Lincoln knew exactly where the better offer had come from. He laughed. “That’s okay. I’d take your pretty cowgirl wife over me any day. Besides, this is my first night at the Double Diamond, I figure I should spend it with Lucas and Chester.”
Lucas and Chester Diamond owned the Double Diamond. Sixteen years earlier, the brothers had decided to open it up to six troubled teenagers. It had only taken the two old cowboys one summer to turn the bunch of delinquents into roping and riding cattle herders. And Lucas and Chester didn’t just teach them how to rope, ride, and herd cattle. They taught them how to be good men. All the boys owned them for that.
Lincoln most of all.
Until he came to the ranch, he hadn’t known what a good male role model was. His dad had died in an oil drilling accident when he was only three and his mother had dated only one man after that. A man who had turned out to be the opposite of a good role model. After his mother passed away when he was thirteen, Lincoln had gone to live with his grandmother, who didn’t know what to do with her punky grandson when he skipped school, drank, smoked pot, and got in fights.
Thankfully, Lucas and Chester had known what to do. They looked past the punk kid and saw a good person. They pulled that good person out of him with love, attention, and a hard day’s work filled with plenty of life lessons: Satisfaction from a job well done is worth more than gold. If you take care of the land, the land will take care of you. Your best days are spent working alongside friends. A man is only as good as his word. It’s easy to make the wrong choice and so much harder to make the right one. Good always prevails over evil—so be smart enough to be on the winning team.
Lincoln had chosen the winning team. He was one of the good guys now. Although, lately, he hadn’t felt that good. His caseload kept growing, and no matter how many hours he put in, it felt like evil was winning. His boss had pushed him to take a week off, but even on his vacation, he’d been doing a little investigating work on the side.
Sam Sweeney had been a ranch hand on the Double Diamond. Instead of helping the group of troubled boys become cowboys, he’d pulled mean-spirited pranks on them. When Lucas and Chester had found out, they fired him. Everyone assumed Sam left town. But a few months ago, his daughter had shown up looking for him. Sam had disappeared and no one had heard from his since leaving the Double Diamond ranch. Which made Lincoln and the rest of the boys uneasy. Especially when Chester had threatened Sam if he ever came back to the ranch.
“I haven’t found out anything else on Sam Sweeney’s whereabouts,” Lincoln said.
Holden turned to look at him. “Neither has the private investigator I asked to help. He hasn’t been able to find one piece of information on where Sam went after he left here.”
Silence settled over the group of men, the only sounds the squeak of saddle leather and the clomp of hooves on hard red earth. Lincoln knew they were all thinking the same thing: Sam Sweeney was dead. He also knew that not one of the boys felt any sadness. He certainly didn’t. Sam was a bad person. Something Lincoln had known long before coming to the Double Diamond. As much as he would love to let Sam’s disappearance go and forget about the man, he couldn’t seem to do it.
“Tell me again what happened the last time you saw Sam, Val.” Lincoln had already gone over the story with Val numerous times, but he had learned from experience that people usually forgot some little detail. The more they retold the story, the more they remembered.
“I was mucking out the stalls when Sam showed up to get his saddle and gear. When he saw me, he went off and started cussing all of us out for getting him fired. He grabbed me and that’s all I remember before I got so scared I blacked out.”
Just the thought of Sam bullying Val pissed Lincoln off. Maybe because he had been just as scared of the man. “And you don’t remember anything else?”
“No. When I came to, Sam was gone. I hid in the stall until I heard his truck drive away.”
“When you finally came out of the barn, did you see anyone?”
“You mean Chester? No. But he had to be somewhere around because how else would he know about Sam coming back to the ranch. I didn’t tell a soul. Did you ask him about it?”
“I did, and he claims he was just riding back to check on you when he saw Sam coming out of the barn. He said he was quite a distance away and Sam left in his truck before he could get to the ranch.”
“That would make sense,” Cru said. “Chester had good eyesight back then. He was always catching us doing things.” He flashed a grin at Logan. “Like you smoking behind the barn.”
Logan laughed. “And Sawyer looking at girlie magazines in the hayloft.”
“And Chester didn’t come to check on you after Sweeney left?” Lincoln asked Val.
Val shook his head. “No. He said after Sam left, he rode back to finish helping with the cattle.”
This was the part of the story that bothered Lincoln. Chester was protective of “his boys.” Lincoln couldn’t see him riding off without making sure Val was okay. It didn’t fit.
“Why all the questions, Linc?” Holden asked. “With the sheriff under investigation, we don’t need to worry about him pointing fingers at
