Forsaken
Forsaken
B.J. Daniels
Big-city detective Bentley Jamison is a long way from home in the Beartooth wilderness when one of local rancher Maddie Conner's ranch hands goes missing. Towering mountains and a small, tight community are as unfamiliar to Jamison as herding sheep, but he’s never shied away from a challenge.As the new deputy sheriff, he’s sworn to protect every inch of this rough terrain – starting with unravelling a mystery that has left Maddie a wide-open target. Maddie’s as beautiful – and untameable – as the land around them. Like Jamison, she won’t back down from danger. But desire that flares hotter than their tempers only raises the stakes when a fierce storm traps them in the high mountains.Caught in a killer’s sights, Jamison and Maddie must trust one another, because now survival… and love… are all that matter.
Danger runs high and passions burn hot in Montana’s wild country
Big-city detective Bentley Jamison is a long way from home in the Beartooth wilderness when one of local rancher Maddie Conner’s ranch hands goes missing. Towering mountains and a small, tight community are as unfamiliar to Jamison as herding sheep, but he’s never shied away from a challenge. As the new deputy sheriff, he’s sworn to protect every inch of this rough terrain—starting with unraveling a mystery that has left Maddie a wide-open target.
Maddie’s as beautiful—and untamable—as the land around them. Like Jamison, she won’t back down from danger. But desire that flares hotter than their tempers only raises the stakes when a fierce storm traps them in the high mountains. Caught in a killer’s sights, Jamison and Maddie must trust one another, because now survival…and love…are all that matter.
Dear Reader,
When I worked as a features writer for the newspaper, I did a story about a sheepherder and his “tender” who’d spent three months back in the Beartooths—only them and a huge band of sheep.
It was the tender, a young man whose job it was to keep camp, that gave me the idea for Forsaken. The teen was so glad to be out of the mountains and told harrowing stories about his summer that included grizzly bears, storms and rough dangerous terrain.
What would it take to send a young man like that racing out of those mountains in absolute terror? And what about the widowed sheep rancher who must go into the remote area to check on not only her sheep—but her sheepherder? That was when my story was born.
I hope you enjoy the trip back into the Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains.
B.J. Daniels
Forsaken
B.J. Daniels
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This book is dedicated to the Western ranchers, sheepherders and tenders who used to trail sheep to summer pastures in the “Beartooths.”
In 2003, after three months and 150 miles, the last band of sheep made the round trip for summer range in Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth mountains, ending an era that dates back to the late 19th century.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE (#u9d795a13-6119-58fc-b72f-db333b667a2b)
CHAPTER TWO (#u0c4ae249-b40b-5445-86bd-7c49eb95a5e9)
CHAPTER THREE (#ue9340fe9-8ecc-5c6c-86be-90a140934bd4)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u30ac5a07-f7d3-540e-89f9-dbff5373ecf1)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ud49ce71c-9287-50db-afe6-e3633cdf7d47)
CHAPTER SIX (#ud33e4f0c-0919-5d37-a715-202262d2a926)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u1bd56d55-3612-5cf8-8cbc-7efc381ef72b)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
THE HORSE STUMBLED under him as he plunged down the steep mountainside, but he spurred on the mare. Around him, the dark pines swayed and sighed in the wind as he crashed down through them, his only thought to reach the ranch alive.
Terror quilled the hair on the back of his neck, but he didn’t dare turn around. Fighting to stay in the saddle, he raced along the creek before charging into the fast-running stream. The clear water showered up in an icy wave that soaked him to the skin and stole his breath.
His horse bolted up the other side, forcing him to cling to the saddle horn to stay on his mount. A pine bough caught him in the face, a sharp twig scraping across his cheek and cutting into his flesh.
Behind him, he heard a familiar sound over the roar of his pulse and the howling wind and the thundering hooves of his horse echoing through the timber. Behind him was that unearthly silence that had chased him out of the Beartooth Mountains.
Even as he rode the horse harder, he knew he’d never be able to outrun it—or the smell of death lingering on his skin.
* * *
DEPUTY SHERIFF BENTLEY JAMISON was the only one in the office when the call came in.
“That you, Frank?” a grating elderly male voice asked when the dispatcher put the call through.
“Sheriff Frank Curry is out of the office. This is Deputy Sheriff Bentley Jamison. What can I do for you?”
“Bentley Jamison? Never heard of you.”
Jamison must have said the next words a dozen times a day since he’d recently joined the force. “I’m new.”
“Huh,” the man said with a chuckle. “Bet you ain’t from around here, either.”
That was a bet the man would win. At least he hadn’t asked what most people did on meeting the new deputy. “What the devil are you doing way out here?”
“What can I do for you?” Jamison asked.
“Well, this is Fuzz Carpenter. You don’t know me, but I just run across a kid comin’ out of the Beartooths. He was a-ridin’ hell-bent for leather like the devil was chasin’ him. Had blood all over him. I flagged him down to try to find out what was wrong, but he wasn’t makin’ an ounce of sense. All I could get out of him was that he worked for the Diamond C sheep ranch. That’s ’bout all I can tell ya, exceptin’ I didn’t like the look in his eyes. Somethin’ bad happened back up in those mountains, sure as hell.”
Jamison wrote the words Diamond C Ranch on the pad next to his phone. “How long ago was this and where exactly?”
“Not ten minutes ago up the Boulder Road. He was a-headin’ back to the ranch, I’m supposing, since he was ridin’ in that direction last I saw of him.”
“Thanks for letting me know. I’ll check it out.”
The man grunted in response and hung up.
Jamison asked directions to the Diamond C from the dispatcher then climbed into his patrol SUV and headed toward what the locals called the Boulder. It was actually the Boulder River valley. As he left Big Timber, Montana, he followed the river, the tall thick cottonwoods only giving him glimpses of the clear, green water.
The valley was wide, broken up by plowed fields and creeks that ran down to the river in a winding trail of pines and cottonwoods. With breathtaking beauty, mountains soared up around him, snowcapped and covered in dark pines.
The nearer he got to the Diamond C, the more the valley narrowed. Sheer rock cliffs towered a thousand feet over the two-lane paved road, and ranches became fewer and farther between.
He passed the Natural Bridge and waterfalls up into the Absaroka mountain range, or the Beartooths as locals called them because of one jagged crag that looked like a bear’s tooth.
Not far after that, the pavement ran out and he found himself in a tight canyon with nothing but the roaring river still full from spring runoff and high mountains hemming him in.
The Diamond C was snuggled in a coulee back off an even narrower dirt road and across a private rickety bridge spanning the river. It was early June in Montana and the snow-fed creeks were all running high.
As he came over a small rise, he saw the house and low sheep barns. Wind buffeted his patrol SUV, letting out a low howl. Nearer to the house, he saw a lone wooden weather-grayed rocker teetering back and forth in the blustery wind at the edge of a wide porch. Freshly hung sheets billowed and snapped on the clothesline nearby.
He’d had his share of premonitions before. Several of them had saved his life. But none had ever been as strong as the feeling of dread that washed over him as he drove toward the white clapboard two-story farmhouse.
* * *
MADISON “MADDIE” CONNER felt the change in the air just a moment before she heard the vehicle approaching. The wind had been blowing all night and morning, screaming down out of the mountains, sending anything not nailed down cartwheeling across the yard.
She’d awakened in the middle of the night when one of the big metal garbage cans had taken off, banging across the wide expanse between house and barn before crashing into the side of the shed. It had been difficult getting back to sleep. Everything was always darkest at that hour—especially her worrying thoughts.
Since rising, she’d kept busy. But a feeling of unease had burrowed under her skin like a splinter, festering as the day progressed. Finally at midmorning and unable to shake off her dismal mood, she’d tried to reach her sheepherder by radio. So far she hadn’t been able to raise him or his tender, who were both back in the mountains.
Branch Murdock often purposely forgot to take his radio with him when he was out checking the sheep. He refused to carry a cell phone, not that she blamed him. There was little coverage back in the mountains anyway. She’d told herself she’d try him later.
Stepping out on the porch now, she leaned against the railing and watched the patrol SUV pull to a stop in front of the house. She’d expected to see Sheriff Frank Curry, a handsome fiftysomething big man with a drooping handlebar mustache, climb out.
The man who emerged after the dust settled wasn’t Frank—but he was as large and broad-shouldered.
Maddie squinted with both curiosity and an inkling of concern as a man in what she estimated as his thirties tilted back his Stetson on his thick head of brown hair to look in her direction. His eyes were pale and hooded. She could make out enough of his features under the shaded brim of his cowboy hat to realize she’d never seen him before.
He wore the entire sheriff’s deputy uniform from the tan shirt to the creased-front slacks and dress boots. She’d never seen any of the local law enforcement in anything but the tan shirt, jeans and well-worn cowboy boots.
Even before he opened his mouth, she knew he wasn’t from anywhere around here.
“Good morning, ma’am,” he said in a voice that was surprisingly low and soft. The accent, though, was all “back East.” He removed his hat and turned the brim in his fingers, and she got her first good look at him. His face was more lined than she’d originally thought, and his hair was graying at his temples. She realized he was closer to her own age, mid-forties.
His eyes were a haunting pale gray. It reminded her of the wolves that had been reintroduced just over the mountains in Yellowstone Park. The wolves that often killed her sheep.
“I’m Deputy Sheriff Bentley Jamison and I’m looking for Madison Conner,” he said, squinting up at her.
“Well, you found her.” She saw his surprise and couldn’t help smiling to herself. He wasn’t the first man who had just assumed the ranch owner was male.
“I’m here about one of your employees,” he said. “A neighbor of yours saw a young man come out of the mountains a little while ago.... The man who called thought your employee might have been in trouble.”
His words brought back the full force of the unease she’d awakened with last night. “What kind of trouble? I don’t know anything about—” She took a step to the edge of the porch stairs then stopped as her gaze slid past him to the faded red barn in need of fresh paint.
Her breath caught as she recognized the lathered-up horse standing next to it. The horse was still saddled, but there was no sign of its rider. Even from the distance she could see that the mare needed tending to at once.
She shoved off the porch steps and sprinted toward the barn. When she got hold of Dewey Putman she’d tan his hide for treating a horse like that. Even as she thought it, though, she felt that sliver of worry dig in deeper.
What was her tender doing back at the ranch? And what had a neighbor seen that would make him call a deputy instead of her?
Maddie reached the horse, her heart breaking at the shape it was in. The mare had been ridden hard. Her fingers brushed over a four-inch cut along one flank, and she saw that the mare was favoring one leg.
She dug her cell phone from her jeans pocket and tapped in the veterinarian’s number, then shoved open the barn door and called Dewey’s name.
Behind her, she was only vaguely aware that the sheriff’s deputy had followed her. In the dim light of the barn, dust motes twirled in the early-morning light as she called Dewey’s name again before the vet came on the line.
“I’ve got a horse that needs attention right away,” she said into the phone. “If you can’t come out...” She let out a relieved sigh. “Thanks, Doc. I appreciate it.”
As she disconnected, she heard a rustling sound deeper in the barn, then a whimper and what sounded like sobbing. She felt her chest tighten. Stuffing her cell phone back into her jeans pocket, she grabbed up a pitchfork as she followed the sound to a back stall.
A few feet from the muffled noise she felt the deputy’s large hand drop to her shoulder. He’d unsnapped his weapon and now motioned for her to stand back and let him handle it.
As a groan came from inside the stall, Maddie gave a shake of her head and banged the stall door open with the pitchfork.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Dewey Putman?” she demanded then froze as she saw her sheep tender cowering in the corner. Her gaze took in his bloodstained clothing, the scratches on his face and the terror in his eyes before he dropped his head into his folded arms again and wept.
“Come out of there, son,” the deputy said as he pushed past her.
She let out the breath that had caught in her throat at the sight of Dewey like this and slowly lowered the pitchfork. “You heard him. Come out.”
Dewey looked up. A lock of his dark hair had fallen over one bloodshot brown eye. She felt her stomach roil.
“Come on,” she said, gentling her voice the way she would have for a spooked horse. She dropped the pitchfork over the partial wall into the next stall and held out her hand.
But before Dewey could take it, the deputy stepped between them.
“I’m going to have to handle this,” he said to her then turned to Dewey. “What’s your name?”
“His name is Dewey Putman. He’s my sheep tender.” Then turning to Dewey, she said, “What I need to know is what you’re doing here, and where are Branch and my sheep?”
The deputy shot her a look that said he’d prefer to do this his way.
Before she could remind him that he was on her ranch or that she had two thousand sheep and possibly no herder, he said, “Could you please make some tea?”
Bristling, Maddie raised a brow. “Tea?”
“Or coffee if you prefer. Something to warm him up. Also, he’ll need a change of clothing. His clothes are soaked. If he isn’t suffering from hypothermia, he will be.”
Ready to do what came naturally and take care of things herself, she had to bite her tongue as she shot another look at Dewey. He was trembling like a dog cornered by a grizzly and in as bad shape or worse than his horse.
Something had happened in the sheep camp back in the Beartooth Mountains. Even before she’d seen the blood on his clothing, she’d known by the look in the young man’s eyes that he was in trouble. The deputy knew it, too.
Dewey was her employee, her responsibility. While her first instinct was to help him, she knew from the warning look the deputy had given her that Dewey’s welfare was now out of her hands.
“I’ll see to his horse,” she said. “There’s a pot of coffee on the stove. Help yourself.”
