guardian.
There was no one else to turn to and, besides, Connor had never been one to believe in buck-passing.
Taking care of three younger siblings and a modest cattle ranch was a hell of a responsibility to take on for an eighteen-year-old, so the rest of them—Cody, Cole and Cassidy—figured that the least they could do was not give Connor a hard time about anything, including the rules he saw fit to set down and enforce.
Connor’s Code, they had all come to agree, was there for their own good. If they were to survive in a world that could—all too easily—be rough and cruel, they had to pull together.
And in exchange for not giving Connor any grief, their older brother returned the favor. He backed them whenever he could and never made them feel as if they were victims of a cold fate. He taught them that they were the masters of their own destinies. They just had to fight a little harder to forge them.
Even so, when Cody had decided to do something different with his life—change his career path to become a deputy—he was certain that Connor would voice his objections, or at least display a degree of displeasure with his choice.
Instead, Connor had heard him out when he made his case. At the end, he had nodded, saying, “If that’s what you want to do, do it. You change your mind, the ranch is always going to be here for you. But if you’re going to be a deputy, I want you to be the best damn deputy you can be. I don’t want to hear anyone telling me that the sheriff regrets the day he took you on as Alma’s replacement.”
And Cody had promised to give the job nothing less than his best—which had turned out to be a challenge.
Alma Rodriguez Tyler might have been a small woman, as well as the first female deputy that Forever, Texas, had ever had, but Cody would have been the first one to say that she had left some pretty big boots to fill.
Even so, he had taken to the job like the proverbial duck to water. Cody discovered that he really loved it. Loved putting on the uniform, the badge. Loved being a deputy the way he hadn’t ever really loved being a rancher.
The only part of ranching that was near and dear to his heart was the horses. He loved riding, loved becoming one with the animal beneath him. While his other siblings gradually shifted over to getting around in the family truck or the second-hand Jeep they had all chipped in to buy, Cody loved riding. He had ever since he’d been a toddler and his late father, Josh, had picked him up and put him on the back of his first horse, a sleepy-eyed old mare named Libby.
Still, like any young man of twenty-five, Cody had given in to conformity and saved up to buy his own Jeep in the interest of the image he knew he had to project as one of Sheriff Rick Santiago’s deputies.
Not that there was all that much for the sheriff’s department to do. It wasn’t as if Forever, population of a little over five hundred people these days, was exactly a hotbed of either criminal activity or underhanded dealings. There was the occasional argument that escalated to trading blows, and of course there was Miss Elizabeth, an eighty-nine-year-old widow who, from time to time, would be found wandering the streets of Forever, sleepwalking in her nightgown.
For the most part, theirs was a quiet little town. He and the two deputies, Joe Lone Wolf and Gabe Rodriguez, were seen more as friends than as lawmen.
But a man’s word was his bond and Cody believed in being at his desk at the beginning of each workday because he was supposed to, not because he was waiting for some minor crime wave to break out so he could jump into action.
As fate would have it, his spirit might have been more than willing to arrive on time, but his Jeep’s was not. For some reason, the vehicle had simply refused to turn over when he put his key in the ignition, despite the fact that the town’s sole mechanic—thought to be a veritable wizard when it came to machinery—had overhauled it and pronounced it good as new.
Cody knew everything there was to know about horses and absolutely nothing when it came to car engines. After one more futile attempt to rouse the engine, he’d pocketed his key and thrown a saddle on Flint, a golden palomino he had raised from a colt.
A couple of minutes later, he was headed toward Forever at a quick gallop.
Entirely focused on not being late, Cody had almost missed seeing the beat-up pickup truck. The truck, which had definitely seen better days, was pulled over to the far side of the road. And even if he had seen it, it was in such poor condition, he would have just assumed it was abandoned.
Cody had already ridden past it when he thought he heard a scream.
Pulling up Flint’s reins, he paused, cocked his head and listened again.
Nothing.
He was just about to chalk it up to either his imagination or the summer wind, which could, at times, make a mournful sound. Cody was on the verge of lightly kicking the palomino’s flanks and resuming his journey when he heard it again.
This time there was no doubt in his mind. What he’d heard was definitely a scream. It was loud, full-bodied and strong enough to not just make his blond hair stand on end, but to send a hard shiver down his spine, as well.
Automatically putting his hand over his holster to assure himself that he had remembered to strap on his weapon before heading out, Cody turned his horse around and galloped right back toward the clearly not abandoned pickup truck. Excitement coursed through his body.
Someone was in trouble.
Oh God, this was such a bad idea. She shouldn’t have driven out looking for him in her condition.
“Yeah, like you really had a choice,” Devon Bennett mocked herself, sarcasm saturating each word.
Independent to a fault, accustomed to handling everything that came her way, Devon could never have resisted looking for Jack when she woke up to find him gone from the motel room.
At first, she’d thought he’d just gone out to get them breakfast—but he wouldn’t have needed to take their suitcase for that. And it was missing, along with her credit cards and all the money out of her purse.
He did leave her the truck. But that wasn’t because he’d had an attack of conscience, or even because she was carrying his baby and was due to deliver in about a week or so. Being coldly honest with herself, Devon knew that Jack hadn’t taken the truck for one reason and one reason only. The truck was still there, parked right outside of the rundown motel, because Jack couldn’t find the keys to it.
He wasn’t able to find them because she’d had this uneasy feeling that Jack was having second thoughts about the plans they had laid out for their future. Not knowing what Jack might impulsively decide to do, she had tucked the keys to the truck under her pillow—smack in the center so that even if he did suspect they were there, he would have had to move her in such a way that she was certain to wake up.
Looking back now as she scanned the desolate area—weren’t there supposed to be some people around this forsaken wilderness?—Devon couldn’t have said exactly what had possessed her to hide the keys, but maybe, somewhere deep down, she didn’t really trust Jack anymore. Oh, he’d smiled a lot and talked about these grand plans he had for the two of them, promising that everything would be wonderful once they got
