Lone Creek
Chapter One
I'd only ever seen Laurie Balcomb a few times, usually
glimpses while I was working and she was passing by on
her way to someplace else. I'd never met her or spoken
with her. She and her husband were the new owners of the
Pettyjohn Ranch, and they didn't socialize with the
help.
But when she came into sight on this afternoon, riding
horseback across a hay field, there was no mistaking her
even from a quarter mile away. Her hair was auburn shot
through with gold, she was wearing a brindle chamois
shirt, and the way the sunlight caught her, she looked
like a living flame.
I hadn't paid much attention to Laurie before this,
other than to notice that she was a nice-looking woman.
The sense I'd gotten from her was subdued, distant. Even
her hair had seemed darker.
But now, for just a second, something slipped in my
head-the kind of jolt you got when you were walking down
a staircase in the dark and thought there was one more
step at the bottom.
I shook it off and slowed my pickup truck to a stop.
This was September, a warm afternoon at the end of a dry
Montana summer, and I'd been r ... read full excerpt from Lone Creek ebook