CHAPTER TWO
DEPUTY SHERIFF BENTLEY JAMISON watched the ranch woman stride off, before turning back to the young man cowering in the corner of the stall. He’d seen his share of young men with blood on their hands. None, though, had looked as terrified as this one.
“Son, I’m going to have to ask you to stand up now,” he said.
As Dewey Putman stumbled to his feet, Jamison searched him for a weapon or any sign of an injury that could account for the blood on the boy’s clothing. The tender was little more than a kid, late teens at most. He had no weapon and had no visible wounds. So there was a good chance the blood on his clothing wasn’t his.
“Let’s go up to the house,” Jamison said. “I’m going to need to call your parents. Can you tell me that number?”
The boy shook his head.
He figured Mrs. Conner must have it as he led the young man through the dimly lit barn.
As they neared the open barn door, Dewey balked. He shook his head, hugging himself and moaning under his breath as he looked toward the bright daylight outside.
It was one of those beautiful early June days in southwest Montana. A blinding sun hung in a cloudless blue sky. The breeze smelled of spring, but its cold bite was a reminder that summer in these parts was weeks off.
“It’s all right,” he told the boy. “It’s not that far to the house. I won’t let anything happen to you.” Still, he had to take Dewey’s trembling arm to get him to cross the patch of sunlit earth to the house. What, he wondered as an icy chill settled over him, had frightened this kid so badly?
At his patrol SUV, he took out the investigation kit he’d been given when he’d started as deputy. So far, he’d had no use for it. Crime in this part of the world was barking dogs, an occasional barroom brawl and traffic control when a semi blew over on the pass. It was a far cry from his job as a homicide detective in New York City.
On the porch, he had the boy strip off his wet, soiled clothing down to his underwear. He led him into the house and was looking for the bathroom when he heard Madison Conner come up the porch steps.
“Don’t touch those,” he said through the screen door as she knelt to pick up the boy’s dirty clothing.
She rose with an indignant sigh, took one glance at her half-naked tender then pulled open the screen door and walked past them. “The bathroom is the second door on the left,” she said, pointing down a short hallway without turning to look at them.
“I need to contact this boy’s parents or guardian,” he said to her retreating back.
“You’re looking at his guardian,” she said before disappearing into the kitchen.
In the green-and-white-tiled 1950s-style bathroom, Jamison turned on the shower and quickly ran the necessary forensics tests, scraping under the boy’s fingernails and swabbing his hands and wrists for gunshot residue, before he let him climb into the hot shower.
He left Dewey long enough to bag the boy’s clothing and load it and the specimens he’d taken into the patrol SUV before he returned to the house.
When he walked in, he found Madison Conner putting clothing outside the bathroom door. She gave him a look that made it clear she didn’t like him interfering with what she considered her business.
Since arriving in the state a few weeks ago, Jamison had learned how independent Montanans were—especially ranch women. Behind the often weathered suntanned skin he’d glimpsed an iron-strong will. He’d never seen more capable women.
Whether hauling trucks loaded with ranch supplies, feeding dozens of ranchers at brandings or jumping in to help with every chore on the spread, there was little these women didn’t know how to do—and well.
This was the first ranch woman, though, that he was about to butt heads with.
He took note of Maddie Conner’s clothing from her loose-fitting large flannel shirt and jeans. Her boots were as worn as her hands, and both were a sign of a hardworking rancher. There were fine lines around her cornflower-blue eyes. The set of her jaw bespoke of a stubbornness born of living in a man’s world. But while she might hide her femininity under a lot of attitude and loose clothing, there was kindness in her face that the years and her lifestyle hadn’t yet eroded.
As she straightened the stack of clothing she’d left for the boy he glimpsed a deep sadness in her expression, which she quickly masked. She made a swipe at an errant lock of her hair. It was long, the dark red of cherrywood with a few streaks of silver woven through. It surprised him to realize she was probably close to his own age.
As if sensing him watching her, she checked her expression and gathered up her thick mane. With nimble fingers she trapped it again in the large clip that held her hair off her neck. He couldn’t help noticing how pale and soft the exposed skin appeared.
“Yes?” she asked, irritation in her tone as her gaze met his.
“I need to ask you a few questions,” he said, embarrassed that she’d caught him staring at her. “You’re Dewey’s legal guardian?”
She gave him a grave nod. “Come into the kitchen,” she said, turning her back on him. She appeared reconciled to the questions and his being there, but definitely not happy about it. “The sooner you get your answers, the sooner I can see to my shepherd and flock.”
Jamison followed her into a sunlit yellow kitchen that looked as if it, like the bathroom, hadn’t been remodeled since the early fifties. The table was large and long with curved metal legs and a yellow checked top that matched the counter. The cabinets were knotty pine and the floor was a familiar linoleum pattern reminiscent of another era.
“How do you take your coffee?” she asked as she pulled down several mugs from the cabinet.
“Black.” He heard the shower shut off. “You said your tender’s name is Dewey Putman?” he asked as he produced his notebook and pen.
Maddie could tell by the way he said “tender” that he had no idea what that was. She put a cup of hot coffee in front of him. A pot was always on at most ranches. Hers was no different since she never knew who might stop by. Not that she got much company anymore. Her own fault for being so contrary, her husband would have said and would have been right.
She was too worried to sit, so she leaned against the counter, cradling her coffee mug, soaking in its warmth. She tried to remember the deputy’s name—something odd, she thought. All she could recall was his last name. Jamison.
“Dewey worked as the tender,” she said. “His job was to take care of the camp while Branch, that’s my sheepherder, took care of the sheep up in the high country for three months this summer.”
“The high country?”
“Back in the Beartooth Mountains—that’s where I graze a couple thousand sheep. The tender moves camp as needed. He cooks, comes down for supplies when they run low—”
“Would they have been running low?”
She shook her head. “Branch just took the sheep up to the grazing area four days ago.”
“And that’s where this boy has been?”
She nodded.
“When was the last time you heard from your sheepherder?”
“Four days ago when I helped take the sheep up. That was the last time I saw either of them until...” An image of Dewey’s horse, then the boy flashed into her mind. She gripped her mug tighter as she lifted it to her lips.
“Your sheepherder is named Branch?”
“Branch Murdock.”
Jamison looked up from his notebook. “His parents named him Branch?”
She gave a shrug. “That’s the name I’ve been putting on his paycheck for almost twenty-five years. Before that my mother wrote the checks.”
“Did everything appear normal when you left them up in the mountains?”
Maddie hated to admit she’d had misgivings about giving the boy the job. “Dewey’s a little green, I’ll admit, but I figured he’d learn well enough from Branch.”
“So the boy hadn’t been a tender before?”
“No.”
“How old is he?”
“Sixteen.” She saw the deputy’s eyes widen. “Plenty of men his age are doing a lot harder ranch work than being a sheep tender.” She knew she sounded defensive, but the deputy unnerved her with his intent silver gaze.
“If you’re his legal guardian, then where are his parents?”
“Divorced. I don’t know where his mother is off to. His father works odd jobs that take him north to the Bakken oil fields for long periods of time. That’s why Chester asked me to give the boy a job and made me his guardian.”
The deputy studied her for a long moment before he asked, “Has Dewey been in trouble before?”
“Who says he’s in trouble now?” she snapped, and looked away, angry with herself, Dewey and the situation. If this man would just let her talk to Dewey and find out what had happened up in those mountains, she could get this cleared up before Deputy Jamison jumped to the wrong conclusion.
“You might as well tell me if the boy’s been in trouble,” Jamison said. “I’ll find out soon enough.”
Silence stretched between them until she finally broke it. “Dewey got into some dustup at school. His father thought spending the summer in the mountains, away from his friends...”
“What kind of...dustup?”
“Boy stuff, I would imagine.” She glanced toward the sound of footfalls in the hallway. “I don’t really know,” she said quietly then turned as Dewey filled the open kitchen doorway. “Come have some coffee,” she called, moving to get him a mug.
Dewey came meekly into the kitchen, wearing her son’s clothing. He looked enough like her Matthew that it felt like being kicked by a horse. She already felt sick at heart as it was for Dewey, for his horse, for whatever had frightened him and maybe worse, whatever he might have done.
“Sit,” she ordered, and turned away to cut the chocolate cake she’d made only that morning. She’d planned to take the cake to the stock-growers’ meeting she had later in the afternoon, but all her plans would change now.
Dewey pulled out a chair at the end of the table, and she placed a slice of cake and a mug of coffee in front of him. She automatically reached for the sugar and cream because that was the way Matthew had always taken his coffee. Dewey ignored both and began to slurp up the hot coffee as if dying of thirst.
The deputy was watching the boy closely. She felt her chest tighten at the thought of what kind of trouble Dewey might be in. “Dewey—”
Jamison cut her off. “That cake looks awfully good, Mrs. Conner. Mind if I have a piece?”
Maddie tried to still her impatience as she sliced the deputy a large portion and topped off his coffee even though he hadn’t touched it. She desperately needed to know what had happened and what she was going to have to do about it.
“Mrs. Conner here was just telling me—”
“Maddie,” she interrupted.
Jamison shot her an annoyed look before turning back to the boy again. “Maddie was just telling me you were hired on as the sheepherder’s tender.”
Dewey nodded but kept his eyes on the cake he was in the process of devouring. He acted as if he hadn’t eaten in days. She realized with a start that Branch wouldn’t have let the boy go hungry—that was, if he’d been able to take care of the two of them.
Did that mean something had happened to Branch? Her stomach dropped at the thought. What of her sheep? She’d been hanging on to the ranch by a thread for so long...
“Son, can you tell me what happened?” the deputy asked.
The fork froze in Dewey’s hand, and then slowly he began to scrape the crumbs from the plate, never taking his eyes off the table, before dropping his fork and washing the cake down with the rest of his coffee.
“How about we start at the beginning?” Jamison said. “For the past four days, you’ve been up in the mountains with the sheepherder, is that right?”
Dewey nodded.
“Where is Branch now?” Maddie asked, ignoring the warning look the deputy shot her.
“I don’t know,” the boy said, dropping his voice and his head.
The deputy cleared his throat. “When did you last see him?”
“Just before bed last night. He said he’d been having trouble sleeping. The noises were keeping him up.”
“The noises? You mean the sheep?” the deputy asked.
Dewey lifted his head and frowned at the silly question. “Branch was used to the sheep. He said he could tell if they were happy or scared just by the sounds they made at night.”
“Then what was keeping him up at night?” the deputy asked.
“The strange sounds...” Dewey glanced back down at the table “...the...crying.”
Maddie couldn’t help herself. “Crying?”
“I’m not making it up,” the boy said, lifting his head to plead his case with her. Tears filled his eyes, and he began to tremble again. “I swear. We heard awful...crying on the wind.”
“You have heard the sound of wind or a coyote calling at night, haven’t you?” Maddie asked in exasperation.
“It weren’t no coyote,” the boy snapped. “It weren’t just the wind, either. It was...something else. Even old Branch was spooked by it.”
“Are you sure Branch didn’t just wander off?” the deputy asked.
“Maybe. His horse was missing this morning. I called for him and looked all over.”
Maddie doubted Dewey had done much searching for the sheepherder given how scared he was.
“How did you get the blood on you?” the deputy asked.
The boy wagged his head without looking up. “One of the lambs. She was hurt. I tried to help her.” He was close to tears again. Maddie remembered her son at that age, so tough and yet so tender, a boy on the edge of manhood doing his best to measure up. If only Matthew was here now, she thought with that unbearable grip at her heart.
“How did you and Branch get along?” Jamison asked.
“Fine,” he said to his empty plate.
Maddie took the plate and cut him another slice of cake. She could feel the deputy’s irritation with her, not that she gave a damn as she slid the second slice of cake in front of Dewey and refilled his mug. She noticed the deputy had hardly touched his cake or his coffee.
“I would imagine with only the two of you up there all alone, you might have had disagreements on occasion,” the deputy asked.
Dewey said nothing as he dived into the cake and coffee she’d set before him. She felt torn between wanting to shake the truth out of Dewey and wanting to protect him. All her instincts told her that the boy needed protecting.
“Branch hard to get along with, was he?” Jamison asked.
“Meaner than a rabid dog when he drank.” The kid, realizing he’d just spilled the beans, shot Maddie an alarmed look and quickly gulped out, “Not that he drank usually.”
Maddie groaned.
“If you had something to do with Branch going missing up there—”
“I didn’t!” he cried. “I swear. I don’t know what happened to him.”
She felt her stomach go tight with fear as a thought hit her. “Where’s Branch’s dog, Lucy? That dog would never have let him out of her sight.”
Dewey shook his head and began to cry.
“Son,” the deputy pressed. “If you know something, you have to tell me.”
“I don’t know. I’m telling you. I...I don’t know anything.”
“I’ve had enough of this,” Maddie said as she shoved off the kitchen counter.
Dewey looked up, startled, as if he thought she planned to beat it out of him.
“I have two thousand sheep up in those mountains, and I can’t be sure anyone is watching them,” she said to Jamison.
“Right now, I have bigger concerns than your sheep,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’m going to have to hold the boy until I know what happened up there. I’m afraid this warrants investigating.”
“Then you see to your investigation, Deputy. I’m going to check on my sheep.” What she couldn’t bring herself to say, let alone admit to this Easterner, was that the future of her ranch was riding on this year’s sheep production.
