Prologue
Ashlyn Callahan’s six brothers stared at the man on the ground, then at their petite, silver-haired sister.
“Did you kill him, Ash?” Galen asked.
“Someone had to do it,” Ash said, glaring at the semicircle of men whom she’d summoned to the stone-and-fire ring where evil Uncle Wolf had surprised her. As if she’d known that this was the moment she was born for, Ash had swiftly raised her weapon and fired. “You’re the doctor, Galen. Check him out and see if it was a good hit.”
Dante knelt near Wolf as Galen looked him over. Tighe stood close by her side, and Jace watched the canyons, keeping a wary eye out for Wolf’s mercenaries. Falcon went to get Galen’s medical bag from the military jeep, and Sloan headed up onto a nearby rock ledge to act as lookout. Her brothers supported her, and that support made her strong.
“If he’s dead, know that I’m not sorry,” Ash said flatly. She’d aimed to kill, and she was willing to admit it to anyone who asked, even though all the Callahans had been warned not to hurt their treacherous uncle. Their grandfather, Chief Running Bear, had always said that no harm was to befall his son Wolf—at least not from the family.
But because of Wolf and his cartel thugs, and their attempted takeover of Rancho Diablo, the Chacon Callahan parents, Julia and Carlos, had been in hiding for years. So had their Callahan cousins’ parents, Jeremiah and Molly, who had built Rancho Diablo into the sprawling spread it was. The house—which was basically a castle as far as Ash was concerned—had seven chimneys and its Tudor style served as a beacon on the wide, panoramic landscape. But the ranch was more war zone than home ever since Wolf had decided to try to take it over. The Callahan children and grandchildren had never experienced what it was like to grow up here, as they were now in satellite safe locations, most of them in Hell’s Colony, Texas, at the Phillips’ compound.
It makes my blood boil. I suppose I snapped—but after Wolf tried to steal the black Diablos, after he incarcerated them in caves under the canyons, under our very ranch, and after he very nearly killed Jace, someone had to pull the trigger.
I’m always happy to pull the trigger, and this time it was especially rewarding.
Galen glanced up at her. “He’s not dead,” he said. “His pulse is very weak. With care, he can be saved.”
Ash shrugged. “If you turn your backs, I’ll roll him into the canyon for the vultures. If you save him to strike at us another day, I wash my hands of it.”
Her brothers stared at her, and Tighe pulled her into his arms for a brotherly, comforting hug.
“It’s okay, little sister,” he murmured. “You don’t always have to be the strong one.”
They were all strong. No family was stronger than hers. And although she carried her grandfather’s spirit, it warred with the part of her soul that bowed to no one.
The lightning strike tattoo on her shoulder burned. All of them had the same tattoo—only hers had a minuscule star beside it, setting her apart.
I always knew I was the hunted one that Grandfather foretold, the one destined to bring darkness and devastation to Rancho Diablo. I always knew it was me, and I was never afraid.
She watched dispassionately as Galen and her brothers loaded their uncle into the jeep to take him to the hospital.
“I’ll find my way back,” Ash said. “You, my brothers, can play ambulance driver.”
Sloan jumped down from the ledge and got in the vehicle. “Nice shooting, by the way. Wolf won’t be too happy when he regains consciousness. See you soon, sis.”
They drove away. She waited until they were long gone. Then Ash turned in the opposite direction, and with the stealth and speed she’d learned from Running Bear, she left the stone-and-fire ring—the place their grandfather had named as their home base while they fought for Rancho Diablo—and began the long journey away from her beloved family.
Chapter One
Nine months later
Xav Phillips had looked long and hard for Ash Callahan, and now, if his luck held, he might have finally caught up to her in a small town in Texas—Wild, Texas, to be precise. She’d done a good job of covering her tracks, but he’d learned a lot of beneficial things in the years he’d worked for the Callahans, and one of them was how to find something or somebody that didn’t want to be found.
He wasn’t sure what Ash saw in this bucolic place in the Hill Country in the heart of Texas, but he’d be willing to bet the serenity of the place had called to her.
Ashlyn Callahan had been in need of peace for many years.
He knocked on the door of the small, two-story white house perched on a grassy stretch of farmland. He noted the Christmas decorations twining the white posts on the porch and the twinkling tree situated in the window. Back at Rancho Diablo in New Mexico, Christmas would be in full swing. Aunt Fiona Callahan typically planned an annual Christmas ball—this year the ball had a fairy-tale theme—but she was missing the last Callahan to be raffled at one of her shindigs. Ash had left the ranch and the town of Diablo after she’d allegedly shot her uncle Wolf Chacon. Fiona had begged Xav to find her niece, not just because she wanted her to be the final Callahan raffle “victim” at the ball, but because it was the holidays. It was time for Ash to come home, Fiona proclaimed, adding, “I’m not getting any younger! I want my family around.”
So that was the excuse that sent him searching for Ash, but it wasn’t the real reason he had to find her. Truth be told, he missed her like hell—a fact he wouldn’t have admitted to a soul. Her six brawny brothers had no idea of the depth of his feelings for Ash, and there was no reason to share that with his employers.
And there were other urgent motives to find his platinum-haired girl. Most important, Ash didn’t know that she had not been the one to shoot her uncle Wolf. She’d certainly tried. But in the melee of her uncle’s appearance and Xav firing, Ash had never noticed that her weapon didn’t recoil.
If her gun had been loaded, he was certain Wolf wouldn’t have gotten off with only a punctured lung. Ash was a crack shooter.
But Ash’s gun wasn’t the one that fired the shot.
It had been his.
He’d unloaded Ash’s gun that afternoon while she’d napped—after they’d made love. He’d unloaded it because they were alone in the canyons, and he’d been about to propose.
One didn’t propose to Ash without taking proper precautions.
A man didn’t love a woman as long as he’d loved Ash and lay his heart on the line without being fairly sure of himself. But one never knew what Ash would say or do—and so he had to be prepared for a refusal.
He’d planned his seduction carefully. Make love, disarm her, then proffer the best argument he had for hitting up the closest altar.
He’d even had a diamond-and-sapphire ring in his pocket to mark the occasion, if she was inclined to accept his offer of a partnership between them. A joining of the Callahan and Phillips families at long last. A merger between them, a professional alliance—the smoothest lasso he could design to draw Ash over to his side without her kicking and screaming. Ash was a practical woman; since a great many of the Callahan families were living at the Hell’s Colony compound in Texas that he and his three siblings, Kendall, Gage and Shaman owned, it made sense to go easy on the emotions and heavy on practical.
But he’d never gotten to the proposal. Wolf had ambushed them, and Ash had shot him—or she thought she had. Xav had fired, too, and in the silence that fell as Wolf crumpled to the ground, Xav had taken her gun, fully intending to leave behind no trace of her involvement. There was no reason for her to be blamed.
Ash had sent him away, telling him this was a family matter, a fact with which he couldn’t argue. She was