Zane squeezed her hand, and leaning toward her, drew her into his arms.

He hadn’t planned to kiss her. But at that moment, it seemed the most natural thing in the world.

Her lips parted, her breath warm and sweet. He felt a quiver run through her, his pulse kicking up as his mouth dropped to hers.

Dakota gently pushed him away. “Sorry, but your reputation precedes you.”

He heard the slight tremble in her voice. She pulled free of his arms and he leaned back, telling himself he shouldn’t have kissed her. Especially given why they were together. Didn’t he have enough women problems right now?

“You’re going to believe rumors about me?” he joked as he tried to cover up how even that quick kiss had affected him.

She smiled but there was hurt in her gaze.

His gaze caressed her face for a moment before meeting her eyes. “But that kiss? I was just fulfilling a promise I made you before you moved to New Mexico. Remember?”

About the Author

USA TODAY bestselling author BJ DANIELS wrote her first book after a career as an award-winning newspaper journalist and author of thirty-seven published short stories. That first book, Odd Man Out, received a four-and-a-half-star review from RT Book Reviews and went on to be nominated for Best Intrigue that year. Since then she has won numerous awards, including a career achievement award for romantic suspense and many nominations and awards for best book.

Daniels lives in Montana with her husband, Parker, and two springer spaniels, Spot and Jem. When she isn’t writing, she snowboards, camps, boats and plays tennis. Daniels is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, Kiss of Death and Romance Writers of America.

To contact her, write to BJ Daniels, PO Box 1173, Malta, MT 59538, USA or e-mail her at bjdaniels@mtintouch.net. Check out her website at www.bjdaniels.com.

Wrangled
USA Today Bestselling Author BJ Daniels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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This book is dedicated to Julie Miller and Delores Fossen, two fellow Intrigue writers I greatly admire. I was with them in Los Angeles at the Romantic Times convention relaxing when I came up with the ending of this book. Thank you both for your friendship. I’m looking forward to our January Ice Lake anthology together.

Chapter One

The knock at the door surprised Zane Chisholm. He’d just spent the warm summer day in the saddle rounding up cattle. All he wanted to do was kick off his boots and hit the hay early. The last thing he wanted was company.

But whoever was knocking didn’t sound as if they were planning to go away anytime soon. Living at the end of a dirt road, he didn’t get uninvited company—other than one of his five brothers. So that narrows it down, he thought as he went to the window and peered out through the curtains.

The car parked outside was a compact, lime-green with Montana State University plates. Definitely not one of his brothers, he thought with a grin. Chisholm men wouldn’t be caught dead driving such a “girlie” car. Especially a lime-green one.

Even more odd was the young, willowy blonde pounding on his door. She must be lost and needing directions. Or she was selling something.

His curiosity piqued, he went to answer her persistent knock. As the door swung open, he saw that her eyes were blue and set wide in a classically gorgeous face. She wore a slinky red dress that fell over her body like water. The woman was a stunner.

She smiled warmly. “Hi.”

“Hi.” He waited, wondering what she wanted, and enjoying the view in the meantime.

Her smile slipped a little as she took in his worn jeans, his even more worn cowboy boots and the dirty Western shirt with a torn sleeve and a missing button.

“I wasn’t expecting company,” he said when he saw her apparent disappointment in his attire.

“Oh?” She looked confused now. “Did I get the night wrong? You’re Zane Chisholm and this is Friday, right?”

“Right.” He frowned. “Did we have a date or something?” He knew he’d never seen this woman before. No red-blooded American male would forget a woman like this.

She reached into her sparkly shoulder bag and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “Your last email,” she said, handing it to him.

He took the paper, unfolded it and saw his email address. It appeared he had been corresponding with this woman for the past two days.

“If you forgot—”

“No,” he said quickly. “Please, come in and let’s see if we can sort this out.”

She stepped in but looked tentative, as if not so sure about him.

“Why don’t you start with how we met,” he said as he offered her a seat.

She sat on the edge of the couch. “The Evans rural internet dating service.”

“Arlene’s matchmaking business?” he asked in surprise. Arlene Evans, who was now Arlene Monroe, had started the business a few years ago to bring rural couples together.

“We’ve been visiting by email until you …”

“Asked you out,” he finished for her.

“Are you saying someone else has been using your email?”

“It sure looks that way, since I never signed up with Arlene’s matchmaking service. But,” he added quickly when he saw how upset she was, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Arlene is behind this. It wouldn’t be the first time she took it upon herself to play matchmaker.” Either that or his brothers were behind it as a joke, though that seemed unlikely. This beautiful woman was no joke.

She looked down at her hands in her lap. “I’m so embarrassed.” She quickly rose to her feet. “I should go.”

“No, wait,” he said, unable to shake the feeling that maybe this had been fate and that he would be making the biggest mistake of his life if he let this woman walk out now.

“You know, it wouldn’t take me long to jump in the shower and change if you’re still up for a date,” he said with a grin.

She hesitated. “Really? I mean, you don’t have to—”

“I want to. But you have the advantage over me. I don’t know your name.”

She smiled shyly. “Courtney Baxter.” She held out her hand. As he shook it, Zane thought, This night could change my life.

He had no idea how true that was going to be.

Chapter Two

Dakota Lansing got the call at 3:20 a.m. She jerked awake, surprised by the sound of the ringing phone. She hadn’t had a landline in years. Glancing around in confusion, for a moment she forgot where she was.

Home at the ranch. It all came back in a rush, including her father’s death. She turned on the light as the phone rang yet again and grabbed the receiver.

As she did, she glanced at the clock, her mind spinning with fear. Calls in the wee hours of the morning were always bad news.

“Hello?” Her voice broke as she remembered the last call that had come too early in the morning.

This is Dr. Sheridan at Memorial Hospital in Great Falls. I’m sorry to inform you that your father has had a heart attack. I’m afraid there was nothing we could do. Your sister is here if you would like to speak with her.

My sister? You must have the wrong number, I don’t have a sister.

“Hello?” she said again now.

At first all she heard was crying. “Hello?”

“Dakota, I need your help.”

Her sister, half sister, the one she hadn’t known existed until two weeks ago, let out a choked sob.

“Courtney? What’s wrong?”

More sobbing. “I’m in trouble.”

This, at least, didn’t come as a surprise. Dakota had expected her half sister was in trouble when she’d asked after their father’s funeral if she could stay at the ranch for a while.

“I want to get to know you,” Courtney had said. But it had become obvious fairly quickly that her half sister wanted a lot more than that.

“Speak up. I can barely hear you,” Dakota said now.

“I can’t. He’s in the next room.”

Dakota rolled her eyes. A man. Not surprising, since Courtney had been out every night in the two weeks since their father’s funeral.

“I think he might be dead.”

Dakota came wide awake. Dead? “Where are you?” There was a loud crash in the background as something fell and broke. “Tell me where you are,” Dakota cried as she stumbled out of bed. “Courtney?”

Her father’s secret love child, a woman only two years younger than herself, whispered two words before the line went dead.

“Zane Chisholm’s.”