Not that she wasn’t even more scared out of her wits that something bad had happened to Branch. He wasn’t just her sheepherder. He was as close to a grandfather as she’d ever had. He was also her closest friend.
But if she had tried to explain it to the deputy she would have been fighting tears. And she never cried. She’d done all her crying a long time ago.
As she started down the hallway toward her bedroom, she heard him coming after her. “Mrs. Conner—”
“Maddie,” she snapped without turning around. She had no idea what had happened back in those mountains, but she was scared, sick over the pain she saw in that boy sitting in her kitchen and worried as the devil about Branch, as well as her sheep.
She didn’t have the time or patience to deal with the law right now.
Jamison caught up to her halfway down the hall and grabbed her arm, forcing her to stop and face him. “Maddie, I can’t let you go up there alone.”
“No offense, but a greenhorn like you would just slow me down.”
“I’ll do my best not to,” he said. “But I’m going with you.” His gaze softened as he seemed to notice the tears in her eyes. She wiped at them, as angry with herself as she was with him for noticing.
“Right now I’m concerned about my sheepherder. Branch has been with my family for years. He wouldn’t leave the sheep unattended. Either Dewey is wrong or—”
“Or your sheepherder met with some kind of accident.”
She connected with his gaze. “He’s my responsibility. I really don’t need your help.”
“Did you notice the kid’s knuckles?”
Maddie started. She hadn’t.
“He’s been in a recent fistfight. And that cut over his eye? He didn’t get that from falling down. On top of that, he’s lying about something.”
“You don’t know—”
“I might be a greenhorn in Montana, but I know when a suspect is lying. Before I took the job as deputy here, I was a homicide detective.”
A dark, cold lump formed in her chest. A suspect? Homicide?
“I’m sorry, Mrs.—Maddie, but I’m afraid under the circumstances, neither of us has a choice right now. You have a missing sheepherder and sheep you need to see to. But I can’t let you go up there alone and destroy what I suspect is going to be a crime scene.”
CHAPTER THREE
NOTHING MOVED FASTER in the near ghost town of Beartooth, Montana, than gossip. Even the powerful, fearful winds that blew down out of the Crazy Mountains were no match for the wagging tongues.
This morning the gossip was about Maddie Conner and the Diamond C Ranch’s young tender.
Every morning Lynette “Nettie” Benton crossed the street from her store to the Branding Iron Café to get a cinnamon roll and coffee and the latest gossip. She could always depend on the regulars to dish up tasty tidbits of news or scandal.
In fact, she prided herself on knowing everything that was going on in town. She spent much of her day at the front window of the Beartooth General Store watching the world go by. True, the world passed more like a glacier in Beartooth.
The town, in the shadow of the “Crazies,” as the locals called the Crazy Mountain range, had once been quite the wild mining town back in the late eighteen hundreds. Now, though, other than a bunch of deserted old buildings, there was only her general store, the post office, the Range Rider Bar, a community church and the café, which suited most folks in the area just fine since the larger town of Big Timber was only twenty-some miles away.
In Montana traveling twenty miles was nothing. Many traveled much farther and often on dirt roads just to get to a store—let alone to catch a flight or shop at a big-box store.
Nettie liked to say that she knew more about the people in the area than they did about themselves. And she’d never been shy about spreading what she knew, either, which was why she’d become known as the county’s worst gossip.
She didn’t mind. Let them say what they would. Most days, the tidbits she picked up weren’t all that exciting. This morning, though, she’d hit the mother lode when she’d overheard Fuzz Carpenter.
Fuzz was sitting at the front table at the Branding Iron Café with the rest of the ranchers who gathered there every morning when she heard him mention the woman sheep rancher and her young tender.
Historically sheep ranchers, in what had originally been cattle country, weren’t all that popular. While cattle and sheep ranchers now got along, it was still rare for a woman to be running a sheep ranch. Not to mention the fact that Maddie Conner didn’t take any guff off anyone—especially male ranchers who thought she needed their advice.
“Covered with blood,” Fuzz was saying. “Didn’t take more than a look in that boy’s eyes. Somethin’ bad happened back in those mountains. Mark my words.”
Nettie’s first thought was to call Sheriff Frank Curry and find out what was going on. But then she heard Fuzz say that he’d talked to some new deputy because the sheriff was out of town.
“Bentley Jamison,” Fuzz mocked with the worst impression of a New York accent Nettie had ever heard. “What the hell kind of name is that?” The ranchers all laughed. “Wait until he meets Maddie Conner.” That brought on more laughter. “I wouldn’t even want to take her on.”
Nettie was thinking about the sheriff being out of town. No doubt Frank was visiting his daughter, she thought with a chill.
* * *
SHERIFF FRANK CURRY nervously turned the brim of his Stetson in his fingers as he waited. He was a big man, a throwback from another era with his thick handlebar mustache and longish hair. He could have been a sheriff from a hundred years ago.
The nurse had told him to sit down in one of the chairs in the glassed-in solarium, but he could no more sit than he could fly. He stood at the window, looking out at the rolling land and counting his regrets. They’d been few—before a seventeen-year-old young woman named Tiffany Chandler had shown up at his door. Actually the first time they’d met, he’d caught her in his house going through his bureau drawers as brazen as any thief he’d run across.
Now, at the sound of footfalls behind him, he braced himself and turned to see his daughter and a nurse come into the room.
“Hi, sweetheart,” he said.
Tiffany looked paler than he remembered, thinner, too. She’d cut her long blond hair, hacking it short and choppy with a pair of scissors she’d somehow gotten her hands on.
“How the hell does a mental patient get hold of scissors?” he’d demanded when he’d received the call from the hospital.
“Your daughter is a very...determined young woman,” the nurse had told him. The woman meant sneaky, cunning, shrewd, manipulative—deadly. Determined was a kindness to him that sounded more like pity.
Frank knew what extremes Tiffany would go to once she set her mind to something. She’d almost killed him, after killing something he’d loved.
Looking at her now, he could see there was still a lot of hate and anger in her. He knew that defiant, hurt look too well and liked to believe it masked fear rather than soulless hatred.
Tiffany glared at him with huge blue eyes that dominated her waiflike features. She had refused to let anyone repair the damage she’d done to her hairdo. He’d always noticed a fragility about her, but now it was heightened.
He felt desperate to take her in his arms and protect her—just as he had last February when he’d learned who she was. Until then, he hadn’t known he had a daughter. Still didn’t, actually.
After she’d tried to kill him, the county attorney had sent her for a mental evaluation to see if she could stand trial. The state had also insisted on running a paternity test to see if the teenager actually was Frank’s birth daughter.
The report had come in a large brown envelope, but Frank had never opened it. He felt Tiffany was his responsibility no matter what blood ran through her veins because she was the creation of his vindictive ex-wife.
When he thought of his ex-wife, Pam, he often thought of killing her. That thought only lasted an instant because he wasn’t a killer—and because he had created Pam, just as she had created Tiffany. Pam had kept the pregnancy from him, raising the girl alone and programming her to ultimately take revenge against the man they both now hated.
“How are you doing?” he asked Tiffany, gripping the brim of his hat when he wanted more than anything to hold this poor child. But the nurse had warned him not to try.
“How do you think I’m doing in this crazy bin?” Tiffany spat.
Better than prison, he wanted to tell her. But he couldn’t be sure that prison wasn’t still in her future. It would be up to the state eventually. Right now, he was fighting to keep her from going before a judge on attempted-murder charges against an officer of the law. He feared she would be tried as an adult, and he couldn’t bear the thought of her in prison.
“Is there anything you need, anything I can get for you?” he asked.
“You’ve done quite enough. If that’s all...” She started to turn away.
“Tiffany, the doctor said you haven’t been cooperating.”
She raised one very pale blond brow at him as she let her blue eyes return to him.
“If you get well—”
“Is that what you’re telling them?” She crossed her skinny arms over her skinny chest. “That I’m unwell? Crazy? A lunatic just like my mother?” The nurse put a hand on her shoulder, but Tiffany shook it off. “I’m just fine. And so was my mother before she met you.”
He hated that she wouldn’t take responsibility for what she’d done any more than her mother had the one time he’d talked to her after he’d found out about Tiffany.
“You tried to kill me,” he said to the girl now.
Her eyes glittered an instant before she gave him a slow smile. “I’m just sorry I failed.”
“It’s talk like that that will end you up in prison. Don’t you understand I’m trying to help you?”
“By pressing charges against me?”
“That was the state because I am a county sheriff.” And Tiffany was dangerous, no matter how much he might want to argue otherwise. He sighed, his heart breaking with frustration. He wanted to help her. Why couldn’t she see that?
“Tiffany, I love you. You’re my daughter. I want time to make up for the past since I didn’t even know you existed. Give us that time by working with the doctor so you can get out of here.”
Tears suddenly filled her eyes. “You turned my mother against me.”
His fury at his ex-wife boiled to the surface. She’d sent her only child to seek revenge in the most deadly, destructive way for both him and Tiffany. And now she’d washed her hands of the girl. What mother could do such a thing?
Pam was the one who needed to be in a mental institution, he thought, tamping down his murderous rage. “You know I have no control over your mother. She wants to hurt us both. By making you think I’m responsible, it’s just another way for her to drive us apart.”
Tiffany shook her head, tears now streaming down her face. “She said you would blame her.”
Frank balled his fists at his sides. He didn’t know where Pam was, afraid sometimes of what he would do if he found her. He unclenched his fists, not wanting to give his daughter any more ammunition against him.
“This is your fault,” Tiffany cried. “If you had loved my mother and not that horrible Nettie Benton...”
Frank felt his heart clinch at his former lover’s name on his daughter’s lips. There was only one other person Tiffany and her mother hated more than him.
“None of this has anything to do with Lynette,” he said, using the name he’d always called Nettie. “She was married to Bob when your mother and I were together, and there was nothing going on between us.”
“Mother said you never got over the bitch.”
He would have loved arguing that, but he couldn’t. His daughter would have seen the truth. “I married your mother because I loved her.” That much at least was true. Pam’s jealousy had destroyed the marriage, but Tiffany wouldn’t believe that. He hated even thinking about those dark days, never knowing what mood Pam would be in when he returned home.
“Mother said you never tried to get her back.”
They’d had this discussion too many times, and nothing he could say weakened the venom Pam had injected into their daughter’s veins.
“I can’t change the past. Had I known about you, I would have gone after your mother and brought you both back. She never gave me that chance.”
The girl shook her head, her big blue eyes filling with tears. “If I had known that Nettie Benton was the woman you were in love with...” She didn’t have to continue. He knew. Tiffany had come to Beartooth with a gun and a heart full of hate.
She knew where to find him, but she’d been looking for Lynette Johnson. That had been Lynette’s name when the two of them were in their early twenties and lovers. Tiffany hadn’t known that Lynette went by the name Nettie Benton.
Frank wished more than anything that he and Lynette had married and had children of their own. Instead Lynette had married Bob Benton. And years later, he’d foolishly married Pam Chandler. Their marriage had been short and far from sweet.
It wasn’t enough that Pam and Tiffany had brought him to his knees. But he lived in fear that Tiffany, if released, would go after Lynette, the woman he’d loved and lost years ago and still loved now.
Or that Pam, realizing her daughter might never be free again, might decide to take matters into her own hands.
* * *
JAMISON CALLED HIS office in Big Timber and discussed the situation with the undersheriff in charge. They both agreed he should go up into the mountains with Mrs. Conner.
“At this point, it doesn’t warrant sending search and rescue up there,” Undersheriff Dillon Lawson said. “We don’t know that a crime has been committed or even if the sheepherder is actually missing.”
They wouldn’t know about the blood on the boy’s coat until the forensics came back from the state lab, and who knew how long that would take?
“The boy’s been in a fight,” Jamison said. “Something happened up there. Something bad enough that the boy is terrified. But you’re right—there’s no smoking gun.” Not yet anyway.
“Okay. This could take you a few days, though. You’re scheduled off this weekend. If this case runs over...”
“I doubt it will. If it does, it isn’t a problem.”
“Let me know what you find—if you can get cell-phone coverage from one of the higher peaks up there, call me. Coverage up there is sketchy at best. If it becomes a rescue operation or worse, we can send in a helicopter once we have the location. So it is just going to be you and Maddie Conner going up there?”
“She’s not keen on my going along.”
Dillon chuckled. “I’ll just bet. Good luck.”
Jamison hung up and went to check on Dewey Putman. He got the feeling that the undersheriff thought his going up into the mountains would be good for him. Knock some of the back-East off of him. Apparently Maddie’s reputation had also preceded her since the undersheriff found some humor in his going with her.
In the kitchen, he saw that Dewey had finished his cake and coffee, shoved his dirty dishes away and, with his head cradled on his arms, had fallen into an exhausted sleep on the table.
He knew Maddie Conner was holding out hope that Dewey hadn’t done anything wrong and that they would find nothing out of the ordinary back in her summer sheep camp. He wished he could share her optimism.
“For all you know that is lamb blood on that boy’s jacket, just like he said,” she’d argued before he’d gone out to make the call to the office.
“Maybe. I think you should call the boy’s father. Meanwhile, I’m afraid he’ll have to be held in custody at the jail since his guardian will be in the mountains with me.”
“I already called the oil company and left a message for his father. Since there is no one else, I guess that’s the best we can do for now.”
“We shouldn’t be gone that long,” Jamison had said.
