If her friends could see her, standing there as if her feet were set in the concrete, they’d be shocked. She’d interviewed serial killers and cold-blooded murderers, but chatting up nut jobs with antisocial personality disorders was a piece of cake compared to what waited for her inside Mort’s. Beyond the no one under 21 sign, her past waited for her, and as she’d learned recently, digging into other people’s pasts was a hell of a lot easier than digging into her own.

“For God’s sake,” she muttered and reached for the door. She was a little disgusted with herself for being such a wimp and a weenie, and she squelched her apprehension under the heavy fist of her strong will. Nothing was going to happen that she did not want to happen. She was in control. As always.

The heavy thump of the jukebox and the smell of hops and tobacco assaulted her as she stepped inside. The door shut behind her and she paused to let her eyes adjust to the dim light. Mort’s was just a bar. Like a thousand others she’d been in across the country. Nothing special, not even the array of antlers hanging above the long mahogany bar was anything out of the ordinary.

Maddie didn’t like bars. Especially cowboy bars. The smoke, the music, the steady stream of beer. She didn’t particularly care for cowboys either. As far as she was concerned, a pair of snug Wranglers on a tight cowboy butt couldn’t quite make up for the boots, the buckles, the wads of chew. She liked her men in suits and Italian leather shoes. Not that she’d had a man, or even a date, in about four years.

She studied the crowd as she wove her way to the middle of the long oak bar and the only empty stool. Her gaze took in cowboy hats and trucker caps, a few crew cuts, and a mullet or two. She noticed ponytails, shoulder-length bobs, and some of the worst perms and flipped bangs to ever come out of the eighties. What she didn’t see was the one person she’d come searching for, although she didn’t really expect to see him sitting at one of the tables.