It was well past ten o’clock by the time Jake’s pickup crunched onto the gravel of the crowded parking lot of the Lobo, lucky to find a single spot empty around the back of the building. It was Saturday night and the boys were out in force, all looking for a barstool and a beer and a little pussy after a hard week’s worth of work on the ranch. He pulled in, threw the truck in park and turned off the engine, which sputtered and groaned – whether in defiance or relief, Jake couldn’t tell – before falling silent, and then pocketed his keys.

Walking into the bar, Jake looked around for familiar faces. Finding none - which was fine with him considering his motive for being there in the first place - he ambled over to the bar and asked for a longneck. Since the barstools and tables were all full, he found a relatively empty spot near the jukebox and leaned back against a wall behind the pool table. He crossed one foot over the other and idly watched a couple of wranglers rack and stack the balls. His eyes drifted over the room as he took a long swallow of his beer, pausing when he spotted a man sitting alone at a table near the back of the room.

Jake knew immediately that the man was not a local simply by the way he was dressed. The cowboys and ranchers who scratched out a living in these parts didn’t go out to grab a brew on a Saturday night duded up like an undertaker. The man wore an immaculate white dress shirt and a pair of pressed khaki pants, and Jake could see spit-polished dress shoes under the table and a dark blue suit jacket hung neatly over the back of his chair.

The man was the prettiest thing in the bar, in Jake’s opinion. The stranger ...