Big Sky Standoff - By B. J. Daniels Page 0,2

up.

She watched him rub the tiny scar behind his left ear again. It still surprised her that he’d agreed to the implanted monitoring device. Via satellite, she would know where he was at any second of the day. That alone would go against the grain of a man like Dillon Savage. Maybe she was right about how badly he’d wanted out of prison.

But then again, she knew he could very well have a more personal motive for going along with the deal.

“So the device isn’t giving you any discomfort?” she asked.

He grinned. “For a man who can’t remember the last time he was in a vehicle without shackles, it’s all good.”

As she drove through the small prison town of Deer Lodge, past the original jail, which was now an old west museum, she wondered what his life had been like behind bars.

Dillon Savage had spent his early life on his family’s cattle ranch, leaving to attend university out East. Later, when his father sold the ranch, Dillon had returned, only to start stealing other people’s cattle. Living in the wilds, with no home, no roots, he’d kept on the move, always one step ahead of her. Being locked up really must have been his own private hell.

Unless he had something to occupy his mind. Like rustling cattle vicariously from his prison cell.

“I’m surprised you didn’t work the prison ranch,” she said as she drove onto Interstate 90 and headed east.

“They worried that their cattle would start disappearing.”

She smiled not only at his attempt at humor, but also at the truth of the matter. It had taken her over two years to catch Dillon Savage. And even now she wasn’t sure how that had happened. The one thing she could be certain of was that catching him had little to do with her—and a whole lot to do with Dillon. He’d messed up and it had gotten him sent to prison. She’d just given him a ride.

REDA HARPER STOOD at the window of her ranch house, tapping the toe of her boot impatiently as she cursed the mailman. She was a tall, wiry woman with short-cropped gray hair and what some called an unpleasant disposition.

The truth? Reda Harper was a bitch, and not only did she take pride in it, she also felt justified.

She shoved aside the curtain, squinting against the glare to study her mailbox up on the county road. The red flag was still up. The mailman hadn’t come yet. In fact, Gus was late. As usual. And she knew why.

Angeline Franklin.

The last few weeks Angeline had been going up the road to meet mailman Gus Turner, presumably to get her mail. By the time Angeline and Gus got through gabbin’ and flirtin’ with each other, Reda Harper’s mail was late, and she was getting damn tired of it.

She had a notion to send Angeline one of her letters. The thought buoyed her spirits. It was disgraceful the way Angeline hung on that mailbox, looking all doe-eyed, while Gus stuttered and stammered and didn’t have the sense to just drive off.

The phone rang, making Reda jump. With a curse, she stepped away from the window to answer it.

“Listen, you old hateful crone. If you don’t stop—”

She slammed down the receiver as hard as she could, her thin lips turning up in a whisper of a smile as she went back to the window.

The red flag was down on her mailbox, the dust on the road settling around the fence posts.

Reda took a deep breath. Her letters were on their way. She smiled, finally free to get to work.

Taking her shotgun down from the rack by the door, she reached into the drawer and shook out a half-dozen shells, stuffing them into her jacket pocket as she headed to the barn to saddle her horse.

A woman rancher living alone had to take care of herself. Reda Harper had had sixty-one years of practice.

“I WANT TO MAKE SURE we understand each other,” Jacklyn Wilde said, concentrating on her driving as an eighteen-wheeler blew past.

“Oh, I think we understand each other perfectly,” Dillon commented. He was looking out at the landscape as if he couldn’t get enough of it.

A late storm had lightly dusted the tops of the Boulder Mountains along the Continental Divide to the east. Running across the valley, as far as the eye could see, spring grasses, brilliantly green, rippled in the breeze, broken only by an occasional creek of crystal clear water.

“I got you an early release contingent