

      Miranda shook her head. “Did Lucas get a search party organized?”

      “Yes. He called in every available deputy and volunteer he could find. Word’s spreading fast. A bunch of our neighbors have shown up to help—Tori’s there.” Miranda’s best friend since third grade. “They’re forming a search grid. You want to ride back with me and join them?”

      Miranda sighed. “Yeah. I’ve looked everywhere I can think of.”

      They rode in silence for a while.

      “How could she just vanish?” Paige’s choked voice hit Miranda hard. “If it wasn’t a mountain lion…” She let out a sob, and Miranda knew where her mind had gone.

      To a night months ago, when Shannon might’ve become a victim of the man she’d helped send to jail. A night in the dark parking lot of the Silver Spur, where she had witnessed the abduction of Jo Ella Jamison.

      Abducted by a guy Shannon had danced with in the bar that night.

      “Mom. Don’t think that way.” Miranda inched Sundae up beside her mother’s horse. “We’re going to find her.”

      But deep down inside, she was just as scared as Paige.

      “I DON’T WANT TO LEAVE you alone.” Miranda slumped in a chair in the living room, every inch of her body aching.

      “Me, neither.” Tori, with her blazing red hair and flashy Western clothes, had never looked more serious.

      “You girls are tired,” Paige said. “Go on home. I’ll be fine.”

      But she didn’t look fine. They’d searched until dark closed in around them, and still hadn’t found a sign of Shannon. Garrett had spotted a set of cougar tracks not far from the fork in the trail. He’d lost them when they reached rocky ground, but he’d seen no sign of human tracks, blood or anything else that would indicate the mountain lion had attacked Shannon.

      Still, there was easily more than one cougar out there, as well as the occasional wolf that drifted down from Canada or up from Yellowstone National Park. No matter where Shannon was, it couldn’t be good.

      Lucas had questioned them until Miranda thought her head would explode. Paige had to feel the same way.

      “I’ll go feed, then come back.”

      “I’m off tonight,” Tori said. She worked two jobs—waitressing at the Silver Spur and at the truck stop a few miles out of town. “I can stay, too.”

      Before Paige could protest, there was a knock at the back door. “Sit. I’ll get it.” Miranda went to the kitchen and flicked on the porch light.

      “Miranda.” Fae Lambert, Tori’s aunt and co-owner of the truck stop, stood on the other side of the screen, one hand at her ample breast. Her black hair, coaxed with hairspray into a semitamed mane, didn’t move an inch as she shook her head. “Honey, I’m so sorry to hear about Shannon. Is there any word?”

      “Not yet. Come on in.” Miranda