No one can resist a book by Diana Palmer!

“Nobody does it better.”

—New York Times bestselling author Linda Howard

“Palmer knows how to make the sparks fly…Heartwarming.”

—Publishers Weekly on Renegade

“A compelling tale…that packs an emotional wallop.”

—Booklist on Renegade

“Sensual and suspenseful”

—Booklist on Lawless

“Diana Palmer is a mesmerising storyteller who captures the essence of what a romance should be.”

—Affaire de Coeur

“Nobody tops Diana Palmer when it comes to delivering pure, undiluted romance. I love her stories.”

—New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz

“The dialogue is charming, the characters likeable and the sex sizzling.”

—Publishers Weekly on Once in Paris

The Maverick

By

Diana Palmer
Magnate’s Make-Believe Mistress

By

Bronwyn Jameson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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The Maverick

By

Diana Palmer

About the Author

DIANA PALMER has a gift for telling the most sensual tales with charm and humor. With more than forty million copies of her books in print, Diana is one of North America’s most beloved authors and considered one of the top ten romance authors in the United States. Diana’s hobbies include gardening, archeology, anthropology, art, astronomy and music. She has been married to James Kyle for over thirty-five years. They have one son, Blayne, who is married to the former Christina Clayton, and a granddaughter, Selena Marie.

To Julie Benefiel, who designed my cowboy quilt (hand pieced by Nancy Caudill),

To Nancy Mason, who quilted it,

And to Janet Borchert, who put together a 2007 hardcover book of all my covers, including foreign ones, along with Jade, Tracy, Nancy, Carey, Amy, Renata, Maria, LeeAnn, Efy, Kay, Peggy, Hang, Ronnie, Mona and Debbie of the Diana Palmer Bulletin Board.

Also to everyone who participated in the compendium summaries of all my books, and to Nancy for the quilted covers for the loose-leaf notebooks.

With many thanks and much love.

Dear Reader,

Of all the characters I have created over the past thirty years, Harley Fowler has been the most complex. He started life in Mercenary’s Woman as a cowboy who worked for mercenary Eb Scott’s friend, the enigmatic Cy Parks. He was a braggart, a blowhard and a pain in the neck, but we got glimpses of the man he might become. In The Winter Soldier, he grew up. When confronted by violent drug dealers, he discovered that, while he was pretending to be a professional soldier, Cy Parks, his reclusive boss, was the real article. Harley swallowed his pride and walked bravely into gunfire beside Cy Parks, Micah Steele and Eb Scott to take down a dangerous drug distribution center.

I have had many readers ask for Harley’s own book, but until now I hadn’t found just the right venue for him. Sometimes if you rush a story into publication, you do damage to the character it is intended to spotlight. I waited until I was certain I had the right story for Harley. Now I am.

I hope all of you who wanted to know more about Cy Parks’s mysterious foreman will be pleased at the revelations. As you might notice, this book is the beginning of a murder mystery that will unravel in subsequent books, most notably in the story of Kilraven and Winnie Sinclair and in the following year’s novel about Kilraven’s half-brother, Jon Blackhawk. Don’t be impatient. It’s going to be a good ride. I promise.

Love to all of you from your biggest fan,

Diana Palmer

Chapter One

Harley Fowler was staring so hard at his list of chores that he walked right into a young brunette as he headed into the hardware store in Jacobsville, Texas. He looked up, shocked, when she fell back against the open door, glaring at him.

“I’ve heard of men getting buried in their work, but this is too much,” she told him with a speaking look. She smoothed over her short black hair, feeling for a bump where she’d collided with the door. Deep blue eyes glared up into his pale blue ones. She noticed that he had light brown hair and was wearing a baseball cap that seemed to suit him. He was sexy-looking.

“I’m not buried in my work,” he said curtly. “I’m trying to get back to work, and shopping chores are keeping me from it.”

“Which doesn’t explain why you’re assaulting women with doors. Does it?” she mused.

His eyes flared. “I didn’t assault you with a door. You walked into me.”

“I did not. You were staring at that piece of paper so hard that you wouldn’t have seen a freight train coming.” She peered over his arm at the list. “Pruning shears? Two new rakes?” She pursed her lips, but smiling blue eyes stared at him. “You’re obviously somebody’s gardener,” she said, noting his muddy shoes and baseball cap.

His eyebrows met. “I am not a gardener,” he said indignantly. “I’m a cowboy.”

“You are not!”

“Excuse me?”

“You don’t have a horse, you’re not wearing a cowboy hat, and you don’t have on any chaps.” She glanced at his feet. “You aren’t even wearing cowboy boots!”

He gaped at her. “Did you just escape from intense therapy?”

“I have not been in any therapy,” she said haughtily. “My idiosyncrasies are so unique that they couldn’t classify me even with the latest edition of the DSM-IV, much less attempt to pyschoanalize me!”

She was referring to a classic volume of psychology that was used to diagnose those with mental challenges. He obviously had no idea what she was talking about.

“So, can you sing, then?”

He looked hunted. “Why would I want to sing?”

“Cowboys sing. I read it in a book.”

“You can read?” he asked in mock surprise.

“Why would you think I couldn’t?” she asked.

He nodded toward the sign on the hardware store’s door that clearly said, in large letters, PULL. She was trying to push it.

She let go of the door and shifted her feet. “I saw that,” she said defensively. “I just wanted to know if you were paying attention.” She cocked her head at him. “Do you have a rope?”

“Why?” he asked. “You planning to hang yourself?”

She sighed with exaggerated patience. “Cowboys carry ropes.”

“What for?”

“So they can rope cattle!”

“Don’t find many head of cattle wandering around in hardware stores,” he murmured, looking more confident now.

“What if you did?” she persisted. “How would you get a cow out of the store?”

“Bull. We run purebred Santa Gertrudis bulls on Mr. Parks’s ranch,” he corrected.

“And you don’t have any cows?” She made a face. “You don’t raise calves, then.” She nodded.

His face flamed. “We do so raise calves. We do have cows. We just don’t carry them into hardware stores and turn them loose!”

“Well, excuse me!” she said in mock apology. “I never said you did.”

“Cowboy hats and ropes and cows,” he muttered. He opened the door. “You going in or standing out here? I have work to do.”

“Doing what? Knocking unsuspecting women in the head with doors?” she asked pleasantly.

His impatient eyes went over her neat slacks and wool jacket, to the bag she was holding. “I said, are you going into the store?” he asked with forced patience, holding the door open.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I am,” she replied, moving closer. “I need some tape measures and Super Glue and matches and chalk and push pins and colored string and sticky tape.”

“Don’t tell me,” he drawled. “You’re a contractor.”

“Oh, she’s something a little less conventional than that, Harley,” Police Chief Cash Grier said as he came up the steps to the store. “How’s it going, Jones?” he asked.

“I’m overflowing in DBs, Grier,” she replied with a grin. “Want some?”

He held up his hands. “We don’t do a big business in homicides here. I’d like to keep it that way.” He scowled. “You’re out of your territory a bit, aren’t you?”

“I am. I was asked down here by your sheriff, Hayes Carson. He actually does have a DB. I’m working the crime scene for him per his request through the Bexar County medical examiner’s office, but I didn’t bring enough supplies. I hope the hardware store can accommodate me. It’s a long drive back to San Antonio when you’re on a case.”

“On a case?” Harley asked, confused.

“Yes, on a case,” she said. “Unlike you, some of us are professionals who have real jobs.”

“Do you know him?” Cash asked her.

She gave Harley a studied appraisal. “Not really. He came barreling up the steps and hit me with a door. He says he’s a cowboy,” she added in a confidential tone. “But just between us, I’m sure he’s lying. He doesn’t have a horse or a rope, he isn’t wearing a cowboy hat or boots, he says he can’t sing, and he thinks bulls roam around loose in hardware stores.”

Harley stared at her with more mixed emotions than he’d felt in years.

Cash choked back a laugh. “Well, he actually is a cowboy,” Cash defended him. “He’s Harley Fowler, Cy Parks’s foreman on his cattle ranch.”

“Imagine that!” she exclaimed. “What a blow to the image of Texas if some tourist walks in and sees him dressed like that!” She indicated Harley’s attire with one slender hand. “They can’t call us the cowboy capital of the world if we have people working cattle in baseball caps! We’ll be disgraced!”

Cash was trying not to laugh. Harley looked as if he might explode.

“Better a horseless cowboy than a contractor with an attitude like yours!” Harley shot back, with glittery eyes. “I’m amazed that anybody around here would hire you to build something for them.”

She gave him a superior look. “I don’t build things. But I could if I wanted to.”

“She really doesn’t build things,” Cash said. “Harley, this is Alice Mayfield Jones,” he introduced. “She’s a forensic investigator for the Bexar County medical examiner’s office.”

“She works with dead people?” Harley exclaimed, and moved back a step.

“Dead bodies,” Alice returned, glaring at his obvious distaste. “DBs. And I’m damned good at my job. Ask him,” she added, nodding toward Cash.

“She does have a reputation,” Cash admitted. His dark eyes twinkled. “And a nickname. Old Jab-’Em-in-the-Liver Alice.”

“You’ve been talking to Marc Brannon,” she accused.

“You did help him solve a case, back when he was still a Texas Ranger,” he pointed out.

“Now they’ve got this new guy, transferred up from Houston,” she said on a sigh. “He’s real hard going. No sense of humor.” She gave him a wry look. “Kind of like you used to be, in the old days when you worked out of the San Antonio district attorney’s office, Grier,” she recalled. “A professional loner with a bad attitude.”

“Oh, I’ve changed.” He grinned. “A wife and child can turn the worst of us inside out.”

She smiled. “No kidding? If I have time, I’d love to see that little girl everybody’s talking about. Is she as pretty as her mama?”

He nodded. “Oh, yes. Every bit.”

Harley pulled at his collar. “Could you stop talking about children, please?” he muttered. “I’ll break out in hives.”

“Allergic to small things, are you?” Alice chided.

“Allergic to the whole subject of marriage,” he emphasized with a meaningful stare.

Her eyebrows arched. “I’m sorry, were you hoping I was going to ask you to marry me?” she replied pleasantly. “You’re not bad-looking, I guess, but I have a very high standard for prospective bridegrooms. Frankly,” she added with a quick appraisal, “if you were on sale in a groom shop, I can assure you that I wouldn’t purchase you.”

He stared at her as if he doubted his hearing. Cash Grier had to turn away. His face was going purple.

The hardware-store door opened and a tall, black-haired, taciturn man came out it. He frowned. “Jones? What the hell are you doing down here? They asked for Longfellow!”

She glared back. “Longfellow hid in the women’s restroom and refused to come out,” she said haughtily. “So they sent me. And why are you interested in Sheriff Carson’s case? You’re a fed.”

Kilraven put his finger to his lips and looked around hastily to make sure nobody was listening. “I’m a policeman, working on the city force,” he said curtly.

Alice held up both hands defensively. “Sorry! It’s so hard to keep up with all these secrets!”

Kilraven glanced at his boss and back at Alice. “What secrets?”

“Well, there’s the horseless cowboy there—” she pointed at Harley “—and the DB over on the Little Carmichael River…”

Kilraven’s silver eyes widened. “On the river? I thought it was in town. Nobody told me!”

“I just did,” Alice said. “But it’s really a secret. I’m not supposed to tell anybody.”

“I’m local law enforcement,” Kilraven insisted. “You can tell me. Who is he?”

Alice gave him a bland look and propped a hand on her hip. “I only looked at him for two minutes before I realized I needed to get more investigative supplies. He’s male and dead. He’s got no ID, he’s naked, and even his mother wouldn’t recognize his face.”

“Dental records…” Kilraven began.