ZANE WOKE TO POUNDING. He tried to sit up. His head swam. He hadn’t really drunk champagne last night, had he?

Numbly he realized the pounding wasn’t just in his head. Someone was at the door and it was still dark outside. He turned on a light, blinded for a moment. As he glanced over at the other side of his queen-size bed, he was a little surprised to find it empty. Courtney had come home with him last night, hadn’t she?

As he got up he saw that he was stark naked. Whoever was at the door was pounding harder now. He quickly pulled on a pair of obviously hastily discarded jeans and padded barefoot into the living room to answer the door.

“What the hell happened to you?” his brother Marshall asked in surprise when Zane opened the door.

“I’m a little hungover.” A major understatement. He couldn’t remember feeling this badly—even during his college days when he’d done his share of partying.

“Your face,” Marshall said. “It’s all scratched up.”

Zane frowned and went into the bathroom. He turned on the light and stared in shock into the mirror. His pulse jumped. He had what looked like claw marks down the side of his left cheek. As he looked down at his arm, he saw another scratch on his forearm.

What the hell had happened last night?

“Are you okay?” Marshall asked from the bathroom doorway. He sounded worried, but nothing like Zane felt.

“I don’t know. I’m having trouble remembering last night.”

“Well, it must have been a wild one,” Marshall said. “I hope it was consensual with whatever mountain lion you hooked up with.”

“Not funny.” His head throbbed and his memory was a black hole that he was a little afraid to look into too deeply.

“You do remember that you and I are picking up horses in Wolf Point today, right?” Marshall said. “I’ll give you a few minutes to get cleaned up, but don’t even think about trying to get out of this. I need your help and we’re already running late. I told you to be ready at four forty-five.”

Zane nodded, although it hurt his head. What time was it, anyway? The clock on the wall read 5:10 a.m. “Could you make me some coffee while I get ready?”

His brother sighed. “Aren’t you getting a little too old for partying like this?” he grumbled on his way to the kitchen.

Zane stepped into the bathroom, closed the door and stared into the mirror again. He looked like hell. Worse, he couldn’t remember drinking more than a glass or two of champagne, certainly not enough to cause this kind of damage.

He thought about Courtney. She had to have done this to him. He touched his cheek. What scared him was, what had he done to get that kind of reaction from her?

EMMA CHISHOLM HAD been an early riser all her life. She liked getting up before the rest of the world when everything was still and dark. Since marrying Hoyt Chisholm a year ago, she especially liked seeing the sun come up here on the ranch.

As she stepped into the big ranch kitchen, she heard a sound and froze.

“I hope I didn’t scare you.”

Emma shuddered as a chill raced down the length of her spine. She tried to hide it but knew she’d failed when she turned to see amusement in their new live-in housekeeper’s one good eye. Up before sunrise and often the last one to bed, the woman moved around the house with ghostlike stealth.

“There really is no need for you to work such long hours,” she said as Mrs. Crowley stepped out of the dark shadows of the kitchen. The fifty-eight-year-old woman moved with a strange gait—no doubt caused by her disfiguring injury. It was hard to look into Mrs. Crowley’s face. The right side appeared to have been horribly burned, that eye white and sightless. Behind her thick glasses, her other eye shone darkly.

“I’m not interested in sleeping anymore,” Mrs. Crowley said. Her first name was Cynthia, but she’d asked them to refer to her by her married name.

The moment she’d come to the house, she had taken over. But Emma couldn’t complain. Mrs. Crowley, a woman about her own age, was a hard worker and asked for little in return. She lived in a separate wing of the house and was Emma’s new babysitter.

Not that Emma’s husband, Hoyt, would ever admit that was the case. But last year his past had come back to haunt them. It had to do with the deaths of Hoyt’s last three wives. An insurance investigator by the name of Aggie Wells had been convinced that he’d killed them.

When Aggie had heard about Hoyt’s fourth marriage—this one a Vegas elopement to Emma—she’d come to Montana to warn Emma that she was next.

Aggie was dead now. While the police hadn’t found her killer, Emma was fairly certain that the perpetrator was the same one who’d murdered at least one of Hoyt’s wives.

Aggie Wells had originally been convinced that the killer was Hoyt, but as time went on she’d thought Hoyt’s first wife might still be alive. Laura had allegedly drowned in Fort Peck Reservoir more than thirty years before. Aggie had even found a woman named Sharon Jones, whom she believed was Laura. Unfortunately, Sharon Jones had disappeared before the police could question her.

For months now Hoyt had been afraid to leave Emma alone. Either he or one of his six sons hung around the house to make sure no harm came to her.

She’d been going crazy, feeling as if she was under house arrest. Hoyt and his sons had to be going crazy as well. They were ranchers and much more at home on the back of a horse than hanging around the kitchen with her.

Finally Hoyt had come up with the idea of a live-in housekeeper. Emma was sure that Mrs. Crowley wasn’t what he’d had in mind. But after all the rumors and suspicions that were flying around, it was next to impossible to get anyone to work at the ranch.

Fortunately, Mrs. Crowley had been glad to come. She said she liked that Chisholm Cattle Company was so isolated.

“People stare,” she’d said simply when Emma had asked her if she thought she could be happy living this far away from civilization.

She was an abrupt woman who had little to say. Emma knew she should be thankful, but sometimes it would be nice to have someone who would just sit and visit with her. That definitely wasn’t Mrs. Crowley, but Emma kept trying.

“I see you’ve made coffee,” Emma said now. “May I pour you a cup? We could sit at the table for a few minutes before Hoyt comes down.”

“No, thank you. I’m cleaning the guest rooms today.”

Emma could have argued that the guest rooms could wait. Actually, they probably didn’t need cleaning. It had been a while since they’d had a guest. But Mrs. Crowley didn’t give her a chance. The woman was already off down the hallway to that wing of the house.

As Emma watched her go, she noticed how the woman dragged her right leg. That’s what gave her that peculiar gait, she thought distractedly. Then she heard Hoyt coming downstairs and poured them both a cup of coffee.

It wasn’t until she took the mugs over to the table that she realized Mrs. Crowley always made herself scarce when Hoyt was around. Maybe she just wanted to give them privacy, Emma told herself. “Strange woman,” she said under her breath.

A moment later Hoyt came into the kitchen, checked to make sure they were alone and put his arms around her. “Good morning. Want to sneak out to the barn with me, Mrs. Chisholm? Zane and Marshall have gone to Wolf Point. Dawson, Tanner and Logan are all mending fences and Colton has gone into town for feed.”

She laughed, leaning into his hug. It had been a while since they’d made love in the hayloft.

CYNTHIA CROWLEY WATCHED Emma and Hoyt from one of the guest room windows. They had their arms around each other’s waists. Emma had her face turned up to Hoyt, idolization in her eyes. She was laughing at something he’d said.

Cynthia could only imagine.

She let the curtain fall back into place as Hoyt pushed open the barn door and they disappeared inside. As she turned to look around the guest room, she mumbled a curse under her breath. The decor was Western, from the oak bed frame to the cowboy-print comforter. Emma’s doing, the housekeeper thought as she moved to look at an old photograph on the wall.

