“I suppose Horace does need a wife, too.”
Their own beagle, who adored Lacy, was currently having a three-day sleepover with Travis’s brother, the governor of Texas. “We can’t leave them here. They’ll starve.”
“There’re some cereal bars in the truck,” Phil said softly. “Phoebe made them this morning. I don’t think the pups are old enough for solid foods yet. But the mother—”
“She needs help.” Lacy stepped closer quietly. She cooed tenderly, patiently. Until the momma stepped toward her. Lacy looked at Travis. “The cereal bars?”
Travis knew what she wanted. He fetched like the good husband he was.
Fifteen minutes later, Lacy was cuddling the momma and giving her a cursory inspection, while getting licked in return. Travis and Phil had been relegated to puppy catchers. Phil had a small kennel in the back of his truck that he’d used to ferry his daughter Phoebe’s goats to the vet—his son-in-law Matt—a few days earlier. It came in handy.
Travis was chasing the last of the furry little boogers around when his foot tangled in an old bundle of rags—and he went crashing to the ground.
He couldn’t help himself.
Travis screamed like his niece Katie whenever she saw a spider.
Phil and Lacy came running. The momma dog barked her fool head off, her puppies mimicking her immediately.
“What in the hell, Deane?”
“Keep Lacy back!” Travis yelled at the older man, who immediately blocked Lacy from seeing the grisly sight Travis knew he would never forget.
A human skull stared back at him, a macabre grin on its face.
Travis fought the urge to vomit.
He looked at Phil. “You’d best call the sheriff. We just found a body, and I don’t think it put itself here.”
Phil’s curse echoed in the barn around them.
Travis stood and went to his wife. He knew she’d seen human remains before—she was an ER doctor, after all—but this was a sight he didn’t want her to see in her nightmares. She already had enough nightmares of her own.
1
Officer Jim Hollace with the Wyoming State Police listened to the call out as it went over the radio, reporting a body found. And he knew.
That address still haunted him. Still came into his nightmares. He drove by there almost every day he worked, just to see. To remember.
He’d done some stupid things fourteen years ago. Shit that hadn’t left him alone since. In his job, he’d seen the worst of humanity. Beer and bourbon did very little to block it out. He’d tried. Lost two wives and three kids because of it.
That address, that woman, had always haunted him. Probably always would.
He circled the block—he was assigned the region just next to the Masterson region. He’d tried to stay away from Masterson and the ranch where he’d lived for a few years, but, sometimes, it just pulled him back.
Sometimes, he went out there and just sat, drinking away the memories.
Jim snorted. The memories never went away. Far from it.
Like her ghost was keeping him there or something.
Which was stupid.
He hadn’t done anything but try to protect his family. Luther’s kids were his cousins, too. Step, but still family. He had to remember that.
He’d tried to make up for what had happened. He’d sobered up a bit then, dropped the drugs. He hadn’t touched a single drug since those days. He was proud of that.
Jim had been lucky to have never gotten busted with anything other than a beer or two. The Wyoming State Police had been able to brush underage drinking off. Jim had had the connections, thanks to his cousin Luther’s friendship with the then-sheriff of Masterson, to make certain nothing stayed on Jim’s record. He’d gotten a good job with the Wyoming State Police, and he knew it. He’d done his best.
He’d done his best.
That was all he could say.
But Masterson still haunted him. Damned town probably always would.
They’d just found one of the ghosts he’d longed to forget.
He had to get home. Get himself something to drink. Something to help him forget.
Jim drove his patrol car just a little too fast on the county roads until he got there.
2
Sheriff Joel Masterson looked at the body as the state forensics team worked diligently to uncover it. It was his county, but it being a murder—because no one wrapped themselves up in a pink and orange quilt and buried themselves in Luther Beise’s barn by accident—made him glad he’d made the decision over the phone to have the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation called in as soon as possible. Joel knew what he was capable of, and he knew what resources his little squad actually had. He could handle the case—but it would pull resources from areas that he didn’t want to stretch right now.
They were always stretched thin—in both manpower and monetary resources. It was just the way it was for his office. He’d known that going in. He had six deputies, now.
It was just bad luck that the one DCI agent sent into help was the one Joel wanted nowhere near Masterson County.
There had always been a bit of political jockeying about jurisdiction on the big cases since he’d been elected, but he was working on fixing the chasm that the previous sheriff had created.
Seemed like all Joel did any more was clean up the previous sheriff’s messes. Those messes just kept coming to the surface when he least expected it. Joel damned Clive Gunderson for nothing less than the four hundredth time.
His thoughts darkened further when he thought of his wife’s younger sister—his brother Nate’s wife—and how she’d almost died at Clive’s hands.
It would take a long, long time to forget that.
He looked at Clive Gunderson’s stepson and fought the snarl.
Too many memories Joel wanted to forget. His sister-in-law’s blood all over the side of the road, for one thing. The terror on Nate’s face was another. He’d never had a real problem with Clint before, but just the sight of him hurt now.
It was the first time their paths had crossed since