“For those, you need identifiable teeth,” Alice replied sweetly.

Harley was turning white.

She glanced at him. “Are you squeamish?” she asked hopefully. “Listen, I once examined this dead guy whose girlfriend caught him with a hooker. After she offed him, she cut off his…Where are you going?”

Harley was making a beeline for the interior of the hardware store.

“Bathroom, I imagine.” Grier grinned at Kilraven, who chuckled.

“He works around cattle and he’s squeamish?” Alice asked, delighted. “I’ll bet he’s a lot of fun when they round up the calves!”

“Not nice,” Kilraven chided. “Everybody’s got a weak spot, Jones. Even you.”

“I have no weak spots,” she assured him.

“No social life, either,” Grier murmured. “I heard you tried to conduct a postmortem on a turkey in North Carolina during a murder investigation there.”

“It met with fowl play,” she said, straight-faced.

Both men chuckled.

“I have to get to work,” she said, becoming serious. “This is a strange case. Nobody knows who this guy is or where he came from, and there was a serious attempt to make him unidentifiable. Even with DNA, when I can get a profile back from state—and don’t hold your breath on the timetable—I don’t know if we can identify him. If he has no criminal record, he won’t be on file anywhere.”

“At least we don’t get many of these,” Kilraven said quietly.

Jones smiled at him. “When are you coming back up to San Antonio?” she asked. “You solved the Pendleton kidnapping and helped wrap up the perps.”

“Just a few loose ends to tie up,” he said. He nodded at her and his boss. “I’ll get back on patrol.”

“Brady’s wife made potato soup and real corn bread for lunch. Don’t miss it.”

“Not me, boss.”

Alice stared after the handsome officer. “He’s a dish. But isn’t he overstaying his purpose down here?” she asked Cash.

He leaned down. “Winnie Sinclair works for the 911 center. Local gossip has it that he’s sweet on her. That’s why he’s finding excuses not to leave.”

Alice looked worried. “And he’s dragging around a whole past that hardly anybody knows about. He’s pretending it never happened.”

“Maybe he has to.”

She nodded. “It was bad. One of the worst cases I ever worked. Poor guy.” She frowned. “They never solved it, you know. The perp is still out there, running around loose. It must have driven Kilraven and his brother, Jon Blackhawk, nuts, wondering if it was somebody they arrested, somebody with a grudge.”

“Their father was an FBI agent in San Antonio, before he drank himself to death after the murders. Blackhawk still is,” Cash replied thoughtfully. “Could have been a case any one of the three men worked, a perp getting even.”

“It could,” she agreed. “It must haunt the brothers. The guilt would be bad enough, but they wouldn’t want to risk it happening again, to someone else they got involved with. They avoid women. Especially Kilraven.”

“He wouldn’t want to go through it again,” Cash said.

“This Sinclair woman, how does she feel about Kilraven?”

Cash gave her a friendly smile. “I am not a gossip.”

“Bull.”

He laughed. “She’s crazy about him. But she’s very young.”

“Age doesn’t matter, in the long run,” Alice said with a faraway look in her eyes. “At least, sometimes.” She opened the door. “See you around, Grier.”

“You, too, Jones.”

She walked into the hardware store. There at the counter was Harley, pale and out of sorts. He glared at her.

She held up both hands. “I wasn’t even graphic,” she said defensively. “And God only knows how you manage to help with branding, with that stomach.”

“I ate something that didn’t agree with me,” he said icily.

“In that case, you must not have a lot of friends…”

The clerk doubled over laughing.

“I do not eat people!” Harley muttered.

“I should hope not,” she replied. “I mean, being a cannibal is much worse than being a gardener.”

“I am not a gardener!”

Alice gave the clerk a sweet smile. “Do you have chalk and colored string?” she asked. “I also need double-A batteries for my digital camera and some antibacterial hand cleaner.”

The clerk looked blank.

Harley grinned. He knew this clerk very well. Sadly, Alice didn’t. “Hey, John, this is a real, honest-to-goodness crime scene investigator,” he told the young man. “She works out of the medical examiner’s office in San Antonio!”

Alice felt her stomach drop as she noted the bright fascination in the clerk’s eyes. The clerk’s whole face became animated. “You do, really? Hey, I watch all those CSI shows,” he exclaimed. “I know about DNA profiles. I even know how to tell how long a body’s been dead just by identifying the insects on it…!”

“You have a great day, Ms. Jones,” Harley told Alice, over the clerk’s exuberant monologue.

She glared at him. “Oh, thanks very much.”

He tipped his bibbed cap at her. “See you, John,” he told the clerk. Harley picked up his purchases, smiling with pure delight, and headed right out the front door.

The clerk waved an absent hand in his general direction, never taking his eyes off Alice. “Anyway, about those insects,” he began enthusiastically.

Alice followed him around the store for her supplies, groaning inwardly as he kept talking. She never ran out of people who could tell her how to do her job these days, thanks to the proliferation of television shows on forensics. She tried to explain that most labs were understaffed, under-budgeted, and that lab results didn’t come back in an hour, even for a department like hers, on the University of Texas campus, which had a national reputation for excellence. But the bug expert here was on a roll and he wasn’t listening. She resigned herself to the lecture and forced a smile. Wouldn’t do to make enemies here, not when she might be doing more business with him later. She was going to get even with that smug cowboy the next time she saw him, though.

The riverbank was spitting out law enforcement people. Alice groaned as she bent to the poor body and began to take measurements. She’d already had an accommodating young officer from the Jacobsville Police Department run yellow police tape all around the crime scene. That didn’t stop people from stepping over it, however.

“You stop that,” Alice muttered at two men wearing deputy sheriff uniforms. They both stopped with one foot in the air at the tone of her voice. “No tramping around on my crime scene! That yellow tape is to keep people out.”

“Sorry,” one murmured sheepishly, and they both went back on their side of the line. Alice pushed away a strand of sweaty hair with the back of a latex-gloved hand and muttered to herself. It was almost Christmas, but the weather had gone nuts and it was hot. She’d already taken off her wool jacket and replaced it with a lab coat, but her slacks were wool and she was burning up. Not to mention that this guy had been lying on the riverbank for at least a day and he was ripe. She had Vicks Salve under her nose, but it wasn’t helping a lot.

For the hundredth time, she wondered why she’d ever chosen such a messy profession. But it was very satisfying when she could help catch a murderer, which she had many times over the years. Not that it substituted for a family. But most men she met were repelled by her profession. Sometimes she tried to keep it to herself. But inevitably there would be a movie or a TV show that would mention some forensic detail and Alice would hold forth on the misinformation she noted. Sometimes it was rather graphic, like with the vengeful cowboy in the hardware store.

Then there would be the forced smiles. The excuses. And so it went. Usually that happened before the end of the first date. Or at least the second.

“I’ll bet I’m the only twenty-six-year-old virgin in the whole damned state of Texas,” she muttered to herself.

“Excuse me?” one of the deputies, a woman, exclaimed with wide, shocked eyes.

“That’s right, you just look at me as if I sprouted horns and a tail,” she murmured as she worked. “I know I’m an anachronism.”

“That’s not what I meant,” the deputy said, chuckling. “Listen, there are a lot of women our ages with that attitude. I don’t want some unspeakable condition that I catch from a man who passes himself around like a dish of peanuts at a bar. And do you think they’re going to tell you they’ve got something?”

Alice beamed. “I like you.”

She chuckled. “Thanks. I think of it as being sensible.” She lowered her voice. “See Kilraven over there?” she asked, drawing Alice’s eyes to the arrival of another local cop—even if he really was a fed pretending to be one. “They say his brother, Jon Black-hawk, has never had a woman in his life. And we think we’re prudes!”

Alice chuckled. “That’s what I heard, too. Sensible man!”

“Very.” The deputy was picking up every piece of paper, every cigarette butt she could find with latex gloves on, bagging them for Alice for evidence. “What about that old rag, Jones, think I should put it in a bag, too? Look at this little rusty spot.”

Alice glanced at it, frowning. It was old, but there was a trace of something on it, something newer than the rag. “Yes,” she said. “I think it’s been here for a while, but that’s new trace evidence on it. Careful not to touch the rusty-looking spot.”

“Blood, isn’t it?” She nodded.

“You’re good,” Alice said.

“I came down from Dallas PD,” she said. “I got tired of big-city crime. Things are a little less hectic here. In fact, this is my first DB since I joined Sheriff Carson’s department.”

“That’s a real change, I know,” Alice said. “I work out of San Antonio. Not the quietest place in the world, especially on weekends.”

Kilraven had walked right over the police tape and came up near the body.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Alice exclaimed. “Kilraven…!”

“Look,” he said, his keen silver eyes on the grass just under the dead man’s right hand, which was clenched and depressed into the mud. “There’s something white.”

Alice followed his gaze. She didn’t even see it at first. She’d moved so that it was in shadow. But when she shifted, the sunlight caught it. Paper. A tiny sliver of paper, just peeping out from under the dead man’s thumb. She reached down with her gloved hand and brushed away the grass. There was a deep indentation in the soft, mushy soil, next to his hand; maybe a footprint. “I need my camera before I move it,” she said, holding out her hand. The deputy retrieved the big digital camera from its bag and handed it to Alice, who documented the find and recorded it on a graph of the crime scene. Then, returning the camera, she slid a pencil gently under the hand, moving it until she was able to see the paper. She reached into her kit for a pair of tweezers and tugged it carefully from his grasp.

“It’s a tiny, folded piece of paper,” she said, frowning. “And thank God it hasn’t rained.”

“Amen,” Kilraven agreed, peering at the paper in her hand.

“Good eyes,” she added with a grin.

He grinned back. “Lakota blood.” He chuckled. “Tracking is in my genes. My great-great-grandfather was at Little Big Horn.”

“I won’t ask on which side,” she said in a loud whisper.

“No need to be coy. He rode with Crazy Horse’s band.”

“Hey, I read about that,” the deputy said. “Custer’s guys were routed, they say.”

“One of the Cheyenne people said later that a white officer was killed down at the river in the first charge,” he said. “He said the officer was carried up to the last stand by his men, and after that the soldiers seemed to lose heart and didn’t fight so hard. They found Custer’s brother, Tom, and a couple of ranking officers from other units, including Custer’s brother-in-law, with Custer. It could indicate that the chain of command changed several times. Makes sense, if you think about it. If there was a charge, Custer would have led it. Several historians think that Custer’s unit made it into the river before the Cheyenne came flying into it after them. If Custer was killed early, he’d have been carried up to the last stand ridge—an enlisted guy, they’d have left there in the river.”

“I never read that Custer got killed early in the fight,” the deputy exclaimed.

“I’ve only ever seen the theory in one book—a warrior was interviewed who was on the Indian side of the fight, and he said he thought Custer was killed in the first charge,” he mused. “The Indians’ side of the story didn’t get much attention until recent years. They said there were no surviving eyewitnesses. Bull! There were several tribes of eyewitnesses. It was just that nobody thought their stories were worth hearing just after the battle. Not the massacre,” he added before the deputy could speak. “Massacres are when you kill unarmed people. Custer’s men all had guns.”

The deputy grinned. “Ever think of teaching history?”

“Teaching’s too dangerous a profession. That’s why I joined the police force instead.” Kilraven chuckled.

“Great news for law enforcement,” Alice said. “You have good eyes.”

“You’d have seen it for yourself, Jones, eventually,” he replied. “You’re the best.”

“Wow! Did you hear that? Take notes,” Alice told the deputy. “The next time I get yelled at for not doing my job right, I’m quoting Kilraven.”

“Would it help?” he asked.

She laughed. “They’re still scared of you up in San Antonio,” she said. “One of the old patrolmen, Jacobs, turns white when they mention your name. I understand the two of you had a little dustup?”