It was of the original house before Hoyt had added onto it. The first Chisholm main house was a two-story shotgun. It was barely recognizable as the house in which Cynthia now stood. Hoyt had done well for himself, buying up more land as his cattle business had improved.

On another wall was a photograph of his six adopted sons, three towheaded with bright blue eyes, three dark-eyed with straight black hair and Native American features. In the photo, all six sat along the top rail of the corral. The triplets must have been about eight when the picture was taken, which made the other three from seven to ten or so.

They looked all boy. There was a shadow on the ground in the bottom part of the photograph. Hoyt must have been the photographer, since she was sure the shadow was his.

Now the boys were all raised—not that Emma didn’t get them back here every evening she could. All but Zane were engaged or getting married so the house was also full of their fiancées. Emma apparently loved it and always insisted on helping with the cooking.

Not that Cynthia Crowley minded the help—or the time spent with the new Mrs. Hoyt Chisholm. Emma fascinated her in the most macabre of ways.

The new Mrs. Chisholm had definitely been a surprise. A man as powerful and wealthy as Hoyt Chisholm could have had a trophy wife. Instead he’d chosen a plump fifty-something redhead.

“There is no accounting for tastes,” the housekeeper said to the empty room as she went to work dusting. Before she’d been hired on, she’d been told about Hoyt’s other three wives—and their fates.

“Do you think he killed them?” she’d asked the director of the employment agency where she’d gone to get the job.

“Oh, good heavens, no,” the woman had cried, then dropped her voice. “I certainly wouldn’t send a housekeeper up there if I thought for a moment …”

Cynthia had smiled. “I’m not afraid of Hoyt Chisholm. Or his wife. I’m sorry, what did you say her name was?”

“Emma. And I’ve heard she is delightful.”

“Yes, delightful,” Cynthia grumbled to herself now. At the sound of laughter, she went to the window. Through the sheer curtains she saw Emma and Hoyt coming out of the barn. They were both smiling—and holding hands.

Cynthia Crowley made a rude noise under her breath. “The two of them act like teenagers.”

A loud snap filled the air, startling her. It wasn’t until she felt the pain that she looked down. She hadn’t been aware that she’d been holding anything in her hands until she saw the broken bud vase, and the blood oozing from her hand from where she’d broken the vase’s fragile, slim neck.

ONCE THEY HAD THE HORSES loaded at a ranch north of Wolf Point, Marshall suggested they grab lunch. Zane wasn’t hungry, wasn’t sure he ever would be again. He was anxious to call Courtney and find out what had happened last night.

Stepping outside the café to call her, he realized that he didn’t have her number. Nor was she listed under Courtney Baxter. He tried the couple of Baxters in the Whitehorse area, but neither knew a Courtney.

With no choice left, he called Arlene Evans Monroe at the woman’s rural internet dating service that had allegedly put them together in the first place.

“Did you set me up with a woman named Courtney Baxter?” he asked Arlene, trying not to sound accusing. Arlene used to be known as the county gossip. In the old days he wouldn’t have put anything past her. But he’d heard she’d changed since meeting her husband Hank Monroe.

“Yes,” she said, sounding wary. “Is there a problem?”

“Only that Courtney showed up at my door last night saying I had a date with her through your agency and I didn’t have a clue who she was.”

“Are you telling me you didn’t make a date with this woman?”

“I never even signed up for your dating service. I thought maybe someone had done it as a joke.”

“Zane, I have your check right here.”

How was that possible? He knew he was still feeling the effects of the hangover; his aching head was finding it hard to understand any of this. But all morning he’d been worried about what had happened last night. He had a very bad feeling and needed to talk to Courtney.

“When does it show that I signed up?” he asked Arlene.

“Two weeks ago.”

Two weeks ago? A thought struck him. About two weeks ago he’d come home to find someone had been in his house. Like most people who lived in and around Whitehorse he never locked his doors, so the intruder hadn’t had to break in. Nor had the person taken anything that he could see—not even his laptop computer. But enough things had been moved that he’d known someone had been there.

He swore now, realizing that must have been when the person had gone online and signed him up for the dating service—and taken at least one of his checks. He hadn’t even noticed any were missing.

“What is the number on that check?” he asked Arlene. She read it off and he wrote it down, seeing that it was a much higher number than the checks now in his checkbook. He wouldn’t have missed it for months.

Who went around signing someone up for a dating service? This made no sense. It had to have been one of his brothers. Or his stepmother, Emma? She had made it clear she thought it was time her six rowdy stepsons settled down. Maybe she was behind this.

But neither Emma nor his brothers would have come to his house when he wasn’t home, gotten on his computer and then taken one of his checks to pay for the rural dating service. Who then? And why? This was getting stranger by the moment.

“I need Courtney Baxter’s telephone number,” he told Arlene.

“According to the service policy you agreed to—”

“I didn’t agree because I never signed up,” he said, trying not to lose his temper. He caught his reflection in the café window and saw the four scratches down his cheek where someone had definitely clawed him.

“Zane, what if I call her and make sure it’s all right first? Do you want to hold?”

He groaned, but agreed to wait.

She came back on the line moments later. “She’s not answering her cell phone. I left her a message to call me immediately. I’m sorry, Zane, but that’s the best I can do. It’s policy.”

He swore under his breath. The old Arlene would have handed it over. She would also have asked why he was so anxious to talk to his “date” and the news would have gone on the Whitehorse grapevine two seconds later.

“The moment you hear from her …”

“I’ll let you know,” she said.

Zane didn’t hear anything from Arlene on the long drive back to Whitehorse. He hoped that once he got home there might be a note or something from Courtney.

Not wanting to drag the loaded horse trailer down the narrow lane to the house, Marshall dropped him off by the mailbox on the county road.

“You sure you’re going to be all right?” Marshall asked.

He’d been sick all day and still had a killer headache.

“You really did tie one on last night,” his brother said, looking concerned. “What were you drinking anyway?”

“I remember having some champagne.”

Marshall shook his head. “That all?”

Zane couldn’t recall if it had been his idea, but he doubted it. Courtney must have suggested it. “And I only had a couple of glasses, I’m sure.”

His brother lifted a brow. “You sure about that?”

He wasn’t sure of anything. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine,” he lied as he climbed out of the Chisholm Cattle Company truck and headed down the narrow dirt road to his house.

The early summer sun was still up on the western horizon. It warmed his back as he walked. Grass grew bright green around him, the air rich with the sweet scents of new growth. Grasshoppers buzzed and butterflies flitted past. In the distance he could see that there was still snow on the tops of the Little Rocky Mountains.

As he came over a rise, he slowed. A pickup he didn’t recognize was parked in front of his house. Courtney? Or maybe one of her older brothers here to kick his butt. He quickened his step, anxious to find out exactly what had happened last night—one way or the other.

Zane was still a good distance from the truck when he saw the woman and realized that it wasn’t Courtney. This woman was dressed in jeans, boots and a yellow-checked Western shirt. Her chestnut hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She stood leaning against the truck as if she’d been waiting awhile and wasn’t happy about it.

