walked to her pickup, her eyes burning. She could feel someone watching her, the gaze boring into her back. Her grandmother? Or that awful Enid?
She slid behind the wheel, anxious to get away before she shed the tears now blurring her eyes. She wouldn’t give either old woman the satisfaction of seeing how much that had hurt.
PEPPER WINCHESTER STOOD at the window trembling with rage as she watched McCall drive away.
“You should have told me how much she resembles me,” she said, knowing Enid was behind her even though she hadn’t heard the woman approach. Trace used to say that Enid moved as silently as a ghost—or a cat burglar.
“What would have been the point?” Enid asked. “You didn’t have to see her. Now you’re upset and—”
Pepper spun around to face her ancient housekeeper the patrol pickup disappeared down the road. “Of course I’m upset. Why would she come here and ask about Trace?”
“Because she believes he was her father.”
Pepper scoffed at that, just as she had when Trace told her that he’d gotten that tramp Ruby Bates pregnant. But the proof had been standing in her house just moments before.
There was no denying that McCall was a Winchester—and her father’s daughter.
“You’re the one who let her in,” Enid complained. “I could have gotten rid of her.”
When Pepper had seen the sheriff’s department vehicle pull in, she’d thought it might be news about Trace and had been unable to smother that tiny ember of hope that caught fire inside her.
“She’ll be back, you know,” Enid warned in obvious disapproval. “She wants more than what she got this time.”
Yes, Pepper suspected McCall would be back. She’d seen herself and Trace in the young brazen woman.
“So,” Enid said with a sigh. “Can I get you anything?”
My son Trace. That was the only thing she wanted.
“I just want to be alone.” Pepper turned back to the window, looking down at the long curve of the road into the ranch.
All this time, she’d expected a call or a visit from the sheriff. Word from someone about her son. And after twenty-seven years to have his daughter show up at her door …
Why would McCall be investigating her father’s disappearance now? Or had that just been an excuse to come out to the ranch?
For weeks after Trace left, Pepper would stare at that road waiting for him to come down it. How many times had she imagined him driving up that road in his new black pickup, getting out, his jacket thrown over one shoulder, cowboy hat cocked back to expose his handsome face, his long jean-clad legs closing the distance as if he couldn’t wait to get home.
She’d been so sure he would contact her. Eventually he would call for money. He’d known she could make his hunting violation charge go away—just as she had the others.
For that reason, she’d never understood why he would run away. She’d blamed that tramp he’d foolishly married. Trace wasn’t ready for marriage, let alone a child. Especially one Pepper had been convinced would turn out to be someone else’s bastard. She’d despised Ruby for trapping her son and giving Trace no way out but to leave town.
But after weeks, then months had gone by with no word, Pepper feared she was the reason her son had left and never came back. The thought had turned her heart to stone.
She’d walled herself up here in the lodge unable to face life outside the ranch. Worse, she’d replayed her last argument with Trace over and over in her head.
McCall was right. She had threatened to cut him off without a cent if he didn’t divorce Ruby and denounce that bastard child she was carrying. Trace had pleaded with her to give Ruby a chance, swearing the baby was his.
Pepper sighed. Apparently, he’d been right about that at least, she thought now. She was still trembling from finally coming face-to-face with Trace’s daughter. McCall.
That bitch Ruby had named the girl after her grandfather, Call Winchester, just to throw it in Pepper’s face.
But there was no doubt. The girl definitely was of Winchester blood.
She frowned as she remembered something McCall had said. “Then why did you think he’d left town?”
McCall hadn’t come to the ranch out of simple curiosity. If that were true, she would have shown up sooner.
Pepper stepped to the phone. For years, she hadn’t spoken to another soul other than Enid and her housekeeper’s husband, Alfred—and fortunately neither of them had much to say.
Then McCall had shown up, she thought with a curse as she dialed the sheriff’s department.
LUKE SPENT A COUPLE OF HOURS looking around Whitehorse for the poachers’ pickup before he headed south. His jurisdiction included everything from the Canadian border to the Missouri River—an area about the size of the state of Massachusetts.
For that reason, he put close to twenty-five thousand miles on his three-quarter-ton pickup every year. His truck was his office as well as his main source of transportation unless he was in one of the two boats he used to patrol the area’s waterways.
This time of year, because of paddlefish season, he spent most of his time on the Missouri River south of Whitehorse. Today he was checking tags and watching for fishing violations. Fishing was picking up all over his area from the Milk River to reservoirs Nelson and Fort Peck.
For the next few months, he’d be spending fourteen-to -hour days watching fishermen, checking licenses and boats for safety equipment.
That wouldn’t leave much time to catch the deer poachers, but he figured they knew that.
Tired from getting up at dawn, Luke headed back toward Whitehorse a little earlier than usual. His place was just to the south, his parents’ old homestead that he’d bought when he’d recently returned to Whitehorse. The homestead had been sold following his parents’ deaths but he’d managed to get it back.
He liked to think it was a sign that he’d made the right decision by coming back here. A sign that there was a chance for him and McCall. He was building a new house on the property and was anxious for a couple of days off to work on it.
As he drove over the rise on the road, the stark skeleton of his new house set against the sunset, he slowed. The truck parked down by his stock pond didn’t look familiar.
He pulled his pickup to a stop and got out, scanning the old windbreak of Russian olive trees as he did. The unfamiliar truck had local plates. As he walked past the pickup, he saw an older outboard lying in the back in a pool of oil and the broken tip of a fishing pole floating next to it.
“Hey!”
The greeting startled him even as he recognized the voice.
His cousin Eugene Crawford stepped from behind one of the outbuildings where he’d obviously gone to take a leak. He had a fishing pole in one hand and a beer
