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Still no answer. The door of the truck hung open. Lute could see that the cab was empty. As he inched closer, his boot toe stubbed something soft. He looked down.
Slade lay faceup in the brush a few paces from the truck. A single, neat bullet hole was drilled with almost surgical precision through the center of his forehead. The spatters of blood, what few there were, were still wet.
Lute’s knees refused to hold him. He sank to the ground next to the body, swearing to bolster his courage. Some bastard had beaten him to the job. It had to be Tyler. He’d been a sniper in Iraq. But how the hell had he known Slade would be here?
Stella seemed to like Beau. Could she have warned him?
No time to think about that, Lute told himself. He needed to salvage the situation to make himself look good. And then he had to get out of here.
He’d stolen the rifle from the ranch to frame Beau Tyler. The plan was to kill Slade with the weapon, then toss it where it could be easily found. The bullets in Slade’s body would be a match for the old man’s gun, which Beau could have easily taken. The note Slade had stuffed in his pocket, along with the testimony of witnesses who’d seen the fight in the bar, would seal the evidence. Case closed.
He could still make it work, Lute reasoned, especially since he’d be laying a trail to the real killer.
Standing, he laid the rifle’s muzzle on the hole in Slade’s forehead, trying to match the angle of the first bullet. With a shaking finger, he pulled the trigger.
The shot cracked like lightning in the darkness.
Lute stared down at the damage. Firing the gun hadn’t been such a big deal after all. Better yet, the bullet had made an ugly wound, pretty much obliterating the first one. Giddy with triumph, Lute pumped three more shots into Slade’s still-warm body—for Jess, he told himself. Bang, bang, bang. So easy. He forced himself to stop before it became fun. He’d done enough.
There were plenty of shoe and tire tracks around the bog, left over from the earlier investigation. Still, to be safe, he found a broken mesquite branch and brushed out his tracks as he backed away from the scene. He hadn’t forgotten the rattler. He gave it a wide berth, hoping there weren’t more around.
Reaching his truck, he took a moment to wipe the gun with the damp cloth he’d brought along. On the way back to town, he would use the cloth to throw the gun into the long grass that grew along the roadside. No fingerprints. A clean getaway—and a clear conscience.
Stella would be pleased when he told her he’d done his job. But he planned to leave out one detail. Why bother to tell her he’d fired four bullets into a corpse?
The lawyer, J. Bob Tucker, had arrived precisely at 10:00 a.m., driving a black Lincoln Town Car and wearing a charcoal suit with a bolo tie and a Stetson. Tall and thin with a hooked nose and sparse gray hair, he was in his mid-sixties, the same age as Bull had been.
Since Tucker had requested a desk for the reading, Will had carried the dining room chairs into the ranch office, arranged them in a semicircle, and shifted the computer onto a side table. Bernice had offered to do the simple task, but he was through being a damned invalid. That morning, before first light, he’d gone out to the stable, saddled his horse, and ridden down to the lower pasture. His leg still ached, but not so much that he couldn’t stand it. Pain or no pain, the old Will Tyler was back. But he would never take his body for granted again.
Now Will glanced down the row of chairs that faced the desk. Just six people were present for the reading of his father’s will—Beau, Jasper, Bernice, Sky, Erin, and himself. Will was a trifle disappointed that Tori hadn’t been included. But he should have known better. To Bull the three things that counted were blood, land, and loyalty. It was no surprise that, given the divorce, he’d excluded her from t
he family.
Sky had shown surprise at being asked to attend the reading. As far as Will knew, the man had never aspired to own anything but his truck, his clothes, his saddle, and his guns. His paychecks—and he was fairly paid—went directly to the bank. Unless he had some secret vice, he must have accumulated a tidy sum over the years, but he never spoke of it. Sky was as private as a lone cougar. Today, dressed in faded jeans and a denim work shirt with his dusty Stetson balanced on one knee, he appeared anxious to get this bother out of the way and go back to shoring up the paddock.
Erin edged closer to her father. Will encircled her shoulders with a comforting arm as the lawyer shuffled his papers on the desk. He could have spared his daughter this serious adult business, but she was growing up. It was time she understood her place in the family.
Tucker cleared his throat, adjusted his glasses, and began to read. “I, Virgil Tyler, being of sound mind . . .”
His voice droned on. Will and Beau were to be given equal shares in the ranch as long as both of them were involved in its management. If Beau chose to stay away, his share would be twenty-five percent. Clearly Bull had wanted both his sons on the land. Jasper and Bernice were to be given a modest income for life and a place to live for as long as they wished to stay. A trust fund, set aside for Erin, would pay for her college education. That left only Sky.
The lawyer cleared his throat again and moved on to the second page of the will.
“To Sky Fletcher, in recognition of his service to the ranch, I leave the contents of this envelope, to be opened in private, at his discretion.” The lawyer slid a sealed, plain manila envelope across the desk, toward Sky. “Here you are, Mr. Fletcher. The envelope was given to me by Mr. Tyler, in this condition.” Tucker scooped a few stray papers into his briefcase and closed it with a click. “Unless you have questions, that concludes my business here.”
The envelope was thin, as if it contained no more than a few sheets of paper. Without taking time to inspect it, Sky folded it and slid it into an inner pocket of his vest. He was one of the most self-contained men Will had ever known. If he was surprised, or even curious, he hid it well.
The lawyer stood to leave, and everyone else rose with him. Beau turned to Sky. “I hope you’re going to tell us what’s in that envelope,” he said. “When are you going to open it?”
Sky shook his dark head. “Not just yet. I’ll know when the time is right.”
Will glanced past him. Jasper had paused in the doorway. His pale eyes appeared to be studying the three men, taking their measure in some secret way. As his gaze met Will’s, he raised a grizzled eyebrow. Then he turned away, leaving Will to wonder what the old man had been thinking.
Sky walked back down the slope toward the paddock, where two of the men had been helping him build a new section of fence. His senses were acutely aware of everything around him—the smells of grass and manure, the whinny of a mare to her foal, the echoing ring of two hammers, striking almost in unison. Through the well-worn soles of his boots he could feel every rock and pebble, every rise and fall of ground. The sun beat down on the felted crown of his Stetson, warming his thick, black hair. Everything was much the same as it had been for years, yet not the same. Whatever was inside the mysterious envelope, he sensed it could have the power to change his life.
He remembered the windy November morning when he’d first wandered onto the ranch, a fifteen-year-old runaway, filthy and shivering in his thin denim jacket, his stomach a gnawing pit of hunger. The name Blanco Springs had been mentioned by his mother, so long ago that he no longer remembered the context, but it had to be a better place than where he’d come from. Maybe she even had folks there. He’d hitched rides from Oklahoma, stopping at farms and ranches on the way to chop wood or shovel out barns in exchange for a meal. The last ride, a truck delivering winter feed, had let him off here, and here he had found a home.
A plump, kind-looking woman had answered his knock at the back door. Too proud to beg, he’d asked for work. She’d taken one look and hauled him into the kitchen. “Go wash up,” she’d directed him. “I’ll fix you some breakfast. Then you can talk to the boss about earning it.”
