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jean-clad legs closing the distance as if he couldn’t wait to get home.
    She’d been so sure he would contact her. Eventually he would call for money. He’d known she could make his hunting violation charge go away—just as she had the others.
    For that reason, she’d never understood why he would run away. She’d blamed that tramp he’d foolishly married. Trace wasn’t ready for marriage, let alone a child. Especially one Pepper had been convinced would turn out to be someone else’s bastard. She’d despised Ruby for trapping her son and giving Trace no way out but to leave town.
    But after weeks, then months had gone by with no word, Pepper feared she was the reason her son had left and never came back. The thought had turned her heart to stone.
    She’d walled herself up here in the lodge unable to face life outside the ranch. Worse, she’d replayed her last argument with Trace over and over in her head.
    McCall was right. She had threatened to cut him off without a cent if he didn’t divorce Ruby and denounce that bastard child she was carrying. Trace had pleaded with her to give Ruby a chance, swearing the baby was his.
    Pepper sighed. Apparently, he’d been right about that at least, she thought now. She was still trembling from finally coming face-to-face with Trace’s daughter. McCall.
    That bitch Ruby had named the girl after her grandfather, Call Winchester, just to throw it in Pepper’s face.
    But there was no doubt. The girl definitely was of Winchester blood.
    She frowned as she remembered something McCall had said. “Then why did you think he’d left town?”
    McCall hadn’t come to the ranch out of simple curiosity. If that were true, she would have shown up sooner.
    Pepper stepped to the phone. For years, she hadn’t spoken to another soul other than Enid and her housekeeper’s husband, Alfred—and fortunately neither of them had much to say.
    Then McCall had shown up, she thought with a curse as she dialed the sheriff’s department.
     
    L UKE SPENT A COUPLE OF HOURS looking around Whitehorse for the poachers’ pickup before he headed south. His jurisdiction included everything from the Canadian border to the Missouri River—an area about the size of the state of Massachusetts.
    For that reason, he put close to twenty-five thousand miles on his three-quarter-ton pickup every year. His truck was his office as well as his main source of transportation unless he was in one of the two boats he used to patrol the area’s waterways.
    This time of year, because of paddlefish season, he spent most of his time on the Missouri River south of Whitehorse. Today he was checking tags and watching for fishing violations. Fishing was picking up all over his area from the Milk River to reservoirs Nelson and Fort Peck.
    For the next few months, he’d be spending fourteen-to fifteen-hour days watching fishermen, checking licenses and boats for safety equipment.
    That wouldn’t leave much time to catch the deer poachers, but he figured they knew that.
    Tired from getting up at dawn, Luke headed back toward Whitehorse a little earlier than usual. His place was just to the south, his parents’ old homestead that he’d bought when he’d recently returned to Whitehorse. The homestead had been sold following his parents’ deaths but he’d managed to get it back.
    He liked to think it was a sign that he’d made the right decision by coming back here. A sign that there was a chance for him and McCall. He was building a new house on the property and was anxious for a couple of days off to work on it.
    As he drove over the rise on the road, the stark skeleton of his new house set against the sunset, he slowed. The truck parked down by his stock pond didn’t look familiar.
    He pulled his pickup to a stop and got out, scanning the old windbreak of Russian olive trees as he did. The unfamiliar truck had local plates. As he walked past the pickup, he saw an older outboard lying in the back in a pool of oil