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“Branded,” she whispered, blotting herself with a towel. Her fingers went involuntarily to the Mustangs tattoo on her rear end. Get a grip, she scolded herself. It’s just a tattoo. Not a brand. She wrapped the towel around herself, hoping that out of sight would equal out of mind, and went to get dressed.
Sure enough, by the time Sophie had concocted a kitchen-cupboard casserole and was slicing sweet potatoes to look like french fries—as if that would fool Joey—Archie Ryan had arrived in a temper. A short, stubby, muscular man in canvas work pants and an un-tucked plaid flannel shirt, he stomped past the kitchen window, ignoring his daughter’s wave. He went straight to the trailer she’d persuaded him to park in the backyard because that was the only way she could keep an eye on him.
After putting the sweet potatoes in the oven to roast, she called for Joe to set the table, knowing very well he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—hear her over his loud music. She sighed in exasperation before climbing the attic steps to bang on his door until it rattled.
Archie was next. However, as soon as Sophie stepped outside the back door, the mud-speckled red motorbike leaning against the garden shed caught her eye. And held it.
Getaway.
She plopped down onto the back step and rested her chin on the heel of her palm, letting herself imagine climbing aboard Joe’s peppy little bike and taking off for the hills, leaving behind her cantankerous father, her complicated son and all her other responsibilities. She’d go straight to the Rockies and climb toward the sky, the Continental Divide being the closest thing to heaven on earth that she knew of. Already she could feel the wind in her hair, the thrum of the engine, the adrenaline coursing through her bloodstream….
Sophie shook her head. She hadn’t dreamed about such things in years. Luke was to blame, Luke and his seductive pledge that he’d wanted to take her with him.
Fourteen years too late.
“Goddamn you, Maverick,” she said, rising to stalk across the straggly grass to pound on her father’s dented door. “Supper,” she barked. “Now or never, Dad.” Without waiting, she returned to the cottage where Joe was miraculously setting the table. She wrapped her arms around his skinny shoulders and gave him a tight hug that was mostly a comfort to herself. He slipped away, smiling sheepishly.
The screen door wheezed. “What’s to eat?” Buzzsaw demanded in his distinctive gravelly voice, already scowling at her from beneath the creased brim of his grimy straw cowboy hat. He had a grizzled week-old beard and stormy brown eyes that turned mean when he’d crossed from pleasantly buzzed to downright drunk.
Sophie was no longer intimidated. Time and circumstance had tipped the scales of power in her favor. She swept off her father’s hat and set a green salad on the table. “It’s been a long, hard day. We are going to sit together and have a nice dinner without complaint or ill comment. We will be polite and courteous and talk only of pleasant subjects. Isn’t that right, Dad?”
Archie grunted as he went to his place.
Sophie took that as agreement. “Joey, will you say grace?”
“Oh, Mom.”
She smiled—pointedly. “Pardon me. I meant, Joe, my dear, handsome, obedient son, will you please say grace?”
Joe took one look at her steely smile and ducked his chin to comply. He knew his mother’s limits.
Even Archie seemed to understand; occasionally a glimmer of a clue pierced his thick skull. They ate dinner in a near silence that Sophie found very restful. The only discussions were those she initiated, consisting of topics such as the cushions she was needlepointing for the window seat in her bedroom and the gorgeous acorn squash Bess Ripley was selling from her produce stand at the railroad junction.
When they finished, Joe helped wash the dishes one-handed—a towering ice cream cone occupying the other—and then begged to be excused to play computer games. Because he asked so nicely Sophie agreed, even though she couldn’t understand why he didn’t want to be outside on such a beautiful evening. She thought of Luke then, locked up in one of Treetop’s little-used, cement-block jail cells. Luke, who belonged to the outdoors more than anyone she’d ever known.
It wasn’t like this was the first fine September evening he’d spent in the lockup. The Mustangs’ penchant for petty crime had kept them all checking in and out of the jail on a rotating basis. Luke had always been the first to make bail or pay his fine, thanks to Mary Lucas and her attorneys-on-retainer.
There was no reason for Sophie to feel sorry for him.
She put the last plate away and slammed the yellow cupboard door. She raked her hair back from her face, hoping the taut pull of skin over her forehead would yank her out of the momentary funk.
Instead her thoughts returned to the shock of seeing Luke again. How he’d alternated between lazy taunts and the bitter accusations that had shaken her already-wobbly resolution to distance herself.
What had become of Luke? Her Luke—handsome, vital, burning with the joy of life?
Sure, he’d always been wild. But he’d never been…bad. Not at the core. Not like Demon Bradshaw, who the sheriff’s department currently suspected of selling illegal firearms, among other nefarious dealings. So far they hadn’t been able to put together enough evidence for an arrest.
