Page 6 of Deadly Evidence
After helping him rinse the dishes and load them in the dishwasher, she shooed Vicente out the door.
At seven o’clock, she gave another worried glance out the windows.
The buckskin wasn’t back in his corral, and the sun had slipped below the horizon. The temperature was already dropping.Where are you, Brady?
Surely Buck would have come home alone if Brady had fallen off...unless the horse had stepped in a prairie dog hole and left his rider to come home on foot.
There was also the possibility that he’d encountered someone unexpected.
And that could be fatal.
Grabbing her worn leather gloves from the bench by the back door, she stepped outside and whistled for Mojo as she strode to the corral by the barn.
In ten minutes, she’d saddled her big bay mare, Duster, settled her Ruger .30-06 into its rifle scabbard on her saddle, and was headed up over the first ridge with the dog tagging along behind, its tongue lolling and tail waving.
At the top of the ridge, she pulled to a halt and lifted a pair of binoculars from her saddlebag.
Twenty thousand acres of Triple R sagebrush-strewn grassland spread out before her, reaching to the horizon in three directions.
Just a few miles to the north, her best grazing land faded into parched, high desert terrain. Two miles to the southwest lay the Rio Grande, and beyond it, Mexico.
She stood in her stirrups and slowly twisted, studying the barren landscape. No sign of a buckskin gelding. No sign of a man on foot.
Lowering the binoculars, she urged Duster into a lope and headed down one slope and up the next until sweat lathered themare’s neck and the eastern sky darkened to the deep indigo of nightfall.
At the top of yet another low rise she stood in her stirrups and scanned the terrain once more, then slumped down in her saddle.
The local cellular company offered poor reception at best. Out here, there weren’t any cell towers for miles, so there hadn’t been much reason to carry a phone.
It would take a good hour to get home and call the Gelman County sheriff to request a search party.
And in the meantime, Brady Coleman could be somewhere out here. Bleeding to death. Unconscious. Easy prey for a pack of hungry coyotes or a mountain lion.
Uttering a quiet prayer under her breath, she reined her horse into a neat pivot and started for home.
Mojo rushed ahead, then veered off to the west and stood barking at the top of a small knoll. Her tail wagging furiously, she looked over her shoulder at Anna, her barks escalating.
Hope flooded through Anna as she reined the mare toward the knoll and urged her into a lope. At the top, she pulled to a halt. It didn’t take long to see why Mojo was excited.
In the distance, she could make out the dirt road bordering the Triple R’s western boundary. No one ever used it unless they were lost—or were hightailing into the USA from the Mexican border.
Riding from the other direction, she hadn’t seen this particular spot. But now, through the scraggly trees growing at the base of a rocky outcropping, she could see a dark vehicle.
In its headlights were the silhouettes of a horse and several tall figures.
“Hush.” She dismounted and quickly silenced the dog with a gentle hand on her shoulders, then moved her mare behind the knoll and ground-tied her out of sight.
The other horse fidgeted and danced sideways into the pool of light in front of the dark SUV. Its coat flashed pale—buckskin?—before it moved away from the light.
“Buck?” Anna breathed, her senses sharpening. The cool evening air slid over her as she lowered herself to the ground and adjusted her binoculars.
Their faces were indiscernible, but the three broad-shouldered figures were probably male.
Two of them gestured expansively, and after a few minutes, they climbed into the SUV, hauled it into a jerky, three-point turn, and headed north toward the county highway.
The third guy swung up into the saddle and headed south. From the way he sat his horse, she no longer had any doubt about his identity.
She’d sent Brady out here to do a ranch hand’s job. He sure hadn’t said a word about meeting any of his “fellow agents” tonight.