When she spotted him, she pushed off the side of the pickup and headed toward him. As she came closer, his gaze settled on her face. He felt the air rush out of him. She was beautiful, but that was only part of what had taken his breath away.

He’d seen Dakota Lansing only once since she was a kid hanging around the rodeo grounds. She’d been cute as a bug’s ear back then and it had been no secret that she’d had a crush on him. But, five years his junior, she’d been too young and innocent so he’d kept her at arm’s length, treating her like the kid she was.

The last time he’d seen her he’d happened to run into her at the spring rodeo in Whitehorse. He’d been so surprised to see her—let alone that she’d turned into this beautiful woman—he’d been tongue-tied. She must have thought him a complete fool.

The whole meeting had been embarrassing, but since she’d moved to New Mexico, he’d thought he would never see her again. And yet here she was standing in his yard.

“Dakota?” he said, surprised at how pleased he was to see her.

Smiling, he started toward her, but slowed as he caught her body language. Hands on hips, big brown eyes narrowed, an angry tilt to her head. His brain had been working at a snail’s pace all day. It finally kicked into gear to question what Dakota Lansing was doing here—let alone why she appeared to be upset.

She closed the distance between them. “Where is my sister?” Those big brown eyes widened, and he knew she’d seen the scratches on his face just seconds before she balled up her fist and slugged him.

The punch had some power behind it, but it still had less effect on him than her words.

“Your sister?” he asked, taking a step back as he rubbed his jaw and frowned at her. He’d known Dakota Lansing all his life. She didn’t have a sister.

Chapter Three

“Courtney Baxter,” Dakota said. “The woman I know you were out with last night.” She looked as if she wanted to hit him again. Her eyes narrowed. “What did you do to her?”

He rubbed his jaw, feeling as if he was mentally two steps behind and had been since Courtney Baxter had knocked on his door not twenty-four hours before. “Courtney Baxter is your sister?”

“My half sister. Where is she?”

His head ached and now so did his jaw. Dakota had a pretty good right hook. “How do you know I was with her?”

“She called me sounding terrified. What did you do to her?”

Taking a step back, he raised both hands. “Hold on a minute. We can figure this out.”

“What is there to figure out?” she demanded.

He noticed something he hadn’t earlier. Dakota’s left hand. No wedding ring. No ring at all. The last time he’d seen her, she’d had a nice-size rock on her ring finger. He’d heard she was engaged to some investment manager down in New Mexico.

She saw him staring at her left hand and stuck her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, her look daring him to say anything about it.

No chance of that.

“We should put something on those knuckles,” he said, having noticed before that her right hand was swelling. Hitting him had hurt her more than it had him. Well, physically at least.

Dakota Lansing. He still couldn’t believe that the freckle-faced tomboy who used to stick her tongue out at him had grown into this amazing-looking woman.

“Why don’t you come into the house for a minute,” he said, and started for the front porch.

“Zane, I’m only interested in finding my sister.”

“So am I.” He left the door open, went into the kitchen and opened the freezer door. By the time he heard her come in he had a tray of ice cubes dumped into a clean dishcloth.

“What did you do to her?” Dakota demanded again from the kitchen doorway.

He motioned to a chair at the kitchen table. “Dakota, you know me. You know I wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

She didn’t look convinced, but she did sit down. He reached for her injured hand, but she quickly took the ice from him, pushing his hand away.

“Courtney said on the phone last night that she was in trouble. I heard something crash in the background. Just before the connection went dead she said your name.”

The whole time she’d been talking she was glaring at him, challenging him to come up with an explanation. He wished he could.

“Dakota, I have to be honest with you. I can’t remember anything about last night. I woke up this morning alone with these scratches on my face and—” he pushed up his sleeve “—my arm.”

Her eyes widened a little when she saw the scratches on his arm. He saw fear flicker in her expression, fear and anger. “How long have you been dating my sister?”

She sounded almost jealous. Which he thought just showed how hungover he was. “I had never laid eyes on her until she showed up at my door last night claiming we had a date,” he said. He saw she was having trouble believing it. “I swear it. And I certainly didn’t know she was your sister. So how is it I never knew you had a sister?”

“She’s my father’s love child.” Dakota sighed and shifted the ice pack on her swollen knuckles. “I only found out two weeks ago after my father died.”

He remembered seeing in the newspaper that her father had passed away. He’d thought about sending a card, but it had been so many years, he doubted Dakota would remember him.

“Are you sure she’s even—”

“I saw her birth certificate. It had my father’s signature and his name on it. Apparently Courtney’s mother and my father got together either when my mother was dying or right after.”

He could see how painful this was for her. Dakota had idolized her father, and to find out on his death that he’d been keeping a lover and a sister from her for years …

“So you’re claiming that Courtney just showed up at your door?” Dakota asked, clearly not wanting to talk about her father.

Zane told her about his call to Arlene at the dating service, the check someone had used to enroll him and that he was waiting to hear from Courtney, since he, too, was worried about what might have happened last night.

She studied him for a long moment. “So a woman you have never seen before shows up at your door claiming you have a date, and you just go out with her anyway?”

He guessed Dakota had probably heard about his reputation with women. “I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.”

Her chuckle had a distinct edge to it, and he remembered why he’d always liked her. Dakota had always been smart and sassy. She’d been a daredevil as a kid, always up for just about anything, from climbing the three-story structure that held the rodeo announcer’s booth at the fairgrounds, to trying to ride any animal that would hold still long enough for her to hop on. Since her father had raised rodeo stock, she’d had a lot of animals to choose from. He’d liked her a lot. Still did, he thought.

“How well do you know her?” Zane asked.

“Not as well as you know her, apparently,” Dakota said, and shoved the ice pack away as she reached for her phone.

“Who are you calling?” He hated to think.

“I’m trying Courtney’s cell.” She punched in the number and hit Send. “I’ve been trying to call her all day and—”

At the distant sound of a phone ringing they both froze for an instant. Then, getting to their feet, they followed the muffled ringing.

Zane hadn’t gone far when he realized the sound was coming from his bedroom. He pushed open the door and stepped in, Dakota on his heels.

The ringing seemed to be coming from the bed, but when he drew back the crumpled covers, it was empty. As the phone stopped ringing, no doubt going to voice mail, he knelt down and looked under the bed.

He could just make out the phone in the shadowy darkness under the bed—and what was left of the lamp that had been on the nightstand on the other side of the bed. The lamp lay shattered between the bed and the closet.

Refusing to think about that right now, he reached for Courtney’s phone.

It wasn’t until he pulled it out and heard Dakota gasp that he noticed the cell phone was smeared with something dark red. Blood.

He dropped the phone on the bed, realizing belatedly that he should never have touched it. He had a bad feeling it would be evidence—against him.

As he turned, Dakota took a step back from him. The frightened look in her eyes hit him like a blow. There were tears in her eyes; the look on her face was breaking his heart.

“I didn’t harm your sister. Dakota, you know me.”

“I knew you, Zane, but that was a long time ago.”

“Not so long. I haven’t changed. Drunk or sober, I would never hurt a woman. You have to believe me.” But how could he keep telling himself that nothing bad had happened last night when the evidence just kept stacking up?