She’d given him a disbelieving smile. “There is only one way to get back where we need to go, Deputy, and that’s by horseback, so it’s going to take a while. You ever ridden a horse? Never mind. I’ll saddle you a gentle one. But you’re going to need some boots and some practical clothes. I think some of my husband’s will fit you.”
Before he’d been able to ask about her husband, she’d disappeared down the hall. He remembered the way Maddie had been looking at the kid earlier, so much heartbreak in her eyes. It had made him wonder where she’d gotten the clothing she’d given Dewey. Did she have a son of her own?
Leaving the sleeping boy, he stepped back in the living room and looked for family photographs. While he waited for Maddie, he couldn’t help being curious. To his surprise, he found no family photographs. That seemed strange. She’d mentioned a husband and she’d produced boys’ clothing, but there was no sign anyone lived here but her.
“I put some clothes out for you,” she said from behind, startling him. As he turned, she gave him an irritated look as if she knew he’d been snooping. “I put them in a room down the hall. I’ll get what we’ll need together and go load the horses.” Without another word, she disappeared out the front door.
Jamison found a flannel shirt, canvas jacket, a yellow slicker, jeans and several pairs of heavy socks along with a pair of cowboy boots waiting for him in what appeared to be a spare bedroom. He was surprised when everything fit fairly well.
Having changed quickly, he came out of the bedroom and listened for a moment to make sure Maddie had left the house before sticking his head in the other rooms. He found Maddie’s bedroom and the family photos he’d been looking for. In a wedding-day photograph, he studied an innocent-looking young Maddie standing next to a handsome young man.
She’d been beautiful. So fresh and sweet looking. She’d had that “I’m ready to conquer the world” look in those blue eyes of hers. She’d looked...happy.
There were later photos of the husband and Maddie and finally some of a son. So where were this son and husband now?
Stepping back out of the room, Jamison went into the kitchen to check on Dewey again. The boy still slept as if he hadn’t so much as dozed in days. In the living room, Jamison put in a call to the sheriff’s office again.
Lucille Brown, a good-natured older woman, was working dispatch today. She’d put through the earlier call from Fuzz Carpenter and had given him directions to the Diamond C.
“Can you provide me with some background information on Madison Conner?” he asked. Through the window, he could see Maddie talking to a man he suspected was the veterinarian she’d called earlier about Dewey’s horse.
“Maddie? What do you want to know? She raises sheep. She still sends her flock up into the high country every summer. Last of the ranches to do that. Gotta hand it to her. She’s tough as any woman I’ve ever met.”
Jamison could sure as hell attest to that. He’d probably met a more stubborn, headstrong woman in his life, but he couldn’t recall one.
“Does she have a son?” he asked just as Maddie turned and started back toward the house.
“Matthew. Lost him and her husband in a tragic accident four summers ago. Everyone thought she’d sell out and leave after that. But not Maddie. It’s her family’s place, but word around town is that it might not be for long. She’s had some tough breaks. If Fuzz is right and something has happened to Branch...”
“We don’t know that,” he said.
Just as Maddie reached the porch steps, a Sweetgrass County patrol car pulled in. “I’ve got to go,” Jamison told Lucille, and disconnected as Maddie came through the door.
“Ready?” She had a resigned look on her face as if braced for not only being forced to allow him to go along, but also for whatever she had to face up in those mountains.
Jamison had noticed the tall antenna on the roof when he was walking Dewey back to the house from the barn. He assumed it was for a radio and now saw the base unit on a table in the corner of the living room.
“Have you heard anything from Branch?” he asked, motioning to the two-way radio receiver.
“I haven’t talked to either of them since I left them four days ago. I already told you that.”
“But you tried to reach them.” She’d left an earlier coffee mug by the base unit. He was betting that the coffee was cold from this morning. So she had been worried, just as he suspected.
She swallowed and let out a sigh before she answered. “I tried to raise Branch this morning.”
“You couldn’t?”
“It doesn’t mean anything. He doesn’t like carrying the radio, so he often leaves it in camp.” She sounded defensive and not for the first time today.
“Why did you try to reach him this morning?”
“I was just checking—”
“You were worried because of Dewey.”
Her gaze came back to his, as determined as the set of her shoulders. “Are you trying to put words into my mouth, Deputy?”
“Sorry. What were you checking on?”
“Just to make sure they were doing all right.”
“You do that often?” He wondered if she’d lie and was glad when she didn’t.
“No. I was concerned that Dewey might be...homesick. His father was determined that sheep camp was just what his son needed. He wanted Dewey away from his friends, and with his father gone so much of the time...”
“But you had your doubts.”
She gave him an impatient look. “Not everyone can spend that much time alone.”
“But Branch was with him.”
She let out an amused snort. “Branch isn’t much of a talker. He could go for days without a single word, so yes, Dewey would have had a lot of time to himself. Just because he got scared and came out of the mountains, doesn’t mean—”
“Please try to reach Branch,” he said, motioning to the radio.
She did as he asked, though with apparently the same result as she’d had earlier. “Like I said, he probably doesn’t have the radio with him.”
“Or he’s unable to answer. Does he have a cell phone with him?”
“No, but they aren’t worth a hill of beans back where we’re going. Not really anywhere to plug it in, either, when it runs out of juice.” She turned and started out the door, clearly over his interrogation.
“So where exactly are we going?” he asked as he went after her. Even with his longer legs, he had to walk fast to keep up with her.
“Up there,” she said without slowing down as she descended the porch steps and strode across the yard toward the barn. She waved a hand past the low sheep barns to the snowcapped mountains rising to dizzying heights in the distance. “It’s a good day’s ride.” She shot him a look, assessing him, as he caught up to her. He could see that he came up lacking in her estimation.
“A whole day?” That surprised him. He looked again to the mountains. He’d come out here wanting to lose himself in this wild remote country, but he hadn’t meant literally.
“We’re getting a late start,” she said as if his questions were slowing them down even more. “We’ll be lucky to reach camp in two.”
Jamison had looked at a map of the area before he’d left New York and had been in awe at the way the mountains to the south of Big Timber ran all the way to Yellowstone Park with the only access from this area by foot or horseback.
As he stared at the snowcapped peaks, he couldn’t imagine what it must be like way back in such an isolated place, let alone how difficult it would be to survive in such unforgiving, wild country. It had to mess with a person’s mind. He wondered what it had done to Dewey Putman.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE PICKUP RATTLED up the road, the horse trailer with two horses inside knocking along behind it. As Maddie drove, the road narrowed until it was little more than two ruts. They followed the Boulder River through a tight canyon of rock and pines, the road winding deeper into the mountains.
Jamison looked over at the ranch woman. She had a tight grip on the wheel, her eyes on the road ahead and a determined set to her jaw. He wanted to ask about her husband and son as well as how far they would drive before they would unload the horses and head up into the mountains.
But he held his tongue, sensing the last thing she wanted to do right now was talk to him, especially about her husband and son.
So he focused on the road ahead and tried not to let his thoughts get too far ahead of him—or behind him for that matter. When he’d left New York for Montana, he’d promised himself that he wasn’t going to belabor that former life with thoughts of if only.
But he couldn’t help thinking about Maddie’s ranch house with its 1950s decor and its family photos in her bedroom—and the high-dollar, high-rise apartment he’d shared with his now ex-wife and the complete lack of family photographs anywhere in it.
Lana had insisted on a professional decorator who had assured her that family photographs on the mantel were tacky.
He’d given her free rein, not caring at the time. He’d just wanted Lana to be happy.
“So have you always done this?” Jamison asked, needing to break the silence and avoid thoughts of his ex-wife and that other life.
Maddie shot him a glance. “Driven a truck with a horse trailer on the back?”
“Raised sheep.”
“It’s my family’s ranch, so yes, five generations worth of sheep ranchers. You know anything about sheep?” She continued before he could answer. “Sheep don’t like to walk in water or move through narrow openings. They prefer to move into the wind and uphill rather than downwind or downhill. They see in color but have poor depth perception. That’s why they avoid shadows and always move toward the light. They have excellent hearing, so they’re more sensitive to high-frequency sounds. Loud noises scare them. They’re actually quite timid, easily frightened and defenseless against predators. A sheep falls on its back? It can’t right itself. It will die right there if someone isn’t watching over it.”
“I...I didn’t know—”
“Sheep are nothing like cows,” she said as if he hadn’t spoken. “Cattle need to be fenced in or handled by a bunch of cowboys on horseback. With sheep, all it takes is one experienced sheepherder. He can handle over a thousand head of sheep alone with no fence, no night corrals, just him, his horse and his dog.”
“Why are you—”
“Because you don’t know anything about sheep or where we’re headed. I’m willing to bet you’ve never been in country like this. It’s rugged and wild, isolated and unforgiving—not the kind of place to take a greenhorn. So it’s not too late to change your mind,” she said.
“Change my mind?”
“About going with me. I’d be happy to let you know what I find.”
He shook his head. “I’ll be fine.”
She scoffed at that. “When was the last time you spent two days on horseback at over ten thousand feet above sea level?”
“I’ll try not to be a bother to you.”
She sighed. “If you can’t keep up, I’ll leave you behind.” She shot him a look. “I’m serious. I need to get to the sheep camp and check on my sheepherder. I won’t let you slow me down.”
“Agreed.” He glanced at the .357 Magnum pistol strapped on her hip. “As long as it isn’t your policy to shoot stragglers.”
“Best not find out,” she said, slowing the pickup. Ahead he saw a wide spot next to the river. Beyond that was a Jeep trail that rose abruptly, and beyond that was nothing but towering pine-covered mountains.
“This is where we leave the truck,” she said and climbed out.
* * *
NETTIE BENTON HATED to think of Frank up at the state mental hospital visiting his daughter. She’d known right from the start that there was something wrong with Tiffany when she’d rented her the apartment over the store. But it wasn’t until she’d seen the girl’s demonized drawings of Sheriff Frank Curry that she’d realized Tiffany was dangerous.
She shook her head, remembering how that girl had almost killed him. Just the memory made her heart pound. Poor Frank. Nettie had tried to warn him, but Frank being Frank had thought the girl harmless. Tiffany and her horrible mother had put him through the wringer, and they weren’t through with him yet.
“Don’t be jealous of my daughter,” Frank had said when she’d tried to talk to him about Tiffany.
“You don’t even know if she’s really your daughter.”
“Lynette—”
“Frank, she tried to kill you!”
He’d just shaken his head and given her one of his patient smiles. “I have to try to help her. Please try to understand.”
She understood that he’d been scarce as hen’s teeth since the girl showed up in town and worse now that Tiffany was locked up miles away at the state mental hospital.
Nettie missed him stopping into the store for his usual: an orange soda and a candy bar. She’d always thought he dropped by as an excuse to see her. She’d even thought they might have a second chance together—after her husband, Bob, had left for good, after deciding he wanted to live in Arizona, and before Frank’s daughter had come into his life. If she even was his daughter.
Nettie shoved away the heartbreaking thought that maybe she and Frank had missed their chance for happiness a second time as she listened to the men in the café speculate on what could have happened to Maddie’s young sheep tender.
Sensing there was nothing more to be gained this morning at the café, Nettie made her way back across the street to the two-story Beartooth General Store. She’d married the store, choosing Bob instead of Frank at her mother’s encouragement. She regretted the Bob part, but the store was her life. Especially now that her husband—soon to be ex—had deserted her for a trailer in an Arizona desert. Running the store had kept her mind off her unfulfilled marriage and the regret that had eaten away at her for almost thirty years.
The only bright spot in her day had been Sheriff Frank Curry’s occasional visits. With those few and far between lately, Nettie felt at loose ends. Even the latest gossip about Maddie Conner’s tender couldn’t lift her mood.
As she neared the store, she saw a customer waiting for her in the shade of the wide store porch that ran the width of the building.
“If you’d read the sign on the door, it would have told you to come over to the café to get me.” She squinted against the bright spring day and did a double take as she recognized the man waiting for her. “J.D.?”
* * *
J. D. WEST STEPPED out of the shadow of the Beartooth General Store porch, a grin on his handsome face. In his mid-fifties, J.D. was one of those men who only got better looking with age—much like Sheriff Frank Curry, Nettie thought.
“How ya doin’, sweetheart?” He had dark hair and eyes and a grin that had made many a young woman drop her panties before he’d left town.
She couldn’t have been more surprised to see him. It had been years since he’d left on the run after a row with his older brother, Taylor, and the law hot on his trail.
Nettie had heard J.D. had gotten caught and done some jail time over in Miles City, Montana. Rumors had circulated about him over the years, and alleged sightings all over the West had been reported. Most everyone either thought J. D. West was in prison somewhere or dead.
“You look like you’ve just seen a ghost,” he said with a laugh.
His laugh took Nettie back, and for a moment they were both teenagers again. She’d always liked J.D. even though she’d never succumbed to his charm.
You like men who live on the edge. It was Bob’s voice in her head. That’s why you’ve been carrying a torch for Frank Curry all these years. She would be so glad when she could shut Bob up for good.
“What are you doing here?” she blurted out.
He laughed again. “Here as in Beartooth? Or here as in standing on your porch waiting for you?” He didn’t give her a chance to answer. “I decided to pay a visit to my old stompin’ grounds. When I saw your sign in the window...” He grinned.
For a moment, she didn’t know which sign in the window he was referring to. But glancing past him, she saw her apartment-for-rent sign. The apartment over the store had been empty since Tiffany Chandler had been arrested and taken away.