“I threw him into a fruit display at the local supermarket. Messy business. Did you know that blackberries leave purple stains on skin?” he added conversationally.

“I’m a forensic specialist,” Alice reminded him. “Can I ask why you threw him into a fruit display?”

“We were working a robbery and he started making these remarks about fruit with one of the gay officers standing right beside me. The officer in question couldn’t do anything without getting in trouble.” He grinned. “Amazing, how attitudes change with a little gentle adjustment.”

“Hey, Kilraven, what are you doing walking around on the crime scene?” Cash Grier called from the sidelines.

“Don’t fuss at him,” Alice called back. “He just spotted a crucial piece of evidence. You should give him an award!”

There were catcalls from all the officers present.

“I should get an award!” he muttered as he went to join his boss. “I never take days off or vacations!”

“That’s because you don’t have a social life, Kilraven,” one of the officers joked.

Alice stood up, staring at the local law enforcement uniforms surrounding the crime scene tape. She recognized at least two cars from other jurisdictions. There was even a federal car out there! It wasn’t unusual in a sleepy county like Jacobs for all officers who weren’t busy to congregate around an event like this. It wasn’t every day that you found a murder victim in your area. But a federal car for a local murder?

As she watched, Garon Grier and Jon Blackhawk of the San Antonio district FBI office climbed out of the BuCar—the FBI’s term for a bureau car—and walked over the tape to join Alice.

“What have you found?” Grier asked.

She pursed her lips, glancing from the assistant director of the regional FBI office, Grier, to Special Agent Jon Blackhawk. What a contrast! Grier was blond and Blackhawk had long, jet-black hair tied in a ponytail. They were both tall and well-built without being flashy about it. Garon Grier, like his brother Cash, was married. Jon Blackhawk was unattached and available. Alice wished she was his type. He was every bit as good-looking as his half brother Kilraven.

“I found some bits and pieces of evidence, with the deputy’s help. Your brother,” she told Jon, “found this.” She held up the piece of paper in an evidence bag. “Don’t touch,” she cautioned as both men peered in. “I’m not unfolding it until I can get it into my lab. I won’t risk losing any trace evidence out here.”

Blackhawk pulled out a pad and started taking notes. “Where was it?” he asked.

“Gripped in the dead man’s fingers, out of sight. Why are you here?” she asked. “This is a local matter.”

Blackhawk was cautious. “Not entirely,” he said.

Kilraven joined them. He and Blackhawk exchanged uneasy glances.

“Okay. Something’s going on that I can’t be told about. It’s okay.” She held up a hand. “I’m used to being a mushroom. Kept in the dark and fed with…”

“Never mind,” Garon told her. He softened it with a smile. “We’ve had a tip. Nothing substantial. Just something that interests us about this case.”

“And you can’t tell me what the tip was?”

“We found a car in the river, farther down,” Cash said quietly. “San Antonio plates.”

“Maybe his?” Alice indicated the body.

“Maybe. We’re running the plates now,” Cash said.

“So, do you think he came down here on his own, or did somebody bring him in a trunk?” Alice mused.

The men chuckled. “You’re good, Alice,” Garon murmured.

“Of course I am!” she agreed. “Could you,” she called to the female deputy, “get me some plaster of Paris out of my van, in the back? This may be a footprint where we found the piece of paper! Thanks.”

She went back to work with a vengeance while two sets of brothers looked on with intent interest.

Chapter Two

Alice fell into her bed at the local Jacobsville motel after a satisfying soak in the luxurious whirlpool bathtub. Amazing, she thought, to find such a high-ticket item in a motel in a small Texas town. She was told that film crews from Hollywood frequently chose Jacobs County as a location and that the owner of the motel wanted to keep them happy. It was certainly great news for Alice.

She’d never been so tired. The crime scene, they found, extended for a quarter of a mile down the river. The victim had fought for his life. There were scuff marks and blood trails all over the place. So much for her theory that he’d traveled to Jacobsville in the trunk of the car they’d found.

The question was, why had somebody brought a man down to Jacobsville to kill him? It made no sense.

She closed her eyes, trying to put herself in the shoes of the murderer. People usually killed for a handful of reasons. They killed deliberately out of jealousy, anger or greed. Sometimes they killed accidentally. Often, it was an impulse that led to a death, or a series of acts that pushed a person over the edge. All too often, it was drugs or alcohol that robbed someone of impulse control, and that led inexorably to murder.

Few people went into an argument or a fight intending to kill someone. But it wasn’t as if you could take it back even seconds after a human life expired. There were thousands of young people in prison who would have given anything to relive a single incident where they’d made a bad choice. Families suffered for those choices, along with their children. So often, it was easy to overlook the fact that even murderers had families, often decent, law-abiding families that agonized over what their loved one had done and paid the price along with them.

Alice rolled over, restlessly. Her job haunted her from time to time. Along with the coroner, and the investigating officers, she was the last voice of the deceased. She spoke for them, by gathering enough evidence to bring the killer to trial. It was a holy grail. She took her duties seriously. But she also had to live with the results of the murderer’s lack of control. It was never pleasant to see a dead body. Some were in far worse conditions than others. She carried those memories as certainly as the family of the deceased carried them.

Early on, she’d learned that she couldn’t let herself become emotionally involved with the victims. If she started crying, she’d never stop, and she wouldn’t be effective in her line of work.

She found a happy medium in being the life of the party at crime scenes. It diverted her from the misery of her surroundings and, on occasion, helped the crime scene detectives cope as well. One reporter, a rookie, had given her a hard time because of her attitude. She’d invited him to her office for a close-up look at the world of a real forensic investigator.

The reporter had arrived expecting the corpse, always tastefully displayed, to be situated in the tidy, high-tech surroundings that television crime shows had accustomed him to seeing.

Instead, Alice pulled the sheet from a drowning victim who’d been in the water three days.

She never saw the reporter again. Local cops who recounted the story, always with choked-back laughter, told her that he’d turned in his camera the same day and voiced an ambition to go into real estate.

Just as well, she thought. The real thing was pretty unpleasant. Television didn’t give you the true picture, because there was no such thing as smell-o-vision. She could recall times when she’d gone through a whole jar of Vicks Salve trying to work on a drowning victim like the one she’d shown the critical member of the Fourth Estate.

She rolled over again. She couldn’t get her mind to shut down long enough to allow for sleep. She was reviewing the meager facts she’d uncovered at the crime scene, trying to make some sort of sense out of it. Why would somebody drive a murder victim out of the city to kill him? Maybe because he didn’t know he was going to become a murder victim. Maybe he got in the car voluntarily.

Good point, she thought. But it didn’t explain the crime. Heat of passion wouldn’t cover this one. It was too deliberate. The perp meant to hide evidence. And he had.

She sighed. She wished she’d become a detective instead of a forensic specialist. It must be more fun solving crimes than being knee-deep in bodies. And prospective dates wouldn’t look at you from a safe distance with that expression of utter distaste, like that gardener in the hardware store this afternoon.

What had Grier called him, Fowler? Harley Fowler, that was it. Not a bad-looking man. He had a familiar face. Alice wondered why. She was sure she’d never seen him before today. She was sure she’d remember somebody that disagreeable.

Maybe he resembled somebody she knew. That was possible. Fowler. Fowler. No. It didn’t ring any bells. She’d have to let her mind brood on it for a couple of days. Sometimes that’s all it took to solve such puzzles—background working of the subconscious. She chuckled to herself. Background workings, she thought, will save me yet.

After hours of almost-sleep, she got up, dressed and went back to the crime scene. It was quiet, now, without the presence of almost every uniformed officer in the county. The body was lying in the local funeral home, waiting for transport to the medical examiner’s office in San Antonio. Alice had driven her evidence up to San Antonio, to the crime lab, and turned it over to the trace evidence people, specifically Longfellow.

She’d entrusted Longfellow with the precious piece of paper which might yield dramatic evidence, once unfolded. There had clearly been writing on it. The dead man had grasped it tight in his hand while he was being killed, and had managed to conceal it from his killer. It must have something on it that he was desperate to preserve. Amazing. She wanted to know what it was. Tomorrow, she promised herself, their best trace evidence specialist, Longfellow, would have that paper turned every which way but loose in her lab, and she’d find answers for Alice. She was one of the best CSI people Alice had ever worked with. When Alice drove right back down to Jacobsville, she knew she’d have answers from the lab soon.

Restless, she looked around at the lonely landscape, bare in winter. The local police were canvassing the surrounding area for anyone who’d seen something unusual in the past few days, or who’d noticed an out-of-town car around the river.

Alice paced the riverbank, a lonely figure in a neat white sweatshirt with blue jeans, staring out across the ripples of the water while her sneakers tried to sink into the damp sand. It was cooler today, in the fifties, about normal for a December day in south Texas.

Sometimes she could think better when she was alone at the crime scene. Today wasn’t one of those days. She was acutely aware of her aloneness. It was worse now, after the death of her father a month ago. He was her last living relative. He’d been a banker back in Tennessee, where she’d taken courses in forensics. The family was from Floresville, just down the road from San Antonio. But her parents had moved away to Tennessee when she was in her last year of high school, and that had been a wrench. Alice had a crush on a boy in her class, but the move killed any hope of a relationship. She really had been a late bloomer, preferring to hang out in the biology lab rather than think about dating. Amoeba under the microscope were so much more interesting.

Alice had left home soon after her mother’s death, the year she started college. Her mother had been a live wire, a happy and well-adjusted woman who could do almost anything around the house, especially cook. She despaired of Alice, her only child, who watched endless reruns of the old TV show Quincy, about a medical examiner, along with archaic Perry Mason episodes. Long before it was popular, Alice had dreamed of being a crime scene technician.

She’d been an ace at biology in high school. Her science teachers had encouraged her, delighting in her bright enthusiasm. One of them had recommended her to a colleague at the University of Texas campus in San Antonio, who’d steered her into a science major and helped her find local scholarships to supplement the small amount her father could afford for her. It had been an uphill climb to get that degree, and to add to it with courses from far-flung universities when time and money permitted; one being courses in forensic anthropology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. In between, she’d slogged away with other techs at one crime scene after another, gaining experience.

Once, in her haste to finish gathering evidence, due to a rare prospective date, she’d slipped up and mislabeled blood evidence. That had cost the prosecution staff a conviction. It had been a sobering experience for Alice, especially when the suspect went out and killed a young boy before being rearrested. Alice felt responsible for that boy’s death. She never forgot how haste had put the nails in his coffin, and she never slipped up again. She gained a reputation for being precise and meticulous in evidence-gathering. And she never went home early again. Alice was almost always the last person to leave the lab, or the crime scene, at the end of the day.

A revved-up engine caught her attention. She turned as a carload of young boys pulled up beside her white van at the river’s edge.

“Lookie there, a lonely lady!” one of them called. “Ain’t she purty?”

“Shore is! Hey, pretty thing, you like younger men? We can make you happy!”

“You bet!” Another one laughed.

“Hey, lady, you feel like a party?!” another one catcalled.

Alice glared. “No, I don’t feel like a party. Take a hike!” She turned back to her contemplation of the river, hoping they’d give up and leave.

“Aww, that ain’t no way to treat prospective boyfriends!” one yelled back. “Come on up here and lie down, lady. We want to talk to you!”

More raucous laughter echoed out of the car.

So much for patience. She was in no mood for teenagers acting out. She pulled out the pad and pen she always carried in her back pocket and walked up the bank and around to the back of their car. She wrote down the license plate number without being obvious about it. She’d call in a harassment call and let local law enforcement help her out. But even as she thought about it, she hesitated. There had to be a better way to handle this bunch of loonies without involving the law. She was overreacting. They were just teenagers, after all. Inspiration struck as she reemerged at the driver’s side of the car.

