Authors: Tara Janzen
Tags: #contemporary romance, #Colorado, #New York Times Bestselling Author
Stevie Lee (22 page)
She’d given him a chance. She’d given him two. But he’d thought his knife hand was faster than her finger on her rifle. He’d been wrong.
Dead wrong
. . .
“No,” she whispered, the word catching on a pained gasp of disbelief. “No . . . no . . . no.”
The evidence said otherwise, the violence, the blood, the mother lode of adrenaline racing through her veins. One instant of pure animal panic had turned her into a murderer. The knife had arced silently through the air, and in response she’d squeezed the slim band of metal. Pain had sliced into her palm as the gun had jerked and exploded, then there had been nothing but echoes.
There was so much blood. He’d collapsed face down on the bed, and she didn’t have the stomach to touch him, let alone roll him over to see what she’d hit. His dark, beard-stubbled face loomed in her memory, along with his bad teeth and the smell of him. He hadn’t been the first man to come after her—he wouldn’t be the last—but he’d been the first man she’d ever shot.
Shot and killed
. An awful feeling washed through her and brought bile up in her throat—a terrible feeling she couldn’t even begin to name. With a shaky hand she smeared a tear across her cheek and strode over to the table, her bootsteps sounding loud and hollow in the old mountain cabin.
With mindless skill she packed her gear into her backpack, tying her slicker over the top and her sleeping bag on the bottom of the frame. She hooked her water bottle to the shoulder strap for easy access; once she started walking, she wouldn’t be stopping for a long time.
Two other items remained on the table: her hat and a packet, rolled and tied in three places, with the initials L. L. burned into the leather. She lifted the packet and curled her fingers around the soft hide, her mouth trembling at the corners. A man had died for want of the prize and for wanting her—for wanting to hurt her.
She would have given him the packet and tracked him down later—nobody stole from Blue Dalton and got away with it—but she’d have shot herself before physically submitting to him. Luck had decided otherwise, though, and she’d shot him instead.
The first light of dawn skimmed across the white and green land and spilled into the valley, bringing streams of pale sunshine through the cabin window. Blue lifted tear-filled eyes for a moment, then quickened her preparations, sliding a knife sheath on her belt and fighting the panic making her hands shake. She cinched the leather strap tight before fastening the buckle.
A rustling sound snapped her gaze to the open front door, and instantly she had her hand on the haft of the knife. A heartbeat later the breath soughed from her lips as the source of the noise came into view.
“Thank God.” She fell to her knees and extended her hand to the white dog panting on the porch. A streak of blood marred his coat. “Come here, Trapper. Come on, boy.” The dog limped forward, and Blue folded him into her arms, hugging him and cooing to him, needing the security he represented. “I thought he had you for sure. Are you okay? Hmm? We’ve got a rough day ahead of us, Trap.” Her fingers tunneled through the soft white coat, and she rested her cheek on his neck. “Don’t worry. We’re going to make it,” she vowed.
She rose, then bent at the knees to pull the pack onto her back. A wince of pain crossed her face as she eased her arms through the shoulder straps. Her body was weak from the fight, from the tension sapping her strength and willpower. The fifty-pound load shifted into position, and with effort she straightened her legs and buckled the hip strap. She bit down on her lower lip. She couldn’t stop now. She had to get farther up into the hills. After all these years it was time to return to the North Star ranch and find her future.
Forcing herself not to look back at the man, she shoved her hand through her hair, pushing it off her face, and settled the faded and sweat-stained Stetson low on her head. On her way out the door she slipped her hand through the strap on her rifle, swinging it up and over her shoulder.
* * *
“Homicide?”
“Not yet. He was still breathing when the ambulance left. The medic was more worried about the liquor on his breath than the bullet in his shoulder.”
“How in the hell did they get an ambulance up here?”
“Carefully.”
Walker Evans listened to the exchange and calmly chewed on a long blade of meadow grass. A dozen deputies, rangers, and even some of the state’s finest were milling around the cabin, looking for a clue to what Walker already knew and what they’d be hard-pressed to find in the dark—the direction Blue Dalton and her dog had taken off in. Jeff Bowles, the head forest ranger on the scene, had given him the first chance at the cabin, and he’d tracked her a hundred yards into the trees before coming back to the dirt road to wait with the rest of them. That was okay with him. He had all the patience he needed, unless they started messing up her trail after the hundred yard mark.
