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spotting him just inside the doorway. He slid off his bar stool to shake Tag’s hand. “You sure grew up.”
    Tag had to laugh, since he’d been twelve when he’d left the canyon, the eldest of his brothers. Now he stood six-two, broad across the shoulders and slim at the hips—much as his father had been in his early thirties.
    After his mother had packed up her five boys and said goodbye to their father and the canyon for good, they’d seen Harlan occasionally for very short visits when their mother had insisted he fly down to Texas for one event in his boys’ lives or another.
    “I hope you stopped by to have a drink with us,” Tag’s uncle said.
    Tag glanced at the clock behind the bar, shocked it was almost noon. The two older men looked pretty chipper considering they’d closed down the Canyon Bar last night. They’d both been too handsome in their youths for their own good. Since then they’d aged surprisingly well. He could see where a younger woman might be attracted to his father.
    Harlan had never remarried. Nor had his brother. Tag had thought that neither of them probably even dated. He’d always believed that both men were happiest either on a stage with guitars in their hands or on a bar stool side by side in some canyon bar.
    But he could be wrong about that. He could be wrong about a lot of things.
    “I’m not sure Tag drinks,” his father said to Angus, and glanced toward the front door as if expecting someone.
    Angus laughed. “He’s a Cardwell. He has to drink,” he said, and motioned to the bartender.
    “I’ll have a beer,” Tag said, standing next to his uncle. “Whatever is on tap will be fine.”
    Angus slapped him on the back and laughed. “This is my nephew,” he told the bartender. “Set him up.”
    Several patrons down the bar were talking about the declining elk herds and blaming the reintroduction of wolves. Tag half expected the talk at the bar would be about the young cocktail waitress’s death, but apparently Hud had been able to keep a lid on it for the time being.
    Tag realized he couldn’t put this off any longer. “Could we step outside?” he asked his father. “I need to talk to you in private for a moment.”
    “It’s cold outside,” Harlan said, frowning as he glanced toward the front door of the bar again. Snow had been plowed into a wall of white at the edge of the parking area. Ice crystals floated in the cold late-morning air. “If this can’t wait, we could step into the back room, I guess.”
    “Fine.” Tag could tell his father was reluctant to leave the bar. He seemed to be watching the front door. Who was he expecting? The woman who’d been in his cabin yesterday?
    “So, what’s up?” his father asked the moment Tag closed the door behind them.
    “I need to ask you something. Who was at your cabin yesterday when I showed up unexpectedly?” Tag asked.
    “I told you there wasn’t—”
    “I saw her leather jacket on the couch.”
    Harlan met his gaze. “My personal life isn’t—”
    “A woman wearing a jacket exactly like that one was just found murdered on the Cardwell Ranch.”
    Shock registered in his father’s face—but only for an instant.
    That instant was long enough, though, that Tag’s stomach had time to fall. “I know you couldn’t have had anything to do with her murder—”
    “Of course not,” Harlan snapped. “I don’t even know the woman.”
    Tag stared at his father. “How could you know that, since I haven’t told you her name?”
    “Because the woman who owns the leather jacket you saw at my cabin came by right after you left this morning. She is alive and well.”
    Tag let out a relieved sigh. “Good. I just had to check before I said anything to the marshal.”
    “Well, I’m glad of that.”
    “I had to ask because this woman is the same one who stumbled into me last night at the Canyon—the same bar where you and Uncle Angus were playing. After seeing that leather jacket at your