She ruffled her hair and moved closer to the tow-headed young driver. She leaned down. “I like your tires,” she drawled with a wide grin. “They’re real nice. And wide. And they have treads. I like treads.” She wiggled her eyebrows at him. “You like treads?”

He stared at her. The silly expression went into eclipse. “Treads?” His voice sounded squeaky. He tried again. “Tire…treads?”

“Yeah. Tire treads.” She stuck her tongue in and out and grinned again. “I reeaaally like tire treads.”

He was trying to pretend that he wasn’t talking to a lunatic. “Uh. You do. Really.”

She was enjoying herself now. The other boys seemed even more confused than the driver did. They were all staring at her. Nobody was laughing.

She frowned. “No, you don’t like treads. You’re just humoring me. Okay. If you don’t like treads, you might like what I got in the truck,” she said, lowering her voice. She jerked her head toward the van.

He cleared his throat. “I might like what you got in the truck,” he parroted.

She nodded, grinning, widening her eyes until the whites almost gleamed. She leaned forward. “I got bodies in there!” she said in a stage whisper and levered her eyes wide-open. “Real dead bodies! Want to see?”

The driver gaped at her. Then he exclaimed, “Dead…bod…Oh, Good Lord, no!”

He jerked back from her, slammed his foot down on the accelerator, and spun sand like dust as he roared back out onto the asphalt and left a rubber trail behind him.

She shook her head. “Was it something I said?” she asked a nearby bush.

She burst out laughing. She really did need a vacation, she told herself.

Harley Fowler saw the van sitting on the side of the road as he moved a handful of steers from one pasture to another. With the help of Bob, Cy Parks’s veteran cattle dog, he put the little steers into their new area and closed the gate behind him. A carload of boys roared up beside the van and got noisy. They were obviously hassling the crime scene woman. Harley recognized her van.

His pale blue eyes narrowed and began to glitter. He didn’t like a gang of boys trying to intimidate a lone woman. He reached into his saddlebag and pulled out his gunbelt, stepping down out of the saddle to strap it on. He tied the horse to a bar of the gate and motioned Bob to stay. Harley strolled off toward the van.

He didn’t think he’d have to use the pistol, of course. The threat of it would be more than enough. But if any of the boys decided to have a go at him, he could put them down with his fists. He’d learned a lot from Eb Scott and the local mercs. He didn’t need a gun to enforce his authority. But if the sight of it made the gang of boys a little more likely to leave without trouble, that was all right, too.

He moved into sight just at the back of Alice’s van. She was leaning over the driver’s side of the car. He couldn’t hear what she said, but he could certainly hear what the boy exclaimed as he roared out onto the highway and took off.

Alice was talking to a bush.

Harley stared at her with confusion.

Alice sensed that she was no longer alone, and she turned. She blinked. “Have you been there long?” she asked hesitantly.

“Just long enough to see the Happy Teenager Gang take a powder,” he replied. “Oh, and to hear you asking a bush about why they left.” His eyes twinkled. “Talk to bushes a lot in your line of work, do you?”

She was studying him curiously, especially the low-slung pistol in its holster. “You on your way to a gunfight and just stopped by to say hello?”

“I was moving steers,” he replied. “I heard the teenagers giving you a hard time and came to see if you needed any help. Obviously not.”

“Were you going to offer to shoot them for me?” she asked.

He chuckled. “Never had to shoot any kids,” he said with emphasis.

“You’ve shot other sorts of people?”

“One or two,” he said pleasantly, but this time he didn’t smile.

She felt chills go down her spine. If her livelihood made him queasy, the way he looked wearing that sidearm made her feel the same way. He wasn’t the easygoing cowboy she’d met in town the day before. He reminded her oddly of Cash Grier, for reasons she couldn’t put into words. There was cold steel in this man. He had the self-confidence of a man who’d been tested under fire. It was unusual, in a modern man. Unless, she considered, he’d been in the military, or some paramilitary unit.

“I don’t shoot women,” he said when she hesitated.

“Good thing,” she replied absently. “I don’t have any bandages.”

He moved closer. She seemed shaken. He scowled. “You okay?”

She shifted uneasily. “I guess so.”

“Mind telling me how you got them to leave so quickly?”

“Oh. That. I just asked if they’d like to see the dead bodies in my van.”

He blinked. He was sure he hadn’t heard her right. “You asked if…?” he prompted.

She sighed. “I guess it was a little over the top. I was going to call Hayes Carson and have him come out and save me, but it seemed a bit much for a little catcalling.”

He didn’t smile. “Let me tell you something. A little catcalling, if they get away with it, can lead to a little harassment, and if they get away with that, it can lead to a little assault, even if drugs or alcohol aren’t involved. Boys need limits, especially at that age. You should have called it in and let Hayes Carson come out here and scare the hell out of them.”

“Well, aren’t you the voice of experience!”

“I should be,” he replied. “When I was sixteen, an older boy hassled a girl in our class repeatedly on campus after school and made fun of me when I objected to it. A few weeks later, after she’d tried and failed to get somebody to do something about him, he assaulted her.”

She let out a whistle. “Heavy stuff.”

“Yes, and the teacher who thought I was overreacting when I told him was later disciplined for his lack of response,” he added coldly.

“We live in difficult times,” she said.

“Count on it.”

She glanced in the direction the car had gone. “I still have the license plate number,” she murmured.

“Give it to Hayes and tell him what happened,” he encouraged her. “Even if you don’t press charges, he’ll keep an eye on them. Just in case.”

She studied his face. “You liked that girl.”

“Yes. She was sweet and kind-natured. She…”

She moved a little closer. “She…?”

“She killed herself,” he said tightly. “She was very religious. She couldn’t live with what happened, especially after she had to testify to it in court and everyone knew.”

“They seal those files…” she began.

“Get real,” he shot back. “It happened in a small town just outside San Antonio, not much bigger than Jacobsville. I was living there temporarily with a nice older couple and going to school with her when it happened. The people who sat on the jury and in the courtroom were all local. They knew her.”

“Oh,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.”

He nodded.

“How long did the boy get?”

“He was a juvenile,” he said heavily. “He was under eighteen when it happened. He stayed in detention until he was twenty-one and they turned him loose.”

“Pity.”

“Yes.” He shook himself as if the memory had taken him over and he wanted to be free of it. “I never heard anything about him after that. I hope he didn’t prosper.”

“Was he sorry, do you think?”

He laughed coldly. “Sorry he got caught, yes.”

“I’ve seen that sort in court,” she replied, her eyes darkening with the memory. “Cocky and self-centered, contemptuous of everybody around them. Especially people in power.”

“Power corrupts,” he began.

“And absolute power corrupts absolutely,” she finished for him. “Lord Acton,” she cited belatedly.

“Smart gent.” He nodded toward the river. “Any new thoughts on the crime scene?”

She shook her head. “I like to go there alone and think. Sometimes I get ideas. I still can’t figure how he died here, when he was from San Antonio, unless he came voluntarily with someone and didn’t know they were going to kill him when they arrived.”

“Or he came down here to see somebody,” he returned, “and was ambushed.”

“Wow,” she said softly, turning to face him. “You’re good.”

There was a faint, ruddy color on his high cheekbones. “Thanks.”

“No, I mean it,” she said when she saw his expression. “That wasn’t sarcasm.”

He relaxed a little.

“We got off to a bad start, and it’s my fault,” Alice admitted. “Dead bodies make me nervous. I’m okay once I get started documenting things. It’s the first sight of it that upsets me. You caught me at a bad time, at the hardware store. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

“Nothing embarrasses me,” he said easily.

“I’m sorry, just the same.”

He relaxed a little more.

She frowned as she studied his handsome face. He really was good-looking. “You look so familiar to me,” she said. “I can’t understand why. I’ve never met you before.”

“They say we all have a doppelgänger,” he mused. “Someone who looks just like us.”

“Maybe that’s it,” she agreed. “San Antonio is a big city, for all its small-town atmosphere. We’ve got a lot of people. You must resemble someone I’ve seen.”

“Probably.”

She looked again at the crime scene. “I hope I can get enough evidence to help convict somebody of this. It was a really brutal murder. I don’t like to think of people who can do things like that being loose in society.”

He was watching her, adding up her nice figure and her odd personality. She was unique. He liked her. He wasn’t admitting it, of course.

“How did you get into forensic work?” he asked. “Was it all those crime shows on TV?”

“It was the Quincy series,” she confessed. “I watched reruns of it on TV when I was a kid. It fascinated me. I liked him, too, but it was the work that caught my attention. He was such an advocate for the victims.” Her eyes became soft with reminiscence. “I remember when evidence I collected solved a crime. It was my first real case. The parents of the victim came over and hugged me after the prosecutor pointed me out to them. I always went to the sentencing if I could get away, in cases I worked. That was the first time I realized how important my work was.” She grinned wickedly. “The convicted gave me the finger on his way out of the courtroom with a sheriff’s deputy. I grinned at him. Felt good. Really good.”

He laughed. It was a new sound, and she liked it.

“Does that make me less spooky?” she asked, moving a step closer.

“Yes, it does.”

“You think I’m, you know, normal?”

“Nobody’s really normal. But I know what you mean,” he said, and he smiled at her, a genuine smile. “Yes, I think you’re okay.”

She cocked her head up at him and her blue eyes twinkled. “Would you believe that extraordinarily handsome Hollywood movie stars actually call me up for dates?”

“Do they, really?” he drawled.

“No, but doesn’t it sound exciting?”

He laughed again.

She moved another step closer. “What I said, about not purchasing you if you were on sale in a groom shop…I didn’t really mean it. There’s a nice ring in that jewelry shop in Jacobsville,” she said dreamily. “A man’s wedding ring.” She peered up through her lashes. “I could buy it for you.”

He pursed his lips. “You could?”

“Yes. And I noticed that there’s a minister at that Methodist Church. Are you Methodist?”

“Not really.”

“Neither am I. Well, there’s a justice of the peace in the courthouse. She marries people.”

He was just listening now. His eyes were wide.

“If you liked the ring, and if it fit, we could talk to the justice of the peace. They also have licenses.”

He pursed his lips again. “Whoa,” he said after a minute. “I only met you yesterday.”

“I know.” She blinked. “What does that have to do with getting married?”

“I don’t know you.”

“Oh. Okay. I’m twenty-six. I still have most of my own teeth.” She displayed them. “I’m healthy and athletic, I like to knit but I can hunt, too, and I have guns. I don’t like spinach, but I love liver and onions. Oh, and I’m a virgin.” She smiled broadly.

He was breathless by this time. He stared at her intently.

“It’s true,” she added when he didn’t comment. She scowled. “Well, I don’t like diseases and you can’t look at a man and tell if he has one.” She hesitated. Frowned worriedly. “You don’t have any…?”

“No, I don’t have any diseases,” he said shortly. “I’m fastidious about women.”

“What a relief!” she said with a huge sigh. “Well, that covers all the basics.” Her blue eyes smiled up at him and she batted her long black eyelashes. “So when do we see the justice of the peace?”

“Not today,” he replied. “I’m washing Bob.”

“Bob?”

He pointed toward the cattle dog, who was still sitting at the pasture gate. He whistled. Bob came running up to him, wagging her long, silky tail and hassling. She looked as if she was always smiling.

“Hi, Bob,” Alice said softly, and bent to offer a hand, which Bob smelled. Then Alice stroked the silky head. “Nice boy.”

“Girl,” he corrected. “Bob’s a girl.”

She blinked at him.

“Mr. Parks said if Johnny Cash could have a boy named Sue, he could have a girl dog named Bob.”

