Melody had been frightened a lot of times in her life. She didn’t live in the greatest area, for starters. Then there was the simple fact that she had been in foster care for most of her life. She had lived in some horrible group homes. She had dealt with some seriously creepy and even dangerous foster parents and foster siblings. This whole threat of violence thing made her feel both angry and vulnerable all at the same time.

Clutching Cisco’s hand, she held her breath and waited to see what he would have to say about the intruder. She wasn’t trespassing. She wasn’t! This was her land and her house. It had belonged to her grandparents, and now it was hers. So, who the hell was standing on her front porch claiming that she was on their property?

Cisco exhaled a grunt, and Melody realized that he didn’t look afraid. He looked irritated. And perhaps he even looked downright annoyed. He took her hand and lifted it to his lips. Then he smiled.

“Don’t worry,” he told her. “I think we may be on the verge of some answers.”

She took a breath to speak, but he shook his head. So, instead of saying anything, she let him take the lead as they exited the kitchen for the living room. It wasn’t incredibly bright in the living room. Most of the dying sun was spilling through the west-facing windows at the back of the house.

The front door was still open as they’d left it. Now there was a man standing silhouetted in the doorway. He was almost as tall as Cisco and very broad. But where Cisco always looked as though he were packing around muscle, this man looked as though he were given more to chunk than to muscle.

“Well, well, well.” The man folded his hands over his chest, and Melody could see that he actually had a handgun strapped to his waist!

What. The. Hell? This was not the Wild West! This was modern Denver. Or the suburbs. Or rather it was outside the city limits and the burbs, but it still wasn’t Dodge City in the days of gunfights and bank robbers!

“Paul Weatherby, I wish I could say I’m surprised to see you here, but that would be a lie. How nice to see you.” Cisco’s tone was so mild that Melody was almost confused. Were they friends?

“You’d better get your thieving ass off my property, Francisco Hernandez.” The man named Paul was growling like a junkyard dog. Apparently, there was no love lost between these two. How odd.

“And can you explain to me,” Cisco drawled in a voice that made Melody think of a courtroom drama, “how this property has come to be yours?”

“I made an offer. The owner accepted.” Paul shrugged. He took a step into the house and leaned against the newel post of the staircase leading to the second floor. “The Farrells were old. They didn’t have any relatives. It was pretty cut and dried.”

“Interesting,” Cisco continued. “So, you made an agreement with people who were in a nursing home?”

Something flickered behind Paul Weatherby’s eyes. Melody caught a glimpse of it. And if the subtle stiffening of Cisco’s body was anything to go by, so did he. The man was hiding something. Or perhaps he didn’t actually know what he was hiding. If he’d been dealing with Watson, he might have heard as many lies as Melody had.

“The Farrells are dead.” Weatherby waved a hand in a dismissive gesture that made Melody want to pick up a lamp and lob it at his head. “They don’t have any kin. I made the deal with their estate lawyer.”

Cisco took a few steps forward and put one booted foot up on the ladder-backed chair sitting in front of an antique rolltop desk. “Here’s the issue, Paul.”

“Issue?” Weatherby did not look amused. Melody realized that Cisco had managed to put himself between her and Weatherby. Given the man’s tone and increasingly irritable expression, that could not have been an accident. “What issue? I own this place. You’re trespassing. Case closed.”

“Except you don’t own it.” Cisco rested his forearms on his thigh and stared straight at Weatherby. “The estate lawyer either lied to you or the two of you are in on this bullshit deal together.”

“Excuse me?”

“The Farrells had a granddaughter, Paul.” The room was absolutely, eerily silent after Cisco’s quiet announcement. “And I find it difficult to believe that you weren’t aware of that, given the fact that your agents have been hounding the young woman for a week or more.”

Silence. Complete and total silence. It did not feel good. Instead, it was more like the calm that comes before the storm breaks and the heavens open up to drench the earth and drown anything foolish enough not to take cover.

“The Farrells’s granddaughter isn’t interested in selling. She contacted me to find out what her rights really were. According to the records from Mr. Watson, she has the right to remain on the property. She is not required to sell. She is not required to hand over anything. It’s all hers, free and clear.”

