HQN Books
March 2010
On Sale: February 23, 2010
Featuring: Heath Renier; Rachel Lyndon
384 pages ISBN: 037377477X EAN: 9780373774777 Mass Market Paperback Add to Wish List
Heath rode carefully around the body
sprawled at the bottom of the draw, gentling Apache with a
quiet word. The horse was right to be scared. Jed hadn't
been dead more than a few days, and the scent of decay was
overwhelming.
An accident. That was the way it
looked, anyhow. Half Jed's skull was bashed in, and his legs
stuck out at strange angles. The rocks were sharp around
here, and plentiful.
But Jed was a damn good rider.
You had to be, in the Pecos, so far from civilization. The
old man had been on his way home, just as his letter had
said. He would have let go the cowboys he'd hired for the
drive once it was finished, and he didn't trust many people.
He would have risked riding alone rather than let some
stranger get close to his hard-earned money.
That was
his mistake.
Heath dismounted and scanned the
horizon. Jed's horse was gone, so there was no way to be
sure exactly how it had happened. Maybe something had
spooked the animal: a rattler, a rabbit, a gust of wind.
Heath couldn't smell anything but the stink of rot, no trace
of another human who might have been around when Jed died.
Any hoofprints or tracks had been blown away. If some
drifter or outlaw had helped Jed to his grave and taken his
horse, he was long gone.
I should have been with
him, Heath thought. But Jed hadn't wanted him
along.
The old man hadn't acted like the others when
he found out, when Heath was stupid enough to forget all the
hard lessons he'd learned. Jed wasn't easily scared. He
hadn't yelled or run away or tried to shoot him. He'd
pretended it didn't matter, that Heath was still like a son
to him.
But Heath had known Jed was lying. He knew
what he saw in the old man's eyes. Jed had understood that
Heath would never hurt him, but he was still human. The only
reason he'd kept so calm and reasonable was that he needed
Heath at the ranch to keep Sean in check. He'd been willing
to use Heath's secret for his own ends—until Sean was no
longer a problem and he could run Heath off like the animal
he was.
Heath laughed. It was almost funny that Jed
was more worried about his nephew than a man who wasn't even
human. The devil knew why Heath had stayed on. He supposed
that three years of friendship, of letting himself trust the
man who'd saved his life, had held him at Dog Creek. That
and his contempt for Sean. He'd owed Jed, and he had meant
to pay off the debt. But Heath had been ready to ride out as
soon as Jed returned and could deal with Sean himself. That
would have been the end of it.
He just hadn't
expected this kind of end.
Apache snorted and tossed
his head. "Easy, boy," Heath murmured, and knelt beside the
body. He touched the bloody depression beneath Jed's
thinning hair. The old man had probably died quickly. No
sign of knife or gunshot wounds.
Closing his nostrils
against the stench, Heath patted Jed's waist and pockets.
Nothing. If he'd brought the money back with him, he would
have carried it in the saddlebags. Everything he'd received
for the sale of fifty percent of Dog Creek's beeves, driven
north to Kansas and the rail lines.
Before he'd left,
before Heath had made his big mistake, Jed had expected to
make a good profit. Enough to buy better stock, make Dog
Creek grow into a concern that could compete with Blackwater
on its own terms. No more risky investments that brought Dog
Creek to the brink of ruin. No more wild ideas. No more
foolish dreams.
And no more free money for the
worthless peacock of a nephew who thought he could bend Jed
around his saddle horn like a twist of rope.
Heath's
lips curled away from his teeth. Sean had been Jed's one
weakness. It had taken the old man a long time to realize
Sean didn't care for anyone but himself. If Jed had lived,
he would finally have shown his nephew that he wasn't going
to be led around by the nose anymore.
But Jed had
waited too long. Once everyone found out the old man was
dead and Sean got his hands on Dog Creek, he would sell it
to the Blackwells. All Jed's hard years of work gone for
nothing.
The wind shifted, momentarily clearing away
the stench and the raw feelings Heath couldn't seem to kill.
