instead of him. Now she’d rented her apartment to J. D. West? Worse, she thought the man deserved a second chance?
He felt himself getting upset again. J.D. had gotten more chances than he deserved before he had even left Beartooth all those years ago. To think Lynette might be taken in by him upset him more than he wanted to admit.
And she thought he was merely being jealous? He let out a curse as he neared his house.
Automatically he slowed. Not that long ago, he would have been anxious to return home. He liked his small house, his few animals, the wide-open spaces the ranch provided him.
Back then he’d had a family of sorts waiting for him. A family of crows had taken up residency in his yard. He’d come to think of them as his own and had spent years studying them, intrigued how much they were like humans.
They would always be waiting for him as he drove in and would caw a welcome. He’d gotten where he could tell them apart by their greetings.
Now, though, the telephone line was empty, just like the clothesline and the ridge on the barn. Tiffany had killed one of them to get back at him. Crows, being very intelligent birds, had left. He’d learned from studying them that they would warn other crows about the danger at his house. They wouldn’t be back nor would others come if they felt threatened.
With a heavy heart, he pulled in and climbed out. The night was dark here in the valley with clouds shrouding the stars. He stood for a moment, staring up at the empty telephone wire, feeling the terrible weight of all his losses.
The sudden sound of glass breaking somewhere inside his house startled him from his dark thoughts. Drawing his gun, he sprinted toward the open front door.
* * *
MADDIE LISTENED TO the wind whipping the tops of the pines. Closer, the fire crackled softly as it burned down. The familiar sounds were comforting—unlike the sound of the deputy across the fire from her. He moved restlessly in his sleeping bag. She’d bet this was the first time he’d slept under the stars—let alone in the middle of nowhere on the side of a mountain.
She could have erected the tent that was kept here along with a few supplies. It hadn’t been all orneriness that had made her dismiss the idea. True, she hadn’t wanted to take the time to put up the tent. Nor had she wanted to expend the energy, and she’d figured the deputy would have been no help.
But those weren’t the real reasons. If she was being honest, she hadn’t wanted to be in the close confines of a tent with her worries—or the deputy. Not tonight.
She mentally cursed herself. What was she doing here with such a city slicker? He didn’t know the country. Worse, he didn’t know how dangerous it could be. What was he doing in Montana, anyway?
It irritated her that she’d had to bring him. But her other choice was letting him look for the sheep camp alone. Better to take him up here to alleviate his concerns. She desperately wanted to prove him wrong.
Jamison was the least of her problems and she knew it. She closed her eyes against the fears that had haunted her from the instant she’d seen Dewey in the back of that stall.
What had happened? She clung to the hope that when they reached the camp, they would find Branch sitting outside his sheepherder wagon whittling on a piece of pine, his dog, Lucy, at his feet, and all two thousand sheep in a grassy meadow behind him, safe and growing fatter.
It was conceivable that the boy had gotten scared when he couldn’t find Branch. When he found a dying lamb, just as he’d said, he would have foolishly thought he could save it. Failing that, he’d panicked and hightailed it out of there. It could have happened just that way, she told herself.
Which meant that when they reached the sheep camp, Branch would give her hell for hiring Dewey, something she had to admit she deserved. She’d take the deputy back down out of the mountains and get Branch a new tender, someone older, someone with experience.
Even as she thought it, she knew how hard it was going to be to find a tender. No one wanted to spend three months back in the wilds. Even sheepherders were hard to find, for that matter. Good thing Branch enjoyed it, but he was getting old—just a few months short of his sixty-eighth birthday. It wouldn’t be long before he couldn’t make the trek, she thought, refusing to let herself accept that this might be his last year—no matter what they found back in the mountains.
All good reasons to give up herding the sheep to high grazing pasture each summer season, she told herself.
She heard the deputy roll over again and felt a stab of guilt. She shouldn’t have mentioned grizzlies, but smiled even as she chastised herself for purposely trying to scare him. He was probably worried about bears and wouldn’t get a wink of sleep.
Maddie thought about telling him that she had her shotgun as well as her .357 Magnum pistol within reach. Also, she could mention that with two thousand sheep not far away, the grizzlies would rather have lamb than either one of them.
But a moment later, Jamison seemed to settle down, and as he did, she heard him snoring softly.
Irritated he could fall asleep so quickly, she snuggled down in her sleeping bag and prayed. It had been so long since any of her prayers had been answered, though, that she didn’t have much hope these would be, either.
* * *
FRANK KNEW HE should call for backup, but the last time he’d caught someone going through his things it had turned out to be his daughter.
He moved cautiously up onto the porch. The front door was ajar. He hadn’t noticed when he’d driven up because he’d been grieving for the loss of his crows.
But now he was paying attention. He glanced back over his shoulder. Where had the intruder parked? Not by the barn or he would have seen the vehicle when he drove in. Whoever it was must have used the back road, parked behind the house and sneaked around to the front to get inside.
That meant the person knew about the back way into the property. It was no leap to assume whoever was inside his house knew him and knew he never locked the front door.
Standing to one side, Frank eased the door all the way open. The living room was dark, but a light was on down the hall. It cast a faint yellow glow that weakened as it reached the living room. But it was enough light to see that the place had been ransacked.
A thief would have gone straight for the guns in his den or the television and stereo, even the old laptop he kept on the small desk in the spare room. A thief wouldn’t have bothered tearing up the living room, which was only sparsely furnished and clearly had nothing of any real value.
As Frank stepped in, he was pretty sure he wasn’t dealing with a thief—but a vandal with a grudge. He’d made enemies as sheriff, but not that many in his career. Avoiding the floorboards that creaked, he moved through the house toward the sound of the racket going on in his bedroom. He could hear his vandal destroying everything within reach.
Frank had never gotten very attached to things, so he had little regard for the furnishings in his home. All were replaceable. Maybe his intruder didn’t know that about him. Or care. It sounded as if the person was working out some anger issues on his house. As he moved closer to the open door to his bedroom, he was anxious to know just who it was.
Nearer the open door, he stopped. He listened to things breaking for a moment. Then cautiously,
