THERE WASN’T A man alive who was happy to see blue and red police lights come up behind him on a long stretch of deserted highway where there were no other visible cars.
But West Caldwell imagined that as men went, he was probably distinctly unhappier than many. Having spent a couple of years behind bars, witnessing the grave failure of the justice system. Though, he supposed in the end the system had prevailed and he had been exonerated of the fraud he hadn’t committed in the first place—but that initial failure meant that he didn’t really have a keen view of law enforcement.
Not of any stripe.
Not that he didn’t know full well that most police officers were just doing their jobs. But the thing was, something happened to you when you were in prison. There was a little bit of an us vs. them mentality. The inmates, and the ones who’d put them in jail. Of course then there was the fact that he couldn’t trust half the bastards in prison.
So really, there were gradations of teams.
But either way you cut it the cops were not on his team.
Of course, he wasn’t in prison anymore. Neither was he a criminal in the eyes of the law.
Still.
He didn’t want to get a ticket either way.
This is what he got for moving to Small Town, USA. Gold Valley, Oregon. He’d rolled into town to get acquainted with his old man—Hank Dalton—a legendary retired bull rider and man whore. One who had left half siblings littered around the country.
West had ended up staying. Because Dallas no longer held any allure to him. No, it was just the site of his financial and personal destruction.
He had been raised in Sweet Home, Oregon, before high-tailing it out of there at eighteen and joining the rodeo, coming back and forth to check in with his half brother—his mother’s son, Emmett.
He had other half siblings here, though. His father’s children, not his mother’s, so he’d figured Gold Valley was as good a place as any to settle in and start over.
He hoped he could get in touch with Emmett again. His mother said her much younger son had run off, doing whatever the hell he wanted, and she wasn’t all that concerned.
West didn’t feel the same.
But here in town he’d discovered a hell of a lot more family than he bargained for. And not only that, the family had taken him in more or less.
Though, part of that was that they seemed to be inured to having siblings popping up out of the woodwork.
He wasn’t the first.
And if what his half brother Caleb thought was true did in fact prove to be, he wouldn’t be the last.
Not that any of that had a hill of beans to do with what was happening now, and the ticket he was about to receive.
He pulled off on the side of the road, next to a copse of dense, dark pine trees. The place was lousy with pines. Totally different than the grassy rolling hills that he had learned to call home in Texas. There were Oregon grapes, fritillarias and ferns instead of bluebonnets. And the flat fields were backed by jagged mountains.
And hell, in Texas, the cop that pulled you over might just be Chuck Norris. So, he supposed he should be grateful that at least this one wasn’t a Texas Ranger.
He looked in his rearview mirror, and watched as the cop car stopped. He had hoped, just a little, that it would go on by. But no.
Then the door opened, and the uniformed figure inside stood. He could just barely see the top of her shoulders and head above the door.
It was a woman. Brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, dark glasses over her eyes. She was small. She slammed the door shut with the force of a much larger person, her belt and gun bulky on her tiny frame.
She hitched that belt up, like a bad cop show, and walked slowly over to the driver’s side of the vehicle. He pushed the button on his truck window and rolled it down.
She appraised him for a moment, just a moment, before she spoke.
“Do you know how fast you were going?” she asked, lifting her sunglasses and sliding them back on her head.
“Can’t say that I do, officer. But I bet you’re going to tell me.” It was clear from the way the corners of her mouth—not a bad mouth even given it was all severe—turned down that she