“Except for the taxes!” Weatherby stammered. He took a few stomping steps farther into the room. His fists were balled up and raised, but he hadn’t gone for his gun yet, thank goodness! “There are five years of back taxes due on this property!”

“That’s an odd sort of coincidence,” Cisco said silkily. Melody could not help but admire his absolute confidence and unflappability. He did not sound bothered by anything that was happening. She was ready to pee her pants and run screaming out the back door.

“Coincidence? What is your problem?” Weatherby demanded. “Did your asshole father send you out here to steal this land from me? It’s mine! I’ve been taking care of the house and paying the electric bills for years now!”

“So, that’s what’s been going on,” Cisco mused. “I wondered. Did you lease the land, Paul? Because I have to tell you that there is absolutely no paperwork to that effect in the file. If Watson offered you a lease or you made a deal with him, he wasn’t upfront about it. It wasn’t legal. So, it wasn’t real.”

Paul was sputtering. He now backed up a few steps instead of advancing. What was he doing? Then he pointed at Cisco and stabbed his finger as though he were trying to make his point that way. “It was a gentleman’s agreement! It doesn’t require paperwork!”

“A gentleman’s agreement doesn’t work when property is being held in trust. You would have had to get an agreement for a lease with the Farrells. And they aren’t exactly alive to say yay or nay, which means that any agreement you had died with them. So, unless you had it in writing, it’s null and void.”

“You bastard!” Weatherby hissed. “You lying, thieving Hernandez bastard! You’re all the same! You’re all trying to take what’s mine. You want Flying W land. You steal Flying W stock. You graze our lands and you lie about it all!”

Melody was now cowering behind Cisco. She didn’t know what Weatherby was yelling about, but it didn’t seem exactly believable. Melody didn’t know Cisco very well, but he’d been straight with her from day one. Even when she’d been rude, he’d been polite and helpful. She had thought he was nothing more than a spoiled rich brat, but he was so much more than that.

“It doesn’t matter what I am, Weatherby.” Cisco pushed away from the chair he was leaning on and took two steps toward his belligerent accuser. “The point is that you are the trespasser here. You are the one who doesn’t belong. So, get out of the house. Leave the property. And don’t come back. If you eventually purchase the property from the owner, fine. Then it’s yours. However, at this point, my client has no interest in selling. She would rather find out where the profits have been going for the last several years. So, if you would like to come forward and state that you had a gentleman’s agreement with the Farrells and have been paying them rent on a land lease, we welcome that information. In fact, you can contact my office first thing Monday morning and make an official statement.”

For five seconds Melody thought that Weatherby was suddenly going to become a help to their investigation of what had happened in the time her grandparents had been in the nursing home. Then the man’s face tightened up into a mask of pure hatred and anger.

“Not a chance,” he growled. “You’ll have to subpoena that information, if there is any. I’m not going to help you for one second. Do you understand me? I’m not going to provide you with anything. You can go to hell!”

Before Melody could guess what he was going to do, Weatherby pulled the gun from his holster. He leveled the barrel of the weapon right at Cisco and paused.

Melody put her hands over her mouth to stifle the scream that wanted to escape. The black hole at the tip of the barrel of the gun seemed to grow larger with each passing second as she waited to hear the deafening sound of a shot. What was this crazy person doing? Why would he think he could just shoot someone and get away with it? Her heart was clawing against her ribcage, and her eyes were watering as she struggled not to cry. The sour taste of fear entered her mouth, and she struggled not to cry out with the sheer terror she was experiencing.

Cisco was still standing mostly in front of her. He was still and calm. She could not understand how this was possible. Did he not feel the same fear that she did? Was he so used to being on the wrong end of a gun that it no longer bothered him? This was insane!

