He watched her walk away, her thick braid twitching across her slim back as she went. Then he brought Drew Van Dellen’s frown into focus at the bar beyond.

“Bryce, we need to talk,” MacDonald Townsend said in a harsh, low voice.

A dull throb started in behind Bryce’s eyes. Townsend had been chanting that phrase all evening. Bryce kept putting him off just to be perverse. He was in no mood to listen to the judge’s whining.

“In a minute, Townsend,” he said irritably, his gaze never leaving Van Dellen. Gracefully he pushed himself to his feet and sauntered away from the table, smiling to himself as Townsend complained bitterly to Sharon and Ben Lucas behind his back.

Drew set his pencil down atop the liquor inventory sheet as Bryce approached the bar. He didn’t bother with a smile. “Mr. Bryce.”

“Drew.” Bryce flashed the Redford grin and dropped his elbows on the bar. “I hear you had a little trouble last night.”

“Nothing that will happen again if we can help it.”

“How is Marilee?”

“Well enough, all things considered. She had a nasty scare.”

“No sign of the culprit?”

“None.”

“Hmm… Well, I imagine it was just a random burglary. Or someone got wind of her inheritance and thought maybe she’d gotten something valuable from our friend Lucy.”

“Not the case,” Drew said neutrally. “Not something small enough to keep in her room, at any rate.”

Bryce nodded as if he were conceding a point in a subtle debate. “One could never tell with Lucy. She was full of surprises.”

“People are. Not all of them pleasant.” He cut a meaningful glance to Bryce’s table. “Take, for example, your friend the judge. In person he doesn’t seem quite the genial fellow the press would paint him.”

“Yes, well, Townsend is under some personal strain these days,” Bryce said, smiling like a shark.

Drew arched a brow and looked supremely bored. Bryce studied him intently for several moments, trying to read, trying to gauge and calculate angles.

Drew went on, unperturbed by the scrutiny. “I wanted to have a word with you about Samantha.”

“Did you?”

The idea seemed to amuse him. Drew had all he could do to keep his expression bland. “Yes. She’s very young, you know. Not terribly sophisticated when it comes to the ways of the world outside Montana.”

“And?” Bryce spread his hands and raised his eyebrows, feigning ignorance. “Are you warning me off, Drew?” he asked with a chuckle.

“Merely pointing out that she’s inexperienced. And married.”

“You couldn’t tell it by the way her husband treats her.”

“They’re having their problems-”

“She deserves better,” Bryce declared flatly. “She’s a bright, lovely girl. I’m just letting her have a taste, giving her a little fun, a little attention.”

And hoping to profit by it. Drew kept the opinion to himself. It would do no good to get into a figurative shoving match. Bryce swung enough weight to put a sizable dent in their business if he so chose, and nothing would be accomplished other than boosting the man’s ego another notch toward the ionosphere.

“I just don’t want to see her hurt, is all,” he said diplomatically, his gaze drifting to Samantha as she delivered a round to a table of tourists from Florida. She smiled at them and listened thoughtfully as they asked her a question about the history of the lodge. Pretty girl, sweet girl, as unspoiled as the wilderness. Pity she had such poor luck with men. Pity men had to be such bastards. The thought of her being caught in a tug-of-war between Bryce and the Raffertys made his heart ache. The knowledge that she wouldn’t confide in him because of his own orientation only added to the sadness and the sense of helplessness.

Bryce’s eyes strayed to Samantha as well. Beautiful, exotic, innocent, fresh, ripe to taste what the world could offer her. She was youth and opportunity. With guidance and tutelage, her potential would have no bounds. The thought was as seductive to him as it should have been to her.

“I don’t have any intention of hurting her,” he murmured as plans shifted and realigned in his head. “Get me a whiskey, will you, Drew?”

He took the drink back to the table, where Lucas was playing at seduction games with Sharon, and Townsend sat stewing. Lucas was out of his depth and didn’t know it. Sharon’s eyes gleamed with secret amusement. Townsend finished off a Stolichnaya, his stare petulant as Bryce eased back down into his chair at the head of the table.

“How much longer are you going to put me off?”

Bryce narrowed his eyes and made a pained face. “I’d say until you became too annoying to stomach, but that moment is already a distant memory.”

Townsend ignored the insult. “Did you get the videotape?”

“No.”

A fine sheen of sweat misted across the judge’s face. Even in the glow of firelight he looked abnormally pale, his skin stretched tight against the bones of his face. His eyes had taken on a haunted, paranoid quality. Bryce rubbed his chin and wondered just how much coke his honor was doing these days. Too much, the fool. If the man had ever possessed any nerve, it was gone now, burned away by excesses his spineless conscience couldn’t handle.

“Goddamn you, Bryce,” he snarled. His hand was trembling as he curled it tightly around his empty glass. “You never should have made it in the first place!”

Bryce laid his elbows on the table and leaned forward, nonchalantly scanning the room for curious onlookers. Everyone was either engrossed in retelling a personal brush with crime or in making a last trip to the bar. Satisfied, he tilted his head in Townsend’s direction, his lips thinning, pale eyes going cold.

“It’s part of the game, Your Honor,” he said softly. “You know what they say. If you can’t stand the heat-Or what’s the version in cop vernacular? If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.”

Townsend’s whole body began to quake visibly. The rims of his eyes went red. Bryce half expected an alien creature to burst from the man’s chest. “If that tape falls into the wrong hands, my life is over!” His voice was a raw whisper, as if unseen hands were choking him.

Bryce studied his fingernails, unconcerned. Nothing on the tape could be linked to him. He always made certain of that. That was part of his edge, one of the keys to his power. In his own mind, Townsend was already written off as a loss. The man was killing himself a thousand times over a phantom. He was a coward. Cowards could be used only so many times before there was nothing left of them.

“You should have thought of that, my friend,” he said, glancing up to meet Townsend’s eyes, “before you pulled the trigger.”

“You’re sure you won’t come out to the ranch?”

“I’ll be fine,” Samantha said.

Bryce sat behind the wheel of her old Camero, looking just as comfortable as he did in his Mercedes, which trailed behind them with Sharon driving. He shifted into neutral and left his hand on the knob as they idled at New Eden’s stoplight. His hands were bony and roped with veins. An onyx ring with a gold crest rose up like a small mountain at the base of his middle finger and gleamed richly in the dashboard lights.

Rich. The word tasted like chocolate and made her think about the feel of silk against her skin. She hefted her purse off her lap and set it on the floor, mentally counting her tips. If she set some of her tip money aside every day, she might be able to go into Latigo and buy herself something nice-in a month or three.

“You’ll be fine,” he said, giving her a wry look. “What about me? I’ll be awake all night worrying about you.”

She smiled at him softly, sincerely, her heart suddenly brimming. “That means a lot to me. It’s nice to know someone cares.”

It would have been nicer if that someone had been Will. Her gaze strayed to the glow of lights at the Hell and Gone.