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That’s why I’m out here,” she added.
    He nodded. “That’s why most of us are out here. We’re insulated from what people call civilization.” He leaned down. “I love it here.”
    â€œSo do I, Red,” she agreed.
    He glanced at the cattle and grimaced. “We’d better get this finished,” he said, looking up at the sky. “They’re predicting rain again. On top of all that snowmelt, we’ll be lucky if we don’t get some more bad flooding this year.”
    â€œOr more snow,” she said, tongue-in-cheek.Wyoming weather was unpredictable; she’d already learned that. Some of the local ranchers had been forced to live in town when the snow piled up so that they couldn’t even get to the cattle. Government agencies had come in to airlift food to starving animals.
    Now the snowmelt was a problem. But so were mosquitoes in the unnaturally warm weather. People didn’t think mosquitoes lived in places like Wyoming and Montana, but they thrived everywhere, it seemed. Along with other pests that could damage the health of cattle.
    â€œYou come from down south of here, don’t you?” Red asked. “Where?”
    She pursed her lips. “One of the other states,” she said. “I’m not telling which one.”
    â€œTexas.”
    Her eyebrows shot up. He laughed. “Boss had a copy of your driver’s license for the files. I just happened to notice it when I hacked into his personnel files.”
    â€œRed!”
    â€œHey, at least I stopped hacking CIA files,” he protested. “And darn, I was enjoying that until they caught me.”
    She was shocked.
    He shrugged. “Most men have a hobby of some sort. At least they didn’t keep me locked up for long. Even offered me a job in their cybercrimeunit.” He laughed. “I may take them up on it one day. But for now, I’m happy being a ranch hand.”
    â€œYou are full of surprises,” she exclaimed.
    â€œYou ain’t seen nothing yet,” he teased. “Let’s get back to work.”

CHAPTER TWO
    T HE SMALL TOWN NEAR THE RANCH was called Catelow, named after a settler who came out west for his health in the early 1800s. He and his family, and some friends who were merchants, petitioned for and got a railhead established so that he could ship cattle east from his ranch property. A few of his descendants still lived locally, but more and more of the younger citizens went out of state to big cities for high-tech jobs that paid better wages.
    Still, the town had all the necessary amenities. Catelow had a good police force, a fire department, a shopping mall, numerous ethnic restaurants, a scattering of Protestant churches and a Catholic one, a city manager from California who was a whiz at making a sickly city government thrive, and a big feed store next to an even bigger hardware store.
    There was also a tractor dealership. From her childhood, following her father around various vendors, she’d been fascinated with heavy machinery. Once, while she was in college, for herbirthday present King Brannt had actually rented a Caterpillar earthmover and had the driver teach her how to operate it. She’d had her brother, Cort, do home movies of the event. The rat wouldn’t edit out the part where she drove the machine into a ditch and got it stuck in the mud, however. Cort had a wicked sense of humor, like King’s younger brother, Danny, who was now a superior court judge, happily married to his former secretary, redheaded Edie Jackson. They had two sons.
    She walked down the rows of tractors, sighing over a big green one that could probably have done everything short of cook a meal. It even had a cab to keep the sun off the driver.
    â€œThis is how you spend your day off, looking at tractors?” a sarcastic feminine voice asked from behind her.
    Startled, she turned to find Mallory with Gelly Bruner clinging to his