Icy fear seized Sage.

“I think you’d better come down to River Road Crossing at Cobra Creek.”

“Why?” She had to swallow to make her voice work. “Is Benji there?”

“Just meet me there.”

He hung up, and Sage’s knees buckled. She grabbed the kitchen counter to keep from hitting the floor.

No...Benji was fine. He had to be...

She grabbed her keys and ran outside. The minivan took three tries to crank, but she threw it in gear and tore down the road toward the river crossing.

As soon as she rounded the bend, she spotted flames shooting into the air. Smoke curled upward, clogging the sky in a thick, gray blanket.

Tires squealed as she swung the van to the shoulder of the road, jumped out and ran toward the burning car.

Sheriff Gandt stood by while firemen worked to extinguish the blaze. But even with the flames and smoke, she could tell that the car was a black Jeep.

Ron drove a black Jeep.

“Do you recognize this vehicle?” the sheriff asked.

A cold sweat broke out on Sage’s body. “It’s Ron’s. My fianc'e.”

Sheriff Gandt’s expression looked harsh in the morning light. Then she saw what he was holding in his hands.

Benji’s teddy bear and red hat.

No... Dear God. Had Benji been in the car with Ron when it crashed and caught on fire?

Chapter One

Two years later

Dugan Graystone did not trust Sheriff Billy Gandt worth a damn.

Gandt thought he owned the town and the people in it and made no bones about the fact that men like Dugan, men who weren’t white, weren’t fit for office and should stay out of his way.

Gandt had even tried to stop Dugan from taking on this search-and-rescue mission, saying he could use his own men. But the families of the two lost hikers had heard about Dugan’s reputation as an expert tracker and insisted he spearhead the efforts to find the young men.

Dugan rode his stallion across the wilderness, scrutinizing every bush and tree, along with the soil, for footprints and other signs that someone had come this way. A team of searchers had spread across the miles of forests looking for the missing men, but Dugan had a sixth sense, and it had led him over to Cobra Creek, miles from where Gandt had set up base camp for the volunteer workers involved in the search.

Dammit, he hated Gandt. He’d run against him for sheriff and lost—mainly because Gandt bought votes. But one day he’d put the bastard in his place and prove that beneath that good-old-boy act, Gandt was nothing but a lying, cheating coward.

Born on the reservation near Cobra Creek, Dugan had Native American blood running through his veins. Dugan fought for what was right.

And nothing about Gandt was right.

Money, power and women were Gandt’s for the taking. And crime—if it benefited Billy—could be overlooked for a price.

Though Dugan owned his own spread, on the side, he worked as a P.I. His friend, Texas Ranger Jaxon Ward, was looking into Gandt’s financials, determined to catch the man at his own game.

The recent flooding of the creek had uprooted bushes and trees, and washed up debris from the river that connected to the creek. Dugan noted an area that looked trampled, as if a path had been cut through the woods.

He guided his horse to a tree and dismounted, then knelt to examine the still-damp earth. A footprint in the mud?

Was it recent?

He noticed another, then some brush flattened, leading toward the creek. Dugan’s instincts kicked in, and he shone his flashlight on the ground and followed the indentations.

Several feet away, he saw another area of ground that looked disturbed. Mud and sticks and...something else.

Bones.

Maybe an animal’s?

He hurried over to examine them, his pulse pounding. No...that was a human femur. And a finger.

Human bones.

And judging from the decomp, they had been there too long to belong to one of the two teenagers who’d gone missing.

The radio at his belt buzzed and crackled, and he hit the button to connect.

“We found the boys,” Jaxon said. “A little dehydrated, but they’re fine.”

Dugan removed his Stetson and wiped sweat from his forehead. “Good. But I need the coroner over here at Cobra Creek.”

“What?”

“I found bones,” Dugan said. “Looks like they’ve been here a couple of years.”

A foreboding washed over Dugan. Two years ago, a man named Ron Lewis had supposedly died in a car crash near here. Sage Freeport’s son had been with him at the time.