Chapter One

Max Malone scratched his dark head of hair and squinted at the sunrise as light cast the Crazy Mountains in a pale pink glow. He’d camped just outside of the Hamilton Ranch, sleeping in the back of his pickup and hoping it wouldn’t rain.

There’d been more news vans parked at the gate three months ago. Now only two remained along with a few reporters who drove out some morning. They were always hoping to get something on the days they’d heard the senator would be leaving the ranch for some political event.

Max had met the other reporters and photographers the first day he’d showed up here. They would have looked down their noses at him even if he hadn’t been driving an old pickup and sleeping in the back of it. He was a print journalist, one of a dying breed.

The only one of the bunch waiting at the gate who’d given him more than a nod was an old former journalist named Harvey Duncan. It was Harvey he stood with this morning at the fence.

“Is it true there are no photographs at all of Sarah Hamilton?” Max asked.

“They say she’s camera shy,” Harvey said and took a gulp of his coffee from a cup that said Java Depot on the side.

Just the smell of the coffee was enough for Max to head into Big Timber. He could go without food for several days. But coffee, that was another story.

“Still it seems strange,” he said.

“No one knows where she is. She couldn’t move back in here, not with the senator and his current wife.”

“I heard the daughters have all scattered to the wind as well,” Max said.

“So it seems.” Harvey took another drink.

“I’ve been struggling to get a bead on Sarah Hamilton. No one seems to know anything about her.”

“With a maiden name like Johnson, it makes it hard. Do you know how many fifty-eight-year-old women there are with that name?”

He did. He’d gone online trying to find out something, anything about her. He needed this story. Even better would be a photograph. Right now a photo of Sarah Hamilton would be worth…hell, it would be priceless. He could name his price.

At movement down at the ranch, the reporters and photographers in the vans all hopped out and got ready.

“I think I’m going into town for coffee,” Max announced and walked back to his pickup. He’d heard that the Senator had a fundraiser coming up. Maybe that was why he was getting into his car and headed toward the gate and the hired security guard manning it.

Max started his pickup. He’d tried to follow Senator Buckmaster Hamilton before, but had lost him. The senator drove like a bat out of hell and he had the luxury of knowing the roads. Add to that the dust that boiled up behind the senator’s car…Max had lost him the couple of times he tried.

This morning, while he would have loved to really go into town for coffee, he was determined to outfox the man.

He took off down the road that led to Beartooth. If he was wrong and the senator was headed the other way, then he still had nothing to lose. He’d go into the small former mining town and have breakfast at the Branding Iron. Maybe he’d hear something he could use.

But the glanced in his mirror, he saw the senator’s car behind him. He drove slow, his window down. The smells of summer blew in reminding him of his childhood growing up down by West Yellowstone. He loved this time of year. He also loved what he did for a living. As an investigative reporter, he got to snoop into other people’s lives. It was like digging through their garbage, which admittedly he’d done a few times when the situation necessitated it.

He was going slow enough that he knew the senator would eventually pass him to get out of his dust. Sure enough he finally did, blowing past without giving him even a sideways glance. Max was betting the man hadn’t noticed him or his old truck parked down the road from where the other reporters hung out.

A news van came flying up behind Max. He moved to the middle of the road and ignored the driver blasting the horn. He could see the senator’s dust dissipating in the distance. Just a little farther.

He’d followed the man another time when he’d left about this time of day and headed in this direction. Max was betting the senator was going to the same place. What had thrown him before was that there’d been no ranches or houses nearby the spot where he’d lost him.

This time he had another plan. He finally let the news van pass him, knowing the van would never be able to catch up to the senator. Slowing he turned at the next dirt road. Sometimes at night, with nothing to do, he would just drive back roads. He’d found this one quite by accident and had been surprised to end up on a tall rocky outcropping. The view had been incredible.

He figured teenagers knew about the spot because he’d seen a few rock fire pits and a lot of smashed empty beer cans.

Driving up the road, he stopped short of the top of the rock peak. Getting out, he grabbed his camera case and closing the door quietly, headed up to the pinnacle. He’d almost reached the top when he heard the vehicle on the narrow dirt road below him. He recognized the senator’s car as it came to a stop at the edge of the road.

The man got out and walked down to the creek, disappearing into the pines.

A few minutes later a pickup truck came down the road from the other direction and began to slow to a stop. Max took a photo of the dust trail the truck had left across the canyon and up into the pines of the foothills. He was getting excited, positive he was on to something given that the senator was meeting in such an isolated spot.

As the truck stopped, he had his camera ready. With the telephoto lens, he snapped a shot of the driver behind the wheel. But it was when the passenger side door opened and the blonde stepped out, that he knew he’d hit paydirt.

He snapped a half dozen photographs of the woman as she headed down to the creek to meet the senator. He even lucked out and got one of the two of them together. If he was right and this woman was Sarah Hamilton, what he had in his camera was like money in the bank.