“We’re here anyway,” she said just as he spied the rustic inn set back from the county road. “And we’re not alone.” They’d caught up with a line of traffic, many cars peeling into the parking lot of the Cahill Inn. Like most of the commercial buildings in Riggs Crossing, the two-storied hotel was complete with a Western façade of weathered cedar siding, a covered porch running the length of the building, and, to add authenticity, hitching posts and watering troughs flanking the two wide steps leading to the front doors.

“Straight off a Hollywood set,” Mendoza observed, as Rivers spied the turnoff to the Cahill house. “Y’know, for an old Western show like Gunsmoke. Or The Rifleman.” Then, as if she anticipated a question, “My grandpa’s a big fan. There’s a Western channel on cable, and whenever he’s not watching sports, he’s tuned into reruns of old black-and-white shoot-’em-ups. Maverick. That’s his fave. It still holds up.”

He wasn’t paying too much attention to the conversation as he peeled off the main road, just before the hotel, leaving other vehicles to vie for limited parking space in the lot that separated the hotel from the lane to James Cahill’s home. A border of fir and pine divided the private lane from the commercial property. Through a line of trees, Rivers noted that the back side of the Cahill Inn was visible. There, additional parking separated the inn from a café near an arched entrance to Cahill Christmas Trees. The area was bustling with people in ski coats, puffy jackets, gloves, and hats. Couples pulling kids on sleds. Workers in red jackets strapping trees onto the roofs of vehicles.

The Cherokee jarred as it hit a root hidden by the snow just before the gate posted with a sign that read PRIVATE PROPERTY.

“I’ll get it,” Mendoza said, already slipping on gloves.

Before Rivers could argue, she was out of the Jeep and unlatching the gate to shove it open, the lower rail scraping a mound of snow behind it. He drove through, and she partially shut the gate again before hopping back into the passenger seat, bringing with her a rush of frigid air.

“Geez, it’s cold,” she said, shivering.

“Winter.”

“I hate it.”

“Then you moved to the wrong place.”

“Probably.” She didn’t elaborate, and he didn’t pry. The truth was he didn’t know much about her, just that she’d transferred from a department in New Mexico, somewhere around Albuquerque, and her record there had been clean, even stellar, and the one time he’d asked about the move, she’d said, “It was time.” He hadn’t pushed as his own reasons for ending up at Riggs Crossing had been personal.

Well, mostly.