“He’s got a point,” she agreed. She ruffled Bob’s fur affectionately. “You’re a beaut, Bob,” she told the dog.

“She really is. Best cattle dog in the business, and she can get into places in the brush that we can’t, on horseback, to flush out strays.”

“Do you come from a ranching family?” she asked absently as she stroked the dog.

“Actually I didn’t know much about cattle when I went to work for Mr. Parks. He had one of his men train me.”

“Wow. Nice guy.”

“He is. Dangerous, but nice.”

She lifted her head at the use of the word and frowned slightly. “Dangerous?”

“Do you know anything about Eb Scott and his outfit?”

“The mercenary.” She nodded. “We all know about his training camp down here. A couple of our officers use his firing range. He made it available to everyone in law enforcement. He’s got friends in our department.”

“Well, he and Mr. Parks and Dr. Micah Steele were part of a group who used to make their living as mercenaries.”

“I remember now,” she exclaimed. “There was a shoot-out with some of that drug lord Lopez’s men a few years ago!”

“Yes. I was in it.”

She let out a breath. “Brave man, to go up against those bozos. They carry automatic weapons.”

“I noticed.” That was said with a droll expression worth a hundred words.

She searched his eyes with quiet respect. “Now, I really want to see the justice of the peace. I’d be safe anywhere.”

He laughed. “I’m not that easy. You haven’t even brought me flowers, or asked me out to a nice restaurant.”

“Oh, dear.”

“What?”

“I don’t get paid until Friday, and I’m broke,” she said sorrowfully. She made a face. “Well, maybe next week? Or we could go dutch…”

He chuckled with pure delight. “I’m broke, too.”

“So, next week?”

“We’ll talk about it.”

She grinned. “Okay.”

“Better get your van going,” he said, holding out a palm-up hand and looking up. “We’re going to get a rain shower. You could be stuck in that soft sand when it gets wet.”

“I could. See you.”

“See you.”

She took off running for the van. Life was looking up, she thought happily.

Chapter Three

Harley went back to the ranch house with Bob racing beside his horse. He felt exhilarated for the first time in years. Usually he got emotionally involved with girls who were already crazy about some other man. He was the comforting shoulder, the listening ear. But Alice Jones seemed to really like him.

Of course, there was her profession. He felt cold when he thought about her hands working on dead tissue. That was a barrier he’d have to find some way to get past. Maybe by concentrating on what a cute woman she was.

Cy Parks was outside, looking over a bunch of young bulls in the corral. He looked up when Harley dismounted.

“What do you think, Harley?” he asked, nodding toward several very trim young Santa Gertrudis bulls.

“Nice,” he said. “These the ones you bought at the auction we went to back in October? Gosh, they’ve grown!”

He nodded. “They are. I brought them in to show to J. D. Langley. He’s looking for some young bulls for his own herd. I thought I’d sell him a couple of these. Good thing I didn’t have to send them back.”

Harley chuckled. “Good thing, for the seller. I remember the lot we sent back last year. I had to help you deliver them.”

“Yes, I remember,” Cy replied. “He slugged you and I slugged him.”

Harley resisted a flush. It made him feel good, that Mr. Parks liked him enough to defend him. He could hardly recall his father. It had been years since they’d had any contact at all. He felt a little funny recalling how he’d lied to his boss about his family, claiming that his mother could help brand cattle and his father was a mechanic. He’d gone to live with an older couple he knew after a fight with his real folks. It was a small ranch they owned, but only the wife lived on it. Harley had stayed in town with the husband at his mechanic’s shop most of the time. He hadn’t been interested in cattle at the time. Now, they were his life and Mr. Parks had taken the place of his father, although Harley had never put it into words. Someday, he guessed, he was going to have to tell his boss the truth about himself. But not today.

“Have any trouble settling the steers in their new pasture?” Cy asked.

“None at all. The forensic lady was out at the river.”

“Alice Jones?”

“Yes. She said sometimes she likes to look around crime scenes alone. She gets impressions.” He smiled. “I helped her with an idea about how the murder was committed.”

Parks looked at him and smiled. “You’ve got a good brain, Harley.”

He grinned. “Thanks.”

“So what was your idea?”

“Maybe the victim was here to see somebody and got ambushed.”

Parks’s expression became solemn. “That’s an interesting theory. If she doesn’t share it with Hayes Carson, you should. There may be somebody local involved in all this.”

“That’s not a comforting thought.”

“I know.” He frowned as he noted the gun and holster Harley was wearing. “Did we have a gunfight and I wasn’t invited?”

“This?” Harley fingered the butt of the gun. “Oh. No! There were some local boys trying to harass Alice. I strapped it on for effect and went to help her, but she’d already sent them running.”

“Threatened to call the cops, huh?” he asked pleasantly.

“She invited them to her van to look at bodies,” he said, chuckling. “They left tread marks on the highway.”

He grinned back. “Well! Sounds like she has a handle on taking care of herself.”

“Yes. But we all need a little backup, from time to time,” Harley said.

Cy put a hand on Harley’s shoulder. “You were mine, that night we had the shoot-out with the drug dealers. You’re a good man under fire.”

“Thanks,” Harley said, flushing a little with the praise. “You’ll never know how I felt, when you said that, after we got home.”

“Maybe I do. See about that cattle truck, will you? I think it’s misfiring again, and you’re the best mechanic we’ve got.”

“I’ll do it. Just don’t tell Buddy you meant it,” he pleaded. “He’s supposed to be the mechanic.”

“Supposed to be is right,” Cy huffed. “But I guess you’ve got a point. Try to tell him, in a nice way, that he needs to check the spark plugs.”

“You could tell him,” Harley began.

“Not the way you can. If I tell him, he’ll quit.” He grimaced. “Already lost one mechanic that way this year. Can’t afford to lose another. You do it.”

Harley laughed. “Okay. I’ll find a way.”

“You always do. Don’t know what I’d do without you, Harley. You’re an asset as a foreman.” He studied the younger man quietly. “I never asked where you came from. You said you knew cattle, but you really didn’t. You learned by watching, until I hooked you up with old Cal and let him tutor you. I always respected the effort you put in, to learn the cattle business. But you’re still as mysterious as you were the day you turned up.”

“Sometimes it’s better to look ahead, and not backward,” Harley replied.

Parks smiled. “Enough said. See you later.”

“Sure.”

He walked off toward the house where his young wife, Lisa, was waiting with one preschool-aged boy and one infant boy in her arms. Of all the people Harley would never have expected to marry, Mr. Parks was first on his list. The rancher had been reclusive, hard to get along with and, frankly, bad company. Lisa had changed him. Now, it was impossible to think of him as anything except a family man. Marriage had mellowed him.

Harley thought about what Parks had said, about how mysterious he was. Maybe Mr. Parks thought he was running from the law. That was a real joke. Harley was running from his family. He’d had it up to his neck with monied circles and important people and parents who thought position was everything. They’d argued heatedly one summer several years ago, when Harley was sixteen, about Harley’s place in the family and his lack of interest in their social life. He’d walked out.

He had a friend whose aunt and uncle owned a small ranch and had a mechanic’s shop in Floresville. He’d taken Harley down there and they’d invited him to move in. He’d had his school files transferred to the nearest high school and he’d started his life over. His parents had objected, but they hadn’t tried to force him to come back home. He graduated and went into the Army. But, just after he returned to Texas following his release from the Army, he went to see his parents and saw that nothing had changed at all. He was expected to do his part for the family by helping win friends and influencing the right people. Harley had left that very night, paid cash for a very old beat-up pickup truck and turned himself into a vagabond cowhand looking for work.

He’d gone by to see the elderly couple he’d lived with during his last year of high school, but the woman had died, the ranch had been sold and the mechanic had moved to Dallas. Discouraged, Harley had been driving through Jacobsville looking for a likely place to hire on when he’d seen cowboys working cattle beside the road. He’d talked to them and heard that Cy Parks was hiring. The rest was history.

He knew that people wondered about him. He kept his silence. It was new and pleasant to be accepted at face value, to have people look at him for who he was and what he knew how to do rather than at his background. He was happy in Jacobsville.

He did wonder sometimes if his people missed him. He read about them in the society columns. There had been a big political dustup just recently and a landslide victory for a friend of his father’s. That had caught his attention. But it hadn’t prompted him to try to mend fences. Years had passed since his sudden exodus from San Antonio, but it was still too soon for that. No, he liked being just plain Harley Fowler, cowboy. He wasn’t risking his hard-won place in Jacobsville for anything.

Alice waited for Hayes Carson in his office, frowning as she looked around. Wanted posters. Reams of paperwork. A computer that was obsolete, paired with a printer that was even more obsolete. An old IBM Selectric typewriter. A battered metal wastebasket that looked as if it got kicked fairly often. A CB unit. She shook her head. There wasn’t one photograph anywhere in the room, except for a framed one of Hayes’s father, Dallas, who’d been sheriff before him. Nothing personal.

Hayes walked in, reading a sheet of paper.

“You really travel light, don’t you?” Alice mused.

He looked up, surprised. “Why do you say that?”

“This is the most impersonal office I’ve ever walked into. Wait.” She held up a hand. “I take that back. Jon Blackhawk’s office is worse. He doesn’t even have a photograph in his.”

“My dad would haunt me if I removed his.” He chuckled, sitting down behind the desk.

“Heard anything from the feds?”

“Yes. They got a report back on the car. It was reported missing by a woman who works for a San Antonio politician yesterday. She has no idea who took it.”

“Damn.” She sighed and leaned back. “Well, Longfellow’s working on that piece of paper I found at the crime scene and we may get something from the cast I made of the footprint. We did find faint sole markings, from a sneaker. FBI lab has the cast. They’ll track down which company made the shoe and try to trace where it was sold.”

“That’s a damned long shot.”

“Hey, they’ve solved crimes from chips of paint.”

“I guess so.”

She was deep in thought. “Odd, how that paper was pushed into the dirt under his hand.”

“Somebody stepped on it,” Hayes reminded her.

“No.” Her eyes narrowed. “It was clenched in the victim’s hand and hidden under it.”

Hayes frowned. “Maybe the victim was keeping it hidden deliberately?”

She nodded. “Like, maybe he knew he was going to die and wanted to leave a clue that might bring his killer to justice.”

Hayes chuckled. “Jones, you watch too many crime dramas on TV.”

“Actually, to hear the clerk at the hardware tell it I don’t watch enough,” she sighed. “I got a ten-minute lecture on forensic entomology while he hunted up some supplies I needed.”

“Bug forensics?” he asked.

She nodded. “You can tell time of death by insect activity. I’ve actually taken courses on it. And I’ve solved at least one murder with the help of a bug expert.” She pushed back a stray wisp of dark hair. “But what’s really interesting, Carson, is teeth.”

He frowned. “Teeth?”

She nodded. “Dentition. You can tell so much about a DB from its teeth, especially if there are dental records available. For example, there’s Carabelli’s cusp, which is most frequently found in people of European ancestry. Then there’s the Uto-Aztecan upper premolar with a bulging buccal cusp which is found only in Native Americans. You can identify Asian ancestry in shovel-shaped incisors…Well, anyway, your ancestry, even the story of your life, is in your teeth. Your diet, your age…”

“Whether you got in bar fights,” he interrupted.

She laughed. “Missing some teeth, are we?”

“Only a couple,” he said easily. “I’ve calmed right down in my old age.”

“You and Kilraven,” she agreed dubiously.

He laughed. “Not that yahoo,” he corrected. “Kilraven will never calm down, and you can quote me.”

“He might, if he can ever slay his demons.” She frowned thoughtfully and narrowed her eyes. “We have a lot of law enforcement down here that works in San Antonio.” She was thinking out loud. “There’s Garon Grier, the assistant SAC in the San Antonio field office. There’s Rick Marquez, who works as a detective for San Antonio P.D. And then there’s Kilraven.”

