The High Country Rancher by Jan Hambright Page B

morning.”
    “Like you turned off the heat lamp in the barn?”
    “Yeah. Stay here. I’m going to check it out.”
    He was glad when she didn’t put up a protest, pull her gun and charge in. This was his territory.
    The house was dead quiet, but he listened anyway. Semidarkness filled the rooms and he reached for the light switch next to the door, flipping it on.
    Baylor took several steps into the living room, satisfied everything was in its place, but an odd scent greeted him as he stepped into the kitchen.
    Gasoline. Just a hint, like someone had it on their clothes as they moved through the house.
    Caution worked through him, but he wasn’t ready to make a call like that until after the point of origin had been determined by Jock. If the same person who started the barn fire had been in his home, why in the hell hadn’t he torched it, too?
    “Baylor?”
    The sound of Mariah’s voice brought him around and he tried to look relaxed even though he didn’t feel it. “In the kitchen.”
    He flipped on the light, pulled a couple of tall glasses out of the cupboard and opened the refrigerator door, spotting the glass pitcher of iced tea he’d put there that morning.
    “Damn, would you look at that?” He pulled the container out of the fridge and held it up to the kitchen light.
    Clearly outlined in the bottom of the pitcher was a gun. A 357, if he guessed right.
    His 357.
    “I’d rather have ice in mine,” Mariah said, staring at the container. Uncertainty quaked through her as she searched Baylor’s face for an explanation.
    “It wasn’t there this morning, but the front door was unlocked when we got here.”
    “Why would anyone hide a gun…unless it was used in the commission of a crime.”
    “Do you have a paper bag?”
    He set the pitcher down on the counter, took a brown bag out of the pantry and handed it to her.
    Mariah pulled her pen out of her pocket and fished in the container, catching the loop behind the trigger. Carefully she raised the gun up out of the tea and let it drain before slipping it inside the bag to turn over to the lab.
    A sense of foreboding latched on to her nerves. She had no proof Baylor hadn’t put it there, only a gut feeling.
    A loud knock dragged her attention away and she followed him out of the kitchen and into the living room, where he opened the front door.
    “She’s cooled down enough that we can get inside. We won’t be poking around, it’s still too hot, but we can find a point of origin.” Jock Hansen led them outside and toward the barn to an area where two huge floodlights had been staged.
    “Watch your step, there are still hot spots.” He turned on his flashlight and moved into the barn.
    Mariah’s toes curled up in her shoes as she stepped into the blackened structure anticipating a trip over the hot coals that glowed on the floor all around her.
    The inside was a hollow cavern shrouded in darkness and barely lit up by the bright lights. Charred boards told the story of the barn’s layout and she tried to imagine it with the stalls and hayloft still intact.
    Gingerly she followed along next to Baylor.
    “This looks like the place where it started.” Jock indicated a corner pen about twenty feet long and twenty feet wide. “The heat lamps are melted, but you can see the outline of the one lying on the floor.”
    Mariah strained to see it, but finally made out the lines of the melted lamp.
    “The fire started in the dry bedding on the floor.” Jock shined his flashlight beam on the charred boards, illuminating the fan pattern where the fire had progressed. “Then it caught the wall on fire.” He eased the light up a foot at a time as he explained the fire science.
    “Then it…” A half-choked yell rattled out of Jock’s throat and he launched backward, his flashlight beam aimed toward the ceiling. “Son-of-a-bitch.”
    Mariah felt a wave of nausea sweep over her as she, too, stepped back and stared up at the roof.
    There, swinging back and