Taming Blackhawk. Barbara McCauley

of screeching wheels and crunching metal. His mother’s scream and Lizzie’s cries.

      Then silence. A deafening, sickening quiet that pounded in his ears to this day.

      How many nights had he woken in a sweat, the sheets ripped from the mattress, his heart racing and his hands shaking?

      Too damn many.

      Even now, as he thought about Seth and Lizzie, about the letter in his pocket, his hands shook and his heart raced.

      “Rand?”

      Startled from his thoughts, he glanced up at Mary Sloan’s soft call. At sixty-one, she was still an attractive woman. Her raven hair was peppered with gray; her skin looked healthy and tanned, with deep lines around her blue eyes. She looked exhausted, he thought. But then, she usually did. Ranching was hard work, long hours and little pay. In her twenty-nine years of marriage, she’d never known any other life.

      Mary and Edward Sloan had adopted Rand Blackhawk immediately following the accident. Mary had always been good to him, Rand thought. Raised him like her own, loved him.

      Edward Sloan had been another matter entirely.

      “Are you all right?” she asked, and took a step closer.

      His first reaction was to say that he was fine. That everything was fine. Isn’t that what everyone had always done in the Sloan family, pretended all was well, when in fact, it was anything but?

      “I don’t know what the hell I am, Mom,” he said honestly. Or even who I am.

      Mary knew about the letter, who it was from, what it said and what it meant to Rand. “It’s one-fifteen,” she said after a long moment. “Are you coming?”

      Was he? His hand tightened around the handle of the pitchfork.

      “Yeah.” He stabbed at a flake of straw and tossed it into the stall. For her he would. “I’m coming.”

      “Rand—” She took another step closer. “I—”

      She stopped again, not knowing what to say.

      Hell, he didn’t know what to say, either.

      “It’s all right, Mom. You go on. Soon as I finish here, I’ll be in.”

      She nodded, turned slowly to leave, then stopped at the sound of car tires crunching on the gravel driveway outside. They both looked at each other.

      “Are you expecting anyone?” she asked.

      “Not me. You?”

      “No.” Her eyes, which had looked so tired just a moment before, now simply looked sad. “I’ll go see who it is. Maybe it’s one of Matthew or Sam’s friends.”

      They both knew that was doubtful. His younger brothers, Mary and Edward’s birth sons, had both left the ranch years ago. Like himself, they’d come home only yesterday. No one knew any of the Sloan boys were back in town.

      Once again she turned to leave, and once again she turned back. “We’ll talk later. All right?”

      Rand nodded. He watched his mother suck in a deep breath, straighten her shoulders, then walk out of the barn.

      He stabbed another forkful of straw and tossed it. They’d talk, no doubt about that. He had no idea what they would say to each other, but one thing was certain, they would talk.

      Grace Sullivan pulled her rented black Jeep Cherokee in front of the two-story farmhouse and parked. Tipping her sunglasses up, she took in the name carved roughly on a strip of pine over the front porch: Sloan.

      Finally.

      She closed her eyes on a sigh of relief and cut the engine. She’d been all over Texas looking for the legendary Rand Sloan. Even if he didn’t live here, maybe someone who did could help her.

      If anyone lived here.

      She stepped out of her car into the blistering August sun and slid her sunglasses back down to shield her eyes as she looked at the house. Its once-white paint had begun to peel, the screens were torn, and the composition roof needed repair. The flower beds had long turned to weeds and dust, and the corrals were empty. On the porch a wooden swing with faded blue cushions swayed slightly in the breeze.

      Her gaze swept back toward the mile-long dirt driveway she’d followed off the main road. A cloud of dust still hung in the heavy air from where she’d driven in. The land was flat, dotted with cactus and thornbush, and stretched as far as the eye could see. Grace listened, but the only sounds she heard were a hawk shrieking overhead and the squeak of the wooden sign moving gently in the hot wind. The place looked and felt deserted.

      Not that there would be much taking place in this heat at this hour on any ranch, she reasoned. Still, she would have expected some kind of activity. Maybe a ranch hand smoking in the shade of the large oak tree beside the barn, or a horse nuzzling a patch of grass. But she saw no sign of life at all. Not even the customary mangy ranch dog had rushed up to bark at her.

      Not your typical ranch, she thought as she closed her car door and headed for the house. But then, from everything she’d heard, Rand Sloan was not your typical man.

      “May I help you?”

      Grace turned and saw the woman standing at the edge of the house, her expression wary but not unfriendly. She was a tall woman, Grace noted, slender, but not delicate. Her short, dark hair was starting to gray; she wore black slacks, a short-sleeved cotton blouse and black cowboy boots.

      “Hello.” Grace smiled at the woman. “My name is Grace Sullivan. I hope I’m not bothering you.”

      “Not yet you’re not.” The woman moved closer and offered a firm handshake. “Mary Sloan.”

      A wife? Grace wondered. Sister? She knew so little about the man. “I’m looking for Rand Sloan. Does he live here?”

      The woman smiled, as if Grace had said something funny. “Rand hasn’t lived here for fifteen years.”

      Disappointment stabbed at Grace. Not another dead end, she thought. She didn’t have time for another dead end.

      “Would you have any idea where I might reach him?” Grace asked. “It’s important that I speak with him right away.”

      “Take a number,” Mary said, then nodded over her shoulder. “He’s in the barn.”

      He’s in the barn? Grace swiveled a look at the barn, tried not to let her chin hit her knees. That simple? After dozens of phone calls and three wasted trips, had she actually found the mysterious Rand Sloan?

      Excitement skittered up her spine.

      “Is it all right if I go on in?” Grace asked.

      “Help yourself.” Mary walked past Grace and moved up the porch steps. The woman hesitated at the front door, then said over her shoulder. “But if you’re from that lawyer’s office in Wolf River, you best give him a wide berth.”

      Grace frowned. “I’m not from a lawyer’s office.”

      Mary nodded. “Good.”

      The wooden screen door slammed behind the woman as she disappeared inside the house. Brow furrowed, Grace stared after her. Now that was odd, she thought.

      But her excitement over finding Rand Sloan pushed the strange woman out of Grace’s mind. Gravel crunched under the sturdy flat heel of her ecru pumps as she made her way toward the large, weather-beaten barn. She wished she’d had time to change her clothes earlier, but if she’d wanted to catch her flight from Dallas to San Antonio, she’d had no choice but to go directly to the airport from the board meeting this morning. The off-white skirt and jacket might fit in at the glossy, teak, ten-foot-long table at Sullivan Enterprises, but on an isolated, dusty ranch one hundred miles from The Alamo, silk and high heels were definitely out of place.

      The story of my life, Grace thought with a shake of her