Whirlwind (The Champions 1)

A roadrunner sprinted ahead of the truck and vanished behind a clump of prickly pear cactus. Dust as fine as face powder billowed from under the wheels of the rig, coating the windows. Heat waves shimmered above the horizon. Even the morning was hot. The rest of the day was bound to be a scorcher.

But with luck, the weather was about to change. In the southern sky, the first thready clouds were moving north from the Mexican highlands—a sign that the summer storms would soon begin.

“Monsoon.” Ruben gazed out the dusty side window.

“Looks like it might be coming early. Good,” Lexie agreed. The yearly monsoon season meant green grass in the pastures for the bulls and horses and the thirty head of beef cattle the ranch still raised. One less worry. But there was no shortage of other concerns.

As the road wound its way toward the pass, she struggled to push aside the issues she’d left behind in Kingman—Cory’s terrible injury and his wife’s worries; Brock Tolman’s scheme to get his grasping hands on her prize bull; and the all-too-charming cowboy who worked for her enemy—the cowboy whose face and voice and laugh had claimed a permanent spot in her memory, whether she wanted him there or not.

Forget him, she told herself. The man’s already proven he can’t be trusted. And you’ve already got enough on your plate!

That plate was truly full. Her father’s death had left the ranch with an almost weekly slate of summer rodeos under contract. Lexie had taken on the task of getting the bulls to the venues, with Ruben’s help, leaving Tess to manage the ranch. The burden of responsibility was beginning to wear on both sisters, but especially on Tess, whose biggest worry was keeping the ranch solvent.

And then there was the menacing note she’d found on her windshield. Was it a joke, or was the ranch really under threat? What if she’d been wrong, keeping its disturbing contents to herself?

A raven, perched on a dead cholla stump, flapped away as the truck approached. Some of the locals believed ravens were bad luck. But Lexie, who was as local as anybody, had been to college and didn’t hold with superstition.

Her hands gripped the steering wheel as she negotiated the last steep switchback. With a long breath of relief, she crested the pass and started the descent into the high valley, an oasis of rolling yellow grassland, fed by seasonal springs and deep wells.

Glancing down from the top of the narrow road, she could see the sprawling tile-roofed ranch house, with its enclosed patio and the large satellite dish on the roof. The house was framed by grassy pastures on the west and a complex of corrals, outbuildings, and a windmill on the east. Three properties shared the valley. The Alamo Canyon Ranch—named long ago for a place that was now federal land—was the largest. The much smaller ranch next door belonged to their neighbor, Aaron Frye, who also managed the third property. Owned by a Phoenix investment company, it was used for growing hay.

Only now, with home in sight, did Lexie realize how tired and hungry she was. All she wanted to do was sit down to a plate of Callie’s scrambled eggs, hash browns, and bacon with black beans, scrub down in the shower, and crawl into bed for a few hours of blessed sleep.

But that wasn’t going to happen. The bulls would have to be unloaded, watered, and fed their ration of high-protein Total Bull feed. Then Tess would want to brief her on everything that had happened at the ranch while she was gone. And Lexie could also expect to be grilled about the trip to the rodeo in Kingman. Maybe this would also be a good time to tell her sister about the threatening message. Sleep would have to wait.

“Something’s wrong.” Ruben’s voice startled her out of her musings.

“What? Where?”

“Down there. Outside.”

Lexie might have looked, but she was negotiating the last switchback turn on the road down to the ranch. “What do you see?” she asked.

“People in the yard. Nobody working.”

Lexie felt her stomach clench. Was it more bad news for the family? Maybe something had happened to Val, her middle sister. Val had left home at seventeen and never been back to the ranch, not even for funerals. She’d sent a lavish

floral piece for Jack’s service, nothing for her father’s.

Or maybe something had happened to Tess, or to Callie.

“Can you see who’s there?” she asked Ruben.

He paused a moment to study the scene below. “Your sister and Callie. And those two boys you hired. Both the dogs. And Mr. Frye’s truck just drove in.”

All present or accounted for. So maybe it was Val after all. Wild, beautiful, laughing Val, who’d never wanted to stay on the ranch. Death tended to strike in threes—another old superstition Lexie refused to believe. But she’d known it to happen.

Sick with impending dread, she drove into the yard and pulled the trailer up to the loading chute. No matter what else was happening, the welfare of the bulls had to come first.

As Lexie climbed wearily out of the truck, Tess came striding toward her. Whip-lean and long-legged, she was nearing thirty, her loose-blowing dark hair already threaded with silver. Nine years ago, her fiancé had died in Afghanistan. It was as if part of her had died with him, leaving nothing behind but strength, toughness, and a sense of responsibility that had driven her like a lash after her father’s death.

Pausing on her way to the truck, Tess barked an order at Chet and Ryder, the two hired boys. “Put some food out for those bulls and check their water. Then you can help Ruben unload and get to work cleaning the trailer.”

The teens hurried to do as they’d been told. They were good kids, high school rodeo riders with PRCA dreams. For them, working on a bull ranch was a dream job, even if it involved a lot of manure shoveling. Next year, after they graduated, they’d be paying their dues and trying their luck on the circuit.

The two border collies, old dogs, lolling on the porch, got up and followed the boys to the corral. They knew where the action would be, and they still enjoyed being part of it.

Inside the trailer, the bulls were snorting, lowing, and pushing at the gates of their stalls. They recognized the smells and sounds of home, and they were impatient for the freedom of the pasture.