“Weatherby, you could probably get away with killing me and trying to claim that I attacked you, even though I’m unarmed. I could even believe that you could get your law enforcement buddies to sign off on the notion that I was trespassing because you had a gentleman’s agreement and were under the impression that you owned this property.” Cisco’s voice was deadly calm. Then he made a very minimal gesture toward her. “But I’m not alone. So, you’d have to murder my companion in cold blood. And the thing is, Weatherby”—Cisco seemed to be pausing for dramatic effect—“she’s the real owner of this property. She is the heir. She is the actual owner on paper. She is the one that you and Watson have been screwing out of the tax money. So, you’d have a really hard time convincing anyone that she’s trespassing when she’s the actual owner and you are the trespasser.”

“What?” Weatherby was now craning his head around in an effort to get a better look at Melody, but the room was quickly getting dark inside. “What are you talking about? The Farrells don’t have kin.”

“I told you. They have a granddaughter. She’s their daughter’s daughter, and they claimed her as such.” Cisco was firm. He was absolutely certain. And to Melody, he was a hero through and through. “So, why don’t you turn around and leave?”

Suddenly there was a flash. Cisco lifted his hands very slowly, probably to avoid setting off the crazy man with the gun. He was messing with his phone. Why? Why was he sending a text right now? Was there not a more pressing issue at hand?

“And by the way,” Cisco continued. Glancing up at Weatherby, he lifted his phone. “I just send my brother your picture and a text. Let’s just say Laredo is more of a pit bull than I am when it comes to pursuing leads he feels are worthwhile.”

“You Hernandez bastards have always stuck together,” Weatherby said bitterly. He shoved his gun back into the holster at his waist and turned on his heel. “Fine. You want this place? Take it. But it won’t be long. You can count on a tax levy coming down in the next twenty-four hours.”

“Bring it,” Cisco said irritably. “In fact, bring everything you have, Weatherby. We’ll be ready.”

Melody gaped as the man who was an actual cop left the house that was actually hers. The whole thing was so surreal that she didn’t even know how to frame it in her mind. She’d never had a house before. Now she owned one. Sort of. At least for as long as it took for them to kick her out for non-payment of taxes. The thought was actually a sad one.

“Are you all right?” Cisco turned and took hold of her upper arms. He peered into her face in the quickly dimming living room and seemed almost panicked by the possibility that she had been hurt. “Are you okay? I know he didn’t touch you, but that was probably a bit more than you anticipated happening when you came out here.”

“Cisco, I’m fine,” she assured him. “I was a little shocked.”

Shocked. Ha! She was shaking like a leaf. If he had not been holding onto her, she would have fallen on her butt. She pushed her arms around his waist and clung to his midsection. Pressing her face to his chest, she absorbed the strange familiarity of his scent and feel. She didn’t know him very well. This should not have been comfortable, and yet it was. More than anything she had ever experienced with another person in her life.

“I’m fine,” she whispered. “I just can’t believe you managed to stay so calm through this whole thing. The guy is unhinged! How can anyone let him stay a cop? He’s crazy. He is absolutely and totally insane. He would have killed us just to get us out of his way!”

“Until he realized that there was no logic in it, yes. That is true.” Cisco sighed. “Weatherby and the Flying W have hated the Hernandez Land & Cattle Company for about as long as anyone can remember. Right now, my brothers and father swear there is some weird accusation of theft and a scheme to move stolen livestock. I don’t know. It’s like trying to watch a really stupid show on TV. It doesn’t make any logical sense, and the only thing that gives the scenario any credibility is the fact that people seem to believe rumors at the drop of a hat with almost no proof.”

“People are really stupid that way,” she agreed.

He put an arm around her and pressed a quick kiss to the top of her head. “Enough about that. Are you ready to go? We need to get back if you’re going to get some good sleep before you have to go back to work.”

Melody wasn’t necessarily concerned about herself. “You’ve really stepped in it by agreeing to look at my case. I’m sorry. Maybe I can eventually pay you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he insisted.

But Melody was worried. She’d heard what he’d told Weatherby. “You have to file a bunch of stuff tomorrow to keep Weatherby from just waltzing in here and lying his way into my house. That costs money.”

“I’ve got it,” he told her quietly. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

But she was worried. And with each second that passed as she walked toward his truck and got inside, and they drove back to her apartment, she grew more and more worried about what kind of trouble she had brought to Cisco’s doorstep.