She ate while he stared, knowing what he had to do. If she was really in danger, he needed to make sure he was near. This assignment was no hardship at all. “Tell me the facts, Brandi.”
“This big guy in his forties comes in almost every Tuesday and Saturday. He drinks Jack and Bud until he passes out, or gets generally obscene and Hank kicks him out. I think he’s a trucker because sometimes he looks like he’s put in a long day. He smells of motor oil and fresh-cut wood. There’s no trouble if he only has a few beers. He leaves early, probably going home to his wife, or he’s out of money. But when he settles in for the night, he’s like a wild boar by midnight.”
She shrugged. “I’m not afraid of him, but I hate that Hank and Sorrel have to deal with him.”
Dan brushed her arm when he leaned closer and took half her sandwich. The touch, like hers, had been no accident. There was something very sensual about sharing food. Something lovers did. “And if he had more than a few, is that when he bothers you?”
“No.” She smiled, stealing another chip. “He bothers me all the time. Staring at me. Making obscene signs of what he wants to do with me. Telling anyone who will listen that I’m going to go home with him one night.
“When he’s drunk, he gets loud and starts saying I’m his girl. That’s why Hank started locking the stage door. I step off stage, Hank locks the door from the inside and goes back down the passage to the door by the bar. One night when the trucker tried the door, he pounded so hard they had to throw him out. After that, he’s been better, but he waits outside even after we close.” Brandi bumped Dan’s shoulder with her own. “How can you help?”
“I could talk to him, but unless you want to file a restraining order, there’s not much the law can do.”
She smiled that sad smile again. Like she was forcing sorrow away. Like her whole life was a lie. “I don’t want to think about it right now. I have another set to do. I’ve been hoping you’d come back to hear my songs.”
Dan couldn’t let the problem go. “And if he’s still here later or waiting in the parking lot?”
“Then I’ll sleep here. I’m not driving back to the motel worrying that he might be following.” She stood and fluffed her wild hair, painted her lips, pulled on a vest with fringe that tickled her hips.
He watched, fascinated at how she turned into someone else so fast. The hungry eyes he’d seen when he’d kissed her had frozen to porcelain like a doll’s stare, unreadable, cold. He didn’t know which Brandi was the real one, but both fascinated him.
“I’ll stay until you finish and follow you home, just to make sure.” He hadn’t slept in two days, but Dan knew he wouldn’t close his eyes tonight if he thought she was in danger.
She walked past him and opened the door. When she turned back, no smile curved her full lips. “If you follow me home, Sheriff, you’re not leaving until dawn.”
Every cell in his body wanted to pull her to him, but there was no time. The canned music had stopped. Hank must have unlocked the stage door because his voice blared down the hallway.
Dan stared at her, his words low. “I’m following you home. You’ll be safe tonight.”
“And warm,” she whispered back.
Tuesday night
CODY WINSLOW THUNDERED through the night on a half-wild horse that loved to run. The moon followed them, dancing along the edge of the canyon as they darted over winter buffalo grass that was stiff with frost.
The former Texas Ranger watched the dark outline of the earth where the land cracked open wide enough for a river to run at its base.
The canyon’s edge seemed to snake closer, as if it were moving, crawling over the flat plains, daring Cody to challenge death. One misstep might take him and the horse over the rim and into the black hole. They’d tumble maybe a hundred feet down, barreling over jagged rocks and frozen juniper branches as sharp as spears. No horse or man would survive.
Only tonight Cody wasn’t worried. He needed to ride, to run, to feel adrenaline pumping in his veins, to know he was alive. He rode hoping to outrun his dark mood.
The demons that were always in the corners of his mind were chasing him tonight. Daring him to step over the edge and tumble into death’s darkness. Whispering that he should give up even trying to live. Betting him to take one more risk...the one that would finally kill him.
“Run,” he shouted to the midnight mare. Nothing would catch him here. Not on his ranch. Not on land his ancestors had hunted on for thousands of years. Fought over. Died for and bled into. Apache blood, settler blood, Comanchero blood was mixed in him as it was in many people in this part of Texas. His family tree was a tumbleweed of every kind of tribe that ever crossed the plains.
If the horse fell and they went to their deaths, no one would find them for weeks on this far corner of his ranch. Even the canyon that twisted like crippled fingers off the great Palo Duro had no name here. It wasn’t beautiful like Ransom Canyon, with layers of earth revealed in a rainbow of colors. Here the rocks were jagged, shooting out of the deep earthen walls from twenty feet in some places, almost like a thin shelf.
The petrified wood formations along the floor of the canyon reminded Cody of snipers waiting, unseen but deadly. Cody felt numb, already dead inside, as he raced across a place with no name on a horse he called Midnight.
The horse’s hooves tapped suddenly over a low place where water ran off the flatland and into the canyon. Frozen now. Silent. Deadly black ice. For a moment the tapping matched Cody’s heartbeat, then both horse and rider seemed to realize the danger at once.
Cody leaned back, pulling the reins, hoping to stop the animal in time, but the horse reared in panic. Dancing on her hind legs for a moment before twisting violently and bucking Cody off as if he was no more than a green rider on his first bronc.
As Cody flew through the night air, he almost smiled. The battle he’d been fighting since he was shot and left for dead on the border three years ago was about to end here on his own land. The voices of all the ancestors who came before him whispered in the wind, as if calling him.
When he hit the frozen ground so hard it knocked the air from his lungs, he knew death wouldn’t come easy tonight. Though he’d welcome the silence, Cody knew he’d fight to the end. He came from generations of fighters. He was the last of his line, and here in the dark he’d make his stand. Too far away to call for help. And too stubborn to ask anyway.
As he fought to breathe, his body slid over a tiny river of frozen rain and into the black canyon.
He twisted, struggling to stop, but all he managed to do was tumble down. Branches whipped against him, and rocks punched his ribs with the force of a prizefighter’s blow. And still he rolled. Over and over. Ice on his skin, warm blood dripping into his eyes. He tried bracing for the hits that came when he landed for a moment before his body rolled again. He grabbed for a rock or a branch to hold on to, but his leather gloves couldn’t get a grip on the ice.
He wasn’t sure if he managed to relax or pass out, but when he landed on a flat rock near the bottom of the canyon, total blackness surrounded him and the few stars
