Blaze (Steel Brothers Saga 21)

“So I’ll take a flashlight.”

I sigh. “All right. I’m not letting you go alone.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

DONNY

It’s the quiet that affects me the most.

I don’t expect Brock and Dale for another couple of hours. I’m still on Steel land according to the property divisions and titles. Dale has been here before, and he told me what to expect. A few old buildings, not much else. He admitted he had only taken a cursory look. We’re going to take a more thorough one this evening.

I’m dressed in older jeans, my working cowboy boots, and a tattered T-shirt. I’m even wearing a Stetson. An old one. It’s been so long since I’ve done any work on the ranch, and I haven’t bought a new one in a while.

Once I moved to Denver to attend college and then law school, I never really considered myself a cowboy anymore.

I don’t have a full-length mirror here, obviously, but I’d bet I look the part now. I even drove my old truck. It’s been sitting in one of Mom and Dad’s garages for years, but it started right up. I threw shovels, plastic garbage bags, work gloves, a wheelbarrow, and…

My Glock 38.

Then I thought better of it, strapped on a holster, and my Glock 38 now sits at my hip.

Dad taught Dale and me how to handle guns when we were teenagers. In fact, I haven’t handled one since then. I’m probably a little bit rusty, but Dad was a good teacher. Apparently Uncle Joe taught him and Uncle Ryan when they were kids because their father—the man who was clearly keeping secrets—didn’t want to teach them.

Why wouldn’t you want to teach your sons to defend themselves?

There’s a story there. One I’ll probably never know.

There are a lot of stories I may never know, but I can at least find some answers. And I can start here, on this tract of land identified by a stranger who left me a clue in a safe-deposit box.

Where to begin?

I walk toward one abandoned building, which looks like it may have been a barn decades ago. The wood is splintered and rotting. The door is hanging on its hinges, and I swing it open easily and step inside.

I inhale and immediately regret it. The scent is thick with rot and waste. I expect to see animal carcasses, but when I flick on the flashlight and check things out, all I see are a few clumps of dirt here and there. The ground is slightly moist under my feet, but nothing is growing in here, since no sunlight can get in.

I walk around the perimeter of the inside, shining my light on the rotting walls and then up to the ceiling—an actual ceiling, instead of rafters like in most barns. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but then I jerk my head at some markings on the wall. About knee high.

I squat down to get a better look. From an animal most likely. Or a human with long fingernails. Long hard fingernails.

A woman. Probably a woman who wears acrylic nails.

“Stop it, Donny,” I say out loud.

My imagination is already running away from me. No women have been missing in the area. We would have heard if that were the case.

I look around further. I don’t see any more scratch marks like the first, but I do see some discoloration. It could be normal. This wood is old and rotting. But it’s almost like splatters of something. A darker brown on the wood.

It could be blood, but it could just as easily be stain or something else. There’s no way to know. It’s obviously been here for a long time. It’s old. It could be animal blood. Most likely is, since this is a barn.

I continue walking along the inside of the building, when—

“Oh, crap!” Literally. Something mushy around my foot. Those clumps of dirt? Dog shit. Obviously a dog has been in here recently, because it’s fresh. The indent of my foot brings up the odor, and I hold back a gag.

Great, just great. I was so busy holding the flashlight up to the walls, looking for more scratch marks and discoloration that I wasn’t watching where I was going. Serves me right, I suppose.

A dog has been here, and recently. Which means…there’s food somewhere. A dog could have taken shelter in here. I flash my light around. Several more piles of shit, older than the one I just stepped in, lie on the ground.

Which means the dog comes back here for shelter. And food.