they were all crammed inside, he closed the door, slid the dead bolt, switched on the light and waited for a chorus of gratifying gasps.
“What’s all this junk?”
The corners of Lonnie’s mouth drooped. “What do you mean, what is it? It’s artifacts.”
“Your ‘private stash’ is bunch of old broken pots?” one man scoffed. Now Lonnie was getting mad. After all these years he had finally decided to share his collection and this was what he got? He pointed at a square-looking figure in a glass case. “That there, that’s a rare Central American Human Effigy. Worth almost five thousand bucks.” He pointed at another case. “And that canteen is Southwest Anasazi. I paid three thousand for it. The case over there is full of Mississippian Indian relics. Any museum would love to have just one of these things.”
“Where’d you get ’em?”
This came from his best friend of the group, who was eyeing Lonnie as though he was some kind of traitor.
“Here and there.”
“Black market?”
Lonnie shrugged.
“What about this?”
Lonnie turned to admire a prehistoric carved rock bowl. The handle was a crude rendition of a human head, turned away from the indentation, the skull overlaid with a veneer of gold.
“That’s my latest purchase,” Lonnie boasted. “It’s local, from right here in Wyoming. No one knows which tribe, but it’s old. Prehistoric. Paid a bundle for it, too.”
“Someone local sold it to you? Who?”
Lonnie shook his head. “No, no, I ain’t telling. He promised me more pieces though. Said he was going deeper, whatever that means.”
There was a sudden chill in the room as though a north wind had just blown over the top of an icy Rocky Mountain peak. Lonnie looked from one face to the next. Neither set of eyes revealed a thing.
It was there, though. In the air. Something cold and watchful.
He rubbed his eyes, wondering if the booze had made him woolly-headed, but he couldn’t shake the feeling he wasn’t the only one in that small private room who kept secrets.
Or that the ones he sensed might be as dangerous as his own.
Chapter One
They’d been driving for what felt like forever, but that wasn’t the real problem. It seemed to Echo De Gris that her stepfather’s anxiety had increased with every advancing mile into Wyoming and now that they were on Open Sky Ranch land, it was almost suffocating.
This made no sense because he was the one who had insisted moving back here soon after Echo’s mother’s long illness had finally claimed her life. Echo had been surprised when, at the last minute, he’d asked her to come along on the trip—they had never really been close and she was in the middle of life-changing events of her own. But how could she deny him?
“There it is,” he said, his voice anxious. He shifted around and flashed her a nervous smile, then peered back out the window. His voice barely a whisper, he repeated himself. “There it is.”
She’d been so involved maneuvering the big truck and rented trailer along the gravel road that wound its way through the rolling hillsides of tall grass that she hadn’t looked very far ahead. She did now as they topped a peak, and caught a glimpse of a large log house nestled near a pond in the valley below. Aspens surrounded the house while the uncompromising Rocky Mountains ringed the valley. A dozen barns and outbuildings fanned into corrals and fenced pastures while an airstrip ran more or less parallel to a stream. There were several black cows in evidence, their lowing riding on a gentle breeze. Horses, some with foals at their sides, dotted the hillsides.
She’d lived here as a small girl but everything looked bigger now than she remembered. High white clouds, brilliant blue skies, jagged peaks.
And talk about remote…
“Herd must be up at the summer pastures,” Pete Westin mused and there was a wistful tone to his craggy voice. She wasn’t sure why he’d sold out and moved her and her mother to the West Coast twenty-some-odd years before; she was just grateful he had. Imagine growing up someplace like this. Even the thought of a day or two in such a spot made her itchy.
A few moments later, she drove into the yard, pulling the rig to a stop beside a half dozen other trucks, most of them with dusty ATVs roped into the beds. All she had to do now was help her stepfather get settled, then she was free to catch a ride to Woodwind and buy a ticket on the first plane headed back to civilization.
“I wonder where everybody is. I expected them to be mowing the fields by now, but it doesn’t look as though they’ve even started,” Pete said as he opened his door.
Echo scooted out from behind the wheel. “I’ll take a look around,” she said. It was a big truck with a long drop to the ground and her full skirt caught in the retracting seat belt. She ended up with bare thighs in a swirl of cotton.
“Never mind, here comes someone,” Pete called from the other side of the truck.
As Echo battled with her clothes she looked up to see a man approaching.
There was something about a cowboy, even to a city slicker like her. Maybe it was the snug jeans or the shirt stretched across strong, broad shoulders; maybe it was the way a guy moved when he didn’t spend a lot of time sitting. Or the hat—black in this instance—shading the eyes, squaring the jaw. Whatever it was, whew. Some of them just had “it” and you knew what “it” was when you saw it.
He looked away from her predicament, but not before she saw the speculation in his silvery eyes. Damn—she was nearly naked from the waist down. With a final yank, she reclaimed her skirt.
His gaze moved to her face, then away as he appeared to notice her stepfather on the far side of the truck. He looked quickly back at Echo and speculation turned into surprise. “Either Uncle Pete got himself a pretty young wife or you’re my little cousin Echo,” he said as they shook hands.
She narrowed her eyes and looked him over again. Too young to be Cody…gray eyes…
She’d seen his college graduation picture a few years earlier, taken with his dad, a herd of cattle behind them. “You’re Adam,” she said.
His smile tipped handsome into gorgeous. “I didn’t know you were coming with Uncle Pete.”
“It was sort of last-minute. I’ll be gone before you know it.”
“She’s got herself a new job in New York City,” Pete grumbled. He’d made no bones about his opinion of her moving across the country.
Adam released her hand. “New York, huh. You’ve turned into a big city girl.”
“I grew up in San Francisco,” she reminded him. “I mean, after we left here.”
“Well, it’s nice to see you. It’s been a long time.”
“Yes,