“You trying to say something?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’m linking unconnected facts. Sometimes it helps. Okay, here goes. A guy comes down here from San Antonio and gets whacked. He’s driving somebody else’s stolen car. He’s messed up so badly that his own mother couldn’t identify him. Whoever killed him didn’t want him ID’d.”

“Lots of reasons for that, maybe.”

“Maybe. Hear me out. I’m doing pattern associations.” She got up, locked her hands behind her waist, and started pacing, tossing out thoughts as they presented themselves. “Of all those law enforcement people, Kilraven’s been the most conspicuous in San Antonio lately. He was with his brother, Jon, when they tried to solve the kidnapping of Gracie Marsh, Jason Pendleton’s stepsister…”

“Pendleton’s wife, now,” he interrupted with a grin.

She returned it. “He was also connected with the rescue of Rodrigo Ramirez, the DEA agent kidnapping victim whose wife, Glory, was an assistant D.A. in San Antonio.”

Hayes leaned back in his chair. “That wasn’t made public, any of it.”

She nodded absently.

“Rick Marquez has been pretty visible, too,” he pointed out. He frowned. “Wasn’t Rick trying to convince Kilraven to let him reopen that murder case that involved his family?”

“Come to think of it, yes,” she replied, stopping in front of the desk. “Kilraven refused. He said it would only resurrect all the pain, and the media would dine out on it. He and Jon both refused. They figured it was a random crime and the perp was long gone.”

“But that wasn’t the end of it.”

“No,” she said. “Marquez refused to quit. He promised to do his work on the QT and not reveal a word of it to anybody except the detective he brought in to help him sort through the old files.” She grimaced. “But the investigation went nowhere. Less than a week into their project, Marquez and his fellow detective were told to drop the investigation.”

Hayes pursed his lips. “Now isn’t that interesting?”

“There’s more,” she said. “Marquez and the detective went to the D.A. and promised to get enough evidence to reopen the case if they were allowed to continue. The D.A. said to let him talk to a few people. The very next week, the detective who was working with Marquez on the case was suddenly pulled off Homicide and sent back to the uniformed division as a patrol sergeant. And Marquez was told politely to keep his nose out of the matter and not to pursue it any further.”

Hayes was frowning now. “You know, it sounds very much as if somebody high up doesn’t want that case reopened. And I have to ask why?”

She nodded. “Somebody is afraid the case may be solved. If I’m guessing right, somebody with an enormous amount of power in government.”

“And we both know what happens when power is abused,” Hayes said with a scowl. “Years ago, when I was still a deputy sheriff, one of my fellow deputies—a new recruit—decided on his own to investigate rumors of a house of prostitution being run out of a local motel. Like a lamb, he went to the county council and brought it up in an open meeting.”

Alice grimaced, because she knew from long experience what most likely happened after that. “Poor guy!”

“Well, after he was fired and run out of town,” Hayes said, “I was called in and told that I was not to involve myself in that case, if I wanted to continue as a deputy sheriff in this county. I’d made the comment that no law officer should be fired for doing his job, you see.”

“What did you do?” she asked, because she knew Hayes. He wasn’t the sort of person to take a threat like that lying down.

“Ran for sheriff and won,” he said simply. He grinned. “Turns out the head of the county council was getting kickbacks from the pimp. I found out, got the evidence and called a reporter I knew in San Antonio.”

“That reporter?” she exclaimed. “He got a Pulitzer Prize for the story! My gosh, Hayes, the head of the county council went to prison! But it was for more than corruption…”

“He and the pimp also ran a modest drug distribution ring,” he interrupted. “He’ll be going up before the parole board in a few months. I plan to attend the hearing.” He smiled. “I do so enjoy these little informal board meetings.”

“Ouch.”

“People who go through life making their money primarily through dishonest dealings don’t usually reform,” he said quietly. “It’s a basic character trait that no amount of well-meaning rehabilitation can reverse.”

“We live among some very unsavory people.”

“Yes. That’s why we have law enforcement. I might add, that the law enforcement on the county level here is exceptional.”

She snarled at him. He just grinned.

“What’s your next move?” she asked.

“I’m not making one until I know what’s in that note. Shouldn’t your assistant have something by now, even if it’s only the text of the message?”

“She should.” Alice pulled out her cell phone and called her office. “But I’m probably way off base about Kilraven’s involvement in this. Maybe the victim just ticked off the wrong people and paid for it. Maybe he had unpaid drug bills or something.”

“That’s always a possibility,” Hayes had to agree.

The phone rang and rang. Finally it was answered. “Crime lab, Longfellow speaking.”

“Did you know that you have the surname of a famous poet?” Alice teased.

The other woman was all business, all the time, and she didn’t get jokes. “Yes. I’m a far-removed distant cousin of the poet, in fact. You want to know about your scrap of paper, I suppose? It’s much too early for any analysis of the paper or ink…”

“The writing, Longfellow, the writing,” Alice interrupted.

“As I said, it’s too early in the analysis. We’d need a sample to compare, first, and then we’d need a handwriting expert…”

“But what does the message say?” Alice blurted out impatiently. Honest to God, the other woman was so ponderously slow sometimes!

“Oh, that. Just a minute.” There was a pause, some paper ruffling, a cough. Longfellow came back on the line. “It doesn’t say anything.”

“You can’t make out the letters? Is it waterlogged, or something?”

“It doesn’t have letters.”

“Then what does it have?” Alice said with the last of her patience straining at the leash. She was picturing Longfellow on the floor with herself standing over the lab tech with a large studded bat…

“It has numbers, Jones,” came the droll reply. “Just a few numbers. Nothing else.”

“An address?”

“Not likely.”

“Give me the numbers.”

“Only the last six are visible. The others apparently were obliterated by the man’s sweaty palms when he clenched it so tightly. Here goes.”

She read the series of numbers.

“Which ones were obliterated?” Alice asked.

“Looks like the ones at the beginning. If it’s a telephone number, the area code and the first of the exchange numbers is missing. We’ll probably be able to reconstruct those at the FBI lab, but not immediately. Sorry.”

“No, listen, you’ve been a world of help. If I controlled salaries, you’d get a raise.”

“Why, thank you, Jones,” came the astonished reply. “That’s very kind of you to say.”

“You’re very welcome. Let me know if you come up with anything else.”

“Of course I will.”

Alice hung up. She looked at the numbers and frowned.

“What have you got?” Hayes asked.

“I’m not sure. A telephone number, perhaps.”

He moved closer and peered at the paper where she’d written those numbers down. “Could that be the exchange?” he asked, noting some of the numbers.

“I don’t know. If it is, it could be a San Antonio number, but we’d need to have the area code to determine that, and it’s missing.”

“Get that lab busy.”

She glowered at him. “Like we sleep late, take two-hour coffee breaks, and wander into the crime lab about noon daily!”

“Sorry,” he said, and grinned.

She pursed her full lips and gave him a roguish look. “Hey, you law enforcement guys live at doughnut shops and lounge around in the office reading sports magazines and playing games on the computer, right?”

He glowered back.

She held out one hand, palm up. “Welcome to the stereotype club.”

“When will she have some more of those numbers?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Has anybody spoken to the woman whose car was stolen to ask if someone she knew might have taken it? Or to pump her for information and find out if she really loaned it to him?” she added shrewdly.

“No, nobody’s talked to her. The feds in charge of the investigation wanted to wait until they had enough information to coax her into giving them something they needed,” he said.

“As we speak, they’re roping Jon Blackhawk to his desk chair and gagging him,” she pronounced with a grin. “His first reaction would be to drag her downtown and grill her.”

“He’s young and hotheaded. At least to hear his brother tell it.”

“Kilraven loves his brother,” Alice replied. “But he does know his failings.”

“I wouldn’t call rushing in headfirst a failing,” Hayes pointed out.

“That’s why you’ve been shot, Hayes,” she said.

“Anybody can get shot,” he said.

“Yes, but you’ve been shot twice,” she reminded him. “The word locally is that you’d have a better chance of being named king of some small country than you’d have getting a wife. Nobody around here is rushing to line up and become a widow.”

“I’ve calmed down,” he muttered defensively. “And who’s been saying that, anyway?”

“I heard that Minette Raynor was,” she replied without quite meeting his eyes.

His jaw tautened. “I have no desire to marry Miss Raynor, now or ever,” he returned coldly. “She helped kill my brother.”

“She didn’t, and you have proof, but suit yourself,” she said when he looked angry enough to say something unforgivable. “Now, do you have any idea how we can talk to that woman before somebody shuts her up? It looks like whoever killed that poor man on the river wouldn’t hesitate to give him company. I’d bet my reputation that he knew something that could bring down someone powerful, and he was stopped dead first. If the woman has any info at all, she’s on the endangered list.”

“Good point,” Hayes had to admit. “Do you have a plan?”

She shook her head. “I wish.”

“About that number, you might run it by the 911 operators,” he said. “They deal with a lot of telephone traffic. They might recognize it.”

“Now that’s constructive thinking,” she said with a grin. “But this isn’t my jurisdiction, you know.”

“The crime was committed in the county. That’s my jurisdiction. I’m giving you the authority to investigate.”

“Won’t your own investigator feel slighted?”

“He would if he was here,” he sighed. “He took his remaining days off and went to Wyoming for Christmas. He said he’d lose them if he didn’t use them by the end of the year. I couldn’t disagree and we didn’t have much going on when I let him go.” He shook his head. “He’ll punch me when he gets back and discovers that we had a real DB right here and he didn’t get to investigate it.”

“The way things look,” she said slowly, “he may still get to help. I don’t think we’re going to solve this one in a couple of days.”

“Hey, I saw a murder like this one on one of those CSI shows,” he said with pretended excitement. “They sent trace evidence out, got results in two hours and had the guy arrested and convicted and sent to jail just before the last commercial!”

She gave him a smile and a gesture that was universal before she picked up her purse, and the slip of paper, and left his office.

She was eating lunch at Barbara’s Café in town when the object of her most recent daydreams walked in, tall and handsome in real cowboy duds, complete with a shepherd’s coat, polished black boots and a real black Stetson cowboy hat with a brim that looked just like the one worn by Richard Boone in the television series Have Gun Will Travel that she used to watch videos of. It was cocked over his eyes and he looked as much like a desperado as he did a working cowboy.

He spotted Alice as he was paying for his meal at the counter and grinned at her. She turned over a cup of coffee and it spilled all over the table, which made his grin much bigger.

Barbara came running with a towel. “Don’t worry, it happens all the time,” she reassured Alice. She glanced at Harley, put some figures together and chuckled. “Ah, romance is in the air.”

“It is not,” Alice said firmly. “I offered to take him to a movie, but I’m broke, and he won’t go dutch treat,” she added in a soft wail.

“Aww,” Barbara sympathized.

“I don’t get paid until next Friday,” Alice said, dabbing at wet spots on her once-immaculate oyster-white wool slacks. “I’ll be miles away by then.”

“I get paid this Friday,” Harley said, straddling a chair opposite Alice with a huge steak and fries on a platter. “Are you having a salad for lunch?” he asked, aghast at the small bowl at her elbow. “You’ll never be able to do any real investigating on a diet like that. You need protein.” He indicated the juicy, rare steak on his own plate.

Alice groaned. He didn’t understand. She’d spent so many hours working in her lab that she couldn’t really eat a steak anymore. It was heresy here in Texas, so she tended to keep her opinions to herself. If she said anything like that, there would be a riot in Barbara’s Café.

So she just smiled. “Fancy seeing you here,” she teased.

He grinned. “I’ll bet it wasn’t a surprise,” he said as he began to carve his steak.