“That’s not Luke.” Sophie let out a deep breath and released her hair. She pulled the drain and wiped down the counter, her eyebrows drawn together in a scowl that was an unconscious copy of her father’s.
“Hey, girl,” Archie called from the front porch. “Come on out here.”
Figuring she’d put it off long enough, Sophie went to the door, wiping her wet hands on the back pockets of her denim pedal pushers. “Ice cream, Dad?”
“Uh, no.” Guiltily Archie slipped a can of beer to his left side, holding it there with the stump of the arm he’d lost in a logging accident on Lucas land approximately thirty years ago. Sophie made no comment. Aside from the occasional sniping argument when her temper wore thin, she’d given up expecting her father to change his ways. Only middle age and bouts of ill health had mellowed his bad habits.
She sat beside him on the purple porch swing and gazed out over Granite Street, waiting for the well-named Buzzsaw to start in on the grief the Lucases had caused him. Birds twittered and hopped in the old plum tree that made a canopy over the small front lawn, pecking at the last of the rotting fruit. The saw-toothed leaves shimmered against the deepening sky.
For once Archie was subdued. “I hear that good-for-nothing Lucas boy’s back in town.”
“He’s a Salinger, Dad. His mother was a Lucas.”
Archie snorted. “Same thing. They’re all rotten, don’t matter what name they go by. It’s in the blood.”
Sophie tensed. The front windows were open. Joe might overhear their conversation from the living room. The bleeps, small explosions and mechanical screams of his computer video game reassured her that his attention was focused elsewhere—on virtual mayhem instead of the real kind. “I wouldn’t condemn them all,” she said. “But, yes, I did arrest Luke Salinger.”
Archie drank deeply and emitted a satisfied ahhh. “For speeding?”
“I gave him a citation for that. I arrested him on old charges—breaking and entering and arson. Remember the fire that damaged the law office? Fourteen years ago, next month.”
“Humph. That boy always was trouble, with his fancy motorcycle and his law-breakin’ ways. I hope you got the sense not to have any more to do with him.” Sophie’s past relationship with Luke—an alliance Archie had done his best to prevent—hung between them with all the levity of a lead balloon.
She fingered the frayed edge of her pedal pushers. “Well, Dad, I expect I’ll be seeing him in court.”
“Court.” Archie guffawed. “You think them muckety-mucks are gonna let that case get to court? Old lady Lucas will be in the judge’s chambers calling in favors—”
“Hush, Dad. I don’t want Joey to hear.”
That shut Archie up. He and Sophie had never talked about the identity of Joe’s father, partly because Archie had thrown her out of the trailer in a drunken rage when he’d found out she was pregnant. He’d been deep into a bad streak then, drinking non-stop. Only seventeen and not yet graduated, Sophie had been almost relieved to go through the pregnancy on her own, in a rented room at Lettice Bellew’s boardinghouse. Archie hadn’t seen his grandson until Joe was three years old. And it wasn’t until he and Sophie had made their uneasy peace many years later that he’d become a regular fixture in their lives.
Archie’s brows met in a deep frown. “Girl, what are you gonna tell the boy about, uh…”
Sophie held her breath, but her father didn’t finish the question. In which case she wasn’t about to volunteer an answer.
“Them Lucases,” he growled, lapsing into familiar territory. He thrust out his stump, the sleeve of his shirt knotted where the elbow should have been. “You know what they done to me, girl. By rights I should be settin’ pretty with a big pension, but nosiree, old lady Lucas is as mean as a junkyard dog, holding tight to every penny unless she’s gonna see some return…”
Sophie tuned out her father’s voice until it was no more than an annoying whine at the back of her brain. The truth of the matter was that Archie had snuck a few beers the day he’d had the accident with a chain saw that had resulted in the loss of his arm. Mary Lucas, a new widow at the time, had taken over running the Lucas cattle ranch and logging operations. She’d paid the hospital bills and given Archie a generous settlement—considering the circumstances—a goodly portion of which he’d promptly drunk up on a months-long spree. Even so, he persisted in blaming his troubles and sketchy work history on Mary Lucas and her extended family.
Sophie had heard it a thousand times before. Gently she pressed a hand on her father’s good arm. “Shut up, Dad, and take a look at the sunset. Isn’t that pretty?”
Archie barely glanced at the apricot glow that lit up the mountainous horizon before continuing churlishly, “Listen to me, girl. Call ’em Lucases or call ’em Salingers, that family will stomp you under their boot heels for so much as smiling at them the wrong way. You steer clear—”
“I’ve got a badge, Dad. Even Mary Lucas has to respect the law.”
“Sure, sure, go ask Sheriff Warren about that. He’s been doing their bidding ever since they helped him get elected top dog, just like every sheriff before him. How’dja think my accident report got cleaned up so no one named Lucas was to blame?”
Sophie simply shrugged. Argument was useless when her father got this worked up.
