Chapter 1
Copperhead
WALKER
It’s the flash of copper that first catches my eye. Like a penny glinting in the sunlight.
Except that it appears to be a person, and that person is swimming in the lake on our family land.
My hand finds the revolver at my hip, a Ruger Vaquero that goes everywhere I do on this mountain.
Never know when you’ll encounter a bear.
Or a crazy trespasser.
My two brothers and I are each famous in our own ways, so we attract our fair share of crazy.
“Dad,” I say, lifting my chin towards the lake. “We got a trespasser.”
My father tightens his grip on the reins of his paint gelding, already pivoting toward the lake, when he stops short. “Oh, that’s just Sadie.”
“Who the hell is ‘just Sadie?’”
“Nice girl. Works at the bookstore downtown.”
“Is there a reason she’s swimming in our lake?”
That bright copper amid the turquoise water keeps catching my eye. I can’t look away from it.
“She told me she likes to swim at the community pool, but sometimes it’s closed. I told her she can come up to swim in our lake anytime she likes.”
I frown. “I don’t like strangers on our land. Not with Jonah around.”
I can take care of crazy, but I don’t want it anywhere near my five year old son.
My father gives me a patient look. “Stand down, Walker. She ain’t a stranger. I know her. She’s one of the good ones. Born and raised here in Marble Falls. Give or take a few acres, she’s practically the girl next door.”
“Why don’tIknow her?”
He just raises an eyebrow. “Probably because you’ve spent the last decade in Nashville or traveling the world on tour. The goings-on in Marble Falls haven’t exactly been on your radar.”
The reminder that I’ve spent far too long away from the place I grew up in chafes at me. I’ve made a lot of mistakes over the last decade. Chasing my dreams all over the world at the expense of family and home is the biggest.
“Sadie’s a hometown girl,” my father continues. “Sweet kid.”
A voice comes crackling through his radio. It’s Rafe, our foreman and unofficial-but-basically-surrogate fourth Rhodes brother. “Daryl, we got cattle coming through a downed fence on the west pasture.”
“Be there in five,” my father radios back.
I turn my horse to head there with him. “I’ll come with you.”
He waves me off. “I can handle it. Why don’t you go introduceyourself instead of sitting on your horse scowling like a bandit about to rob a train?”
That only makes me scowl harder.
“Be nice!” my father calls, then canters off into the distance, laughing to himself.
I nudge Journey, my stallion, closer to the lake.