He caught a whiff of a new scent. Old leather and horse
sweat, not Apache's. He sucked in a deep breath and followed
the smell to the base of the stony hillside that rose up
from one side of the draw.
The saddlebags had been
thrown far enough back under the rocky overhang that an
ordinary man might never have found them. Heath crouched and
dragged them into the light. They were full to bursting. He
didn't have to open the flaps to know what they
contained.
Someone had put the saddlebags here. An
outlaw would have taken them just like he would have taken
Jed's horse. Had Jed seen someone he didn't know, gotten
nervous and decided to hide the bags before he
died?
Heath stood up, a knot in his belly. Maybe
Jed's death had still been an accident, and the old man had
lived just long enough to try to keep the money out of the
hands of any stranger who might run across him.
But
there'd been another accident some years back, a trail boss
who'd gotten his neck broken when Heath—who'd been using his
own name then—was there to see it. Only, no one else had.
And someone had figured out that he wasn't who he claimed to
be, a simple cowhand looking for work wherever he could get
it.
Heath had never before been taken by the law
despite all his years outside it. There'd been a jail cell
and the endless wait for a trial, his fate settled before he
ever stood in front of a judge. But they hadn't reckoned on
a prisoner who was stronger and faster than any normal man.
After he broke out, they'd added another crime to his
tally.
Heath tilted his face toward the sky and
closed his eyes. If he'd been a normal man, he might have
done the right thing and ridden to Heywood for the marshal.
No one else in this part of West Texas knew what he could
become. The money was still here. There was no reason for
anyone to think he'd killed Jed. Even if someone
remembered that other death hundreds of miles from the
Pecos, no one had recognized him in three years, or made any
connection between "Holden Renshaw" and Heath
Renier.
But if there was a chance, even one in a
million, that someone could put those facts
together…
Not even a loup-garou could hang
more than once. Heath had been ready to die plenty of times,
even when the wolf inside him kept on fighting to keep him
alive. But he could never go back to that cell, those bars,
the man-made hell that left him alone in his human body,
trapped by memories and feelings he'd outrun for so long.
Remembering that the one man he'd let himself trust in
nearly ten years had been just like the rest.
Apache
nickered, feeling Heath's anxiety. Heath calmed himself down
and opened one of the saddlebags. A heavy bag of coins was
neatly packed inside. Heath didn't touch it. The other pouch
held more coins. And something else. A bundle of small
folded sheets, bound together with a bit of frayed ribbon,
and a roll of leather tied up with a cord.
Thick
paper crackled as Heath unrolled the leather. There were
three sheets inside, dense with writing. He smoothed out the
first across his knees.
Reading had never been one of
his best skills, but he knew what he was holding. As he
picked his way down the paper, the knot in his belly
squeezed so he could hardly breathe.
The will left
almost everything to him. The ranch, the proceeds from the
sale—and money Heath hadn't known Jed possessed, locked away
in a bank in Kansas City. Money that made Jed a wealthy
man.
Maybe Jed had been hiding that money from Sean,
or from people he owed. Heath didn't know what had been
going on in Jed's mind. He sure as hell hadn't known about
any will giving him Dog Creek.
Not that it mattered
now. Someone had drawn a dark line all the way across it
from corner to corner and blacked out the signature at the
bottom of the page.
Hands shaking like a boy in his
first gunfight, Heath unrolled the other two sheets. The
second was a will leaving everything to Sean, dated two
years ago. It, too, was crossed out.
The third will
wasn't signed or dated. The name at the top meant nothing to
him.
Rachel Lyndon.
He picked up the smaller
bundle of papers and lifted it to his nose. It smelled like
Jed. And someone he'd never met.
Heath untied the
ribbon, and one of the folded sheets fell into the dirt. The
letter had been sent from Ohio. The paper was browned, the
edges bent as if someone had read it over and over
again.
When Heath was finished with it, he put it
back with the other letters, rolled up the second and third
wills in their leather sheath and set it on the ground. His
heart was rattling around in his chest like brush tossed by
the wind. He missed his first try at striking a spark; the
second time he got it right, and nursed the tiny flame until
it was just big enough to burn a sheet of paper. He watched
the first will catch and smolder until there was nothing
left of it but ash.