“That’s right,” Archie said, nodding so vigorously the swing started to sway. “I tell you—”
“Joey!” Sophie said in relief when her son made the mistake of poking his head out the door. “Join us. Please.”
Joe rolled his eyes, but he came outside and sat on the porch railing. The golden-pink light of the setting sun washed across his narrow face and baggy white T-shirt. To Sophie he was beautiful—not that she dared say so out loud when he’d become so touchy about expressions of affection. Silently she ached with her immense love for her son. Too much, she sometimes thought, for one heart to hold.
When Joe had been born she’d known with a protectiveness so fierce it scared her that she would do anything to keep her baby from suffering the kind of upbringing that she’d had—one that had become essentially homeless, parentless and loveless after her mother had died when she was only five. Right from the start, though, she’d denied Joe a father, even if it hadn’t been entirely by plan. Could she continue to deny him the truth as well, especially now that Luke was back home and the can of worms had been opened again?
Listening to his grandfather’s diatribe, Joe cocked his head in such a way that Sophie was reminded of Luke so explicitly that she wondered why no one else noticed. Or commented.
Probably some of them did, but only behind her back.
The Lucas brand, she thought, growing doleful as she twisted a thick curl of hair around her index finger. She’d always worried about what Mary Lucas, the dominating family matriarch, might do if she knew for sure that Joe carried her blood. As of yet, her eldest grandson Heath hadn’t produced an heir. For a long time now Sophie had watched and waited, knowing more about Heath’s personal life than she cared to because she was friendly with his wife, Kiki. It was Sophie’s greatest fear that one day Mary Lucas might began to look elsewhere for her heir.
And there would be Joe Ryan, hidden in plain sight.
The Lucas brand was more trouble than it was worth, in Sophie’s estimation. Joe wasn’t one of their heads of cattle, mineral mines, or uncut trees. He wasn’t their property.
She would never let that family stamp their brand on him!
If that meant she had to deny his parentage, so be it.
“TELL ME ABOUT SOPHIE RYAN,” Luke said when the deputy came to collect the hard plastic supper tray. For fifteen minutes he’d been standing at the high, narrow window of his jail cell, looking out at the sky, thinking of Sophie and her amazing statement of innocence regarding the criminal investigation. She hadn’t uttered one world of explanation to defend, or prove, herself, only brought him in silence to the station, booked him, fingerprinted him and locked him up.
And Luke believed her.
It remained true that someone with inside knowledge had dropped a bug in Ed Warren’s ear. But that someone had not been Sophie, despite the incriminating words that Luke had overheard and somehow misinterpreted.
Of course it hadn’t been Sophie. He was a jackass for doubting her on that count. He’d been so blinded by jealousy over reports of Sophie’s swift recovery from their love affair that he’d believed without proof the gossip that claimed she’d served up the Mustangs to the authorities.
He cursed. Even if she had cracked under interrogation, could he blame her? She’d been seventeen, alone and abandoned—by him. The fault had been his, no other’s.
Face it, man. He stared at the lacy upper branches of a tall cottonwood tree, the only thing he could see from the window besides the sky. The leaves shook like coins in the gilding rays of the setting sun. You acted like a first-class heel. A selfish hothead. A coward.
It was no big surprise, then, that Sophie wanted nothing to do with him aside from his arrest.
Deputy Boone Barzinski was absently studying the uneaten dessert on Luke’s tray. “Sophie Ryan…” he mulled in response to Luke’s request. The redheaded deputy scooped up a dollop of bread pudding with his forefinger.
Luke made fists around the iron bars of his cage. “How long has she been a deputy?” He was beginning to wonder how much of Heath’s secondhand information was accurate.
“Oh, well, now…” Boone licked his finger. He seemed good-natured, but not the sharpest tack in the hardware store. “Maybe four years. No, five. Or six?”
“She’s unmarried?”
“Yep. I mean, nope. She’s not married.”
Luke’s eyes narrowed. “Boyfriend?”
Boone colored; Luke discerned that the deputy had a crush on Sophie. “Uhh, I think she’s…unattached,” he mumbled.
“She’s got a son.”
“Well, you know.” Boone’s glance skipped across the congealed contents of the supper tray. He lowered his voice. “An unwed mother. Nowadays these things happen even to good girls, am I right?”
“Good girls?” Heath—Luke’s main contact in Treetop for more than a decade—had said that Sophie’s inclinations had leaned rather drastically in the opposite direction.
“Saint Sophie—that’s what some of the guys in the department call her. Because she doesn’t…you know. Uh, share her favors. She hardly even dates.” Boone’s brows arched up a high forehead bisected by a horizontal tan line. “They say she’s practically a nun, even though there’s, well, her son and all as evidence of, uh, whatever. I dunno. I was hired only last year, so I couldn’t actually say…”
Luke stared—hard. His knuckles were stark white. “How old is Sophie’s son?”
