Cowboy of Interest. Carla Cassidy

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      From the police station she went to the grocery store and filled her basket with everything she would need to make meals for at least a week. Surely it wouldn’t take any longer than that to get Nick Coleman behind bars.

      She could scarcely believe how she’d reacted the night before at the sight of Nick Coleman.

      Adrienne Bailey, control freak and always responsible, a stickler for rules and political correctness, had momentarily gone stark raving mad.

      She didn’t intend to lose control again, but she had to admit that hitting and kicking Nick Coleman had been more than a little bit cathartic.

      And she wasn’t done with him yet. Although she planned no further physical attacks on the man, she did intend to haunt him, to shadow his every move until, hopefully, he finally broke down and confessed to what he’d done.

      She knew the who, but she needed to know the why. Wendy had been the kind of young woman who never met a stranger, who was curious and friendly about everyone she came into contact with. She’d been adventurous and high spirited, traits that often had the two sisters butting heads, but not traits that got a woman murdered.

      Adrienne drank a quick cup of hot tea and then left the motel, this time headed in the direction of the Holiday Ranch. She had no intention of personally engaging Nick again, but she wanted him to know that she was watching him, waiting for him to make a mistake that would ensure him a future behind bars.

      She made only one stop at the motel manager’s office, where a young man with oversize black-framed glasses and a name tag that read Lawrence gave her directions to the Holiday Ranch.

      Early July in Oklahoma wasn’t so much different from in Kansas City. The cool of spring was gone, but the heat and humidity of late summer had yet to fully arrive.

      She had no idea what to expect from Chief Bowie. While he’d been kind on the phone when he’d made the notification to her, she didn’t know how close-knit Bitterroot might be and if the chief of police would be willing to protect one of his own townspeople against a murder charge.

      After all, Wendy had been an outsider who had no ties to the community. How hard would the chief of police work to solve her murder?

      If she thought he was shirking his duty, she’d climb up the food chain until she found somebody to do the job right. In the meantime, she planned on being a tick on Nick Coleman’s rotten hide.

      She slowed as she passed the entrance to what appeared to be a fairly large spread. The wooden entry declared it to be the Humes Ranch.

      She drove on, nerves suddenly tingling inside her skin as she thought of seeing Nick Coleman again.

      Slowing once again as she saw the entrance to another ranch ahead, she realized she’d made a conscious decision to become a stalker. Wendy’s murder had definitely turned her into a woman she scarcely recognized.

      She pulled the car to a stop in front of the entrance with the black wrought iron entry that read Holiday Ranch. This was where Nick Coleman worked. This was where he lived. Her stomach twisted with nervous energy.

      From her vantage point, she saw a large two-story house and in the far distance lots of outbuildings and men on horseback, but she was too far away for any of the ranch hands to pay attention to a silver sedan parked along the side of the road.

      Knowing she was trespassing, she turned into the long driveway and followed the concrete drive and stopped just past the house. She turned off her engine and rolled down her window the rest of the way. She wouldn’t move unless somebody asked her to.

      Now she could see a bright blue canopy tent in the distance and knew it probably covered the crime scene—the place where Wendy’s body had been found, along with six other potential victims.

      Chief Bowie had told her that Wendy had been found there, but the skeletal remains of six other human beings had been there, as well. She wanted Wendy’s murderer in jail, but wondered what had happened to those other poor souls.

      She’d been there only about ten minutes when a cowboy wearing a dusty brown hat walked up to the driver side of her car. “Cassie and Nicolette aren’t home right now. Is there something I can help you with?” he asked.

      Adrienne had no idea who Cassie and Nicolette were, and in any case, they weren’t the reason she was here. “I’m just here to keep an eye on the man who murdered my sister.”

      The cowboy’s sand-colored eyebrows pulled together in a frown. “There are no murderers here,” he said. “You’ve come to the wrong place.”

      Of course he would say that, she thought. He was probably a good friend of Nick’s. “Are you asking me to leave?”

      He shrugged broad shoulders. “It’s not my place to ask you to go. I don’t own the ranch.” He turned on the heels of his boots and headed away from the car.

      Adrienne narrowed her eyes and tried to discern which of the men in the distance was Nick. She hadn’t really gotten a good look at him the night before. She’d just had a quick vision of blue eyes and slightly shaggy dark brown hair.

      It was only when she saw the man who’d come to talk to her take off on horseback and approach another man on horseback that she assumed the second man was Nick Coleman.

      The two spoke for a moment and then the second man began toward her. His hat was black, his shoulders broad and he rode a huge black horse that would have characterized him as a villain in any respectable Western.

      She gripped her hands tightly together in her lap as he drew close enough that she could see the faint darkness of a black eye where she had hit him the night before.

       Good.

      She’d managed to mark him with her rage, with her grief.

      He pulled his horse to a halt right outside her window, forcing her to lean out and look up at a handsome face with cold blue eyes and a mouth set in a grim line. He was an imposing figure.

      “What are you doing here?” he asked.

      “Protecting all the other young, vulnerable women in town by keeping an eye on you,” she replied, pleased that her voice rang with steely determination.

      “I did not kill your sister,” he said slowly and distinctly, as if speaking to a crazy person.

      “I believe you did, and I’m here to make sure that you don’t get away with it.”

      He sighed and pulled his hat off his head. His thick dark brown hair glistened in the sunshine, and he raked his hand through it as if she was a flake of dandruff he could easily dislodge with a sweep of his fingers.

      “Look, I’m grieving over Wendy, too. I want her killer to be found, but I’m not him. Maybe instead of playing judge and jury, you and I need to sit down and talk and compare notes.”

      He placed his hat back on his head. “If you’re looking for the truth in Wendy’s murder, then meet me at the café at noon and we can have a civilized conversation. If you’re looking for an innocent scapegoat, then you can follow me to the ends of the earth and we’ll never know who took Wendy’s life.”

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