They both turned toward the front of the house as they heard a vehicle pull up. Zane moved quickly to look out, hoping it would be Courtney and he could get this cleared up and relieve his mind.

But it wasn’t Courtney’s lime-green compact with the MSU plates.

It was a Whitehorse County Sheriff’s Department patrol SUV.

“MRS. CROWLEY,” EMMA cried when she saw the woman’s bandaged hand.

“It’s nothing.”

“Oh, here, let me see it.” She reached for the woman’s hand.

“I said it was nothing,” Mrs. Crowley said, taking a step back and drawing her hand behind her. Her face had closed up, her one good eye glinting as hard as the tone of her voice.

Emma fell silent. She’d held out hope that she would like the woman Hoyt had hired as her housekeeper-babysitter. Being close in age, she’d thought they might have things in common.

But every time she had reached out to Mrs. Crowley, offering her friendship, it had been quickly rebuffed.

“Just let me do my work,” the woman said now. Her wrecked face caught the light; the burn scars looked angrier today than usual.

Unlike Hoyt, Emma made a point of looking Mrs. Crowley in the eye. She refused to be put off by her injuries—or her manner.

Hoyt just steered clear of the woman and often apologized for hiring her.

“She’s fine,” Emma always said in Mrs. Crowley’s defense. She suspected that the woman had trouble getting other positions and couldn’t afford to lose this job. Hoyt paid her well and the living accommodations were probably nicer than any she’d had before. Not that Emma’s kindness or the house or the pay had softened Mrs. Crowley in the least.

“Whatever happened to her has made her push people away,” Emma told her husband. “We just need to keep trying to make her feel at home here.”

Hoyt had been skeptical. “You probably pick up stray dogs, too, don’t you? Honey, this time I don’t think even you can make that woman civil—let alone happy.”

Emma couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to Mrs. Crowley that made her like this. She suspected it was more than whatever accident she’d had that had left her disfigured. But Emma doubted she would ever know. It wasn’t like Mrs. Crowley was going to tell her anytime soon.

“DID YOU CALL THE SHERIFF?” Zane asked without looking at her as Dakota joined him at the window.

“No.” With a sinking feeling, Dakota watched Sheriff McCall Crawford climb awkwardly out of the patrol vehicle. Dakota saw that the sheriff was pregnant, a good seven or eight months along.

“Maybe Courtney called her, or—”

Or Courtney had been found. Dakota didn’t let him finish that thought. “Courtney wouldn’t have called the sheriff.” If her sister had had any intention of calling the sheriff, wouldn’t Courtney have done so last night instead of calling her?

Whatever Courtney was up to, Dakota suspected the sheriff was the last person she wanted involved.

“Well, if you didn’t call her, and Courtney didn’t …” Zane let the thought hang between them.

Dakota glanced over at him, saw his freshly scratched face in the glow of the afternoon sun coming through the window and could guess what was about to happen.

Once the sheriff saw the scratches, she wouldn’t need to hear about the phone conversation Dakota’d had with Courtney in the wee hours this morning. Nor would the sheriff need to see the bloody phone from under Zane’s bed before hauling him off to jail.

Common sense told Dakota, given the evidence, jail was probably the best place for him. But not if she had any hope of him helping her find her sister.

“Here’s what I want you to do,” she said as the sheriff’s footfalls echoed on the old wooden porch. “Go in the bathroom and stay there. Let me handle this.”

Zane shook his head as the sheriff knocked at the front door. “If you think I’m going to hide behind your skirts—”

“What you’re going to do is help me find Courtney, and you can’t very well do that behind bars,” Dakota said through gritted teeth as the sheriff knocked again. “Turn on the shower. There’s something I haven’t told you about Courtney. Now trust me.”

She shot him an impatient look and waited until he disappeared into the bathroom and shut the door before she went to answer the sheriff’s third knock.

AS THE DOOR SWUNG OPEN, Sheriff McCall Crawford couldn’t help her surprise.

“Dakota Lansing?” McCall said. “Haven’t seen you in a while.” She’d been several years ahead of Dakota and they’d gone to different schools—McCall in Whitehorse, while Dakota had gone to Chinook—but they’d crossed paths because of sports.

“I’ve been living in New Mexico. I only recently returned. For my father’s funeral,” she added.

“Yes, I heard. I’m sorry.” The sheriff looked past her. “Is Zane around, by any chance?”

“He’s in the shower, but you’re welcome to come in.” She stepped back and McCall entered the house. “He’s getting ready so we can go out for dinner.”

McCall glanced around the small house. There wasn’t much to see. Zane Chisholm obviously wasn’t into decorating. She doubted he spent much time here.

“I came out to talk to Zane, but since you’re here …” McCall said. “Is there a problem I should know about?”

Dakota looked confused by the question. “A problem?”

“I got a call that there was a domestic disturbance out here.”

“When was that?”

“Twenty minutes ago,” McCall said.

Dakota let out a laugh. “You didn’t really take that call seriously, did you? The closest neighbor is a half mile away. Hard to really see or hear a domestic disturbance, unless of course they said there was gunfire involved.”

“True,” McCall said. “Unless, of course, you made the call.”

“I can assure you, I didn’t call. But I suspect caller ID would have confirmed that,” Dakota said.

The sheriff smiled. She remembered Dakota Lansing as being smart and capable. “Just had to check. Actually the call came from a woman who said she was your sister.”

“Courtney?”

McCall saw that she now had Dakota’s attention. “Is Courtney Baxter your sister?”

“My half sister. Long story. Why would she make a call like that? I haven’t seen her for several days.”

“Good question.” McCall glanced toward the bathroom door. She could hear the shower still running. Zane Chisholm took an awfully long shower.

As she felt the baby kick, McCall rested her hand on her swollen belly. For a moment she was lost in that amazing feeling. The whole pregnancy had been like this, stolen moments from her job when she felt as if she wanted to pinch herself. She just couldn’t believe she and Luke were having a baby.

“Is it possible your sister is jealous?” McCall asked as she turned to leave. “I heard Zane was out with a pretty blonde last night. Apparently they were celebrating rather hard.”

Compliments of the Whitehorse grapevine first thing this morning. McCall even knew that Courtney Baxter had been wearing a very sexy red dress. Who needed Twitter? No one in this county, she thought.

That Courtney was Dakota Lansing’s half sister had come as a surprise. The scuttlebutt now around town was that the girl was the product of an affair Clay Lansing had years ago.

“I actually set up the date,” Dakota said. “I knew the two of them would hit it off. Zane and I are just friends. But I can understand why Courtney might be jealous after a date with Zane. He is a catch.”

McCall nodded as she glanced into the kitchen and bedroom, saw the unmade bed and figured this was merely a case of sibling rivalry. “Well, you two have a nice supper. Have Zane give me a call when he gets a chance.”

As she started for the front door, she heard a cell phone ring from somewhere in the bedroom. “If that’s your sister calling, please tell her I’d like to talk to her, too,” McCall said, and let herself out.

