He had an office and a small holding cell rented from the Pine River police department, which he used only rarely. Most of his work involved crimes like cattle rustling, poaching, and the occasional lost hiker. His workload was pretty simple now, very different than it had been back in the days he was patrolling the more populated part of the county. People who lived this far out tended to be pretty self-sufficient, taking care of trouble on their own.
The job suited the man Sam believed he’d become. He wasn’t especially close to his family. His mother, in Dallas, had remarried after the bitter divorce from his father. His sister, Jan, was a financial advisor in Pittsburgh with a family. Sam heard from his father occasionally, but his dad had married a woman from Mexico and spent most of his time there.
For Sam, this little house in the mountains of Colorado near Pine River was as good a place as any to be.
It was certainly the easiest place to be.
Sam walked to the work shed and stepped inside. He flipped a switch and light erupted from a pair of single bulbs swinging overhead. He sipped from his coffee and looked around at the birdhouses stacked on the shelves. There were dozens of them, in various colors, shapes, and sizes. This was his hobby, the thing that kept him busy and his mind occupied on long winter nights. His birdhouses were elaborate, too: castles, multi-level houses with pitched roofs and steeples, condominiums. He made them in shapes of recreational vehicles, boats, airplanes, and spaceships. He’d made one that looked like a hamburger, only because it amused him.
He was pretty good at making birdhouses, but most of his creations stayed here. He had no desire to sell them. He just kept making them, kept stacking them around his work shed and hanging them in the trees around his house.
Once, his pal Dirk had said, “People would pay good money for these,” as he’d admired one that was fashioned after a vintage Cadillac. “Especially rich people in Aspen.”
Maybe Dirk was right, but to Sam, it felt almost like an invasion of his privacy and his solitude to let anyone know that his birdhouses existed, much less sell them. He’d given a couple away. One to Millie, hoping that would soften her up. It hadn’t. One to Leo Kendrick, who spent a lot of time looking out windows. But other than that, this was something he preferred to keep to himself. It was his thing, his quiet pastime, his testament to his life up on the mountain: simple and solitary. Safe.
Sam put aside his coffee and selected a piece of tin to fashion into a birdhouse roof. He glanced at the little building plan he’d made and tacked to the wall, and began to hammer the tin into shape.
But the tin didn’t have the same appeal to him as it normally did. His mind was elsewhere, his thoughts jumbled. He hadn’t been able to erase the image of Libby’s hopeful face as she’d stood outside his truck. He could even hear her voice.
It may be possible that Ryan and I will agree to some happy medium.
That statement had made Sam profoundly and irrationally angry.
That he cared enough for it to make him angry made him angrier still. He didn’t care what Libby Tyler did with her life. It was not up to him to set her on the right course. Then why the hell didn’t he just let it go? Let her do whatever she wanted, let the chips fall where they may! What difference could it possibly make to him?
There it was again, that feeling of something old and battered trying to dig out from underneath his rubble. He didn’t like the feeling at all, and suddenly lost interest in the birdhouses. He put down his hammer, swiped up his coffee cup, and stalked out of his work shed.
The sun was coming up, and with it rose the chatter of the magpies and blue jays greeting their day. Sam stood very still, his eyes closed, taking in the morning.
Sometimes, when there was something going on up at Homecoming Ranch, and the mornings were this still, he could hear a little bit of laughter or voices drifting down to him. He was always glad to hear it, too—the place had been so silent and forlorn after Mrs. Kendrick had died from cancer. Sam had been sorry when Mr. Kendrick and Leo abandoned the ranch for Pine River and sold the place to Grant Tyler.
He worried about Homecoming Ranch. Libby’s intentions were good, but her ideas were such a gamble. Sam’s thinking had been confirmed one day when he’d run into Jackson Crane, who had been Grant Tyler’s financial guy. Jackson mentioned that the sisters would have to book a wedding every weekend to make it a go, and Sam was pretty sure that wasn’t anywhere close to happening.
Still, Libby was pretty goddamn tenacious, and had as good a shot as anyone at turning the ranch around. She’d always been a go-getter, the first one in line to volunteer for whatever needed doing. A few years ago when the wildfires had come close to Pine River, he remembered Libby with a stain of ash on her face, tirelessly working to bundle up food, shoes, and water for evacuees. She was at the annual road race for bikers at the start of the summer, manning the rest stops. She’d been active in her church, had worked with the Chamber of Commerce, and had lobbied the city council for funding for pedestrian-friendly walkways and had won.
She was tenacious all right, so much so that he was pissed off all over again.