“You want to rent my apartment?”
“I sure do. That is, if you’ll rent it to me for a week to start. Then we’ll see after that.”
She wasn’t surprised he had no plans to stay with his brother, Taylor, out at the West Ranch. As far as she knew, the trouble between the two had never been reconciled. The two brothers couldn’t have been more different. Taylor was a family man who’d never been in trouble in his life. J.D. had been in trouble almost since the day he was born.
“I’ll pay in cash,” he said, seeing her hesitation.
She couldn’t say no. Not to J.D. Also, she hadn’t had any other takers for the apartment. She had hesitated more out of surprise than anything else.
“Of course I’ll rent it to you,” she said as she climbed the steps to the porch. “Come inside and I’ll show it to you. It’s nothing fancy, mind you.”
“Not looking for fancy, but I’ll bet it is real nice.”
She turned to look back at him as she entered the store. “Have you been out to the ranch yet?”
J.D. chuckled. “Not yet. I’m getting up my courage. Not expecting a brass band, but even a lukewarm welcome would be appreciated.”
“I hope it goes well,” she said. She opened the inside door to the apartment and climbed the stairs.
“That is real sweet of you, Nettie.”
It wasn’t every day that a man told her she was sweet.
“Damn you look good,” J.D. said, grinning when they reached the apartment.
She felt herself flush. “You always were the worst liar.” Her hand went to her new hairdo. She patted her out-of-the-bottle red curls, pleased.
He shook his head, his gaze softening as it met hers. “I mean it, Nettie. You’re a sight for sore eyes. I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed you and Beartooth. So fill me in on everything that’s been going on,” he said as he moved through the apartment.
She loved nothing better than telling him what she knew about Beartooth. He was especially interested in the latest about Maddie Conner and her tender, and Fuzz Carpenter’s speculation that Branch Murdock was dead—murdered—up in the Beartooths.
“I didn’t know anyone was still running sheep up there,” J.D. said distractedly as he moved to the front window and glanced out.
“Maddie’s the last, and if Branch is dead, well, this will probably be her final year. So what do you think of the apartment?”
J.D. turned to smile at her. “I love it.”
As she watched him pull out money for a week’s rent, Nettie couldn’t help but wonder what he was really doing back in town. J. D. West wasn’t the kind of man who got homesick. He was the kind who’d put Beartooth in his rearview mirror years ago—and never looked back.
* * *
TO MADDIE’S SURPRISE, the deputy offered to saddle his own horse. “You ride?”
“Before I moved to the city, my family had horses.”
She raised a brow. “What kind of horses?”
He hesitated just long enough that she knew they’d been fancy, expensive horses. “Thoroughbreds.”
She chuckled. Didn’t he realize how obvious it was that he came from wealth? Apparently not. How interesting that he wanted to play it down.
“Did your family race them?” she asked as she hefted her saddle up onto the horse’s back.
“No. My sister was involved in some jumping competitions. I preferred to just ride the horses.”
As if that made him less of an elitist. She could hear the Ivy League education behind his words. “Harvard? Princeton?”
“Harvard,” he said as he clinched up his saddle. “Law school. I was an attorney at my wife’s father’s firm for ten years before becoming a cop.” He chuckled and looked up at her. “Aren’t you going to ask how I ended up a deputy sheriff in Big Timber, Montana?”
She’d noticed the pale line on his ring finger and the way he nervously touched the spot when he thought she wasn’t looking. The missing wedding band was like a phantom limb, she thought. It was still there in a way he couldn’t seem to get past. She assumed its loss was too fresh. Which she’d bet explained what he was doing in Montana.
“Nope, that’s sufficient information,” she said.
He laughed. “It seems only fair you tell me something about you.”
She shook her head. “I only asked you those things because I just needed to know if you could ride a horse and were smart enough to stay out of my way,” she said as she swung up into the saddle. “Ready?”
“I’m ready if you are,” he said as he mounted the horse.
“I hope so,” she said, glancing over at him. “We have a long ride ahead of us.” She had no idea how far they would have to go. It would depend on where Branch had last made camp with the sheep. She knew where they should be, but she wasn’t betting on anything at this point.
Just as she doubted the deputy was any more ready for what was ahead of them than she was. But it was clear that neither of them was turning back.
* * *
“WHO WAS THAT?”
On the porch of the general store just after lunch, Nettie turned in surprise to see Sheriff Frank Curry standing behind her. She hadn’t heard him drive up. For a moment she was so happy to see him that she didn’t even register the disapproval in his tone.
“Don’t tell me that was who I think it was,” he said, sounding upset.
“Well, if you think it was J. D. West, then you’re right.” J.D. had professed to love the apartment, paid in cash for a week and told her again how wonderful she looked.
Then he’d bought her lunch, bringing sandwiches over from the café so the two of them could sit on the store porch and eat them. Just moments before the sheriff had appeared, she’d been watching J.D. drive away, warmed by his return to Beartooth.
“What’s he doing in town?” Frank demanded, frowning after J.D.’s pickup.
She definitely didn’t like his tone. “Visiting his family.”
“How long is he staying?”
“As long as he wants to.” Her hands went to her hips. “What’s with all the questions?”
He blinked before turning his frown on her. “He’s trouble.”
“You haven’t seen him in years. Maybe he’s changed.”
Frank scoffed at that.
It had been weeks since she’d seen Frank. This wasn’t how she’d hoped things would go when he stopped by the store again.
“Well, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt,” she said, feeling her indignation as well as her temper rise.
“Of course you are.”
He was making her mad now. “What does that mean?”
“It means, Lynette, that you have always had a soft spot for J.D.” Frank was the only one who called her by her given name. Normally just the sound of it on his lips would have made her day.
“Frank Curry, that’s not true! That was more than thirty years ago, but you were always the one who—” She caught herself before she said, “—I was soft on.”
“You can bet he’s here for more than a visit.” Frank’s gaze narrowed at her. “What did he want with you?”
She bristled. “Maybe he just stopped in to say hello or buy something.”
Frank shook his head. “He’s a lot cagier than that. Believe me, he wanted something.” He shoved back his Stetson, his gaze on her face. “What did he want?” Clearly he was determined to wait her out. She realized he must have overheard J.D. saying he would be back.
“You’ll find out soon enough anyway, I guess,” she said with a sigh. “He asked about renting my apartment.”
“I hope to hell you didn’t rent it to him.”
“As a matter of fact, I did.”
Frank swore again. “What were you thinking, Lynette?”
“That maybe he deserves a second chance? People change, you know.” She knew this was aimed more at herself and Frank and had little to do with J.D. It was she and Frank who deserved a second chance. Why couldn’t he see that?
He eyed her warily. “What are you getting so mad about?”
“You. I haven’t seen you in weeks, and you suddenly show up and...” She choked on the words, unable to say more for fear she would cry. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been brought to tears, but standing out here on the store porch, the spring air warm and scented with pines, wasn’t going to be one of them.
“I want you to stay clear of him.”
She stared at Frank in disbelief. “If I didn’t know better I’d think you were...jealous.”
“Jealous? Isn’t it possible that I worry about you? That I don’t want to see you make an even bigger mistake?”
“I’m sorry, but what was the first big mistake you’re referring to?”
He pulled his Stetson off and slammed it against his leg as if to knock off invisible dust. He had to know he’d stepped in it this time.
“Well, Frank? Surely it wasn’t me not marrying you.”
He stuffed his hat back on his thick, blond-and-only-slightly-graying hair. If only he wasn’t so good-looking.
“Sometimes, Lynette,” he said and, without another word, turned and strode across the street toward the Branding Iron.
Nettie watched him go, wanting to call him back and start over. She realized she should have asked about Tiffany. She also shouldn’t have gotten mad and said what she had. More than anything she wanted him to have been as happy to see her as she’d been to see him.
It wasn’t like him to let someone like J.D. upset him like that. Frank hadn’t been himself for months now. She worried about him—when she wasn’t furious with him. How long was it going to take for him to come to his senses and ask her out? They’d both be ninety with one foot in the grave by the time he finally got around to it. If he ever did.
“Stubborn damned fool,” she said under her breath, all the time hoping he would look back before he disappeared into the café. He didn’t.
* * *
THE FIRST THING Deputy Jamison noticed after they left the truck and horse trailer behind and rode into the mountains was the quiet. It hung in the dark, dense pines. The sound of the horses climbing the mountain seemed small and isolated as if nothing could truly disrupt the mountains’ eerie silence.
Just when he thought he would give anything to break that quiet, the wind came up. A dust devil spun off to his right, appearing to come out of nowhere, and then it was all around them. The wind blowing off the snowy peaks was icy cold and unforgiving. It quickly became a dull roar that was as grating as the silence had been.
As they rode deeper into the mountains, the gale shrieked. It lay over the tall grass and whipped the pine boughs. He caught glimpses of the terrain ahead, a tableau of sheer rock cliffs and grassy bowls above the tree line.
With a start, he realized he’d never been this far from civilization before. He could feel the temperature dropping as they ascended the mountain. The day wore on with the gentle rocking of the horse and creaking of his saddle.
He didn’t know how far they had ridden, only that the air had gotten colder as the weak spring sun inched its way to the west and finally dissolved behind the farthest peak.
While he’d ridden a horse before, never had he ridden one for this long. He was growing weary of being in the saddle, when Maddie reined in ahead of him. As she dismounted, he glanced at his watch. There was still at least an hour of daylight. “Why are we stopping?”
“This is where we spend the night,” she said without looking at him.
He glanced around. She’d stopped at the edge of a stand of pines under a sheer rock face. Ahead there was nothing but wide-open windswept country and more mountain peaks as far as the eye could see.
“I was hoping we might get far enough that we could see the sheepherder’s camp before dark,” he said.
“In the first place, we don’t know where that is,” she said, still not looking at him as she began to untie her saddlebag. “Second, this is where we make camp for the night.”
He couldn’t help himself. “There isn’t a better place to camp?”
Maddie finally turned to look at him. “This is where we make camp,” she repeated. “Why don’t you make yourself useful and scare up some wood for the fire.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said and slid down from his horse. The ground felt good beneath his feet. His posterior ached from the hours in the saddle, but he wasn’t about to mention that to the woman. Nor did he let himself limp in her presence until he could stretch out his legs again.
“Don’t go too far,” she said, reaching for his reins. “There are grizzlies up here with heads the size of semi steering wheels.”
“Are you trying to scare me, Mrs. Conner?”
She chuckled as she led the horses down a small slope that ended in a spot below the rock cliff. Looking closer, he made out what appeared to be a lean-to deep in the pines out of the wind. Closer, the pines at the edge of the stand had been twisted from years of wind and bad weather into grotesque forms.
Jamison set about gathering firewood. By the time he joined her down by the lean-to, she had unpacked their gear and the food she’d brought.
This close to the cliff, the wind was no longer buffeting him. It felt good to get out of it for a while, even though he could hear it in the tops of the pines overhead. The boughs moaned and swayed back and forth in a sky that was losing light fast.
He felt the cold chill of the upcoming night and looked to the mountains ahead, wondering where the sheepherder would be spending it. Or if he was in any shape to care.
CHAPTER FIVE
“I SUPPOSE YOU don’t know how to make a fire,” Maddie said as the deputy dropped his load of firewood next to the ring of charred rocks. The ground inside the ring was blackened from other fires. Jamison wondered how many times she’d made camp here, how many fires had burned to ashes to the sound of the wind overhead.
“Actually, I do know how to build a fire,” he said, kneeling next to the fire ring.
She glanced at him, pretending surprise. “They taught that at the fancy summer camps you went to?”
“You don’t like me much, do you?” he said as he set about getting a fire started.
“It’s nothing personal.”
He chuckled at that. “I shouldn’t take you calling me a greenhorn personally? Or that you make fun of the way I was brought up?”
“You are a greenhorn and you were privileged.”
“But it’s more than that,” he said, looking up at her.
Her eyes were the deep blue of the sky they’d ridden under all afternoon. Her expression softened. He could see the fear even before she voiced it.
“I don’t like you coming up here to make a case against Dewey.”
“If Dewey is innocent—”
“You’re already convinced he’s not.”
“I have my doubts about his story, yes.” He lit the small kindling under the larger logs. The flames licked at the dry wood and began to crackle. “I don’t make assumptions. What I know is that Dewey’s lying about something and he’s terrified, not to mention his clothing was covered in blood. Also, according to Dewey, your sheepherder is apparently missing.”
“Once we find Branch...” Maddie looked past the fire to the peaks in the distance “...I’m sure he’ll clear this all up.”
Jamison heard the hope and saw the worry. It mirrored his own.
Maddie cooked a simple meal that they ate around the fire, both quiet, both lost apparently in their own thoughts. The only sound was wind high in the pines and the soft crackle of the fire as darkness seemed to drop over them without warning.
Jamison had never seen such blackness. Up here in these mountains the dark appeared to have a life of its own. It became a hulking beast crouched just beyond the glow of the campfire.
While it made him uneasy not knowing what was out there—maybe whatever had scared Dewey Putman so badly?—Maddie seemed content here. Jamison had little fear of the animals. It was humans and what they were capable of that kept him awake at night.
The fire flickered, casting golden light on Maddie’s face, and he glimpsed the beautiful woman she’d been when she was younger. It was nothing like the quiet beauty she had now, though. There was a tranquil magnificence in her that sneaked up on him. That she was capable and self-assured only added to that beauty.
