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until I tell you. Open a new e-mail account on Hotmail and send me an e-mail when you’re settled and safe. Then I’ll get you instructions. Don’t use my regular screen name. Middle name, Josy. You know the one.
Middle name
. Add my age. I’ll contact you when I can and take the package off your hands. Oh, hell, I gotta go—”
    And then there was nothing. Ricky had vanished.
    Just like she had to do.
    She fought down a sob, dragged her suitcase from the closet, and grabbed an armload of clothes.
    Two hours later she was at LaGuardia, boarding a plane for Salt Lake City. She had her tote, her suitcase, and her sketch pad, and she made it on the plane in one piece.
    That was something,
Josy thought, as the jet taxied down the runway before takeoff.
    There was only one place she’d thought to go. A place far from New York, where she could lose herself, lay low, have time to think, to work, and maybe put some pieces of her life together while she was trying to save that same life.
    A town where a woman named Ada Scott lived. A town as different from New York as cowhide was from crystal. A town where she could try to recharge what was left of her creative batteries and meet the one living relative she had left in this world.
    A town called Thunder Creek.

Chapter 3

    AT TEN MINUTES PAST SIX IN THE EVENING, TY Barclay locked up his sheriff’s department office and headed out the door without a backward glance. Dead tired, he shifted his black Crown Victoria into drive and headed for home. He’d been awake since 4 A.M. when he’d started the day with a five-mile run to town and back in the predawn darkness, then he’d worked nonstop at his desk ever since. All he wanted to do now was go home, crash, and not wake up, not talk to anyone, not see anyone until tomorrow.
    Then, thankfully, this day—and this night—would be over.
    The Pine Hills apartments were on the outskirts of Thunder Creek, five miles south of Main Street, and he passed only one car on his way—the white Ford Ranger driven by his cousin Roy Hewett.
    Roy honked at him and gave a wave. Ty managed a brief, automatic nod back, but truth be told, his brain scarcely registered Roy. It was still wrapped up in his work, in the cattle rustling investigation that had been ongoing for several months now without a break in the case, in the bar fight the previous night at the Tumbleweed Bar and Grill, and in the rescue of a couple of tourists lost this morning on Cougar Mountain—not to mention the mass of paperwork that had piled up on his desk when he wasn’t looking.
    He had to keep thinking about work in order not to think about Meg. About what today was. And tonight.
    He’d only slept five hours the night before, so sleep would come. It better come. He was counting on that. And when he woke up tomorrow morning, his wedding anniversary would be behind him once again.
    He swore when his cell phone rang.
    “You okay, Ty?” Roy asked.
    “Yeah.” He suppressed the impulse to hang up after that single word. He liked Roy just fine—they were good friends as well as cousins, in fact, but he didn’t like being checked up on. And they both knew that was what was going on here.
    “Want to come over to my place for some supper? Corinne’s cooking—roast chicken, mashed potatoes, all the fixings. We’ve got plenty—”
    “No, thanks. I’m beat, Roy.”
    “Yeah, but you gotta eat—”
    “Another time.”
    There was a silence. “Look, Ty, I know what day this is. I know it’s hard on you. Why be alone? I saw your face when I passed you and you looked grim as death yourself. I mean . . .” Roy broke off and Ty heard the frustration in his voice. He was trying to say the right things. But there were no right things. Not when it came to Meg’s death. And there never would be.
    “I’m all right, Roy. No sweat. I’m going to zap myself a frozen pizza and hit the sack. No big deal. Say hi to Corinne for me.”
    And he disconnected.
    There were times—too