A Cowboy To Keep. Karen Rock

CEO of this beef corporation at the tender age of twenty-one. The article went on to talk about business facts that made her eyes cross. She closed the tab, wondering.

      Why would the owner of a lucrative ranch leave it to track criminals?

      She glanced at herself atop Brownie. Lots of reasons drove a person from home. Could Jack’s be one as dark as hers? A sympathy for him rose, which was ridiculous because she didn’t know any actual facts.

      Her curiosity still piqued, she resumed her search and another headline snagged her eye.

      Jackson Cade Sets Passing Record and Clinches Division One Win.

      She clicked on it and a large shot of a teenaged Jackson filled the screen. His jubilant expression as he thrust two fists in the air while being held aloft by screaming teammates made her squint, marveling that this could be the same person as the remote, sober-looking man she’d met.

      His unscarred face beamed at her, and the thought that he was almost too perfect-looking then, strange as that sounded, struck her. His scar brought his heavenly good looks back to earth, so that now he resembled a darker angel, a look that drew her much, much more than a Hollywood appearance.

      But did her attraction suggest she might be falling into her old habits? She’d always had a weakness for sympathetic bad boys. She’d sworn off relationships, but now another brooding hero had appeared, just like the ones in her favorite gothic romances.

      Well. No, thanks.

      She’d left tragic love stories safely between the pages where they belonged long ago. She wouldn’t reopen that chapter in her life again.

      * * *

      JACK SLIPPED ALONG the edge of the clearing behind Tanya’s cabin, sticking to the tree line, out of view. No sense in alarming Smiley’s girlfriend in case she wasn’t involved (doubtful) or warning her if she was (a much more likely scenario).

      It’d been clear she was hiding something from the moment Dani mentioned Smiley. He hoped she’d get something more out of Tanya when she visited her friend later. Would she blow his cover?

      He moved a sapling aside and stepped over a rotting tree stump. Something about Dani made him instantly reject the idea. She’d given her word, and while he didn’t trust her, his instinct said that meant something to her.

      He smiled as he pictured the spirited woman. She looked like the type who’d defend her friends till the end, who saw the good in people until they proved her wrong, which was just like...

      His eyes dropped to his tattoo, and Jesse’s wide-open grin flashed through his mind, making his own smile fade. He forced his mind back to the hunt.

      When he glimpsed the dirt footpath that led off Tanya’s clearing up to the copper mine, Jack followed it. He stepped lightly over protruding boulders and exposed roots as thick as his arms. Studying the dirt, he noted that the fresh prints lingering in the muddy depressions all pointed to Tanya’s house. A one-way trip. He puzzled over it, doubled back, moved slower still, checking and rechecking the area as he ascended the hill.

      The shadows cast by the slanting sun pooled in the depressions, the way he preferred for tracking, illuminating the minute distinctions. A square heel with a pointed toe. Boots. Size twelve or so. A slight notch on the back of the left heel seemed to appear more than once. The stride suggested a man of average height, his build slightly husky given the depth of the impression, his gait uneven, which might mean bowlegs, a limp or just an adjustment for the terrain. There weren’t enough solid prints to be sure.

      And where was the return set? Or a partner’s? Smiley could be hiding alone in Tanya’s house and waiting to slip back up to the mine to meet someone.

      Everett Ridland?

      If so, Jack’d be there to greet them.

      In the distance, aspens gleaming in the late-afternoon sun half hid a jagged bluff. Overhead, a mourning dove quieted as he approached. It sped off its perch in a flurry of gray, leaving only the rat-tat-tat of a woodpecker to break up the forest hush.

      Suddenly he was ten years old again, creeping through the mountains with his grandfather and Lance on one of their camping trips, committing to memory the slightest disturbances in the wilderness, identifying the passage of elk, black bear and deer, determining edible berries and roots, predicting weather and the direction of his quarry’s travel by the shadows, by the moss, by some kind of sixth sense that seemed bred into his family’s bones. The same knowledge, his grandpa insisted, that’d been passed on to him.

      Too bad that sense hadn’t been with him two years ago, the night he’d caught up with Jesse, fresh out of rehab, at a pool hall when his mother insisted he bring his missing brother home. He winced. The painful memory slashed deeper than the knife that’d left a gash that had taken over a hundred stitches to close.

      Absently running a hand over the raised scar, he halted at the edge of the woods and stared at the small campfire he’d spied earlier this afternoon. A mound of rocks were in a heap at the bottom of a steep bluff. The tracks ended.

      So. A one-way trip by one man. The pile of rocks suggested the avalanche was an accident, but he had to be sure. He scouted the cliff, found his first foothold and began pulling himself up. His fingers scrabbled on scrub brush, roots and depressions as he hauled himself upward, his breath harsh in his throat. At last, he heaved himself over the edge and lay flat on his stomach for a moment, dragging in air.

      A cigarette butt swam into view, not more than an inch away from his face. He blinked at it. Processed. Pushed to his knees and studied the distinctive filter. He picked it up and lifted it to his nose. Inhaled. It smelled darker, browner somehow, than other brands. Camel Filters.

      And in a breath, he was back at that pool hall, Jesse’s knee banging against the underside of the hardwood table top at which they sat.

      He’d looked thinner than ever, Jack recalled, despite their mother’s nonstop cooking all week since his baby brother had been released from rehab. And his eyes had been bloodshot. Telltale signs of another relapse, Jack remembered thinking, resentment swelling as he envisioned more heartbreak ahead. His family had already gone through a lot since Jesse’s addiction began in high school.

      When Jesse had said he needed money for reasons he refused to reveal, Jack imagined the worst. He would forever regret how he’d shut his brother down, telling him he didn’t want to hear about anything that involved drugs. He was sick of being his brother’s babysitter.

      His mother’s cries echoed in his ear as he sniffed the cigarette butt again. Camel Filters, the same kind he’d seen one of Jesse’s suspected killers smoking. Smiley had been caught with heroin, another connection.

      He didn’t recognize the bond jumper in his picture. The thick dark of that long ago night and the men’s hoodies had concealed their appearances enough to make clear identification impossible. Smiley might be here with an accomplice, with Everett Ridland, and either man could be his brother’s assassin.

      Adrenaline spiked his blood. Made his head swim.

      Could this be this be the chance he’d been desperately seeking to finally make things right?

      Jack shimmied back down the bluff, dusted off his pants and spun around at the sound of approaching footsteps. A man in his midthirties, his broad face mostly shrouded by a beard, appeared around a bend in the trail, a leather saddlebag slung over one arm. He pulled up short, doubt crowding his already pinched features so that he looked cross.

      “Who the heck are you?”

      Jack set his hands on his belt, easing his shirt back slightly, ready to grab his gun from his shoulder holster if needed.

      “New wrangler. Jackson Cade.”

      The stranger’s eyes skimmed down to Jack’s boots then rose. “Haven’t heard of you.”

      “Dani hired me.”

      Stroking his beard, the intruder pursed his lips and said nothing for a moment long