She brushed back an errant strand of hair as if she felt him watching her. He saw irritation in the movement. She was a woman used to spending most of her days alone, he realized. She wasn’t used to a man looking at her—maybe especially the way he was. He found her intriguing equally in her strength—and her vulnerability.
“I really would like to know more about you,” he said as the silence stretched taut between them.
She glanced up at him, pretending to be surprised to find him sitting across from her. “Are you asking as a deputy?”
“No, I just thought since we’re going to be spending time together—”
She rose abruptly, dusting her hands off on her jeans. “Then I can’t imagine why you’d have any interest in me. We leave at daybreak. I’d suggest you get some sleep.”
He watched her walk over and pick up the saddlebags with the food she’d brought. As she moved to tie them to a rope hanging from a nearby tree, he got up to help her.
“You’re putting our food in a tree?” he asked as he reached to help hoist the bundle higher.
She refused to relinquish the rope, forcing him to step back as she finished tying it. “Bears,” she said as if he should have known that.
He glanced at their sleeping bags stretched out beside the small campfire.
“Grizzlies,” she said, and he saw the first hint of mischief in those blue eyes.
“Seems a little silly tying up a small amount of food when the bears will have us to eat.”
“I’m not worried,” she said, stepping past him toward the fire. “They’ll be full by the time they finish with you.”
He smiled as she walked over and climbed fully clothed into the sleeping bag on the other side of the fire. She lay down, her back to him.
“The woman has a sense of humor after all,” he said loud enough he was sure she could hear. He considered sitting on the overturned stump by the fire until the blaze burned out. He felt antsy, certainly not ready to go to sleep this early.
Looking up, he caught a glimpse of stars through the swaying pine boughs. The sky seemed alive with them. He stepped out of the trees so he could see the amazing sight. It was magnificent. He gaped at the ceiling of darkness and light in awe. He’d never seen so many stars. Nor had he ever seen such an expansive sky. It arced between the horizons, a midnight-blue canopy bespeckled with millions of twinkling stars.
Away from the fire, though, he was instantly cold. Even standing by it, only the parts of his body near the flames were warm. He walked back, but the fire had died to only a few glowing embers that gave off little heat.
Maddie hadn’t made a peep. He wondered if she was asleep. He thought about looking for more wood for the fire, but changed his mind.
He’d never slept in his clothing in his entire life. Even as cold as it was up here, he slipped out of the canvas coat she’d lent him, then the flannel shirt down to his T-shirt. Goose bumps rippled across his skin. He considered taking off the jeans she’d provided for him, but one glance around and he decided he might have to get up in a hurry, and would be better off at least partially dressed.
The lining of the sleeping bag was ice-cold against his bare arms, and it took him a moment to warm up. He rolled up his coat and shirt for a pillow then curled on his side to watch what was left of the fire die away. He thought about what they might find tomorrow and how he would handle it.
It kept his mind off everything but Maddie Conner.
* * *
SHERIFF FRANK CURRY couldn’t help being mad at himself on so many levels. Right now, though, it was the way he’d handled things with Lynette.
After their run-in, he’d gotten something to eat at the café, half hoping Lynette would come over and join him. She hadn’t. Too upset to go to his empty house, he’d driven over to Bozeman and gone to a movie. Now, on the way home, he couldn’t even remember what it was about.
Driving through the darkness toward his ranch east of Beartooth, he mentally kicked himself for not calling Lynette. He could have patched things up by asking her to the movie. What would it have hurt? He could have called her, apologized... But what did he have to apologize for? She was the one who’d rented her apartment over the store to J. D. West and thought nothing of it.
His chest ached at the thought of J.D. pulling the wool over her eyes. Why was Lynette so blind when it came to men?
“So what are you going to do about it?” he demanded of himself as he drove down the narrow dirt road toward home. What could he do?
Nothing right now. He felt like a single parent. He knew that was silly. But he now had all the responsibilities that came with being a single parent. Tiffany needed him since Pam had deserted her daughter. He was all the girl had now. So when he wasn’t working, he went up to the state hospital to see her.
But that wasn’t the only reason he’d stayed away from Lynette. He was afraid for her because of Pam and Tiffany. He thought that if he put distance between them, then maybe it would keep her safe.
So the situation frustrated the hell out of him when he was around her. He wanted Lynette, needed her, but right now the best thing he could do was give her a wide berth. Who knew what would happen with Tiffany’s case? What if she did get out of this?
He couldn’t forget that Tiffany was a danger to Lynette. And Pam...well, who knew how dangerous she was to them all?
When he’d found out about Tiffany, he’d tried to find Pam. Apparently she hadn’t wanted to be found, which shouldn’t have come as a surprise after what she’d done.
He’d hired a private investigator to get her number for him. He’d talked to her once—for all the good it had done. She had pretended not to know what he was talking about when he’d accused her of poisoning Tiffany against him, programming the child to kill him.
Months later he’d called again and found the line had been disconnected. Which was just as well, he told himself. He was afraid of what he would do if he knew where she was.
He figured she’d probably taken off. Done her damage to him and Tiffany and then gone off, her mission over. But to add fuel to the fire, she’d managed to tell Tiffany that the reason she was running away was because she was afraid of him. Tiffany, unfortunately, believed her mother’s lies.
Sometimes in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep he thought about how to find her. The fantasy—he had to think of it as that—always ended the same. It ended with him murdering Pam with his bare hands.
It was those dark thoughts that plagued him, that and worry over Tiffany. Worry also about Lynette.
“With good reason,” he muttered under his breath as he turned into his ranch. Lynette had proven she had terrible taste in men when she’d married Bob thirty years ago instead of him. Now she’d rented her apartment to J. D. West? Worse, she thought the man deserved a second chance?
He felt himself getting upset again. J.D. had gotten more chances than he deserved before he had even left Beartooth all those years ago. To think Lynette might be taken in by him upset him more than he wanted to admit.
And she thought he was merely being jealous? He let out a curse as he neared his house.
Automatically he slowed. Not that long ago, he would have been anxious to return home. He liked his small house, his few animals, the wide-open spaces the ranch provided him.
Back then he’d had a family of sorts waiting for him. A family of crows had taken up residency in his yard. He’d come to think of them as his own and had spent years studying them, intrigued how much they were like humans.
They would always be waiting for him as he drove in and would caw a welcome. He’d gotten where he could tell them apart by their greetings.
Now, though, the telephone line was empty, just like the clothesline and the ridge on the barn. Tiffany had killed one of them to get back at him. Crows, being very intelligent birds, had left. He’d learned from studying them that they would warn other crows about the danger at his house. They wouldn’t be back nor would others come if they felt threatened.
With a heavy heart, he pulled in and climbed out. The night was dark here in the valley with clouds shrouding the stars. He stood for a moment, staring up at the empty telephone wire, feeling the terrible weight of all his losses.
The sudden sound of glass breaking somewhere inside his house startled him from his dark thoughts. Drawing his gun, he sprinted toward the open front door.
* * *
MADDIE LISTENED TO the wind whipping the tops of the pines. Closer, the fire crackled softly as it burned down. The familiar sounds were comforting—unlike the sound of the deputy across the fire from her. He moved restlessly in his sleeping bag. She’d bet this was the first time he’d slept under the stars—let alone in the middle of nowhere on the side of a mountain.
She could have erected the tent that was kept here along with a few supplies. It hadn’t been all orneriness that had made her dismiss the idea. True, she hadn’t wanted to take the time to put up the tent. Nor had she wanted to expend the energy, and she’d figured the deputy would have been no help.
But those weren’t the real reasons. If she was being honest, she hadn’t wanted to be in the close confines of a tent with her worries—or the deputy. Not tonight.
She mentally cursed herself. What was she doing here with such a city slicker? He didn’t know the country. Worse, he didn’t know how dangerous it could be. What was he doing in Montana, anyway?
It irritated her that she’d had to bring him. But her other choice was letting him look for the sheep camp alone. Better to take him up here to alleviate his concerns. She desperately wanted to prove him wrong.
Jamison was the least of her problems and she knew it. She closed her eyes against the fears that had haunted her from the instant she’d seen Dewey in the back of that stall.
What had happened? She clung to the hope that when they reached the camp, they would find Branch sitting outside his sheepherder wagon whittling on a piece of pine, his dog, Lucy, at his feet, and all two thousand sheep in a grassy meadow behind him, safe and growing fatter.
It was conceivable that the boy had gotten scared when he couldn’t find Branch. When he found a dying lamb, just as he’d said, he would have foolishly thought he could save it. Failing that, he’d panicked and hightailed it out of there. It could have happened just that way, she told herself.
Which meant that when they reached the sheep camp, Branch would give her hell for hiring Dewey, something she had to admit she deserved. She’d take the deputy back down out of the mountains and get Branch a new tender, someone older, someone with experience.
Even as she thought it, she knew how hard it was going to be to find a tender. No one wanted to spend three months back in the wilds. Even sheepherders were hard to find, for that matter. Good thing Branch enjoyed it, but he was getting old—just a few months short of his sixty-eighth birthday. It wouldn’t be long before he couldn’t make the trek, she thought, refusing to let herself accept that this might be his last year—no matter what they found back in the mountains.
All good reasons to give up herding the sheep to high grazing pasture each summer season, she told herself.
She heard the deputy roll over again and felt a stab of guilt. She shouldn’t have mentioned grizzlies, but smiled even as she chastised herself for purposely trying to scare him. He was probably worried about bears and wouldn’t get a wink of sleep.
Maddie thought about telling him that she had her shotgun as well as her .357 Magnum pistol within reach. Also, she could mention that with two thousand sheep not far away, the grizzlies would rather have lamb than either one of them.
But a moment later, Jamison seemed to settle down, and as he did, she heard him snoring softly.
Irritated he could fall asleep so quickly, she snuggled down in her sleeping bag and prayed. It had been so long since any of her prayers had been answered, though, that she didn’t have much hope these would be, either.
* * *
FRANK KNEW HE should call for backup, but the last time he’d caught someone going through his things it had turned out to be his daughter.
He moved cautiously up onto the porch. The front door was ajar. He hadn’t noticed when he’d driven up because he’d been grieving for the loss of his crows.
But now he was paying attention. He glanced back over his shoulder. Where had the intruder parked? Not by the barn or he would have seen the vehicle when he drove in. Whoever it was must have used the back road, parked behind the house and sneaked around to the front to get inside.
That meant the person knew about the back way into the property. It was no leap to assume whoever was inside his house knew him and knew he never locked the front door.
Standing to one side, Frank eased the door all the way open. The living room was dark, but a light was on down the hall. It cast a faint yellow glow that weakened as it reached the living room. But it was enough light to see that the place had been ransacked.
A thief would have gone straight for the guns in his den or the television and stereo, even the old laptop he kept on the small desk in the spare room. A thief wouldn’t have bothered tearing up the living room, which was only sparsely furnished and clearly had nothing of any real value.
As Frank stepped in, he was pretty sure he wasn’t dealing with a thief—but a vandal with a grudge. He’d made enemies as sheriff, but not that many in his career. Avoiding the floorboards that creaked, he moved through the house toward the sound of the racket going on in his bedroom. He could hear his vandal destroying everything within reach.
Frank had never gotten very attached to things, so he had little regard for the furnishings in his home. All were replaceable. Maybe his intruder didn’t know that about him. Or care. It sounded as if the person was working out some anger issues on his house. As he moved closer to the open door to his bedroom, he was anxious to know just who it was.
Nearer the open door, he stopped. He listened to things breaking for a moment. Then cautiously, he peered around the doorframe.
Frank almost dropped the gun in his hand. As it was, he hadn’t been able to hold back the shocked sound that escaped his lips.
His intruder turned. In the single light glowing overhead in the room, a woman stood holding a baseball bat. He felt his knees go weak as he stared in shock at his ex-wife.
He hadn’t seen Pamela Chandler in almost twenty years. Nor had he given any thought to her—until February when he’d found out they had possibly conceived a daughter she hadn’t mentioned. Since then, whenever he did think of Pam, it was only with one desire: to kill her.
He stared at her as if seeing an apparition. When they’d married, she’d been fifteen years younger. She’d been too young for him, too young period. He felt he’d since grown into his age. He couldn’t say the same for Pam.
The past two decades hadn’t been kind to her. She looked stringy thin, her pale skin stretched over her facial bones. Her hair had grayed without her putting up a fight with a dye job. But the eyes were the same—a fiercely bright brittle blue—much like her daughter’s.
She stood with the baseball bat in both hands, caught in a backswing after smashing his bedside lamp to smithereens. She didn’t look surprised to see him. Hell, she was even smiling. It was that smile he’d thought of most recently and how he would wipe it off her face once he had his hands clamped around her throat.
“Hello, Frank.” She said it as if she’d merely seen him in passing on the street and not standing in the middle of his bedroom surrounded by the destruction she’d caused. She said it as if they were old friends—not like a woman who’d poisoned her own child with her lies and bitterness.
When he finally spoke, his voice didn’t sound like his own. “What the hell, Pam?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
He shook his head, shaken by how surreal this felt. He’d dreamed of finding Pam, of catching her off guard and cornering her somewhere, stopping her from terrorizing Tiffany. Of making sure she never hurt anyone again.
Late at night, he would plan her murder, her disappearance. He’d been in law enforcement long enough that he knew how to get rid of her for good. No one would ever know what had happened to her. She would just be...gone.