The leather sheath rolled
sideways in the wind, and Heath picked it up. He was
beginning to lose whatever sense he had left. Burning the
will didn't solve his problem. Jed hadn't been much good
with accounts and paperwork, but Heath couldn't be sure that
the ones he had were the only copies. The last unsigned will
and what it contained could make it look as if Heath had a
motive to kill his boss before Jed finished it. Before Jed
went through with the crazy thing he'd planned.
But
it didn't make any difference if there were other copies of
the will somewhere. Jed's decision made it easier for Heath
to be sure of his own. The old man had lied to Heath in more
ways than one. Even if Heath hadn't revealed himself, Jed
would have ruined everything by bringing a woman to Dog
Creek.
Any debt Heath had to the old man had been
paid with hard work and loyalty. The woman Jed had planned
to marry meant nothing to Heath, and he didn't owe anything
to most of the hands, who'd never much liked him anyway.
Maurice was too good a cook not to find a place at some
other outfit.
He would feel a little bad about
leaving Joey, but he had some money he could give the boy
before he lit out.
That was his last obligation. Sean
could claim the ranch and sell it to the Blackwells, will or
no will, and Heath wouldn't try to stop him.
He
pushed the sheath and the bundle of letters back inside
Jed's saddlebags, carried them over the hill and stripped
out of his clothes. The Change was complete in a painless
instant. The world came sharply into focus, every scent,
every sound crisp as a December morning. He'd know if any
human came within ten miles of the place.
Shaking out
his fur, Heath picked out a likely spot and set about the
task at hand. When the hole was wide and deep enough, he
seized the saddlebags in his jaws and dropped them in. He
covered the hole, scraping at the dirt with his powerful
hind legs. Only when he was finished did he Change again and
look over his work.
It was good. The ground was
already rough, and a few tossed pebbles made the spot look
just like everything else around it. No human would be able
to find it.
Heath put on his clothes, secured his gun
belt and returned to Apache, who sniffed at him and snorted.
Heath mounted and urged the gelding out of the draw. The
money could have been useful, but he didn't want anything
else from Jed. The old man could lie easy knowing he would
keep something of what he'd earned.
A jackrabbit
burst from the cover of a dead mesquite and bounded away. A
cottontop cried from the brush. Heath felt the wide-open
land all around him, beckoning.
One last trip to the
house, and he would shake the dust of the Pecos off his
boots forever.
"Adiós, Jed," he said,
touching the brim of his hat.
For the first time in
three years, Jedediah McCarrick didn't
answer.
Someone s comin to Dog
Creek.
Sean could still hear Jed's voice as he
guided Ulysses down the steep slope of the draw. "She'll
be makin' things different here" the old man had said.
"With her and the money I got from the sale, I'm goin'
to make Dog Creek what it ought to be. No more debt, Sean.
No more money wasted on your gamblin' and them bad ideas you
talked me into."
Only it hadn't quite gone as
Jed had planned. The coyotes and buzzards had done such a
good job that Jed was already unrecognizable. Only his
clothes and his gold tooth would identify him
now.
Sean kept his distance and began looking for the
saddlebags. He searched under every rock and bush, scraped
at every rough spot in the dirt, circled the area in every
direction until he knew he had to stop if he wanted to get
back before the sun rose.
Cursing, Sean gripped the
carved ivory handle of his gun and wished he had something
to shoot. For the dozenth time he went over the encounter in
his mind, searching for a clue, a hint of what Jed had been
thinking when he'd hidden his money.
The old man had
surprised Sean when he'd sent the letter asking his nephew
to meet him at the western border of the ranch. Jed had made
sure to arrive on the very day he'd promised. He'd planned
it all carefully, just so he could give Sean the
news.
Sean closed his eyes and leaned over the saddle
horn. The first words had been a shock. He'd always had what
he wanted from the old man before. The allowance, the
education back East…everything but the life he deserved. The
life Jed owed him. The life he could have when he sold Dog
Creek to the Blackwells.