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grimaced. “I’m legally his dad—and maybe if I hadn’t been so wrapped up in trying to bust that damned smuggling ring these past months, I’d have noticed that my own boy was in trouble.”
    “He was with his mom—you thought he was covered.Give yourself a break. You
did
bust that smuggling ring. Your country thanks you. So how long until the bureau needs you back?”
    Travis frowned out the window at mountain peaks rearing up like giants to punch the June sky. It was a much better sight than a lot of what went on inside his head these days, like the dark trails he’d followed recently, the hellish sounds of human screams and gunfire that came back to him unbidden—and far too often—in the middle of the night. Not to mention the endless reports and paperwork, the interrogations and directives from rigid, out-of-touch supervisors who hadn’t set foot in the field for decades.
    He was burned out. Trying to come to grips with Joe’s death. He needed this change. Needed at this point in his life to shift gears.
    He’d almost forgotten how beautiful it was here. How peaceful. Arizona had its own wild spare beauty, but Montana…Montana was both lush and hard, a land of contrasts with its soft meadows and sharp peaks, its creeks and cattle, white-tailed deer on distant bluffs, mountain goats and elk.
    It was at times an unforgiving and possibly dangerous land that welcomed visitors, challenged them, and nurtured them with deep beauty and adventure—even as it tempted them across high ridges and isolated hills where the unwary could topple off a cliff into a bottomless ravine or stumble across a puma or grizzly.
    This land was good to those who called it home. It cradled its cities and towns in rough-hewn grandeur and it nourished cattle and horses and everyone who loved wide-open spaces. And it seemed to Travis it had always cupped the gentle community of Lonesome Way with particular care, tucked as it was in the shadow of the Crazy Mountains.
    “Travis? Where’d you go?” His brother’s voice pulled him back to Sage Ranch. “How long until you have to report back to the bureau?”
    “Good question.”
    “You got a good answer?”
    “Yeah.” Travis spoke quietly. “Maybe never.”
    There was silence in the kitchen as he turned to meet his brother’s eyes.
    “Care to explain what that means?”
    “I requested an official leave of absence. And I’m considering making it permanent.”
    Startled, Rafe set down his mug of coffee. “Does this by any chance have something to do with losing your partner so suddenly? I know you were close to Joe Grisham, but do you really think he’d want you to—”
    “Joe’s death was a body blow, but it doesn’t have anything to do with why I’m leaving the bureau.” Pacing across the kitchen with the smooth deliberate gait of a federal agent at ease with his own strength, savvy, and skills, Travis took a seat at the table where he’d shared countless meals with his parents, his brothers, and his sister. For a moment, it almost seemed as if he could hear their voices all at once, teasing, laughing, arguing with each other over big country breakfasts, quick lunches, and hearty suppers.
    With an effort, he shook off the ghosts and reeled his thoughts back to the present, meeting his brother’s intent gaze.
    “Joe’s heart gave out. It might have happened anytime; it just so happened that he got hit with that heart attack in a hospital while waiting to interview some scumbag human trafficker who’d been shot by another agent on our team. Even the doctors on-site couldn’t save him. It was too fast, too devastating.”
    His voice was low. The grief still sat on his chest like a fifty-pound anvil. “I still think about Joe’s wife, the way she looked when she got there.” Travis’s mouth tightened as he remembered Caroline’s eyes, dazed with grief, how her small, sturdy body seemed to fold in upon itself as he kept her from crumpling to the spotless hospital