Four strides. That was all it would take to reach her and take that baseball bat away from her and—
“What’s the matter, Frank? Can’t pull the trigger?”
He’d forgotten he was holding his gun. It hung at his side, his hand having dropped with his shock at seeing his ex-wife vandalizing his house.
Still smiling, Pam took a step toward him. She clutched the baseball bat in her hands, evil intent glowing in those blue eyes as hot as the hell she brought with her. Her smile dared him to lift the gun and shoot her.
In his fantasy of murder, Pam was always afraid. Maybe even a little sorry. Not like the woman now moving toward him.
Frank felt his hand slowly rise until the barrel of his weapon was pointed at her heart. She kept coming, the baseball bat cocked back, ready to swing.
He saw himself emptying the gun into her. But even as he envisioned it, he wondered if it wouldn’t take a wooden stake to put this woman down.
“Well, Frank?”
He realized he was shaking his head. “Don’t,” he heard himself say as she kept moving toward him. He felt his finger on the trigger. Another step and—
The blow caught him in the back of the head. Until that moment, he’d been too surprised to think clearly. But in that instant, he realized his mistake. If he’d been acting like a sheriff, he would have figured out that Pam wouldn’t have come here alone. Pam was too calculating—and knew him too well.
He felt his body go slack from the brain-numbing blow. His legs buckled, his thoughts scattering like dried fall leaves blown across his yard.
As he dropped to his knees, his gaze met hers. He’d never seen so much hatred, so much anger, so much evil—and absolutely no fear.
“You really didn’t think I was done with you, did you?” she said and swung the baseball bat.
CHAPTER SIX
MADDIE WOKE TO the sound of fire crackling in the pit next to her, the smell of bacon and daylight. She rolled over quickly, shoving the bag down as she attempted to climb out. She was surprised she’d slept so soundly. It had taken her a long time to fall asleep last night, her thoughts and the deputy keeping her up. She’d finally drifted off long after the campfire had burned out.
She blinked at the day’s brightness, momentarily confused as to where she was. But the moment she spotted Jamison, it all came back to her.
Deputy Jamison stood next to the creek, his broad naked back to her. He’d stripped down to nothing but his jeans and boots and now washed himself in the icy cold stream. The sun shone on the water on his back, making it glisten.
A ripple of need shot through her so sharp and shocking that it hurt. She hadn’t felt anything close to it in years. Maybe never. Its fierce intensity made her weak with a wanting she’d thought she’d put behind her. Until that moment, she realized, she hadn’t thought of herself as a woman for a very long time.
She quickly turned away, shaken and upset by the alien feelings. She told herself that her reaction was normal given that all she’d seen in Deputy Jamison before that moment was a lawman butting into her life and her livelihood. It didn’t matter that he had a badge.
Now she saw the man and had to grudgingly admit he was nice looking if you liked that type. Still, he was nothing like the men she’d known all her life, although he was smart, that went without saying, and not as much of a greenhorn as she’d feared.
When she turned back around, she found herself staring at his bare chest as he walked back toward the fire. It was broad and muscled like his back. Light brown hair formed a V that continued past the top button of his jeans.
“Good morning,” he said cheerfully and pulled on his shirt. “I didn’t realize you were up.”
She nodded and turned to roll up her sleeping bag. A groan rose in her throat. She’d seen half-naked men before. So why was she acting like a schoolgirl? It was enough to make her furious with herself.
“I thought we should have breakfast before we head out,” he said behind her. “I hope you don’t mind. I took the food down from the tree. It will only take me a moment to finish cooking it.”
The last thing she wanted was breakfast—let alone for the deputy to cook it for her.
“I don’t really want—”
“I’m not all that hungry, either, but I figured we might need it before the day is over,” he said, cutting off her protest.
She hated what she’d heard in those words. It bespoke his fear of what they were going to find up ahead of them. With a start, though, she realized that wasn’t why he’d cooked.
He’d made breakfast for her because he suspected she was the one who would need all the strength she could muster today. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had done something so thoughtful just for her. She didn’t want to be touched by his kindness. But she was.
He also expected the worst and, with a sinking heart, she feared he might be right. To think yesterday she’d been ready to face whatever had happened on this mountain by herself. Right now, she was actually glad he’d come with her.
He looked up from his cooking. “Your hair is beautiful.”
His compliment knocked her off balance—and just when she was starting to accept his being here with her.
Her mop of hair had come loose in the night. She hadn’t realized she’d been working her fingers through the thick strands to get the tangles out until he spoke. Now she felt self-conscious.
She glanced at the reddish locks that tumbled over her shoulder. Lately she’d noticed the spun silver intertwined with the red. It had startled her since she hadn’t been aware of the passing of time or how she’d aged with it.
He looked away to tend to breakfast as if sensing her discomfort. She’d never much cared about the way she looked in the mornings—at least not since losing Hank. Nor did she want to start again.
It was another reason she dressed the way she did. There were a couple of old widower ranchers who had been giving her the eye. Dollars to doughnuts they just wanted her land. It didn’t matter even if they really were attracted to her. She wasn’t interested.
Jamison looked up again, and she quickly pulled her hair up, turning her back to finish the job. She thought she could feel the deputy’s gaze warming her back as she worked her fingers through it.
She cursed herself for letting him make her feel self-conscious. Worse, unnerve her. Her heart pounded with a long-forgotten pleasure from the compliment and a flicker of her earlier desire. Both burned through her body, igniting emotions she’d buried with her husband and son four years ago.
For so long she hadn’t let herself feel. Every day, she rose with only work in mind. Running the ranch and trying to keep her head above water had taken all her energy. She’d had little time to think of anything else.
Each night she’d fallen into bed, so exhausted that the only thing she had wanted or needed was sleep.
The last thing she needed was for a man to make her feel, let alone want again, especially when it was this greenhorn.
* * *
JAMISON REALIZED HE’D upset Maddie and regretted saying anything. He noticed the way her fingers trembled as she fought her beautiful long mane into an obedient plait that trailed down her strong back.
She seemed to take a steadying breath before she slapped on her hat and turned back to him and the fire. Her cheeks were heightened in color, her blue eyes bright as diamonds. She ducked her head as if afraid of what he might see in those eyes.
He suspected it had been some time since anyone had complimented her on her appearance. He hadn’t meant to embarrass her. The words had just come out without thinking.
“I didn’t know what you liked to eat,” he said as he offered her a plate of thick bread slices he’d toasted over the fire with strips of bacon, scrambled eggs and cheese tucked between them.
She took it without much enthusiasm as if no hungrier than he was. Sitting, she balanced on one of the log stumps as if she’d done it hundreds of times. She probably had. This was her country. She knew it no doubt better than anything else in her life. It sustained her sheep and a part of her as well, he thought. She was at home here, more content than his wife had ever been in their expensive high-rise apartment in New York City.
Taking a small polite bite, she chewed for a moment. Her gaze sprang up to his as she swallowed. “It’s...good.”
She sounded so surprised it made him laugh. “Thank you for that grudging compliment,” he said with a grin.
“I didn’t realize you could cook.”
“I’m glad I can surprise you.”
“Summer camp?”
“Actually Boy Scouts.”
“I’d have to see the badge to believe that.”
He couldn’t help being pleased. He’d teased a smile out of her.
“Thanks for...cooking.”
He gave her a nod.
She ate quickly after that, no doubt as anxious as he was to get moving. Since he’d awakened, he’d been unnerved by the sudden quiet that had settled around them. The wind had stopped sometime during the night, and now a hush had settled over the mountainside.
“I’ll get us saddled up,” she said when she’d finished the breakfast sandwich. He noticed that she’d eaten it all, just as he had. Like him, she must fear she was going to need the strength later today.
As she readied the horses, he broke camp, packing up the rest of the food and putting out the fire.
“How much farther?” he asked as they swung up into their saddles.
“We should find their camp by afternoon.” He could see how hard her next words were for her. She hadn’t wanted him along, didn’t want him interfering. Maybe more to the point, she didn’t want to have to worry about him along with her other concerns. “Are you doing all right?”
He smiled. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
She snorted at that as she spurred her horse out of the pines and into the clear blue Montana morning.
* * *
WHEN SHERIFF FRANK CURRY opened his eyes, he was on his bedroom floor. He hurt all over, so at first it was impossible to know how badly he’d been injured. He couldn’t even tell where all the pain was coming from.
As he tried to sit up, his head swam. His vision blurred to pinpoints, forcing him to lie down again. He lay on his back with his eyes closed and tried to make sense of what he was doing on his bedroom floor with the room in shambles around him.
What had happened? The last thing he could recall was seeing Lynette at the store, wasn’t it?
As he gingerly touched his aching shoulder, his memory came back in a flash, along with the pain of being hit with a baseball bat. Pam! The pain and anger threatened to blind him. He sat up, gripping the edge of the bed for support. Pam had been in his house. She’d—
He glanced around the room, at the destruction. It made no sense. If it wasn’t for the mess she’d left behind he might have thought he’d fallen, hit his head and dreamed it all.
As he started to get to his feet, he looked around for his gun. It wasn’t in his holster and yet he remembered pulling it. He remembered Pam daring him to use it. He hadn’t, though, had he?
No, if he had, Pam would be lying here in a puddle of blood.
So why hadn’t she taken the gun and used it on him? “Why didn’t you just kill me?” he bellowed even though he knew Pam was long gone, and just as he was well aware of why she hadn’t used his gun on him.
Pam had no intention of going to prison for killing him. Not when she could just torment him and get away with it.
But not this time. She’d been in his house. She’d torn it up. She and whoever she’d brought with her had attacked him. She wasn’t getting away with this.
He got to his feet and took a wobbly step. As he bent over to see if the gun had been kicked under the bed, everything started to go black again. He gave it a minute then looked again. No gun.
Pam must have taken it. Great. He pulled out his cell phone. It dawned on him that the first call he should make was to the hospital. His temples throbbed, and when he touched the back of his head, he could feel the crusted blood in his hair. He was sure he had a concussion. How bad of one, he didn’t know. It would depend on how long he’d been out.
Through the window he could see the sun coming up. It was late when he’d come home from the movie in Bozeman and heard someone in his house. But still he’d been out for hours.
His left thigh ached, and when he touched it, he could feel that it was badly bruised. The memory of Pam swinging the baseball bat came back. He was amazed he didn’t have some broken bones or that she hadn’t beaten him to death once he was down.
He guessed that she’d stopped because she’d made her point. No sense in beating a dead horse, right?
As he dialed 9-1-1 and asked for an ambulance and the undersheriff, he recalled her last words.
You really didn’t think I was done with you, did you?
* * *
RIDING BESIDE MADDIE, Jamison crossed a wide meadow between two mountain peaks before working his way along the bottom of a sheer granite cliff that shot up to dizzying heights over them.
Sunlight traveled down through the pine boughs to bathe them in flickering golden beams. He breathed in the sweet scents of pine and new green grasses, the morning air crisp and cold. He feared the air was so clean it would intoxicate him since he had never breathed anything like it before.
The air, the altitude or Maddie Conner would be his undoing, he thought. He didn’t doubt that if he couldn’t keep up, she would leave him behind. Didn’t they shoot animals that couldn’t keep up with the herd?
Once they left the pines, the sky overhead seemed as endless as the wide-open mountain slopes in front of them. The huge expanse was a startling clear blue, no clouds on the horizon that he could see.
The wind kicked back up the higher they went. Above the tree line, it swept across the grassy slope in a blistering howl of undulating tall grasses that looked like waves rushing to shore. Water gushed from a plethora of small creeks as higher snowfields melted slowly. It was still early in the year up this high. The sun had a lot of climbing to do before summer warmth ever reached these mountains.
Still, the view was breathtaking. The land seemed alive with color from the dark silken emerald of the trees to the vibrant chartreuse of the grass. All this was in contrast to the dark rocky peaks with their cap of blinding white snow and the clear, deep blue sky overhead.
He’d heard Montana called God’s country but until that moment he’d never understood it. The beauty made him ache. Just as the high altitude made him light-headed. Maddie was right about him. He was a fish out of water up here.
“How high are we?” he asked as they crossed a windblown ridge, the horse hooves clattering on the rocks.
“Close to ten thousand feet.”
The last time he was this far above sea level, he’d been in a plane.
He didn’t know how far they’d ridden. He hadn’t felt the hours slip past, lulled by the gentle rocking of his body in the saddle and the mesmerizing beauty juxtaposed against the remoteness and endless isolation. It gave him an odd, alien feeling and added to his apprehension about what they would find over the next mountain.
He didn’t realize anything was wrong until Maddie suddenly pulled her horse up short. “What is it?”
She didn’t answer, but seemed to be listening, though he couldn’t imagine what she could hear over the relentless wind.
Reining in, it took him a moment to hear anything but the deafening gale. When he finally did hear what had caught her attention, he felt the hair on his neck shoot up as goose bumps skittered over his skin.
An eerie keening sound rode the wind.
Last night, he’d heard coyotes calling in the distance. But this was no coyote. If this sound was human, the person was in terrible pain.
“Where is it coming from?” he asked as he eased his horse up next to Maddie’s.
She shook her head, still listening as if trying to pinpoint the sound. But with the wind shifting around them, he couldn’t tell any more than apparently she could.
Maddie cocked her head. Her expression gave little away, but he could tell that, like him, she was shaken by the spine-chilling sound. Unlike him, though, he had a feeling she knew what it was.