“Whatever do you mean?” she asked with pretended innocence.

“I was just talking to Hayes Carson out on the street and he happened to mention that you asked him where I ate lunch,” he replied.

She huffed. “Well, that’s the last personal question I’ll ever ask him, and you can take that to the bank!”

“Should I mention that I asked him where you ate lunch?” he added with a twinkle in his pale eyes.

Alice’s irritated expression vanished. She sighed. “Did you, really?” she asked.

“I did, really. But don’t take that as a marriage proposal,” he said. “I almost never propose to crime scene investigators over lunch.”

“Crime scene investigators?” a cowboy from one of the nearby ranches exclaimed, leaning toward them. “Listen, I watch those shows all the time. Did you know that they can tell time of death by…!”

“Oh, dear, I’m so sorry!” Alice exclaimed as the cowboy gaped at her. She’d “accidentally” poured a glass of iced tea all over him. “It’s a reflex,” she tried to explain as Barbara came running, again. “You see, every time somebody talks about the work I do, I just get all excited and start throwing things!” She picked up her salad bowl. “It’s a helpless reflex, I just can’t stop…”

“No problem!” the cowboy said at once, scrambling to his feet. “I had to get back to work anyway! Don’t think a thing about it!”

He rushed out the door, trailing tea and ice chips, leaving behind half a cup of coffee and a couple of bites of pie and an empty plate.

Harley was trying not to laugh, but he lost it completely. Barbara was chuckling as she motioned to one of her girls to get a broom and pail.

“I’m sorry,” Alice told her. “Really.”

Barbara gave her an amused glance. “You don’t like to talk shop at the table, do you?”

“No. I don’t,” she confessed.

“Don’t worry,” Barbara said as the broom and pail and a couple of paper towels were handed to her. “I’ll make sure word gets around. Before lunch tomorrow,” she added, still laughing.

Chapter Four

After that, nobody tried to engage Alice in conversation about her job. The meal was pleasant and friendly. Alice liked Harley. He had a good personality, and he actually improved on closer acquaintance, as so many people didn’t. He was modest and unassuming, and he didn’t try to monopolize the conversation.

“How’s your investigation coming?” he asked when they were on second cups of black coffee.

She shrugged. “Slowly,” she replied. “We’ve got a partial number, possibly a telephone number, a stolen car whose owner didn’t know it was stolen and a partial sneaker track that we’re hoping someone can identify.”

“I saw a program on the FBI lab that showed how they do that,” Harley replied. He stopped immediately as soon as he realized what he’d said. He sat with his fork poised in midair, eyeing Alice’s refilled coffee mug.

She laughed. “Not to worry. I’ll control my reflexes. Actually the lab does a very good job running down sneaker treads,” she added. “The problem is that most treads are pretty common. You get the name of a company that produces them and then start wearing out shoe leather going to stores and asking for information about people who bought them.”

“What about people who paid cash and there’s no record of their buying them?”

“I never said investigation techniques were perfect,” she returned, smiling. “We use what we can get.”

He frowned. “Those numbers, it shouldn’t be that hard to isolate a telephone number, should it? You could narrow it down with a computer program.”

“Yes, but there are so many possible combinations, considering that we don’t even have the area code.” She groaned. “And we’ll have to try every single one.”

He pursed his lips. “The car, then. Are you sure the person who owned it didn’t have a connection to the murder victim?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Ever considered a career in law enforcement?”

He laughed. “I did, once. A long time ago.” He grimaced, as if the memory wasn’t a particularly pleasant one.

“We’re curious about the car,” she said, “but they don’t want to spook the car’s owner. It turns out that she works for a particularly unpleasant member of the political community.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Who?”

She hesitated.

“Come on. I’m a clam. Ask my boss.”

“Okay. It’s the senior U.S. senator from Texas who lives in San Antonio,” she confessed.

Harley made an ungraceful movement and sat back in his chair. He stared toward the window without really seeing anything. “You think the politician may be connected in some way?”

“There’s no way of knowing right now,” she sighed. “Everybody big in political circles has people who work for them. Anybody can get involved with a bad person and not know it.”

“Are they going to question the car owner?”

“I’m sure they will, eventually. They just want to pick the right time to do it.”

He toyed with his coffee cup. “So, are you staying here for a while?”

She grimaced. “A few more days, just to see if I can develop any more leads. Hayes Carson wants me to look at the car while the lab’s processing it, so I guess I’ll go up to San Antonio for that and come back here when I’m done.”

He just nodded, seemingly distracted.

She studied him with a whimsical expression. “So, when are we getting married?” she asked.

He gave her an amused look. “Not today. I have to move cattle.”

“My schedule is very flexible,” she assured him.

He smiled. “Mine isn’t.”

“Rats.”

“Now, that’s interesting, I was just thinking about rats. I have to get cat food while I’m in town.”

She blinked. “Cat food. For rats?”

“We keep barn cats to deal with the rat problem,” he explained. “But there aren’t quite enough mice and rats to keep the cats healthy, so we supplement.”

“I like cats,” she said with a sigh and a smile. “Maybe we could adopt some stray ones when we get married.” She frowned. “Now that’s going to be a problem.”

“Cats are?”

“No. Where are we going to live?” she persisted. “My job is in San Antonio and yours is here. I know,” she said, brightening. “I’ll commute!”

He laughed. She made him feel light inside. He finished his coffee. “Better work on getting the bridegroom first,” he pointed out.

“Okay. What sort of flowers do you like, and when are we going on our first date?”

He pursed his lips. She was outrageously forward, but behind that bluff personality, he saw something deeper and far more fragile. She was shy. She was like a storefront with piñatas and confetti that sold elegant silverware. She was disguising her real persona with an exaggerated one.

He leaned back in his chair, feeling oddly arrogant at her interest in him. His eyes narrowed and he smiled. “I was thinking we might take in a movie at one of those big movie complexes in San Antonio. Friday night.”

“Ooooooh,” she exclaimed, bright-eyed. “I like science fiction.”

“So do I, and there’s a remake of a 1950’s film playing. I wouldn’t mind seeing it.”

“Neither would I.”

“I’ll pick you up at your motel about five. We’ll have dinner and take in the movie afterward. That suit you?”

She was nodding furiously. “Should I go ahead and buy the rings?” she asked with an innocent expression.

He chuckled. “I told you, I’m too tied up right now for weddings.”

She snapped her fingers. “Darn!”

“But we can see a movie.”

“I like movies.”

“Me, too.”

They paid for their respective meals and walked out together, drawing interest from several of the café patrons. Harley hadn’t been taking any girls around with him lately, and here was this cute CSI lady from San Antonio having lunch with him. Speculation ran riot.

“They’ll have us married by late afternoon,” he remarked, nodding toward the windows, where curious eyes were following their every move.

“I’ll go back in and invite them all to the wedding, shall I?” she asked at once.

“Kill the engine, dude,” he drawled in a perfect imitation of the sea turtle in his favorite cartoon movie.

“You so totally rock, Squirt!” she drawled back.

He laughed. “Sweet. You like cartoon movies, too?”

“Crazy about them,” she replied. “My favorite right now is Wall-E, but it changes from season to season. They just get better all the time.”

“I liked Wall-E, too,” he agreed. “Poignant story. Beautiful soundtrack.”

“My sentiments, exactly. That’s nice. When we have kids, we’ll enjoy taking them to the theater to see the new cartoon movies.”

He took off his hat and started fanning himself. “Don’t mention kids or I’ll faint!” he exclaimed. “I’m already having hot flashes, just considering the thought of marriage!”

She glared at him. “Women have hot flashes when they enter menopause,” she said, emphasizing the first word.

He lifted his eyebrows and grinned. “Maybe I’m a woman in disguise,” he whispered wickedly.

She wrinkled her nose up and gave him a slow, interested scrutiny from his cowboy boots to his brown hair. “It’s a really good disguise,” she had to agree. She growled, low in her throat, and smiled. “Tell you what, after the movie, we can undress you and see how good a disguise it really is.”

“Well, I never!” he exclaimed, gasping. “I’m not that kind of man, I’ll have you know! And if you keep talking like that, I’ll never marry you. A man has his principles. You’re just after my body!”

Alice was bursting at the seams with laughter. Harley followed her eyes, turned around, and there was Kilraven, in uniform, staring at him.

“I read this book,” Kilraven said after a minute, “about a Scot who disguised himself as a woman for three days after he stole an English payroll destined for the turncoat Scottish Lords of the Congregation who were going to try to depose Mary, Queen of Scots. The family that sheltered him was rewarded with compensation that was paid for centuries, even after his death, they say. He knew how to repay a debt.” He frowned. “But that was in the sixteenth century, and you don’t look a thing like Lord Bothwell.”

“I should hope not,” Harley said. “He’s been dead for over four hundred years!”

Alice moved close to him and bumped him with her hip. “Don’t talk like that. Some of my best friends are dead people.”

Harley and Kilraven both groaned.

“It was a joke,” Alice burst out, exasperated. “My goodness, don’t you people have a sense of humor?”

“He doesn’t,” Harley said, indicating Kilraven.

“I do so,” Kilraven shot back, glaring. “I have a good sense of humor.” He stepped closer. “And you’d better say that I do, because I’m armed.”

“You have a great sense of humor,” Harley replied at once, and grinned.

“What are you doing here?” Alice asked suddenly. “I thought you were supposed to be off today.”

Kilraven shrugged. “One of our boys came down with flu and they needed somebody to fill in. Not much to do around here on a day off, so I volunteered,” he added.

“There’s TV,” Alice said.

He scoffed. “I don’t own a TV,” he said huffily. “I read books.”

“European history?” Harley asked, recalling the mention of Bothwell.

“Military history, mostly, but history is history. For instance,” he began, “did you know that Hannibal sealed poisonous snakes in clay urns and had his men throw them onto the decks of enemy ships as an offensive measure?”

Harley was trying to keep a straight face.

Alice didn’t even try. “You’re kidding!”

“I am not. Look it up.”

“I’d have gone right over the side into the ocean!” Alice exclaimed, shivering.

“So did a lot of the enemy combatants.” Kilraven chuckled. “See what you learn when you read, instead of staying glued to a television set?”

“How can you not have a television set?” Harley exclaimed. “You can’t watch the news…”

“Don’t get me started,” Kilraven muttered. “Corporate news, exploiting private individuals with personal problems for the entertainment of the masses! Look at that murder victim who was killed back in the summer, and the family of the accused is still getting crucified nightly in case they had anything to do with it. You call that news? I call it bread and circuses, just like the arena in ancient Rome!”

“Then how do you know what’s going on in the world?” Alice had to know.

“I have a laptop computer with Internet access,” he said. “That’s where the real news is.”

“A revolutionary,” Harley said.

“An anarchist,” Alice corrected.

“I am an upstanding member of law enforcement,” Kilraven retorted. He glanced at the big watch on his wrist. “And I’m going to be late getting back on duty if I don’t get lunch pretty soon.”

Harley was looking at the watch and frowning. He knew the model. It was one frequently worn by mercs. “Blade or garrote?” he asked Kilraven, nodding at the watch.

Kilraven was surprised, but he recovered quickly. “Blade,” he said. “How did you know?”

“Micah Steele used to wear one just like it.”

Kilraven leaned down. “Guess who I bought it from?” he asked. He grinned. With a wave, he sauntered into the café.

“What were you talking about?” Alice asked curiously.

“Trade secret,” Harley returned. “I have to get going. I’ll see you Friday.”

He turned away and then, just as suddenly turned back. “Wait a minute.” He pulled a small pad and pencil out of his shirt pocket and jotted down a number. He tore off the paper and handed it to her. “That’s my cell phone number. If anything comes up, and you can’t make it Friday, you can call me.”

