Chapter 1
“Here you go, Nicole. It’s official!” The clerk smiled as she slid some paperwork through the open bottom of the glass partition through which she spoke. “These tell you how to change your birth certificate, driver’s license, and social security number…”
Blinking through her tears, Charlotte Duran… NO… Nicole Compton…glanced down at the sheet on the ledge in front of her, her gaze following the woman’s blunt-tipped finger over a series of web addresses.
She continued to watch that hand as it reached out further, covering hers, giving her fingers a gentle squeeze. “Good luck,” the woman said.
Charlotte—Nicole—nodded, then looked up and smiled. “Thank you,” she said, meeting the woman’s big brown eyes briefly…for just a second…before she took her paperwork and headed for the courthouse door. Back and shoulders straight, head high, she stepped outside into the warm spring air.
It was done.
She’d taken control of her life. Reclaimed the self that had been robbed from her.
She couldn’t remember the first year after her birth—the year she’d been Nicole—but she’d seen all the proof.
Legal documents, photos that were a one hundred percent match for facial recognition when compared to Charlotte’s year-old pictures, DNA.
Seeing pictures of the mother she’d always yearned to know holding her close, the look of love on the beautiful face she couldn’t remember… Nicole swallowed at the thought. Blinked back more tears.
And Savannah…her somewhat intimidating and wonderful, loving, selfless older sister…she’d kept all the photos of Nicole’s first year. A lot of which had included seven-year-old Savannah.
Sniffling, she climbed into the brand-new to her blue midsize American-made SUV. She wasn’t a naturalized citizen, as she’d grown up thinking. She was American born. From American parents.
She had a heritage. A place where she belonged.
And a world to protect.
The thought brought her up short. She glanced in the rear-view mirror to see the tip of the suitcase visible in the far back of her new vehicle, and it strengthened her resolve.
She’d told Savannah she was going to a dude ranch in Colorado for a couple of weeks.
That after three months of intense debriefing, biweekly meetings with the best of the best in the psychology arm of her sister’s firm of experts, and her own exploration into possible futures for herself, she needed some downtime where no one knew anything about her.
Where she could just be and let the dust settle.
She’d done the one thing she and Savannah had promised each other they would never do to each other. She’d lied.
Sort of.
Pulling onto the Phoenix bypass that would take her to the interstate leading north, Nicole gave verbal commands to set her global positioning system to an address outside Durango, Colorado, and took a deep breath. She was going to a ranch in Colorado. And a dude lived there.
As much as she adored her newfound older sister—and intended to stay close to her for the rest of her life—Nicole had to find her own place in the universe, too. No more living in a protected world where she felt safe and where she’d allowed herself to depend on another person to define her.
The only way she moved forward, became a person she could respect was to create a sense of independence.
Changing her name had been a huge step. One she hadn’t yet shared with anyone but the court system. Savannah would be thrilled. At least Nicole figured she would be. Hoped she would be. Though maybe hurt that Nicole hadn’t let her share the process.
But she was establishing a sense of self. And that was something she had to do alone.
Well…alone except for the help of a total stranger who she hoped to God she could convince to partner with her in her attempt to pay atonement. To obliterate a creation from her past.
To save others instead of herself.
Herself.
On the freeway headed north through the mountains toward Flagstaff, Nicole pulled off at the first scenic viewing point and parked in front of a vista that stretched as far as she could see. Showing mountains and valleys that were so much larger than her billion-dollar world had been.
With the strength of the mountains within her, she grabbed the paperwork from the seat beside her, setting it on her lap. Pulling out her phone, checking to ensure that she was close enough to towers to still have full service, she typed in the first website.
Only when all the websites had been visited, all of the official work was done did she let herself look up again.
She saw grace in the massive beauty, along with the dangers inherent within the rugged slopes. Saw hope when once upon a time she’d had little conscious need of it.
Charlotte Duran and her privileged existence had just been legally and officially wiped off the face of the earth.
But the deeds she’d done, horrible crimes her innocent work for her father had contributed to…
those were still living and breathing. Some of them hiding right there in that vastness, from what she’d been told.
