Free The Night Is Watching by Heather Graham Page B

occasionally he brought Roo out to show. He didn’t enter competitions, but Roo could turn on a dime, and Sloan liked to let him strut his stuff now and then.
    The horses didn’t seem skittish. Then again, they did like human contact and Sloan had enough visitors out here that they wouldn’t be skittish if they’d heard someone walking around the yard.
    Maybe the cat had seen demons that haunted his feline mind.
    As he stood by the stalls, his cell phone rang. He answered it quickly.
    “Hey, you down there?” Johnny Bearclaw asked.
    “Yeah, it’s me, Johnny.”
    “You been there awhile?”
    “No, I just came out. The cat was freaking out over some noise or other,” Sloan said.
    “I was about to come down,” Johnny announced.
    “You heard something?”
    “It sounded as if the horses were a little restless. I’ll be right there.”
    Sixty seconds didn’t pass before Johnny came hurrying down the steps from the overhead apartment. He wasn’t a tall man; he stood maybe five-ten, but he was barrel chested and had broad shoulders and huge hands. Johnny could tenderly serve a dying man soup—or tackle the meanest bronco. His dark eyes were narrowed as he said, “Oddest thing. I just had the feeling someone was around. Strange as hell. Then heard Kanga there neighing and stomping. I saw the light spill out over the paddocks and called you. Does anything seem to be amiss?”
    Sloan shook his head. “Let’s take a look around for the hell of it, though.”
    “Could’ve been a coyote who thought better of it. ’Course, we don’t have any chickens around here, anyway. A coyote would have figured that out pretty fast,” Johnny said.
    “We’ll split up. I’ll go east, and you take the west,” Sloan told him.
    Some brush on either side separated Sloan’s property from his neighbors, but like him, his neighbors had paddocks and stables; they all put up picket fences in front of their homes, but they didn’t bother with gates. No one cared if someone rode over someone else’s land.
    That meant there wasn’t far to go and not many places to look.
    Sloan met Johnny at the rear of the stables. “If someone was snooping around, they’re not here now,” Johnny said. “My money is on a coyote.”
    “You’re probably right.” Sloan looked off into the night. Behind them, the foothills were purple in the moonlight.
    “’Course, if anyone was around here and they knew the place and wanted to disappear...” Johnny began.
    “They could just head out back behind the hills,” Sloan finished.
    “Not much there now but desolation,” Johnny said. “The old mine entrances were blown out with dynamite years ago.”
    “Coyote,” Sloan said. “Thanks, Johnny. Get some sleep.”
    “Yeah, you, too, Sloan. Everything going all right?”
    “Yep.”
    “That artist come in?”
    “Yep.”
    “She any good?”
    “Yes, very good. Well, see you tomorrow, Johnny.”
    “Hey, bring her on out. The horses could use some more exercise.”
    “Yeah, maybe,” Sloan agreed.
    He waved good-night to Johnny and returned to the house. He seldom set the alarm, but he did that night.
    When he lay down to sleep, he felt a thump at the foot of the bed. He smiled. There was nothing unearthly about that thump; it was Cougar, settling down for the night.
    He wondered why he still felt so disturbed. He’d probably had a hunch from the beginning that the skull might have belonged to Sage McCormick. The story had seemed off to him—women might leave their husbands, but from what he’d read about Sage, she wasn’t the type to walk out on a child.
    Still, she had been dead for a hundred years.
    But, like Henri, he was concerned. Why had the skull shown up now? Where had it been?
    And where was the rest of Sage McCormick?
    He thought that when he slept he might be plagued with dreams of the late 1800s—dreams in which outlaws rode down Main Street in a cloud of dust and flying sagebrush. Or that he’d dream of the Gilded Lily, a