Outlaw Mountain

Instead, the man produced another needle and shoved that one into her arm as well.

What if this isn’t a painkiller at all? Alice wondered. What if it’s something else, like poison, maybe? What if he’s trying to kill me?

“What are you doing?” she asked. Her tongue seemed to grow thick in her mouth. She had a hard time forming the words, but by then he had pulled yet a third syringe out of his pocket. She struggled and tried to yank her arm free, but even the smallest movement ground hundreds of cholla spines deeper into her back, legs, and arms. Once again the needle of a loaded syringe plunged into her arm.

“Stop!” Alice commanded, but this time the word came out as little more than an unrecognizable gurgle. She moaned in agony.

“Be still, Alice!” he growled. The falsetto was gone now. It was definitely a man’s voice, but whose? It sounded familiar, but Alice ’s pain-fogged brain couldn’t make the co

“Who are you?” she tried to say. “What do you want?” But the words were so slurred that they sounded like gibberish, even to her.

In reply, the man dropped her wrist. Alice lay still and watched him through a confusing, misty haze as he pocketed the third syringe and gathered up the other two from where they had fallen to the ground beside her. He stuffed them into his coat pocket as well. As he turned to walk away, Alice felt a small object land on her abdomen and then roll off onto the ground.

At that moment, what was happening seemed to be of little concern to her. The body lying on the cold, hard ground might have been someone else’s rather than her own. There was no getting away. Alice had no strength or breath left to scream or cry out for help. There was nothing to do but submit and hope that eventually the pain would stop.

Her tormentor walked away, and after that, time seemed to dissolve as well. The world spun out of control. Despite the cold, sweat popped out all over Alice ’s body. The sudden unaccountable dampness of her skin made her feel that much colder. Even so, she somehow remembered that something had fallen on her-something small and hard that had rolled off her body and onto the ground.

Unable to turn her head without driving the cholla needles deeper into her flesh, she patted the earth next to her until her groping fingers closed around something small and smooth. It was a bottle, a tiny glass bottle.

She knew what the tiny vial was without even looking-knew what it must have contained and what the inevitable result would be. The cholla needles were nothing compared to the hurt and betrayal that flooded through her in that awful moment of realization. Grasping the bottle in her fist, she closed her eyes and let the tears come. Hours later, when Alice Rogers finally stopped breathing, the little glass vial was still clutched tightly in her dying fist.

CHAPTER ONE

Easing the porch swing back and forth, thirty-year-old Sheriff Joa

Both sets of mothers and daughters were studies in contrast. Joa

The last week in October, a surprisingly fierce cold snap had visited southeastern Arizona, bringing with it a frigid rain that had threatened to drown out most of Bisbee’s Halloween trick-or-treating. Two days later, when bright sunlight reemerged, the cottonwood, apple, and peach trees on High Lonesome Ranch seemed to have changed colors overnight, In the su

For little Ruth, recently rescued from life in a desolate Chinese orphanage, the crackly, multicolored leaves were a source of incredible wonder and delight. Together the two girls raked great mounds of leaves into piles, then dived into them with a chorus of shrieks alternating with giggles.

For a while both of Je

On Je

Each time the game was repeated, Ruth clapped her hands in childish delight. “Again, Je

Watching the simple game and enjoying the gales of gleeful laughter, Joa

“What is it, Mari?” Joa

Joa

Convinced that she knew exactly what was going on with Maria

At first Joa

“The ministry,” Maria

Somehow Joa

“I do,” Maria