Illegal arms didn’t hang out on popular highways, on display at roadside stands, waiting to be purchased.
They switched hands under covers of darkness, even in broad daylight and in plain sight.
Like the trail she’d tracked through the Arizona mountains, up to Utah and over to Colorado. A trail with which Harcus Taylor was very familiar.
Eduardo Duran, the man whom Charlotte had grown up adoring as a father, the only family she’d ever known, was extinct. But a portion of his business lived on.
The one appendage that authorities hadn’t found enough evidence to stop. Or prosecute.
Nicole had thought that watching the powerful billionaire and philanthropist be stripped of his identity and exposed as the criminal fraud he was would give her closure.
That seeing him forced to face charges as ex–IRS paper pusher Hugh Gussman, the man he really was, the one who’d fathered her and faked his own death before kidnapping her as a baby, fleeing the country with millions stolen from the federal government, and lying to her about who she was, would put her past to rest. She’d been wrong.
She wasn’t going to rest, establish legitimacy in her own mind or feel as though she belonged in her big sister’s family until she knew that the damage she’d done had been eradicated as completely as the Duran family had been.
With resolve cemented by the certainty of that last thought, Nicole put her new vehicle in Drive, and headed back onto the freeway.
Praying that Harcus Taylor was as driven as she was.
* * *
Seated on a fallen log, Harc Taylor sipped coffee still hot in his travel mug and surveyed the valley below him. Then the vastness of peaks in the distance.
“You know it all, don’t you, sir?” He spoke aloud to the once-wild mustang bearing his saddle and currently munching on the forage Harc had stopped at for their afternoon snack. “All the secrets these hills keep?”
Imperial lifted his head long enough to snort in Harc’s direction.
Nodding, he took the response as an affirmative and hoped that the regal horse had seen all the good the natural beauty that had been his home had to offer.
And little or none of the bad that Harcus imagined as he sat there.
Hoping, too, that one day he’d look out and believe in the peace that seemed to lay before him. To know its existence, not just view the mirage.
Someday he wanted to walk into his barn of once wild horses and consider himself worthy of their acceptance.
Wanted to trust himself enough to be able to assure them that he would never again be a man who’d compromise his ethics, who’d get so caught up in eliminating the wrongdoing he witnessed that he’d bend laws to the extreme in order to succeed.
He was done with shades of gray.
And, noticing the downward angle of the sun shining on the mountains, had to be done with his afternoon ride, too. Cutting the usual daily activity off an hour earlier than usual.
“We’ve got a visitor coming,” he told Imperial. Grabbing the horse’s reins, he lifted himself expertly into the saddle and turned the horse toward the small ranch they called home.
Nicole Compton.
She hadn’t said why she wanted to see him. Had just asked for an appointment, an hour of his time.
He figured he knew, though. His horse-therapy program. People who were struggling, especially those with emotional issues, didn’t always like to reveal their challenges to perfect strangers on the phone.
Whether Nicole had set the meeting for a matter concerning herself or on behalf of someone else, he was eager to meet the woman. Every single step he took to get his fledgling business off the ground was a step in the right direction.
The few successes he’d experienced had helped him get his big toe out of the dark world into which he’d sunk. But he had one hell of a long way to go before his full body emerged and he could stand tall and clean. Be proud of himself again.
He saw the unfamiliar blue SUV parked in the circular dirt drive in front of the house as he rode in from the back of the property. Figured his appointment had turned up a bit early—and instead of stabling Imperial, he rode the gelding past the barns and down the drive toward the house.
The white wood-sided two-story structure was almost fifty years old and a lot more than he needed, but it had come with the ranch—one of the few that was small enough for him to be able to afford. And kept him from view as he approached.
Whether Nicole was there as a potential client or on behalf of one, there was no better way to introduce her to Crimson Ranch than through Imperial.
He saw her first. Out of her car, Nicole had her back to the house, was facing the mowed green acres of front yard, separated from the road by nearly an acre of thirty-foot-tall oak trees.
His first impression—the woman wasn’t dressed for horseback riding. So, maybe representing a potential client.