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PROLOGUE
July 2005
COW MANURE HAD NEVER smelled so sweet, Blake Smith thought, inhaling deeply. Squinting against the bright July morning sun, he glanced down the thin metal steps to the tarmac, scanning the people waiting at the small airport just outside San Antonio.
There weren’t many of them.Four years was a long time.
But a three-and-a-half-year-old child should be easy to spot. He looked for a head covered with blond curls.
Or maybe her hair was brown.
Or maybe she was a he.
And yet no matter how many possibilities he considered, no small child appeared.
His uncle, then? Alan wouldn’t miss this. Not on his life…
What did it mean that Blake couldn’t pick out the big frame and ruddy face of the man who’d raised him ever since his parents had been killed in a car accident when he was seven?
Determined to hold on to the sweet anticipation that had sustained him during his eighteen-hour journey from the Middle East back to Texas, Blake renewed his search. Most of all, he sought the face of the woman whose memory had kept him alive these past forty-seven months, two weeks and three days.
The only person he really needed to see right now, after four grueling years of captivity as the hostage of political terrorists.
Annie.
His heart’s rhythm settled—and then immediately sped again as he spotted the beautiful face of his beloved wife. At last. With shaky knees, he hurried to meet her.
Annie had come for him.
CHAPTER ONE
October 2007
THE COWBOY PUSHED HIS HAT down low.
Everyone knew that thirty-four-year-old Luke Chisum, of the renowned Circle C Ranch, shifted his hat every time he had a good hand.Lifting the corners of his two cards just enough to see the pair of aces, Blake dropped his thirty-three-year-old silver dollar on top of them and threw in two one-dollar chips—the mandatory flop bet. His buddy Cole Lawry, seated to his left, gave him a long look.
Cole studied the ten and queen of spades and two of diamonds faceup on the table, took one more look at Blake and folded.
Brady Carrick, ex-Cowboy football player, didn’t look at anyone. His face impassive as always, he pushed his cards toward the middle of the table. Brady’d had a hard time of it after an injury had caused him to take early retirement, and he’d headed off to Las Vegas, only returning to River Bluff fifteen months before—a year after Blake had made it home.
The younger man had come home blaming himself for the suicide death of a rodeo cowboy in Vegas—something to do with a wager. Having just met him, Blake had stayed out of most of the conversation revolving around the incident, except to say that Brady shouldn’t take the guilt of someone else’s mistakes on his own shoulders.
Verne Chandler, a sometimes player with the Wild Bunch, lived in the decrepit, now closed Wild Card Saloon. The older man had moved in to stay after his sister died, leaving the place to her young son. It was there, in the back apartment, that the five-member Wild Bunch—a group of unmarried guys, most of whom had been friends on and off since high school—held their weekly Texas Hold’em games. Hunched over now in the wheelchair he’d taken to a few months before, Verne wasn’t looking so good. Though he was only in his early sixties, the wrinkles on his face seemed to be the result of about ninety years of hard living.
River Bluff’s male version of the town gossip, Harry Knutson, also tossed in his pair of cards. As did Hap Jones, Luke’s foreman and guest for the evening.
Ron Hayward called Blake’s bet, just as Blake had known he would. Ron was more of an ass than a poker player, a nice enough guy who didn’t know his own weaknesses. Put Ron on a construction site, and he was gifted. Cole, who worked for Ron, could testify to that. But let the owner of Hayward Construction join them at the poker table, and he stood out in a less impressive way. If there was a bet on the table, Ron played—whether he had a worthy hand or not. It made him a waste.
Luke, the dealer of the hand, dropped his army dog tag on top of his cards, added his two dollars to the pot and raised them two. Blake and Ron followed suit. Luke dealt the turn. An ace of spades.
Blake threw in two more chips. And then, when Luke’s raise came back to him, threw in another four.
Ron had spent twenty dollars before he folded.
“It’s just you and me, buddy,” Luke said with a grin, making a show out of dealing the river, the third in the series of deals per hand.
A two of clubs.
Blake tossed in eight bucks. Luke raised him another four. He pushed out another eight. Luke called his eight and raised him four again.
The pot was over a hundred dollars.
Back when Verne’s sister had been alive, this run-down and lifeless place had been pristine. Both out front, where saloon customers came in droves, and back here in the apartment, where Jake Chandler, Verne’s nephew and the absentee member of the Wild Bunch, had grown up far too quickly.
“You wanna just strip off your shorts and get this over with?” Luke smiled as he raised the bidding one more time.