“Can I call you anyway?” she asked.

He blinked. “What for?”

“To talk. You know, if I have any deeply personal problems that just can’t wait until Friday?”

He laughed. “Alice, it’s only two days away,” he said.

“I could be traumatized by a snake or something.”

He sighed. “Okay. But only then. It’s hard to pull a cell phone out of its holder when you’re knee-deep in mud trying to extract mired cattle.”

She beamed. “I’ll keep that in mind.” She tucked the number in the pocket of her slacks. “I enjoyed lunch.”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling. “Me, too.”

She watched him walk away with covetous eyes. He really did have a sensuous body, very masculine. She stood sighing over him until she realized that several pair of eyes were still watching her from inside the café. With a self-conscious grin in their direction, she went quickly to her van.

The pattern in the tennis shoes was so common that Alice had serious doubts that they’d ever locate the seller, much less the owner. The car was going to be a much better lead. She went up to the crime lab while they were processing it. There was some trace evidence that was promising. She also had Sergeant Rick Marquez, who worked out of San Antonio P.D., get as much information as he could about the woman the murdered man had stolen the car from.

The next morning in Jacobsville, on his way to work in San Antonio, Rick stopped by Alice’s motel room to give her the information he’d managed to obtain. “She’s been an employee of Senator Fowler for about two years,” Rick said, perching on the edge of the dresser in front of the bed while she paced. “She’s deeply religious. She goes to church on Sundays and Wednesdays. She’s involved in an outreach program for the homeless, and she gives away a good deal of her salary to people she considers more needy.” He shook his head. “You read about these people, but you rarely encounter them in real life. She hasn’t got a black mark on her record anywhere, unless you consider a detention in high school for being late three days in a row when her mother was in the hospital.”

“Wow,” Alice exclaimed softly.

“There’s more. She almost lost the job by lecturing the senator for hiring illegal workers and threatening them with deportation if they asked for higher wages.”

“What a sweetheart,” Alice muttered.

“From what we hear, the senator is the very devil to work for. They say his wife is almost as hard-nosed. She was a state supreme court judge before she went into the import/export business. She made millions at it. Finances a good part of the senator’s reelection campaigns.”

“Is he honest?”

“Is any politician?” Marquez asked cynically. “He sits on several powerful committees in Congress, and was once accused of taking kickbacks from a Mexican official.”

“For what?”

“He was asked to oppose any shoring up of border security. Word is that the senator and his contact have their fingers in some illegal pies, most notably drug trafficking. But there’s no proof. The last detective who tried to investigate the senator is now working traffic detail.”

“A vengeful man.”

“Very.”

“I don’t suppose that detective would talk to me?” she wondered aloud.

“She might,” he replied surprisingly. “She and I were trying to get the Kilraven family murder case reopened, if you recall, when pressure was put on us to stop. She turned her attention to the senator and got kicked out of the detective squad.” He grimaced. “She’s a good woman. Got an invalid kid to look after and an ex-husband who’s a pain in the butt, to put it nicely.”

“We heard about the cold case being closed. You think the senator might have been responsible for it?” she wondered aloud.

“We don’t know. He has a protégé who’s just been elected junior senator from Texas, and the protégé has some odd ties to people who aren’t exactly the crème of society. But we don’t dare mention that in public.” He smiled. “I don’t fancy being put on a motorcycle at my age and launched into traffic duty.”

“Your friend isn’t having to do that, surely?” she asked.

“No, she’s working two-car patrols on the night shift, but she’s a sergeant, so she gets a good bit of desk work.” He studied her. “What’s this I hear about you trying to marry Harley?”

She grinned. “It’s early days. He’s shy, but I’m going to drown him in flowers and chocolate until he says yes.”

“Good luck,” he said with a chuckle.

“I won’t even need it. We’re going to a movie together Friday.”

“Are you? What are you going to see?”

“The remake of that fifties movie. We’re going to dinner first.”

“You are a fast worker, Alice,” he said with respect. He checked his watch. “I’ve got to get back to the precinct.”

She glanced at his watch curiously. “You don’t have a blade or a wire in that thing, do you?”

“Not likely,” he assured her. “Those watches cost more than I make, and they’re used almost exclusively by mercs.”

“Mercs?” She frowned.

“Soldiers of fortune. They work for the highest bidder, although our local crowd had more honor than that.”

Mercs. Now she understood Harley’s odd phrasing about “trade secrets.”

“Where did you see a watch like that?” he asked.

She looked innocent. “I heard about one from Harley. I just wondered what they were used for.”

“Oh. Well, I guess if you were in a tight spot, it might save your life to have one of those,” he agreed, distracted.

“Before you go, can you give me the name and address of that detective in San Antonio?” she asked.

He hesitated. “Better let me funnel the questions to her, Alice,” he said with a smile. “She doesn’t want anything to slip out about her follow-ups on that case. She’s still working it, without permission.”

She raised an eyebrow. “So are you, unless I miss my guess. Does Kilraven know?”

He shook his head. Then he hesitated. “Well, I don’t think he does. He and Jon Blackhawk still don’t want us nosing around. They’re afraid the media will pick up the story and it will become the nightly news for a year or so.” He shook his head. “Pitiful, how the networks don’t go out and get any real news anymore. They just create it by harping on private families mixed up in tragedies, like living soap operas.”

“That’s how corporate media works,” she told him. “If you want real news, buy a local weekly newspaper.”

He laughed. “You’re absolutely right. Take care, Alice.”

“You, too. Thanks for the help.”

“Anytime.” He paused at the door and grinned at her. “If Harley doesn’t work out, you could always pursue me,” he invited. “I’m young and dashing and I even have long hair.” He indicated his ponytail. “I played semiprofessional soccer when I was in college, and I have a lovely singing voice.”

She chuckled. “I’ve heard about your singing voice, Marquez. Weren’t you asked, very politely, to stay out of the church choir?”

“I wanted to meet women,” he said. “The choir was full of unattached ones. But I can sing,” he added belligerently. “Some people don’t appreciate real talent.”

She wasn’t touching that line with a pole. “I’ll keep you in mind.”

“You do that.” He laughed as he closed the door.

Alice turned back to her notes, spread out on the desk in the motel room. There was something nagging at her about the piece of paper they’d recovered from the murder victim. She wondered why it bothered her.

Harley picked her up punctually at five on Friday night for their date. He wasn’t overdressed, but he had on slacks and a spotless sports shirt with a dark blue jacket. He wasn’t wearing his cowboy hat, either.

“You look nice,” she said, smiling.

His eyes went to her neat blue sweater with embroidery around the rounded neckline and the black slacks she was wearing with slingbacks. She draped a black coat with fur collar over one arm and picked up her purse.

“Thanks,” he said. “You look pretty good yourself, Alice.”

She joined him at the door. “Ooops. Just a minute. I forgot my cell phone. I was charging it.”

She unplugged it and tucked it into her pocket. It rang immediately. She grimaced. “Just a minute, okay?” she asked Harley.

She answered the phone. She listened. She grimaced. “Not tonight,” she groaned. “Listen, I have plans. I never do, but I really have plans tonight. Can’t Clancy cover for me, just this once? Please? Pretty please? I’ll do the same for her. I’ll even work Christmas Eve…okay? Thanks!” She beamed. “Thanks a million!”

She hung up.

“A case?” he asked curiously.

“Yes, but I traded out with another investigator.” She shook her head as she joined him again at the door. “It’s been so slow lately that I forgot how hectic my life usually is.”

“You have to work Christmas Eve?” he asked, surprised.

“Well, I usually volunteer,” she confessed. “I don’t have much of a social life. Besides, I think parents should be with children on holidays. I don’t have any, but all my coworkers do.”

He paused at the door of his pickup truck and looked down at her. “I like kids,” he said.

“So do I,” she replied seriously, and without joking. “I’ve just never had the opportunity to become a parent.”

“You don’t have to be married to have kids,” he pointed out.

She gave him a harsh glare. “I am the product of generations of Baptist ministers,” she told him. “My father was the only one of five brothers who went into business instead. You try having a modern attitude with a mother who taught Sunday School and uncles who spent their lives counseling young women whose lives were destroyed by unexpected pregnancies.”

“I guess it would be rough,” he said.

She smiled. “You grew up with parents who were free thinkers, didn’t you?” she asked, curious.

He grimaced. He put her into the truck and got in beside her before he answered. “My father is an agnostic. He doesn’t believe in anything except the power of the almighty dollar. My mother is just like him. They wanted me to associate with the right people and help them do it. I stayed with a friend’s parents for a while and all but got adopted by them—he was a mechanic and they had a small ranch. I helped in the mechanic’s shop. Then I went into the service, came back and tried to work things out with my real parents, but it wasn’t possible. I ran away from home, fresh out of the Army Rangers.”

“You were overseas during the Bosnia conflict, weren’t you?” she asked.

He snapped his seat belt a little violently. “I was a desk clerk,” he said with disgust. “I washed out of combat training. I couldn’t make the grade. I ended up back in the regular Army doing clerical jobs. I never even saw combat. Not in the Army,” he added.

“Oh.”

“I left home, came down here to become a cowboy barely knowing a cow from a bull. The friends that I lived with had a small ranch, but I mostly stayed in town, working at the shop. We went out to the ranch on weekends, and I wasn’t keen on livestock back then. Mr. Parks took me on anyway. He knew all along that I had no experience, but he put me to work with an old veteran cowhand named Cal Lucas who taught me everything I know about cattle.”

She grinned. “It took guts to do that.”

He laughed. “I guess so. I bluffed a lot, although I am a good mechanic. Then I got in with this Sunday merc crew and went down to Africa with them one week on a so-called training mission. All we did was talk to some guys in a village about their problems with foreign relief shipments. But before we could do anything, we ran afoul of government troops and got sent home.” He sighed. “I bragged about how much I’d learned, what a great merc I was.” He glanced at her as they drove toward San Antonio, but she wasn’t reacting critically. Much the reverse. He relaxed a little. “Then one of the drug lords came storming up to Mr. Parks’s house with his men and I got a dose of reality—an automatic in my face. Mr. Parks jerked two combat knives out of his sleeves and threw them at the two men who were holding me. Put them both down in a heartbeat.” He shook his head, still breathless at the memory. “I never saw anything like it, before or since. I thought he was just a rancher. Turns out he went with Micah Steele and Eb Scott on real merc missions overseas. He listened to me brag and watched me strut, and never said a word. I’d never have known, if the drug dealers hadn’t attacked. We got in a firefight with them later.”

“We heard about that, even up in San Antonio,” she said.

He nodded. “It got around. Mr. Parks and Eb Scott and Micah Steele got together to take out a drug distribution center near Mr. Parks’s property. I swallowed my pride and asked to go along. They let me.” He sighed. “I grew up in the space of an hour. I saw men shot and killed, I had my life saved by Mr. Parks again in the process. Afterward, I never bragged or strutted again. Mr. Parks said he was proud of me.” He flushed a little. “If my father had been like him, I guess I’d still be at home. He’s a real man, Mr. Parks. I’ve never known a better one.”

“He likes you, too.”

He laughed self-consciously. “He does. He’s offered me a few acres of land and some cattle, if I’d like to start my own herd. I’m thinking about it. I love ranching. I think I’m getting good at it.”

“So we’d live on a cattle ranch.” She pursed her lips mischievously. “I guess I could learn to help with branding. I mean, we wouldn’t want our kids to think their mother was a sissy, would we?” she asked, laughing.

Harley gave her a sideways glance and grinned. She really was fun to be with. He thought he might take her by the ranch one day while she was still in Jacobsville and introduce her to Mr. Parks. He was sure Mr. Parks would like her.

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