C.J. Petit

Dylan knew that the boiler was about to blow apart, and if he didn’t act fast, he and the others in the pump room at the number three mine would all die....

Bryn felt sickened as he felt the ground shake, knowing that one of the two shafts had collapsed. Now, he stood in the pump room and watched the two thrumming pumps as they pulled water out of the deep mines....

Chicken Charlie was being shut out by the town and didn't know why. No one would buy her eggs or chickens. Then Ben Arden arrived in town, and suddenly chickens were the least of her concerns.

Doctor Turnbull had estimated that Kyle's mother had six months to live - that was three months ago. He felt guilty for playing a game as she suffered back at their small excuse for a house....

Bethan listened as her father explained to her mother the mission that he was giving to her brother, Lynn, and her Uncle Bryn. After she’s heard all of the details, she left the big house and returned to her small house where she began to pack....

Lynn glared at Ryan Mitchell and wanted to smack his smug face. Even though Ryan meant to insult him, Lynn knew that there was a very good chance that what he said was right....

Cole Turner left the Rocking T that morning to spend a couple of days with his brother and niece in Garden City. It was supposed to be a time of relaxation after having spent a few days moving those cattle to market. Any thought of quiet time vanished when he opened the door to his brother’s house.

Sergeant Ellis White had the Yankee colonel in the crosshairs of the Amadon telescopic sight on the J.F. Brown sniper rifle and knew his index finger just had to squeeze the trigger, but he paused.

Private Jake Elliott was apprehensive as he walked to the commander’s office. He couldn’t think of a single transgression that would have attracted the major’s attention....

Bounty hunters were generally viewed as little better than the men they hunted. Ted Shepard usually didn't pay any mind to what others thought. He was good at what he did. But now, he was trailing a body to his hometown of Wilmore. He might change his mind.

Susanna stared at her father’s body on the floor, his life’s blood still pooling near his head. She’d murdered her own father, and even as she stepped slowly away from the horror, knew that there was more terror in her future....

Fifteen-year-old Joe Beck wasn’t listening as the minister eulogized his uncle but was already planning on what he would have to do as soon as they returned to the Quimby farm. He wasn’t welcome there even before his uncle had died and knew that his cousin John would soon order him to leave....

Max could fix anything that had moving parts., but he couldn't fix what sent him to prison for five years. Now, he was back home and had to fix a lot more than machines, and found it was almost impossible to repair people that didn’t want to be fixed....

He never looked back as he made his way through the gaslit streets without a penny in his pockets and no place to sleep. He would use the one skill he had learned in those empty years that he now left behind him.

Morgan was meeting with an important client in his well-appointed law office in San Antonio when his clerk tapped on the door and entered without waiting for a reply.

Mack Smith had left his shop in Pueblo and was just an hour or so from reaching his brother’s ranch for his annual visit when he felt the bullet slam into his head, and when his eyes finally opened, he found himself flat on his back on the bottom of a ravine....

When the postal inspector in Carson City discovered a counterfeit one-dollar bill, he notified the Secret Service. That was why they’d been created just a decade earlier.

This was supposed to be a journey to find his dream of starting his own spread. As he left the Bar L just northwest of Cheyenne and rode south into Colorado, Conn already knew where he wanted to build his ranch and had enough money to buy the land and get it started.

Sixteen-year-old Henry was ejected from the enormous St. Martin ranch and told never to return, or he would be shot on sight. He vowed to return and seek revenge against the entire family....

Doc Holt listened to the boys at the other end of the bunkhouse as they joked about the night’s excitement, and he felt sick. What they were doing bothered him. Why they were doing it bothered him. But most of all, why he wasn’t doing anything to stop it bothered him....