she could do it then, either.” Lincoln’s mouth quirked in a melancholy smile at Haley’s disbelief. “But she did. We all did. That’s where our paths crossed— the first summer of jumper training. Lucky and I had been friends all our lives—the moment we met her, she fit.
“Linsey grew up in an orphanage, we became her family.” He glanced at the photo of three figures dressed for a jump, exhilarated by the challenge. “We were a team— Lucky Stuart, Linsey Blair, Lincoln Cade. We were called the Three L’s.”
“This was taken the last year—was it your last jump?”
Lincoln struggled to ease the constriction in his chest. “After the photograph was taken, Lucky was called home. His mother was ill. Two months later he came back. We jumped one more time.”
Haley wondered why only one. Lincoln loved jumping. It was in his voice. Even now. “What happened?”
Lincoln’s gaze lifted to Haley. But his mind, and perhaps his heart, had stepped back in time. Memories couldn’t be hurried. Keeping the gaze that saw another face, she waited.
“We were in Oregon.” His voice was distant, as if it came from the faraway place of his thoughts. “The fire had burned for weeks, with jumpers fighting winds as much as the blaze. We were backing each other, as always, when the current shifted and the fire turned, cutting us off from the rest of the crew.”
He fell silent; she waited. Again her wait was rewarded.
“Lucky had a knack for maps—he recalled a river. We ran for it and into a slide. Our radios were broken. A head injury left me confused, unsteady on my feet. I couldn’t walk out.”
“But Linsey and Lucky did?” Haley dared comment into the staccato retelling of a life-and-death drama.
“Only Lucky.” Lincoln turned to the window, seeing wind-fanned flames and falling earth beyond its panes. “The fire turned again, and we stumbled on a shack on secure ground. By then it was clear I’d suffered a concussion at the least. Lucky calculated that with burned ground, the slide, and the river as fire breaks, we had a little time before the blaze circled around. Leaving Linsey to look after me, he walked out alone.”
“Through the fire, Lincoln?”
“Through burned paths that could reignite at any time. If they had—” Halting, he turned a bleak face to Haley, then away again. “Lucky risked his life for mine.”
“And for Linsey,” Haley murmured, studying his profile. Seeing heartache he’d hidden from the world.
As her classmate in veterinary studies, he’d revealed nothing personal. He wouldn’t now, if he weren’t exhausted and hurting. Yet, because she knew Lincoln, she knew there was more. Something left unsaid. Haley went where intuition led. “You loved her.”
“We both did.”
“So you stepped aside.” When he didn’t respond, she asked, “Where is Lucky now?”
“Lucky died.” He looked away. “Four months ago.”
Haley blinked back tears for a grieving friend, for a stranger called Lucky. For a rare friendship. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.” A hand briefly shielded his eyes. “So am I.”
“And now you’re looking for his wife. To help.”
“For Lucky’s sake. I wasn’t there when he needed me, but I thought…” He seemed to lose himself in a mood. In a moment he spoke again. “Shortly after he died, Linsey left Oregon and dropped out of sight. With no family and no roots, she could be anywhere. Nobody I’ve hired has found a trace of her.”
Lincoln said nothing more, and Haley wouldn’t question his search for Lucky Stuart’s widow. Whatever his reason, it wouldn’t be to trade on the past, nor because he loved her still. Lincoln Cade wasn’t a man who would barter on grief.
No matter what prompted his search, Haley hoped he would find Linsey Stuart. If it was right, she hoped they would find love and peace together. But that was for another time, another place. And, she suspected, for reconciled lovers to discover.
“It’s late, Lincoln. You’re exhausted, and I’m famished. Shall we share this thoughtful repast and call it a day?”
He smiled at her ploy to entice him to eat. But as he accepted the sandwich she offered, Haley saw the laughter left the silver of his eyes untouched.
Lincoln considered the wire and the tuft of brown fur caught on a barb. For the third time in a week he’d checked the deteriorating west pasture fence and the second time he’d found evidence of an animal passing near or through the wire. His first thought was deer. Closer inspection suggested dogs.
Among the mongrels of Belle Reve, some were white, some blond, some black. None were brown.
The west pasture was isolated, bordered by two rivers, the sprawl of Belle Reve, and Stuart land. No inhabited houses or farms were close enough for straying pets or working dogs. That left the threat of a pack of lost or abandoned pets. Dogs that would run a horse to death for the joy of the chase.
The Black Arabian stock his brother Jackson kept in pastures at the plantation were far too valuable to dismiss suspicions of a pack gone wild. He decided he would warn Jackson and enlist his aid in trapping the animals. Catching the pommel of his saddle and stepping into the stirrup, Lincoln mounted Diablo.
His inspection complete, he sat for an indecisive moment, trying to resist the lure of the path beyond the fence. The path that would lead to the Stuart farm. In the end he succumbed to a need he’d battled for weeks.
“Won’t hurt to check the property.” As Diablo’s black ears flicked at the sound of his voice, with his palm Lincoln stroked the stallion’s mane. “Could be the pack settled in the barn. And there’s a step to measure for repair.”
Glancing at the sky, gauging the position of the sun, he tapped the horse with the reins. “A couple of hours of daylight left, Diablo. Time enough.”
Diablo was eager to run. Lincoln himself enjoyed the rush as the Arabian topped the fence and raced over the corridor that a century before had been the Stuarts’ wagon route to town.
Beyond sight of the farm, Lincoln slowed to a walk. If the dogs had made their den on the property, they would be gone before he could find it, if he came riding in like the Lone Ranger.
“Easy, boy. No sudden moves.” He walked the horse slowly, barely rustling the grass that grew knee high. “Don’t want to spook them if they’re here.”
With a grunt hardly stifled, he jerked to a startled halt. “What the devil?”
Bending in the saddle, peering through a copse of massive trees, he saw light. Light where there should be no light, gleaming through windows of the Stuart farmhouse.
Illusion? A trick of the sun glinting off glass? Intruders or looters after all these years of the farmhouse standing unlocked?
Maybe. He could persuade himself to accept that. But the creak of rusty hinges was neither a trick nor an illusion. Nor was the woman who pushed open the door and stepped onto the porch. With her hair gleaming like spilling
