“No problem. You’re going to show them to me.”

“The hell I am.”

“Remember when you’re screaming that I gave you a choice.”

He released one of her arms and reached into the side pocket of his coveralls. When his hand came out, it held a strip of hard white plastic, like a short, thin belt with a tongue at one end and a locking catch at the other.

Modesty could see enough to recognize it. She used plastic cable ties on the ranch all the time. They were handy and strong, the modern version of baling wire. Real good at tying things together.

Like wrists.

Swallowing past the dryness in her mouth, she played her last card. “You’ll never find the paintings.”

But as she said it, she looked past him to the pantry he hadn’t had time to search.

Score followed her glance. “Oh, I think I will.”

Without another look at her, he turned his back and strode toward the pantry.

Modesty rushed to the counter and jerked open one of the drawers. She yanked out a wood-handled butcher knife that was as old as she was. The blade had been honed so many times that the steel was half its original width. And wicked sharp.

“What the-” Score began.

She lunged for him.

Automatically he threw up his forearm to block the knife. When he felt the burn of steel on flesh, his temper roared. He hit the old lady so hard she flew one way and the knife went the other. She reeled, staggered, tripped over a kitchen chair, and fell. Her head hit the edge of the old iron cookstove. She landed in a boneless sprawl.

She didn’t move.

Swearing, Score looked at the red slash across his forearm. Blood was welling up, but not in spurts. A cut, that was all. Not even deep enough for stitches. Grappling with his temper, he looked at the old woman.

She seemed smaller, like a bundle of rags instead of a person.

He cursed steadily as he squatted beside her. He’d seen enough bodies to know what death looked like. A simple black-bag job on an old lady’s house had turned into murder.

“What are you-stupid?” he snarled at her. “No way you were going to take me.”

He eased his fingers underneath her head. She still had her glasses on, crookedly, but that no longer mattered. Her eyes were dim from more than cataracts. Beneath thinning white hair he felt a depression in her skull. She must have been dead a second after she hit, because there was no blood.

“Crazy old bitch,” he said, standing up. “Why didn’t you listen?”

With a final disgusted curse, he went to search the pantry.

He didn’t find anything but canned goods and bags of rice and flour, sugar and beans. No trick shelves, no trapdoor, no false ceiling. Nothing but food.

He searched the rest of the house.

Nothing.

He went to the back porch and looked over at the sagging barn forty feet beyond the kitchen. The wind swirled around him, plucking at his coveralls with hard, impatient fingers, then racing away to batter the old barn.

He didn’t have time to search the old building. He’d let the wind take care of it.

He picked up the can of fuel oil from the back porch and went back into the kitchen. It wasn’t the first time he’d dressed a crime scene to look like an everyday accident.

If the paintings turned up, it wouldn’t be the last time, either.

2

AUGUST 27

8:00 A. M.

Holy shit,” Lane Faroe said reverently.

The lanky teenager looked at Jillian Breck, grinned, then realized what he’d just said.

“Oops,” he said. “Sorry.”

“No problem.” Jill smiled without looking away from the thunder and boil of a river narrowed to half its size by a bottleneck of basalt, a rock as hard as the water was determined to reach the sea. “That’s what I say to myself every time I see Lava Falls.”

And every time it’s different.

That’s why she loved it. The water flow from Lake Powell, two hundred miles upstream, changed from day to day. Rocks and boulders on the riverbank got undercut and tumbled into the current. Wherever they stuck, they piled waves in new ways, creating new currents, rips, holes, and eddies.

Running the Colorado was always different, yet always the same. Dangerous.

Exhilarating.

“Looks like a big chocolate snake somebody stepped on,” Lane said.

Jill nodded. “A mean one.”

That was the other thing she loved about the river. It tested her. She was going to miss river running when she gave it up, but she knew the time was coming. Soon. She had a restlessness that even the wild river couldn’t cure.

Maybe she would turn the old Breck homestead into a dude ranch. Bring back horses and buy more cattle, dig a trout pond, organize camera and painting and hunting safaris, feed people from kitchen gardens watered by the old windmill.

Maybe she would keep on being a river bum, following the seasons down Western rivers, teaching kayaking and rafting and wilderness survival skills.

And maybe I should concentrate on this river in front of me. Lava Falls changed with the last monsoon rain. I’ll need a slightly different approach.

Today she felt like an adrenaline ride, something for the tall, good-looking teenager to remember. Lava Falls would provide it. A hundred feet below her cliff overlook, rapids coiled and boomed and frothed. Whirlpools and back eddies hid behind the shoulders of huge rocks along the bank. The roar was constant, insistent, almost numbing.

The right side, she thought, nodding to herself. Plenty of room today. Head for that big boulder sticking out from the bank like a house, let the power of the river turn the raft, dig in hard with the right oar, and shoot across to the other bank.

Lane looked sideways at the river guide who was rowing him and his father Joe Faroe down the Colorado. Lane figured Jill was older than he was by at least a decade, but it didn’t stop him from noticing how hot she was. She had the lean, smooth body of a gymnast, but she had hips and boobs, too. Since everybody wore sunscreen and not much else in the summer heat, he’d had plenty of time to enjoy the scenery around camp.

The problem with being a tall sixteen was that a lot of the women who looked really hot to him thought he was too young, and girls his age wanted older men.

Sometimes life just basically sucked.

But the view was great.

Jill turned and started back down the steep, ragged trail that had been worn dusty by river guides coming to check out one of the most dangerous rapids on a river famous for its risk. The Colorado claimed some lives each year, mostly the drunk or careless, but sometimes the dead were simply unlucky.

When Jill and Lane walked back down to the waiting rafts, Joe Faroe cocked an eyebrow at his son. “Are we walking or riding?”

“You can always walk around,” Jill said before Lane answered. “The trail’s about four miles. We’ll wait for you downstream.”

“I’m riding,” Lane said to his dad. “I’m just wondering if a girl has enough strength to handle that water.”

Faroe shook his head. Lane had an excellent brain, but he still had some things to learn about women. Jill had hiked the teenager into the ground at least twice on this trip, but he always came back with the guy-girl needle. He hadn’t noticed how the other guides-female and male-deferred to Jill’s judgment and skill.

“If it will make you feel better,” Jill said innocently, “I’ll let your daddy row. He’s good and strong.”

“No thanks,” Faroe said. “I’ll leave Lava Falls to the experts.”