DAKOTA LET OUT THE BREATH she’d been holding since the moment she’d realized it was Courtney’s cell phone ringing. Zane had left it lying on the crumpled covers of the bed. Fortunately it had been out of the sheriff’s sight.

She hurried into the bedroom and gingerly picked up the phone. Private caller. “Hello?”

No answer, but she could hear breathing on the line. “Who is this? Courtney? If that’s you—”

Whoever it was hung up.

Dakota stood holding the phone for a moment, then quickly dropped it back on the bed. She felt a rush of anger. Courtney was fine. She’d called the sheriff twenty minutes ago. She must have seen Dakota’s pickup parked in front of Zane’s house from the county road.

Or she’d called so the sheriff would see Zane’s scratched face.

“What are you up to, Courtney?” Dakota said to the empty bedroom. No good, that much she was sure of. “And what really happened here last night?”

The room provided few answers. Unless you read something into the crumpled sheets on the bed. She felt a surge of anger mixed with something she didn’t want to admit. Jealousy. Zane had gone out with her sister. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. She swore under her breath.

Too bad he hadn’t felt that way when they were kids, Dakota thought, remembering how he’d pushed her away.

“You’re just a kid,” he’d said when she tried to hang around him at the rodeo grounds. “Go on. Find someone your own age to bug.”

She ground her teeth at the memory. She’d had the worst crush on him. And, stupidly, she’d written it all down in her diary, every horrible tearful account, including her conviction: Zane doesn’t know it, but some day I’m going to marry him.

Two days ago, when she’d realized that someone had been in her things, she’d discovered that her diary and some old photographs were missing. Courtney. She was the only one who could have taken the diary.

Now Dakota wondered when Courtney had taken it. Two weeks ago—about the same time that someone had mysteriously signed Zane Chisholm up for a dating service?

It was no coincidence that Courtney had tricked Zane into a date. Dakota was sure of that. Courtney had the diary. She knew how her sister had felt about Zane. So Courtney had done this out of meanness?

What had she hoped to accomplish by this? More than sibling rivalry, Dakota thought, remembering the scratches on Zane’s face and the frantic phone call in the wee hours this morning.

Whatever Courtney was up to, Dakota was going to find her and put a stop to it. And Zane was going to help her.

Unlike him, Dakota had a bad feeling she knew exactly why Courtney had targeted him. She couldn’t wait to get her hands on her diary—and her sister.

MRS. CROWLEY STEPPED into her room and closed the door firmly behind her. She had always been so good at playing her roles—she now thought of herself as Mrs. Crowley. Smiling at the thought, she locked the door to listen. She had to make sure she wouldn’t be disturbed.

It hadn’t taken long to learn the sounds of the house. The older section had more to say than the newer one, but she knew all of its many voices—which floorboards creaked, which doors opened silently, which spot in the house carried the most sound for eavesdropping.

She’d explored every square inch of the house until she knew she could move through it blind if she had to. That was a possibility if the house were ever to catch fire.

Satisfied that everyone was down for the night, she stretched, relieving her back from the strain of walking hunched over. She had taught herself to move silently and now chuckled to herself at how many times she’d been able to come up behind Emma without her knowing it and startle her.

Moving just as silently now, she stepped into the bathroom and studied herself in the mirror over the sink a moment before she reached up and took out the white contact lens. She blinked, waiting for the eye to focus. Then she removed the dark brown contact lens.

She slowly began to remove the burn scar, peeling it off as she peeled away Mrs. Crowley. At last she stood at the mirror, her face scrubbed clean, her eyes blue again.

As she stared at herself, though, she felt she was looking at a stranger. It had been so long since she’d been herself, her image came as a shock.

But it was nothing compared to the shock it would give others in the house when the time came to end this charade, she thought with a wry smile.

Chapter Four

The moment Zane had gone into the bathroom and turned on the shower, he’d changed his mind about staying hidden while Dakota handled the sheriff.

He’d never run from trouble in his life, and he wasn’t going to now. But as he’d reached for the bathroom door handle, he’d glimpsed his face again in the mirror over the sink. The scratches were an angry red and, maybe worse, he had no explanation for them.

Dakota was right. He needed to find Courtney and he couldn’t do that behind bars. He feared anything he said to the sheriff would come out sounding like a lie. If Sheriff McCall Crawford saw Courtney’s cell phone …

He’d stayed put even though it was hard. He couldn’t hear what was being said. For all he knew, Courtney had been found and that was why the sheriff was here.

Zane jumped at the tap on the bathroom door. He quickly turned off the shower and opened the door.

“The coast is clear,” Dakota said as he came out.

“What did McCall want?” He hated the fear he heard in his voice. From Dakota’s reaction, she’d heard it too. She had to be wondering if she was wrong about him.

“Apparently Courtney called about a disturbance out here between you and me.”

“Courtney called? Then she’s all right?”

“Apparently.”

He shook his head. “But why would she …” The thought struck him like a brick. “She wanted the sheriff to see the scratches on my face and arm. What the hell is going on with her?”

“She seems to have it in for the two of us,” Dakota said. “That’s why we have to find her and find out what she’s up to.”

“The two of us?”

Dakota looked away for a moment as if she hadn’t meant to say that. “The last time I saw her was a few days ago. Right after that I realized she’d been in my house and taken something of mine.” She waved a hand through the air. “The point is, I want it back. She had no business in my house, let alone taking anything of mine.”

He nodded, seeing that whatever Courtney had taken, Dakota didn’t want to talk about it. He changed the subject. “What did McCall make of all this?”

“She seemed to think it was my sister being jealous.”

“We know better.” The date last night, what he could remember of it, hadn’t been anything special. In fact, he recalled before he’d lost his memory that he hadn’t planned to see Courtney again. She was beautiful, but not that interesting.

His head still hurt, but a thought wormed its way through. “You said Courtney showed up two weeks ago. That’s the same time someone broke into my house and used my computer to set up the rural dating account. Could she have been planning this that long ago, trying to set me up for more than a date?”

“Why go to the trouble?” Dakota asked, frowning as if she was trying to work it out herself.

“Why me at all?” It didn’t make any sense to him either. “The requirements I put down for the perfect date apparently made Courtney the perfect match.”

Dakota raised an eyebrow.

“I didn’t put down any requirements, but whoever signed me up must have rigged it so that my requirements matched Courtney’s. It had to be Courtney.”

“A lot of trouble and to what end?”

“I guess that depends on what happened last night,” he said as he glanced around the living room. Nothing seemed to be missing, but then he’d made that mistake before.

“You really don’t remember what happened after your date?” she asked.

“I’ve never had a hangover like this before.”

Dakota was looking at the scratches on his face again. “Maybe you should get a drug test at the hospital.”

Dakota was willing to consider that he’d been drugged? Zane was surprised and relieved. But why hadn’t he thought of it? Because he’d been running scared from the moment he’d opened his eyes this morning.

He had to know what he was dealing with. Courtney Baxter seemed to be setting him up. But why? He was just grateful that Dakota seemed to be on his side. If he’d just gotten drunk and didn’t remember, that was one thing. But if Dakota was right and Courtney had drugged him …

“I think a drug test is a good idea,” he said, but Dakota didn’t seem to hear him.

