Chapter 25

Part Two: Mission Control

"Thanks for the update. Yeah, I'll be sure they check in when they get here."

Mason Rowell disconnected his call and leaned back in his desk chair. Heaving a sigh, he rubbed his hands over the scruff on his chin. He hadn't bothered to shave that morning. He'd only that minute gotten back from rounding up the strays and leaving two of the hands to repair the cut fencing. This was getting to be a damn fucking habit, and he was sick and tired of it.

"Nothing this whole year has gone right," he muttered. "First that damn woman, then the lost cattle, and now the fucking smugglers."

He had the feeling a cloud had opened up and rained all over his life.

And, yeah, it had all started with that woman. That female. Both of them half-looped in the hotel bar. Each of them searching for something—her for a way to ease back into civilian life after too much time in Afghanistan and Iraq, him to erase the memory of another woman who'd screwed him over. Badly. A woman he'