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      Drew Wilson —When two police sketches help identify him as a suspect, he will do anything to avoid capture.

      Prologue

      He stood on a bluff overlooking green summer pastures and raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes as the morning sun climbed above the opposite ridgetop.

      The target lay in the valley below, a jumble of Hollywood-false Western buildings and swirling bison herds. It would be so easy this time.

      Almost too easy.

      At the beginning, when he’d first conceived his revenge, he’d thought of himself as the planner. The cops had christened him the Mastermind, because he’d so carefully organized his strategy and found men to do his bidding. Bradford Croft had been pliable, with a fondness for young girls that had made him easy to direct. Nevada Barnes had been less malleable. More angry. More dangerous. But he, too, had his weaknesses.

      Croft was dead now and Barnes was in jail, but the plan lived on. Divide and conquer.

      Revenge. Retribution.

      The Mastermind tightened his fingers on the binoculars as a school bus lumbered into view below, passing beneath a swinging sign that promised authentic Wild West entertainment.

      Children spilled from the bus and their shrill, excited voices filtered up to his vantage point. Then the adults emerged, moving more slowly, thinking themselves safe. The Canyon Kidnapper was dead and the Museum Murderer—an epithet he blamed solely on the media—was in jail. The citizens of Bear Claw, Colorado, thought the danger was past.

      They had no idea it was just beginning.

      Chapter One

      Wearing jeans and a fitted blue T-shirt on her lean, five-foot-nothing frame, with her dark hair tucked beneath a straw hat and a canvas bag slung over her shoulder, Maya Cooper looked every inch the tourist she’d intended to portray. But inside, she was all cop as she scanned the swept-clean brick roadway that ran down the center of the faux ghost town outside Bear Claw City.

      Her training as a criminal profiler told her she was reaching, but her gut told her she was on to something.

      She was positive the Chuckwagon Ranch was connected to the sick bastard who’d planned two separate violent crime sprees over the past six months.

      Wexton Henkes, part owner of the theme park, was a Bear Claw legend. Born in the city and raised up through the school system, he’d taken his father’s one-room electronic repair shop and built it into an empire. Once he’d made his first million—or ten—he’d started giving back to the city that had brought him his success. He’d funded everything from civic projects and art revivals to nature conservation and the local sports teams. In short, he was a prince.

      On the outside, at least. Inside, Maya was convinced he was something else entirely. He’d broken his own son’s arm three months earlier—nobody could tell her different—and he was poised to duck the abuse charges because he had money, power and influence.

      Enough influence to get her in serious trouble the last time she’d gone after him.

      “But not this time,” she said aloud, earning herself strange looks from the passing tourists.

      The June morning was warm and bright, perfect for СКАЧАТЬ