She was looking at Courtney’s cell phone. She had picked it up by two fingers. He could see the smeared blood from here.

“Any idea how it got blood on it?” she asked. “Or how it ended up under your bed? I noticed there was also a broken lamp on the other side of the bed. You probably don’t know anything about that either.”

He shook his head. “You said you heard something crash in the background when you were on the phone with her.”

“Could have been the lamp.” She looked down at the phone again. “Maybe we should see about getting DNA off this phone to find out if it is even Courtney’s blood. We can have a doctor run a blood test on you at the same time for possible drugs. Do you have a small plastic sandwich bag we can put this in?”

“Top drawer on the right.” He watched her head for the kitchen, trying to figure out what about Dakota was bothering him. She certainly was taking all this better than he would have thought.

“I doubt there will be fingerprints other than ours, but …” She stopped on her way back from the kitchen, the cell phone in a plastic bag she’d found in the drawer. “What’s wrong?”

He wasn’t sure. “You just kept me out of jail—at least temporarily—and now you’re going to help clear me? What’s going on, Dakota?”

“I told you. I need your help to find Courtney.”

“Because she took something of yours that you want back. If you just wanted to find Courtney, you could have told the sheriff everything you know and thrown me to the wolves,” he said. “The sheriff, with all her resources, would be looking for your sister right now. So why didn’t you? It wasn’t just to keep me out of jail so I could help you find her. I hate to sound suspicious, but I have to wonder why you’re so anxious to find her that you would throw in with me.”

“She’s my sister.”

“Uh-huh.”

Dakota sighed. “Okay, maybe I’ve suspected she was up to something from the first time I laid eyes on her.”

“You said your father’s name and signature are on her birth certificate. Are you saying you’re questioning that?”

She shrugged. “All I know is that something’s wrong with her story. After what you’ve told me, I’m even more convinced.”

“But not enough to go to the sheriff.”

“I want to do some investigating of my own before I get the sheriff involved,” Dakota said.

He suspected there was more, something she was hiding, but right now he was just glad he wasn’t in jail. “Then you believe me?”

“I’m willing to consider you were set up.” She stepped to the door and opened it. “On the way into town, I think we should see who Courtney’s been calling—and who’s been calling her.”

DAKOTA HADN’T BEEN completely truthful. Not that she didn’t have her reasons for wanting to believe Zane and, if she was being honest with herself, some of them had to do with the crush she’d had on him when she was a girl.

He was even more handsome now. Not that she was the kind of woman who was overcome by good looks. Zane hadn’t made fun of her like the other boys when she’d been the skinny, freckle-faced, buck-toothed, mouth-full-of-braces girl who’d hung around him like a lovesick puppy.

Nor was she that smitten girl anymore. But she also believed that Zane, while no longer the lanky boy she’d known as a girl, was still honorable and decent. She had to trust her instincts. Her instincts told her that Zane was telling the truth.

“I’ll drive,” she said, and Zane didn’t argue. He looked like death warmed over, making her also believe she might be right about him having been drugged.

She could tell that his greatest fear was that something really awful had happened to Courtney last night. Dakota told herself it was more likely, after what the sheriff had said, that Courtney was up to her pretty little neck in this and not as the victim. Another reason Dakota wanted to find her as quickly as possible.

As she drove, she watched Zane out of the corner of her eye as he began to check the numbers on the cell phone through the plastic bag.

“There are no contact numbers,” Zane said. “I get the feeling this is a fairly new phone, since there are so few calls and messages. The last outgoing call was …” He read off the number.

“That’s the number at my ranch from when Courtney called last night. Do you recognize any of the other numbers?”

“As for incoming, there are calls and messages from you and Arlene Evans Monroe. I had asked her to call Courtney and get back to me when she heard from her.” He studied the numbers for a moment. “Otherwise there are two incoming calls from numbers that I don’t recognize. Courtney returned one of those calls, but not the most recent one.”

Dakota realized she hadn’t told Zane about the phone call earlier. “Someone was looking for her. Before the sheriff left your house, Courtney’s cell phone rang. I answered it. I could hear breathing on the other end of the line, but the person didn’t say anything before hanging up.”

“Courtney? If she was the one who called the sheriff about a disturbance at my house,” he said, his brows furrowing.

“Or someone else looking for Courtney.”

“Do you recognize either of these numbers?” He read the numbers off to her.

“Sorry, they don’t sound familiar. There’s a notebook and pen in the glove box,” she told him as they neared town.

Zane jotted down the numbers as Dakota pulled into the back of the hospital.

Whitehorse County Hospital was small. As they walked in the back door, Zane spotted Dr. Buck Carrey. He looked more like a rancher than a doctor. A big man, he had a weathered face wrinkled from the sun and from smiling. His gray hair was uncharacteristically long for Whitehorse and pulled back in a ponytail. Today he was wearing jeans, boots and a Western shirt, with his white Stetson cocked back on his head.

He greeted Zane warmly, then shook hands with Dakota, whom he hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting before, and invited them into his office. “You said this was a confidential matter?” he asked, closing the door.

Dakota listened while Zane gave an abbreviated version of what they needed. Doc raised a brow when Zane showed him the phone. “Let’s start with the blood test. As for the DNA, I need something to compare it to.”

“I’m her sister. Well, half sister. Will that work?”

“Close enough.” Doc left and came back with the items he needed to do both tests. He took blood from Zane, then a swab of Dakota’s mouth and another swab of blood from the phone.

“I’ll have to get back to you on your blood test,” he told Zane. “Same with the blood on the phone.” Doc seemed to study Zane’s scratches for a moment. “You sure you don’t want the sheriff in on this?”

“If we can’t find Courtney, we’ll go to the sheriff,” Dakota promised. Her sister was in trouble, she’d bet on that. But she feared it was Courtney’s own making.

“I’M SORRY ABOUT ALL THIS,” Zane said as they left the hospital. “First your father’s death, then a sister you never knew you had and now this.”

Dakota shrugged as she opened her pickup door and slid behind the wheel. “I think what hurt the most was that I’d always wanted a sister and apparently I’ve had one since I was two—I just didn’t know it.”

“Why do you think your father kept it from you?”

She shook her head. “Guilt maybe. Everyone says he adored my mother, but when she got sick, I don’t think he could handle it.”

“I can’t imagine your father living a double life, not the way he felt about your mother.” He also couldn’t imagine Clay Lansing keeping all of this from his daughter. There had to be more to the story. “So what do you know about Courtney’s mother?”

“Nothing, really,” Dakota said. “Courtney said she died and that she doesn’t like to talk about it.”

“Did she mention where she was raised, at least?”

“Great Falls. She wasn’t even that far away, just a few hours. My father must have seen her when he went there, since she was at the hospital when he died.”

“He died in Great Falls?” Zane asked in surprise.

Dakota nodded and seemed to concentrate on her driving. “All of it has come as such a shock—his death, Courtney, the lie he lived all these years.” He could hear the hurt in her voice. “She had more time with him at the end than I did,” Dakota said, voicing her pain.

