Gunfire On The Ranch. Delores Fossen

on the pasture fences. Blue satin ribbon flapping in the hot May breeze. There were no ranch hands out and about. No signs of a killer, either, but the snake could already be there, waiting to strike.

      His phone buzzed, and he saw the name flash on the screen. Wesley Sanford, a fellow DEA agent who’d alerted Theo that there could be a problem, that a killer could be headed to the ranch. Theo kept his attention on the road, on his surroundings, too, but he hit the answer button to put the call on speaker.

      “Anything?” Wesley asked right away.

      “No, not yet. How about you?”

      “I’ll be at the Blue River sheriff’s office in just a couple of minutes. I’ll tell the deputies what’s going on. I might even get the chance to speak to Gabriel himself.”

      Gabriel, the sheriff of the ranching town of Blue River as well as Ivy’s brother. Well, one of them, anyway. Her other brother, Jameson, was a Texas Ranger.

      “But I’m guessing that the sheriff won’t be working this late the night before his wedding?” Wesley added.

      Theo had no idea. He hadn’t kept up with news on the Becketts. They were more of those old memories, and wounds, that he hadn’t wanted in his life. Besides, the Becketts wouldn’t want him keeping up with them. Or even want him around, for that matter. They’d made that crystal clear ten years ago. Theo had had no choice but to come tonight, though. Once the danger was over, however, he’d get out of there as fast as he had a decade ago.

      “If Gabriel is at his office,” Theo told Wesley, “remember not to say anything in the police station. Take him outside to talk.” If their criminal informant had been right, the killer could have managed to plant a bug in the building. And in the sheriff’s house. “I don’t want this clown to know we’re onto him. I want to catch him.”

      Wesley hadn’t especially needed that reminder, but the stakes were too high for either of them to make a mistake. The last time Theo had made a mistake with the Becketts, Ivy’s parents had been murdered. Maybe by this same killer who was after them now.

      Or maybe by Theo’s own father.

      But if his father had actually been the murderer ten years ago, then tonight Theo was dealing with a copycat. Because his father was miles away behind bars in a maximum-security prison. Still, a copycat could be just as lethal as the original one had been.

      Too bad Theo couldn’t just sound the alarm and alert Ivy’s brothers and the ranch hands, but that possible bug in Gabriel’s house meant the only secure way for Theo to contact the Becketts was outside, face-to-face.

      “Whether the sheriff is here or not, I’ll let someone know there might be a bug,” Wesley assured him. “Call me when you can.”

      Theo hit the end-call button on his phone just as he reached the top of the hill, and the ranch house came into view. Well, one of the houses, anyway. From what he’d learned, there were now four on the grounds. One for Gabriel. Another belonging to Jameson. The third was one Gabriel’s deputy and longtime friend, Cameron Doran, had built.

      It was the fourth house, though, that contained the bad memories.

      Because that was where Ivy’s parents had been murdered. No one lived there and hadn’t since, well, since that night.

      According to the quick check Theo had done before he’d left for Blue River, Ivy’s house was hours away in a rural area near Houston. Apparently, Theo wasn’t the only one who’d left Blue River after the murders.

      Other than her address, there hadn’t been a lot of info to find on Ivy, though she had listed herself as widowed on the tax documents for her small ranch. So she’d not only moved on physically but also emotionally with another man she’d married and lost. Theo felt a hit of the jealousy before he quickly reined it in. Ivy wasn’t his, hadn’t been for a long time, so of course she had moved on. That’s what normal people did.

      Theo hadn’t considered himself normal in a while now.

      He stopped his truck beneath a cluster of trees only about twenty yards from Gabriel’s house. Theo drew his gun and made his way to the side of the wraparound porch. There were plenty of shrubs where he could hide and have a line of sight to all four houses. However, he’d barely gotten into position when he heard something he didn’t want to hear.

      “Drop your gun,” someone snapped.

      Hell. How had a person managed to get so close without him noticing? And it wasn’t just any ordinary someone, either. Theo recognized that voice even after all these years.

      Ivy.

      He turned, slowly, and he spotted her at the back corner of the house. Thanks to the light coming from one of the windows, he had no trouble seeing her face.

      And the rifle she was pointing at him.

      Apparently, she had no trouble seeing him, either, because she whispered his name on a rise of breath. What she didn’t do was lower her weapon.

      Theo said her name, and it had far more emotion in it than he wanted. Of course, any drop of emotion was too much right now, since he didn’t want their past playing into this. She was his ex-lover, emphasis on the ex. All he wanted now was to do his job and get the heck out of there.

      Ivy didn’t say anything else, but she started walking toward him. Her attention volleyed between his face and his gun, which he lowered to his side.

      “I was getting something from Gabriel’s office when I glanced out the window and saw you,” she finally said. “We didn’t expect you. Judging from the way you were sneaking around, you didn’t want us to see you.”

      No, he hadn’t wanted the killer to see him.

      “I had to come,” he told her. “I found out...something.”

      Ivy flinched a little and came even closer until she was only about a foot away from him. She hadn’t changed much in the past ten years. She was almost thirty now and still had that thick, dark brown hair that fell just past her shoulders. Still had the same intense eyes. He couldn’t see the color of them in the darkness, but he knew they were sapphire blue.

      Despite Theo’s not wanting to feel anything, he did. The old attraction that for some stupid reason felt just as strong as it always had. But he was also feeling something else. The anger. That’s why he kept watch around them.

      “I guess you heard about the wedding. Are you here to see your sister?” she asked.

      “No.” Best not to get into the fact that he hadn’t seen his kid sister, Jodi, in a long time. Because that was a different set of bad memories. Not because he didn’t love her. He did. But Jodi was a reminder that he’d failed her, too. She’d nearly gotten killed the same night as Ivy’s folks, and he hadn’t been able to stop it. Now, all these years later, she was marrying Gabriel Beckett.

      So obviously Gabriel and Jodi had managed to work through their shared painful pasts. He guessed they’d found their “normal.”

      “It’s not safe for us to be out here,” Theo explained. “We need to get in my truck so we can talk.”

      She didn’t budge, but she did follow his gaze when he looked around again. “You heard about the threatening letter,” Ivy said.

      No, he hadn’t, but it got his attention, and Theo shook his head. “What letter?”

      Ivy huffed, and she finally lowered her gun. “The latest one had a warning that my brothers, my sister and I would all be murdered on the anniversary of our parents’ deaths.”

      Which was only two months away.

      Ivy’s tone practically dismissed the threat her family had gotten. But Theo wasn’t dismissing anything. “You get a lot of letters like that?”

      “Enough. Emails, too, and the occasional phone call from blocked numbers. If you didn’t know about that, then why are you here?” she asked without