Boone blinked nervously under the scrutiny. He waggled his head back and forth, as if silently counting with each nod. “Junior high age, I guess. Joe’s a good boy. Plays guard on the basketball team. Sophie’s awful proud of him.”
“Twelve?” Luke asked sharply. “Thirteen? That old?”
“Maybe.”
“And what about the father?”
Remembering his professional capacity, Boone drew back, squaring his sloping shoulders in the taupe deputy’s uniform. “Uh, say, what do you care anyhow?” His color deepened, turning even the pale half of his forehead pink. “Sophie doesn’t put up with loose talk. She’d have my hide if she knew I’d gone and blabbed—”
“No harm done.” Luke stepped back from the bars. “Sophie and I used to be friends. I was wondering how she’s been doing, that’s all.”
“Oh. Right.” Recognition—and something more—flared in the deputy’s eyes. “You’re the one who—” Boone slammed shut his mouth. “Er, uh, okay. You set for the night? Sure you don’t want to make a phone call? We got lights out at ten.”
You’re the one who— The unfinished statement was jangling in Luke’s head like a fire alarm, but he nodded and drew further back into his cell. When Deputy Barzinski returned an hour later to put out the lights Luke was still standing in the same place, silent but alert, his eyes on the narrow rectangle of indigo sky.
Sophie, he repeated to himself. Sophie…
He was the one who—what?
JUDGE HARRIET ENTWHISTLE prided herself on being eccentric and independent, as well as tough. She ran her court her way and hang what the judicial review board had to say. There were cases where a woman’s good sense had to overrule the guidelines thought up by city folk who, when it came right down to it, knew beans about country-style justice.
The particulars of the bail hearing of Mr. Lucas Salinger—fugitive, notorious hometown boy, grandson of the judge’s favorite canasta partner—had convinced Harriet that this was such a case. Her quandary was how to adequately satisfy what was one of the participants’ most unusual need for personal justice with what the law demanded.
“Let me see if my poor ole brain’s got this straight,” the judge said, glaring from the bench at the assorted players, not out of any actual ire, but just on general principles. “The injured party in this case, Sampson and Devore, Attorneys-at-Law, have been out of business for eight years, and they never wanted to press charges in the first place. Oddly enough.” Lucas money had passed hands there, she’d wager. “Mr. Salinger—” the judge regarded the leather-clad defendant sourly “—skipped town before he could be fully questioned. Our good sheriff seems disinclined to reopen the investigation.” Sheriff Ed Warren bobbed up, smiling like a politician. “For reasons that fail me,” Judge Entwhistle intoned, and the sheriff dropped down again, his smile gone stale as day-old doughnuts. “However, the charges against Mr. Salinger were never officially dropped, leading Deputy Sophie Ryan to make an arrest when Mr. Salinger reappeared in town.”
Judge Entwhistle paused to scan the arrest report, neatly filled in by Deputy Ryan, whom the judge was prepared to favor above the rest of the yahoos standing before her. Sophie Ryan had testified in the circuit court many times. She was always respectful, well-prepared and honest, unlike some of the law enforcement personnel, who were so puffed-up with machismo they thought a starched uniform and a sidearm were enough to persuade even a judge to their point of view. Nevertheless…
Mary Lucas had asked for leniency, and Mary did know how to play a mean game of canasta.
The judge looked up. Every eye in the courtroom was trained on her face, which put her in a better mood. “And finally, we have the prosecutor—” the fresh-out-of-law-school pipsqueak brightened expectantly “—who also is disinclined to prosecute the case, considering the time span and Mr. Salinger’s clean record and gainful employment thereafter. Is that right?”
The prosecutor agreed.
Judge Entwhistle addressed Luke Salinger. “I’m of a mind to see that you get what you have coming to you, young man, fourteen years too late or not.” She scrutinized the defendant, trying to decide if he was as lawless as the case signified or merely temporarily misguided, as according to Mary Lucas.
After a nice, lengthy silence, the judge cleared her throat. “Which leads to my ruling. I’ve decided to continue this case indefinitely. In the meantime, Mr. Salinger, you’re free to go.” The judge tapped her gavel at the sudden rise of chatter. “However,” she said heavily, silencing the courtroom, “I also intend to keep you under close supervision, Mr. Salinger.” She twitched a scolding finger, deciding to take a left turn off the rule book. “As a matter of fact, I do believe it would be wise to appoint a watchdog to see that you behave yourself. By order of this court, I place Mr. Lucas Salinger under the charge of—”
Mary Lucas set her cane and rose from her seat in the first row, a proud, tall, gaunt figure in a Western-cut business suit.
“—Deputy Sophie Ryan,” the judge finished with a flourish.
