Jodi Thomas - Indigo Lake

“You travel lots?” Dakota asked.

“So much so I feel like I don’t have a home, just a place where I change clothes. When I found out about the place across the lake, I took some time off to investigate. I’ve never owned a square inch of land in my life.”

“Are you planning to stay?” Maria asked as she handed Dakota her bag with a tiny loaf of bread.

“No. I’ll sell it. I wouldn’t have any idea how to make a farm work.”

Dakota suddenly saw a light at the end of her dark tunnel. “I could list it and sell it for you. That’s what I do for a living.” All she had to do was put up with him for a few days, sell his place, and she just might make twice the commission she usually did.

“Sounds exciting, Hamilton,” Maria said. “Your job, I mean.”

He turned back to Maria. “It can be, but mostly it’s just paperwork or standing around waiting for something to happen. Not near as exciting as I thought it might be when I signed on.”

They were ignoring her again, Dakota thought. He hadn’t even answered her offer to sell his place.

Dakota thought of asking questions, but right now all she could think of was getting him out of their kitchen. The last thing Maria needed was a friend who’d be around for only a few days. After the accident, all of the friends her sister had had in Dallas melted away like ice cream left on a summer porch.

Maybe she didn’t believe in curses, but still, avoiding any Hamilton seemed to be a rational precaution.

The sheriff’s cruiser pulled up in her yard before she had time to push Blade out the door.

“Morning, ladies,” Sheriff Brigman shouted through the screen door without stepping foot on the porch. “Any chance a guy named Hamilton is here? He couldn’t have gone far. I saw his bike parked on his land.”

Blade hurried outside with the bag of bread in his hand. “I’m just finishing breakfast, Sheriff. What do you need?”

Dakota watched the two men talking but couldn’t make out what they were saying. If Hamilton already knew the sheriff, that could mean bad news. He could have lied about his job. He probably got that killer body in the prison gym. Maybe he had to check in with every sheriff in every county he passed through? He probably said he was ATF because that was who arrested him.

Maria had just joined her at the door when Blade picked up his boots and saddlebags off the corner of the porch and waved.

“Thanks,” was all he said before the sheriff backed the car away from the porch with Blade riding shotgun.

“Probably off to fight a forest fire,” Maria reasoned. “What a hero.”

“There’s not five trees standing together for a hundred miles,” Dakota said, pointing out the obvious.

Maria looked surprised. “Now you tell me.”

Both girls laughed.

“I have to go to work.” Dakota grabbed the old briefcase she’d bought at the secondhand store three years ago.

“Me too,” Maria added. “See you before dark, little sister.”

“See you before dark,” Dakota answered.

Halfway to town Dakota was still thinking of how Blade had looked in the hallway with nothing on but his jeans. Surely he could have pulled his shirt on before he stepped out. Then she realized something: he’d been showing off.

And not for Maria, but for her.

He’d probably deny it to his dying breath, but she’d grown up on a farm. She’d seen roosters. Maybe he came not just to look at his place but to con them. He’d said he wasn’t a liar, but probably every liar said that. It would be a waste of time to ask him if he was a serial killer.

She might as well go with believing he was telling the truth for now, but she planned to watch him. Maybe check out his funny biker saddlebags for weapons.

She smiled, planning to hold her cards close to her chest until she figured him out. If he was playing some kind of flirting game, maybe she should warn him that she didn’t know the rules.

He’d winked at her twice. That must mean something.

Maybe he had a twitch?

He’d kept her warm last night, but never touched her.

Or at least she didn’t think he had. Did she want him to? Just the thought made her warm.

Suddenly Dakota felt like she was just out of high school again and trying to figure out how guys think. She glanced in the rearview mirror. Cheeks flushed, eyes wide.

She wasn’t growing older. Not today.

CHAPTER NINE

BLADE HAMILTON DIDN’T KNOW a thing about farming or ranching or barn fires. All the way out to the Collins ranch, the sheriff talked about how he needed an expert fire investigator to have a look at it and it would be a week, maybe more, before he could get a fire marshal to this part of Texas.

Blade hated to bust the sheriff’s bubble, but Sheriff Brigman still didn’t have an expert on the kind of fire he was dealing with. He had studied arson fires and even worked a few bomb sites in the army. So, Blade kept quiet while the sheriff drove and hoped he had enough experience to fake it.

For the past five years he had worked fires set in wooded areas. That was different from this, and the only tool of his trade he had with him was his camera. But he’d known his enemy in the woods of northern Washington and the hills of California. The opponent hadn’t changed, just the location had. Blade began to collect facts about the land, and mentally started a list of questions.

When they turned off under a ten-foot gate with a Bar W brand, Blade had stopped listening to the sheriff and started trying to remember what he’d learned over the past five years. The same rules should apply—well a few of them, anyway. He could help. If the sheriff wanted a special agent helping out, he had one.

The soaked ground had probably kept the whole ranch from being a disaster. Winter grass, if it had been dry, would burn fast and hot. There wouldn’t be much chance of stopping it except at roads or creeks. Barbed wire wouldn’t slow it down. And there probably weren’t enough men in the county to fight it on a dry night.

Last night the rain had given him hell, but it had stopped the fire on the Bar W from spreading.

“Who am I kidding?” Sheriff Brigman asked, pulling Blade back into the conversation. “No one will come out this far because a few barns burned down. I’d never get a fire marshal or the ATF agent here. Not unless we find a body in the ashes. If I hadn’t remembered meeting you, I’d be on my own. It’s lucky you’re here, Hamilton.”

“You might want to ask the Davis women about that.” Blade wished he’d been awake enough last night to remember one thing, but he was dead on his feet when he got to the barn and found Dakota sleeping in that old chair. “They mentioned Hamiltons tend to kill Davises, so they weren’t too happy when I showed up. Every now and then the youngest one looks at me like she’s checking to see if there’s a weapon in my hand.”

The sheriff laughed. “From what I heard, bullets flew in both directions back during the feud. Like most good Western stories, it started with stolen cattle and ended with a woman. Legend goes that the last man to die in the bloody battle that night killed himself. Walked right straight into Indigo Lake until the water covered his head. Only I’ve heard whispers of an even darker ending. No one really knows. There was not one man named Davis or Hamilton left alive to tell the story, and the women told them more to frighten the next generation than to be passing along history.”

Blade swore he felt his blood chill. What could be darker? One of his relatives, maybe even one on the staircase wall, had committed suicide? Blade decided he didn’t want to know the darker ending if suicide was the good choice.

He took a deep breath and thought of Dakota. She was the other half of the feud. Maybe, if she was still speaking to him later, he’d ask her about her family stories. Even in her very proper, very boring clothes, he saw the flash of a fighter in those dark eyes of hers and in the crimson glints in her hair. Maria had mentioned they’d come from strong warriors on both their Irish and Apache sides. Stubborn. Independent. Deadly.