Rawhide Ranger. Rita Herron

“and you’re responsible for murder.”

      “How dare you?” She raised her hand back, balled it into a fist, tempted to slug him, but his eyebrow went up in challenge, and her sanity returned. She had to get a grip. She couldn’t attack the law or she’d end up in jail. Then what would her father do?

      “How dare I what?” he asked. “Try to find out the truth? Try to solve the murders that occurred on your property?”

      He inched closer, so close his breath brushed her cheek. A breath that hinted at coffee and intimacy and … sex.

      She folded her arms, ignoring any temptation to take another whiff. “I thought Billy Whitley killed Marcie James, Daniel Taabe, and those others?”

      He shrugged. “We have reason to believe that someone else might be responsible, that Billy Whitley’s suicide note might have been forged.”

      “What makes you think that?”

      “The handwriting analysis didn’t pan out after all, and the blood used in the ritualistic burial doesn’t match Billy’s.”

      “What blood?” Jessie asked.

      “The Comanches bury their dead in a ritualistic style. They bend the person’s knees, bind them with a rope, then bathe them. Then they paint the deceased’s face red, and seal the eyes with clay. The red face paint is made from powdered ochre mixed with fish oil or animal grease and blood.” He paused again to make his point. “Human blood.”

      In spite of her bravado, Jessie shivered slightly.

      “After that, they dress the deceased in the finest clothing, lay them on a blanket, then wrap the body in another blanket and tie them with buffalo-hide rope. The body is placed in a sitting position on a horse and taken to the burial place west of the Comanche settlement and buried.”

      “So you really think this land is sacred?”

      He gave a clipped nod. “Yes. The cadaver found was definitely Native American, the bones years old.”

      Jessie rubbed her arms with her hands. “But why would Billy admit that he killed Marcie and Daniel if he didn’t?”

      Sergeant Navarro’s eyes darkened. “Because someone forced him to write that confession, or forged it.”

      Tension stretched between them as she contemplated his suggestion. “If you think my father did all that, you’re crazy.”

      His jaw tightened. “Your father had means, motive and opportunity.” He gestured toward the crime scenes where the bodies had been discovered, then to the latest grave where the Native American had been uncovered. “But if he’s not guilty, then someone else is, and I intend to find them and make them pay.”

      His big body suddenly stilled, went rigid, his eyes sharp as he turned and scanned the grounds. She saw the animal prints in the soil just as he did. Coyote prints.

      He moved forward stealthily like a hunter stalking his prey, tracking the prints. His thick thighs flexed as he climbed over scrub brush and rocks until he reached a copse of oaks and hackberries. Tilting his hat back slightly for a better view, he dropped to his haunches and pawed through the brush.

      She hiked over to see what he was looking at. Hopefully not another body. “What is it?”

      He held up a small leather pouch he’d hooked by a gloved thumb. “It looks like a woman’s.”

      She knelt beside him to examine it closer, focusing on the beaded flowers on the leather.

      “Have you seen it before?” he asked.

      He turned it over, revealing the letters LL engraved on the other side, and perspiration dampened her breasts. “Yes.”

      “Whom does it belong to?”

      She bit her lip, a memory suffusing her. “LL stands for Linda Lantz. She worked for us as a horse groom a couple of years ago.”

      He narrowed his eyes. “Where is she now?”

      “I don’t know. She left the ranch about the same time Marcie was killed.”

      The Ranger cleared his throat. “And you’re just telling us about this now?”

      She jutted up her chin defiantly. “I didn’t think her leaving had anything to do with Marcie’s disappearance and death. Linda had been talking about moving closer to her family in Wyoming so I assumed she left to go home.”

      “Without giving you notice?”

      She shrugged. “It happens.”

      “Well, if she left that long ago, then this pouch has been here for two years. That makes her a possible suspect …” He let the sentence trail off and Jessie filled in the blanks.

      A suspect or perhaps another victim.

      Worried, she stood, massaging her temple as she tried to remember if Linda had acted oddly those last few weeks.

      “Did she know Marcie?” Ranger Navarro asked.

      “I don’t think so, but they could have met in town.”

      He cleared his throat. “Maybe she disappeared because she knows something about the murders. What if she stumbled on the killer burying the bodies out here?”

      “Oh, God …” Jessie sighed. “I hope that’s not true. Linda was a nice girl.”

      A heartbeat of silence ticked between them. That knot of anxiety in her stomach gnawed deeper. What if Linda’s body was buried here, too? What if it had been here for two years? Maybe she should have reported her missing.

      The sound of animals scurrying in the distance reverberated through the hackberries and mesquites, then a menacing growl—a coyote?

      Odd. Coyotes usually surfaced at night, not morning.

      “They’re watching,” he said in a low tone.

      “What?” Jessie searched the early morning shadows dancing through the trees. “Who’s watching?”

      “The spirits of the dead,” he said in a quiet tone, as if he could see them. “Their sacred burial ground has been disturbed, one of their own moved, and they want the body returned.”

      Jessie tipped back the brim of her hat and studied him. “You really believe that?”

      He nodded matter-of-factly. “See that tzensa on the ridge.”

      “That what?” “Coyote.”

      “Yes.” Intrigued that a man of the law believed in folk legends, she followed him as he walked over to a cluster of rocks, then peered up toward the ridge at the coyote as if he was silently communicating with it.

      “The tzensa is an omen that something unpleasant is going to happen,” he said in a deep, almost hypnotic tone. “He may even be a skin walker.”

      In spite of the warm spring sunshine, a chill skated up Jessie’s arms. He’d followed the coyote’s prints to the leather pouch. “What exactly is a skin walker?”

      He gave her a questioning look as if he suspected her to make fun of him, then must have decided that either she wasn’t, or that he didn’t care and continued. “According to the Comanches, when an evil spirit is angered, it wants revenge and can sometimes possess the body of an animal.”

      Jessie shook her head. “That’s a little far-fetched, isn’t it?”

      He gave a sardonic chuckle. “Some would say the same about religion.”

      Jessie mentally conceded the point. “You’re a Ranger. I thought you believed in forensics and cold, hard evidence, not in superstitions.”

      He lifted his head as if he smelled something in the air, something unpleasant. Maybe dangerous. “A good cop uses both the physical evidence and his instincts.”