CHAPTER ONE

      Last day of February, 2016

      BLADE HAMILTON WALKED to the dark water’s edge and stared into Indigo Lake. He didn’t belong here. He didn’t belong anywhere. He’d wasted his time coming to this nothing of a place.

      By birth, the land was his. You’re the last of your branch of the Hamilton line, the judge in Crossroads had said an hour ago when he’d handed over the deed to Hamilton Acres. Only, Blade had never heard of this old homestead before a week ago. He’d known nothing about his father or a dilapidated ranch that carried his last name.

      He’d picked up the keys and a map from the sheriff in town and ridden out before dark on his vintage 1948 Harley-Davidson. He’d paid sixty thousand for the Harley, and Blade would bet it was worth more than his inherited land and house put together.

      The last quarter mile had been dirt road, ending in an old bridge that groaned as he crossed onto what the judge had called the old Hamilton place.

      A weathered two-story house stood a hundred yards off the road, like a sentinel blocking his entrance. Fifty or so years ago someone must have painted the homestead bright red, but the wood had weathered to a sangria color that almost matched the mud along the lake. Huge cottonwoods waded into the water with their bony-kneed roots and haunting skeleton forms still naked from winter.

      Thanks to a stream with a wide-yet-shallow waterfall flooding the open land, small trees and bushes grew to his left like a wild miniature forest. The house sat on high ground where vines, now brown with winter, seemed to be crawling across the ground and almost covering the porch. Another few years and the vines would probably pull the place down.

      Leaving the bike on dry ground beside a small barn, he moved slowly toward the house, his mind already mapping out the route back to Denver. He’d grown up in cities and the silence of the country made him uneasy.

      Blade dropped his saddlebags on the porch and unlocked the door. He slowly walked into a museum of hard times.

      Most of the windows downstairs were boarded, so he used a flashlight to navigate. Guns were racked on the walls and animal hides served as rugs. The place must have been furnished about the turn of the twentieth century and left to age. The smell of neglect hung in the moist air, and a thick layer of dirt rested over draped furniture.

      Pictures showing four or maybe five generations hung in the stairwell. Faces stared back, resembling him so closely Blade had to take a second look. Ranchers on horseback, soldiers in uniforms, an oil field worker leaning from a rig, a fisherman next to an old Jeep, a man in a suit with a string tie. All were identified by tiny plates at the bottom of the frames.

      Hamilton men, many of whom carried Blade as their first or middle name. His father, Henry Blade Hamilton, stared back from an army photo. Vietnam, Blade guessed. It must have been taken when he was Blade’s age, early thirties.