2

      TAYLOR SANG ALONG with the radio and Toby Keith as he professed why he should’ve been a cowboy. Pulling into town, Taylor reached up and turned the radio off. Nothing in the online ad for the little cabin she’d booked had prepared her for the reality of arriving in Crooked Water, New Mexico.

      Not even close.

      Slowing to the posted speed limit of thirty-five miles per hour, she had plenty of time to assess the town. All of it. The sign outside the tiny village advertised a population number someone had taped over with duct tape and, using stencils and spray paint, modified to 207. There was a post office housed in a glass-faced stucco building that couldn’t be more than twenty-five feet square.

      Beside it sat a brick-bodied bar and grill with a neon sign over the front door that buzzed loud enough she could hear it.

      Directly across the street was a mercantile-cum-grocer with touristy knickknacks set in the plate glass window. Sale ads were hand drawn with permanent marker on fluorescent paper and peppered the remaining window space.

      And a block farther down, set apart from what seemed to be the heart of the town, a small white chapel faced off with a windowless drive-thru liquor store.

      Parking in front of the Muddy Waters Bar and Grill, she hopped down from her truck and strolled across the street. Somewhere nearby, Quinn Monroe waited. She wasn’t slated to meet him until the day after tomorrow, but she’d wanted some time to settle into her little cabin at the ranch.

      That’s a load of crap and you know it, her subconscious snarked. You wanted to scope the climb and afford yourself plenty of time to skulk out of town if it looked too tough. At least have the good grace to wait for the bartender to hand you that first double shot of whiskey before you start lying to yourself.

      Man, if her inner voice grew any more compassionate, she’d have to think about finding a way to suffocate the witch.

      She pushed through one of the large doors to the mercantile and stopped, door still half open. Generic canned chili—a lot of generic canned chili—had been built into a pyramid display right inside the entry. A large sign proclaimed “BOGO! Get it before it’s gone!”

      “How much chili can a community of barely two hundred people eat?” she asked quietly, still frozen halfway through the doorway.

      “Oh, you’d be surprised,” a tiny, bespectacled man answered from a stool behind an ancient register.

      He was so diminutive in a wizened way that it took her a second to realize he’d stood. Shuffling around the end of the worn pine counter with its aluminum flashing and green glass candy jars, he couldn’t have topped out at more than five foot three inches.

      “Get fishermen in here all damn day who think they’ll pull a Bear Grylls and live off the land. Bunch of morons, the lot of ’em. More men end up with food poisoning from trying to cook their catch over an open fire and forage for greens along the riverbanks than those eatin’ at my sister’s diner over in Boise.” He gazed up at her with rheumatic, watery blue eyes and grinned. “Works out for me, though. Buy-one-get-one-free chili is mighty tasty when you’ve had the dysentery in the wilds. Got a special on Charmin, too, for that matter, but you don’t look like a moron.”

      Lips quivering, Taylor stepped the rest of the way in and let the door fall shut before she burst out laughing. It had been so long since she’d let loose, her facial muscles ached with it. Bent over, hands on her knees, she glanced up to find the old man grinning even wider. “And the locals?” she couldn’t help but ask.

      “We don’t touch that canned, preservative-filled crap. Anything with a shelf life of eight years is bound to kill you,” he said, gesturing across the street with a small jerk of his chin. “Town folk eat at Muddy Waters.”

      “What’s good over there?” she asked absently as she peered down the store’s aisles. The place was admittedly well stocked for such a small, remote grocery.

      The little man shrugged. “Just about everything.” Then he held out a hand twisted by years of arthritis and roughed by physical work. “I’m Joseph Cummings. You can call me Joe. And if you’re here long enough, Old Joe.”

      She shook his hand, surprised at the strength in his grip. “Hey, Joe. I’m Taylor Williams. I’ll be here a little over a week. I’m climbing Trono del Cielo.” She swallowed hard at the last bit, not at all sure why she’d offered a stranger the information.

      He cocked his head to one side, considering her. “You’re the one going up the mountain with Quinn Monroe, then.”

      “I am, yes. Why?”

      “He mentioned he had someone booked for the climb when he came in and ordered provisions.” He waved a hand dismissively, shuffling around the counter to reclaim his seat as he spoke. “Couldn’t be no one better to lock yourself onto for that climb.”

      The idea of being locked together, of carabiners tying her fate, her very survival, to another’s—and his to her—made her swallow convulsively. Gear could fail. Decisions made under pressure, decisions not carefully weighed and measured, could be wrong. Do-overs weren’t a given but a matter of grace, and if life lacked one thing, it was grace.

      “Good to know,” she croaked out.

      He carried on, not seeming to notice the sweat suddenly trickling down her temples. “Got a small storefront here, but we do a bang-up catalog order business. I might be older than a petrified dinosaur turd, but I’m good with a computer.” His fragile-looking chest puffed up. “I can get you anything I need from my Santa Fe supplier or with my laptop, so you need something while you’re here, something I ain’t got on the shelf? Just let me know.”

      “I’ll do just that. Thanks.”

      Joe’s eyes narrowed. “You nervous about the climb or meeting Quinn?”

      So he had noticed. “Why would I be nervous about meeting Quinn?” she asked, avoiding the first part of the question.

      The old man cackled. “You’re a woman, ain’t ya?”

      “Yeah, but my breasts don’t tend to get too intimidated by the male species.” She grinned. “They have a bit of a narcissistic side.”

      “Rightly so,” he said, winking and, of all things, causing her to blush as the door swung open behind her, a rush of hot, dry air washing over the sweat at the nape of her neck. “But Quinn? Well, he’s famous in these parts for lovin’ and leavin’ in nothing flat. Broke a lot of hearts when he left town that first time. Imagine it’ll be the same when he leaves this time.”

      “Good thing I’m just here for the climb, then, isn’t it, Joe? That’ll keep us