“If she’s telling the truth,” Zane said as he looked over at her. “You suspected something about her story was a lie, didn’t you?”

She glanced at him in surprise.

He smiled. “I know you, Dakota. You wouldn’t have believed me so quickly if you didn’t suspect your sister was up to something.” True, they hadn’t seen each other in years, but in so many ways she was that kid he knew from the rodeo grounds. She’d always seemed too smart for her own good.

“If you’re right and you were set up, then Courtney is in on it,” Dakota said. “I can’t imagine any other reason she would sign up for Arlene’s rural dating service. One look at her tells me she’s never had trouble finding a date.”

Zane had been one of those men. He cursed himself for it. “I need to see her room where she was staying.”

“She’s not there,” Dakota said. “I checked and her car wasn’t there before I came looking for you.”

“She might have dumped her car somewhere.”

“Why would she do that?”

He shook his head. “Why would she pretend we had a date and possibly drug me?”

“You don’t know she was the one who signed you up for Arlene’s rural dating service,” Dakota pointed out.

“No, but she had to be in on it. That’s the only thing that makes any sense. You didn’t check to make sure she wasn’t at home, a friend maybe had given her a ride home?”

Dakota shook her head. “She doesn’t have any friends here.”

“That you know of,” Zane said. “Let’s try her room first. If she set me up …”

“You think she’s cleared out.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m thinking. I’m sure there’s more, but I have a feeling this next part is her being scarce until the other shoe drops,” he said.

THEY REACHED CHINOOK, a small, old town along the railroad, down the Highline from Whitehorse. She turned north on a dirt road toward the Lansing ranch, traveling through the rolling prairie.

It had been a clear blue day, the kind that are almost blinding. Now the sun had dipped behind the Bear Paw Mountains, the sky a silken blue-gray and still cloudless. A meadowlark sang a song that traveled along with them as she drove.

“You say she doesn’t have any friends,” Zane said as he watched the countryside roll by and tried to get a clear picture of what Courtney Baxter was really like. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he hadn’t been out with the “real” Courtney last night. “No one you’ve seen her with, no phone calls?”

Dakota shook her head.

“When I woke up and Courtney was gone, I just assumed she’d left on her own,” he said. “But what if there’d been someone else with her at my house last night after I passed out?”

He felt her studying him again, stealing glances at him as she drove. “Dakota, you know me. I wouldn’t have hurt her.”

She let out a breath. “I know.”

“Thank you for believing in me. I suspect whatever this is, Courtney isn’t in it alone and I have a bad feeling your sister doesn’t realize how dangerous the person she got involved with really is.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. I get the feeling Courtney can take care of herself.”

Dakota drove past the large old, white, single-story ranch house to the small matching guesthouse out back. Zane remembered when they were kids and Dakota had told him that her father had built a house on the ranch for her to stay in when she reached sixteen. He recalled her excitement because she was like him. She never wanted to leave the ranch; she just didn’t want to live at home.

But something had changed for her to end up in New Mexico, engaged to a guy involved in investment managing.

Zane saw as they climbed out of the pickup that Courtney’s compact car was nowhere in sight.

Dakota knocked at the front door. “Courtney?”

He held his breath, praying she would open the door. Dakota knocked again, then pulled out a key and opened the door.

As the door swung in, Zane caught the scent of perfume, the familiarity of it making him a little sick to his stomach and increasing his dread. What had happened last night? The harder he tried to remember, the worse he felt.

The guesthouse was small, one bedroom, one bath with a kitchenette and living area. The bedroom door was ajar. Dakota stepped over to it, carefully pushing the door all the way open to expose an empty, unmade bed.

“It doesn’t look like she’s been back,” Dakota said as he headed over to the closet and eased the door open.

Only a handful of clothes hung there. He frowned and moved to the chest of drawers. The top drawer held a few undergarments. The next drawer had even less, only a couple of tank tops and pajama bottoms. The third drawer had two pairs of jeans, and the bottom drawer was empty.

He closed the last drawer and turned to look at Dakota. “What woman has so few clothes?”

She shrugged. “Maybe this is all she owns.”

“Or maybe she left most of her belongings somewhere else. Does she have a job?”

“She said she’s been looking locally.”

He smiled at that. “Not looking very hard, right?”

Dakota sighed. “I got the feeling she was waiting for me to offer her half the ranch.”

If Courtney Baxter really was Clay Lansing’s love child, then she could probably legally force Dakota to split the ranch and the rough stock business with her. He swore under his breath. How could Clay have done this to Dakota? Worse, he’d kept her sister from her—and let Dakota learn about her after he was gone. Didn’t he realize the repercussions of his actions?

Zane moved to the bed. A clock radio sat on one of the bedside tables, nothing else. He bent down to look under the bed and was hit again with the smell of Courtney’s perfume. For a moment he thought he would be sick. He stilled his stomach and squinted into the darkness under the bed.

Something glinted. Reaching in, he felt the cool, weathered vinyl surface, found the handle and pulled the old suitcase from under the bed.

He glanced at Dakota.

“Maybe you’d better make sure it isn’t ticking before you open it,” she said.

He popped the latches on each side. The suitcase fell open.

EMMA CHISHOLM GLANCED OUT the window, surprised to see Mrs. Crowley silhouetted against the fading twilight.

Instinctively, Emma stepped back, afraid the woman might have seen her. She was relieved when she stole another glance and saw that Mrs. Crowley had her back to the house.

What was she doing out there? The woman never went outside. At least not that Emma had ever noticed.

Peering around the edge of the curtain, it took her a moment to realize the housekeeper was on a cell phone. Emma had never seen her make or take a call. No cell phone had ever rung while Mrs. Crowley was working. Emma was actually surprised that the housekeeper even owned one.

She couldn’t help but wonder who the woman was talking to. Mrs. Crowley made it clear she had no one who would interfere with her ability to stay at the ranch and work every day except one each week.

When pinned down, the housekeeper had said she was widowed, no children. She’d quickly made it clear she thought Emma had stepped over some invisible line by even asking.

“It could be a friend,” Emma muttered to herself. But even as she said it, she had her doubts. “Maybe a friend from before the accident.”

That was something else that Mrs. Crowley made clear she wasn’t going to talk about.

“People don’t just stare at me,” she said, her voice sharp with bitterness and anger. “They want to know what happened. Like vultures, they would love to hear every horrible detail.” Mrs. Crowley’s one good eye glinted like granite. “Well, they won’t be hearing it from me and neither will you.”

With that, she’d turned and limped off.

Emma watched now from the edge of the curtain as Mrs. Crowley finished her phone call and stood for a long moment as if admiring what little remained of the sunset.

As she turned to come back to the house, her gaze rose to the second floor as though she sensed Emma watching her.

Emma jerked back, heart hammering. The last thing she wanted Mrs. Crowley to think was that she was spying on her, true or not.

After a moment, Emma dared to take another peek. Mrs. Crowley was still standing in the same spot. The harsh glow of the sunset fell across the woman’s disfigured face. She was smiling her crooked half smile, her gaze mocking as she looked up at the second-floor window, making sure that Emma knew she’d been caught spying on her.

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