of it. Dark hair framed the face of an angel, while ice-cold fury shone in her dark eyes. It took him a moment to realize that her anger was directed at him.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I can take care of myself,” she said, snatching the hat from his fingers. “I didn’t need you coming to my defense.” She started to storm down the alley in the direction the man had gone.
Jack mentally kicked himself for getting involved in what now appeared to be a lover’s quarrel. He should have known better. Just as he should have known to let well enough alone and let the woman leave without another word.
“From what I heard, it sure didn’t sound like you didn’t need my help,” he said to her retreating back.
She stopped and turned to look back at him. Her eyes narrowed into slits as she stepped toward him, back into the faint glow of the café sign. “What you heard? What exactly is it you think you heard?”
He raised both hands and took a step back. “Nothing. I should have just left you alone to take care of yourself.”
“Yes, you should have.”
He nodded. “I won’t make that mistake again.”
With that, he turned and walked away, shaking his head at his attempt at chivalry. Still, he couldn’t help but think about the slash of red on her one perfect cheek where the man had obviously hit her. Well, whoever she was, like the man she’d been arguing with, she wasn’t from around here.
He told himself he wouldn’t be crossing either of their paths again—which was just fine with him.
“Welcome home,” he mumbled to himself as he headed for his cabin.
CHAPTER TWO
SHERIFF FRANK CURRY SHOVED back his Stetson as he watched the assistant coroner inspect the body. The sun was high and hot, another beautiful spring day in southern Montana. A breeze stirred the new leaves of the cottonwoods along the crystal-clear Yellowstone River. In the distance, the snowcapped peaks of the Crazy Mountains gleamed like fields of diamonds.
A fisherman had stumbled across the body in the weeds this morning after hooking into a nice-sized cutthroat. He was trying to land the fish when he’d practically fallen over the dead man.
From a nearby limb that hung out over the water, a crow cawed, drawing Frank’s attention away from the body for a moment. The bird’s dark wings flapped before it settled its black, beady eyes on him, as if to say he’d seen it all and could tell volumes if only Frank were capable of understanding a bird.
The crow cawed once more and flew off as Assistant Coroner Charlie Brooks stepped out of the weeds, rubbing the back of his neck. He was a short, squat man with timber-thick legs and a bald cue-ball of a head.
“I’d say he was killed sometime in the wee hours of this morning. Cause of death? Strangulation.” Charlie, like a lot of coroners, was a huge mystery fan. “The body hasn’t been here more than a few hours. Dumped, I would imagine, from up there.” He pointed to an embankment that led up to a gravel access road into Otter Creek. “Appears he rolled down, to come to rest at the edge of the river.”
Frank nodded—that had been his opinion as well. That was why he had one of his deputies up on the road making plaster casts of the tire prints closest to the edge of the embankment.
“Going to need to take some fingerprints once you get him to the morgue,” he told the coroner. “No identification on him that I could find.”
“We’ll put him on ice until you can get a positive ID and notify next of kin.”
Frank figured it shouldn’t take long. The man had spent some time in a penitentiary somewhere, given the array of prison tattoos on his arms and neck. His prints should be on file.
“What’s that he was killed with?” the coroner asked. “Appears to be some kind of fancy braided rope.”
“Hitched horsehair,” Frank said. “They make a lot of this up at Montana State Prison. That’s why around here, hitchin’ is synonymous with doing time. You ever heard the legend of Tom Horn? It’s said that he was hung with a rope he hitched while doing time in a territorial prison.”
“Horsehair dyed bright colors, huh? I’ll be damned.” A retired doctor, Charlie was new to Montana after living all his life in the big city.
Standing back, Frank watched as the assistant coroner and one of the local EMTs put the victim into a body bag and carried him to the fishing-access parking lot. In the distance he could hear the thrum of traffic on Interstate 90. Closer, a trout rose out of the water, the splash sending sparkling droplets into the morning air.
Frank watched the wavelets from the fish spread across the smooth surface. Murder had its own ripple effect. Shaking off the thought, he followed the path the body had made tumbling from the road. He hoped to find a wallet or something that might have fallen out of the man’s pockets.
Fortunately, in Montana, few people littered, so there were only a half dozen rusted beer cans, a couple of plastic water bottles and several pieces of dew-wet cardboard in the weeds. He was about to give up when he spotted what looked like a scrap of white paper caught high in the grass.
His hands still covered by the latex gloves he’d donned earlier, he plucked the scrap up, surprised to see that it was a photograph folded in half. Yellowed with age, the snapshot was also cracked down the middle because of the fold and worn at the edges as if it had been handled a lot. The people lined up in the shot appeared to be a family, the youngest still in Mama’s arms.
Frank turned the photo over and saw that something had been written on the back. The faded marks were impossible to read. But what made his heart beat a little faster was the realization that the photo hadn’t been in the grass long. It wasn’t even that damp from the morning dew.
All his instincts told him it had belonged to the unidentified dead man.
* * *
JACK WOKE TO POUNDING on his cabin door. He pulled on his jeans and stumbled barefoot to the door. “What in the—” He cut off his words with a grin as he saw who was standing there.
“Sorry to wake you so early, but I’m hungry,” Carson Grant said, smiling.
Jack reached for his friend’s hand, clasped it and pulled Carson into an awkward quick hug.
“It is so good to see you,” Carson said.
“You, too. Come on in.”
Carson had offered to come up to the prison and pick him up when he got out.
“Actually, the warden had my pickup released from Evidence and sent up here along with my horse and horse trailer, right after I was sent to prison. So I’ll be traveling in style,” Jack had joked about his old truck. “I will need a place to corral my horse, though, until I get settled.”
Carson had laughed. “That was awfully nice of the warden. Hell, Jack, you really do make friends everywhere you go. Just drop your horse at the W Bar