So far, none of them had gotten even close. A slight smile curved a corner of his mouth. Bowles wasn’t stupid. When you need more rangers, you call your rangers, and when you have to, you call in the state patrol and the county sheriff. But when you need somebody to track a crazy woman through country she knows like the back of her hand, you call a tracker who knows the same country. Yes, Walker was content to wait. He was between seasons and on county time, and he knew he’d catch her.
Blue Dalton
, the name went through his mind, bringing another, wryer smile to his face. What he knew about the woman wasn’t much, but it was enough. She was her father’s daughter, and old Abel must have told her everything. Things were bound to get real interesting in these mountains when word got out she was back. Before things got too interesting, though, he meant to have the situation firmly in hand. He’d waited too long to let someone else jump his claim. He didn’t care if everyone else called it Dalton’s Treasure. The real name for the riches was Lacey’s Lode, and it belonged to him.
“What do you make of this stuff?” The sheriff asked Bowles, tapping his knuckles on the plastic window of Blue Dalton’s Jeep, just inches away from where Walker rested against the door.
“Scuba diving gear,” Bowles answered, not needing to look inside.
“For what?”
Bowles glanced at Walker. “We think she went diving in the lake. Most of the air is out of the tanks, and the wet suit is still wet.” He paused and squinted up into the night sky, peering through the vapor clouds of his breath. “The darn thing is probably frozen by now.”
“Lake Agnes?” The sheriff’s voice rose with skepticism. “It’s illegal to dive in these high lakes.”
“So’s shooting people,” Walker drawled, adding his two bits of enlightenment.
The sheriff shot him a sideways glance, anger apparent in every hard line of his face. “What’s the pretty boy doing here?” he snapped at Bowles, staring at Walker as if he wished he’d disappear.
“He’s our tracker.”
“What’s wrong with our regular people?” The sheriff didn’t bother to hide his dislike of Walker, and Walker, immune to the sheriff’s opinions, let the dislike and the insult slide. But he did wonder if the lawman hated him because his wife had a roving eye, or because Walker had been turning her down since he’d been sixteen and the lady had been twenty-one.
Bowles answered, “Well, sir. Our regular people are good enough to track lost campers who want to be found, but we’re dealing with Blue Dalton, and I’d bet a dollar to a dime she doesn’t want anybody finding her.”
The sheriff accepted the explanation by ignoring it, but Walker distinctly heard him mutter something about sending one no-account after another. Louder, the sheriff said, “What does she want to go diving into Agnes for anyway? There’s nothing in there but fish.”
“Who knows?” Bowles shrugged and cast a warning look at Walker, which Walker acknowledged with a subtle lowering of his gaze. They both had a damn good idea of what Blue Dalton had gone looking for, but neither saw any reason to bog down the sheriff’s investigation with a bunch of hearsay, and ancient hearsay at that. Old man Dalton’s dying words had been floating around these mountains long enough for anybody who cared to hear them, though few took them as seriously as Walker. Few had the right.
“What about the Jeep? Why’d she leave it?” the sheriff asked.
Another grin flashed across Walker’s face, but he kept his mouth shut. Bowles cleared his throat. “The tires are slashed.”
The sheriff looked down and stepped back to check the other side of the Jeep, but he didn’t say a word.
“I think we’ve got a clear case of self-defense,” Bowles said. “The man thought he’d found a lone woman up here in the wilderness and decided to get mean. He slashed her tires, beat her dog, then tried to attack her in the cabin.”
“Then why did she light out?” the sheriff asked.
“Maybe she got scared,” Bowles offered.
Walker coughed into his hand and turned his back.
“Something like that would scare any woman,” Bowles insisted, looking at the sheriff but speaking for Walker’s benefit.
“Got her so scared she packed up and headed off into nowhere instead of down the road for help? I’m not buying it,” the sheriff said.
Neither was Walker. He’d been weaned on tales, true and otherwise, about the Dalton clan, and running scared wasn’t exactly their modus operandi. They’d mostly kept to themselves up on their ranch in the Rawahs, but if trouble came looking, they faced it. And trouble, it seemed, did have a tendency to go looking for Daltons.
Well, trouble had a partner now. Walker Evans was looking for a Dalton . . . Blue Dalton.
* * * * * * * * *
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