“This way,” she said after a moment. He glimpsed her face just before she rode off. There was more than determination etched in her expression. There was pain and regret. She had come to a sad conclusion based on what, he didn’t know.
He followed, riding up along the edge of the wide basin then across another high rocky ridge. The view took his breath away and gave him vertigo. He swore he could see forever and yet he still couldn’t see what was making that heart-wrenching sound.
The keening grew louder just before he and Maddie dropped off the high ridge and over a rocky rise. He could feel the wind in his face, wearing away at his skin the way it had worn away at the land.
They hadn’t gone far when Maddie pulled up again.
He reined in just an instant before he saw the dog. A small Australian shepherd mix of a mutt was sitting on a rocky knob below them. Its head was thrown back, and long, mournful howls were emitting from deep within its throat.
Something was crumpled on the ground below the dog in the rocks. He caught only a glimpse of dark red plaid fabric, and then Maddie was racing down the mountainside toward the dog.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MADDIE’S HEART SANK at the mournful cry of the dog—let alone whatever was lying at the dog’s feet just over the rocky ledge. She braced herself for what she would find and yet she was already fighting tears before she reached the animal.
She’d been so sure she was going to find Branch Murdock’s body just below the dog on the mountainside that she was startled when the familiar red-and-black-plaid fabric just over the edge of the ridge was only that—the red-and-black plaid of the sheepherder’s coat.
Maddie slid off her horse, still stunned and even more confused when she saw that the coat had been spread out like a bed for the dog.
It was what a hunter did when he lost one of his bird dogs and couldn’t find the animal before dark set in. He would leave his coat with his scent on it. The dog would hopefully find it and stay there until he returned. With luck, the hunter would find the dog lying on the coat, waiting for him, the next morning.
How long had Lucy been waiting for Branch? And why would he leave his coat here for the dog? Branch and Lucy were inseparable.
As Maddie approached the dog, Lucy quit howling for a moment, but started up again. It was the most heartbreaking sound Maddie had ever heard on that lonesome mountain ridge so far from everything.
“Where’s Branch?” she whispered as she squatted down next to the dog. She remembered when Branch had adopted the puppy. Just the thought of the two of them crossing the ranch yard, Lucy still a puppy, running hard on her short legs to keep up with Branch’s long stride, broke her heart.
As she put her arm around Lucy, she heard the deputy dismount and come toward them, his boots crunching on the rocky ground. Not his boots, she reminded herself. Her husband’s. That thought shot like an arrow through her heart.
Her husband.
The loss often hit her out of the blue as if until that moment, she hadn’t realized Hank was gone and never coming back.
She blinked back tears as she knelt by the dog. “It’s all right,” she whispered to Lucy, even though she suspected it was far from it.
Picking up Branch’s coat from the ground, she held it close. The coarse wool smelled of a strong mixture of tobacco, campfire smoke, sheep and dog. She breathed in the familiar scents that would always remind her of Branch as she looked out across the mountain—just as Lucy was doing. There was no sign of her sheepherder—or her sheep.
“May I see that?” Jamison asked and held out his hand for the coat.
She hesitated, feeling protective and afraid, but grudgingly she handed it over to him and watched as he went through the pockets then checked the fabric. For bloodstains? Bullet holes?
He didn’t seem to find anything of interest, she saw with relief. She watched him sniff one of the pockets, then the other one.
“He took his tobacco with him and whatever tool he carried in his other pocket,” the deputy said.
“A knife. He always carried a pocketknife.” She watched as he shook out several flakes of loose tobacco from the one pocket. The wind caught the stray tobacco leaves and sent them whirling off over the side of the mountain on a downdraft.
Jamison turned the other pocket inside out to show her where the pocketknife had worn a hole in the fabric. “Why would your sheepherder leave his coat here and take everything else with him?” he asked as he eyed the dog.
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B.J. Daniels
Big-city detective Bentley Jamison is a long way from home in the Beartooth wilderness when one of local rancher Maddie Conner's ranch hands goes missing. Towering mountains and a small, tight community are as unfamiliar to Jamison as herding sheep, but he’s never shied away from a challenge.As the new deputy sheriff, he’s sworn to protect every inch of this rough terrain – starting with unravelling a mystery that has left Maddie a wide-open target. Maddie’s as beautiful – and untameable – as the land around them. Like Jamison, she won’t back down from danger. But desire that flares hotter than their tempers only raises the stakes when a fierce storm traps them in the high mountains.Caught in a killer’s sights, Jamison and Maddie must trust one another, because now survival… and love… are all that matter.
Danger runs high and passions burn hot in Montana’s wild country
Big-city detective Bentley Jamison is a long way from home in the Beartooth wilderness when one of local rancher Maddie Conner’s ranch hands goes missing. Towering mountains and a small, tight community are as unfamiliar to Jamison as herding sheep, but he’s never shied away from a challenge. As the new deputy sheriff, he’s sworn to protect every inch of this rough terrain—starting with unraveling a mystery that has left Maddie a wide-open target.
Maddie’s as beautiful—and untamable—as the land around them. Like Jamison, she won’t back down from danger. But desire that flares hotter than their tempers only raises the stakes when a fierce storm traps them in the high mountains. Caught in a killer’s sights, Jamison and Maddie must trust one another, because now survival…and love…are all that matter.
Dear Reader,
When I worked as a features writer for the newspaper, I did a story about a sheepherder and his “tender” who’d spent three months back in the Beartooths—only them and a huge band of sheep.
It was the tender, a young man whose job it was to keep camp, that gave me the idea for Forsaken. The teen was so glad to be out of the mountains and told harrowing stories about his summer that included grizzly bears, storms and rough dangerous terrain.
What would it take to send a young man like that racing out of those mountains in absolute terror? And what about the widowed sheep rancher who must go into the remote area to check on not only her sheep—but her sheepherder? That was when my story was born.
I hope you enjoy the trip back into the Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains.
B.J. Daniels
Forsaken
B.J. Daniels
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This book is dedicated to the Western ranchers, sheepherders and tenders who used to trail sheep to summer pastures in the “Beartooths.”
In 2003, after three months and 150 miles, the last band of sheep made the round trip for summer range in Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth mountains, ending an era that dates back to the late 19th century.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE (#u9d795a13-6119-58fc-b72f-db333b667a2b)
CHAPTER TWO (#u0c4ae249-b40b-5445-86bd-7c49eb95a5e9)
CHAPTER THREE (#ue9340fe9-8ecc-5c6c-86be-90a140934bd4)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u30ac5a07-f7d3-540e-89f9-dbff5373ecf1)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ud49ce71c-9287-50db-afe6-e3633cdf7d47)
CHAPTER SIX (#ud33e4f0c-0919-5d37-a715-202262d2a926)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u1bd56d55-3612-5cf8-8cbc-7efc381ef72b)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
THE HORSE STUMBLED under him as he plunged down the steep mountainside, but he spurred on the mare. Around him, the dark pines swayed and sighed in the wind as he crashed down through them, his only thought to reach the ranch alive.
Terror quilled the hair on the back of his neck, but he didn’t dare turn around. Fighting to stay in the saddle, he raced along the creek before charging into the fast-running stream. The clear water showered up in an icy wave that soaked him to the skin and stole his breath.
His horse bolted up the other side, forcing him to cling to the saddle horn to stay on his mount. A pine bough caught him in the face, a sharp twig scraping across his cheek and cutting into his flesh.
Behind him, he heard a familiar sound over the roar of his pulse and the howling wind and the thundering hooves of his horse echoing through the timber. Behind him was that unearthly silence that had chased him out of the Beartooth Mountains.
Even as he rode the horse harder, he knew he’d never be able to outrun it—or the smell of death lingering on his skin.
* * *
DEPUTY SHERIFF BENTLEY JAMISON was the only one in the office when the call came in.
“That you, Frank?” a grating elderly male voice asked when the dispatcher put the call through.
“Sheriff Frank Curry is out of the office. This is Deputy Sheriff Bentley Jamison. What can I do for you?”
“Bentley Jamison? Never heard of you.”
Jamison must have said the next words a dozen times a day since he’d recently joined the force. “I’m new.”
“Huh,” the man said with a chuckle. “Bet you ain’t from around here, either.”
That was a bet the man would win. At least he hadn’t asked what most people did on meeting the new deputy. “What the devil are you doing way out here?”
“What can I do for you?” Jamison asked.
“Well, this is Fuzz Carpenter. You don’t know me, but I just run across a kid comin’ out of the Beartooths. He was a-ridin’ hell-bent for leather like the devil was chasin’ him. Had blood all over him. I flagged him down to try to find out what was wrong, but he wasn’t makin’ an ounce of sense. All I could get out of him was that he worked for the Diamond C sheep ranch. That’s ’bout all I can tell ya, exceptin’ I didn’t like the look in his eyes. Somethin’ bad happened back up in those mountains, sure as hell.”
Jamison wrote the words Diamond C Ranch on the pad next to his phone. “How long ago was this and where exactly?”
“Not ten minutes ago up the Boulder Road. He was a-headin’ back to the ranch, I’m supposing, since he was ridin’ in that direction last I saw of him.”
“Thanks for letting me know. I’ll check it out.”
The man grunted in response and hung up.
Jamison asked directions to the Diamond C from the dispatcher then climbed into his patrol SUV and headed toward what the locals called the Boulder. It was actually the Boulder River valley. As he left Big Timber, Montana, he followed the river, the tall thick cottonwoods only giving him glimpses of the clear, green water.
The valley was wide, broken up by plowed fields and creeks that ran down to the river in a winding trail of pines and cottonwoods. With breathtaking beauty, mountains soared up around him, snowcapped and covered in dark pines.
The nearer he got to the Diamond C, the more the valley narrowed. Sheer rock cliffs towered a thousand feet over the two-lane paved road, and ranches became fewer and farther between.
He passed the Natural Bridge and waterfalls up into the Absaroka mountain range, or the Beartooths as locals called them because of one jagged crag that looked like a bear’s tooth.
Not far after that, the pavement ran out and he found himself in a tight canyon with nothing but the roaring river still full from spring runoff and high mountains hemming him in.
The Diamond C was snuggled in a coulee back off an even narrower dirt road and across a private rickety bridge spanning the river. It was early June in Montana and the snow-fed creeks were all running high.
As he came over a small rise, he saw the house and low sheep barns. Wind buffeted his patrol SUV, letting out a low howl. Nearer to the house, he saw a lone wooden weather-grayed rocker teetering back and forth in the blustery wind at the edge of a wide porch. Freshly hung sheets billowed and snapped on the clothesline nearby.
He’d had his share of premonitions before. Several of them had saved his life. But none had ever been as strong as the feeling of dread that washed over him as he drove toward the white clapboard two-story farmhouse.
* * *
MADISON “MADDIE” CONNER felt the change in the air just a moment before she heard the vehicle approaching. The wind had been blowing all night and morning, screaming down out of the mountains, sending anything not nailed down cartwheeling across the yard.
She’d awakened in the middle of the night when one of the big metal garbage cans had taken off, banging across the wide expanse between house and barn before crashing into the side of the shed. It had been difficult getting back to sleep. Everything was always darkest at that hour—especially her worrying thoughts.
Since rising, she’d kept busy. But a feeling of unease had burrowed under her skin like a splinter, festering as the day progressed. Finally at midmorning and unable to shake off her dismal mood, she’d tried to reach her sheepherder by radio. So far she hadn’t been able to raise him or his tender, who were both back in the mountains.
Branch Murdock often purposely forgot to take his radio with him when he was out checking the sheep. He refused to carry a cell phone, not that she blamed him. There was little coverage back in the mountains anyway. She’d told herself she’d try him later.
Stepping out on the porch now, she leaned against the railing and watched the patrol SUV pull to a stop in front of the house. She’d expected to see Sheriff Frank Curry, a handsome fiftysomething big man with a drooping handlebar mustache, climb out.
The man who emerged after the dust settled wasn’t Frank—but he was as large and broad-shouldered.
Maddie squinted with both curiosity and an inkling of concern as a man in what she estimated as his thirties tilted back his Stetson on his thick head of brown hair to look in her direction. His eyes were pale and hooded. She could make out enough of his features under the shaded brim of his cowboy hat to realize she’d never seen him before.
He wore the entire sheriff’s deputy uniform from the tan shirt to the creased-front slacks and dress boots. She’d never seen any of the local law enforcement in anything but the tan shirt, jeans and well-worn cowboy boots.
Even before he opened his mouth, she knew he wasn’t from anywhere around here.
“Good morning, ma’am,” he said in a voice that was surprisingly low and soft. The accent, though, was all “back East.” He removed his hat and turned the brim in his fingers, and she got her first good look at him. His face was more lined than she’d originally thought, and his hair was graying at his temples. She realized he was closer to her own age, mid-forties.
His eyes were a haunting pale gray. It reminded her of the wolves that had been reintroduced just over the mountains in Yellowstone Park. The wolves that often killed her sheep.
“I’m Deputy Sheriff Bentley Jamison and I’m looking for Madison Conner,” he said, squinting up at her.
“Well, you found her.” She saw his surprise and couldn’t help smiling to herself. He wasn’t the first man who had just assumed the ranch owner was male.
“I’m here about one of your employees,” he said. “A neighbor of yours saw a young man come out of the mountains a little while ago.... The man who called thought your employee might have been in trouble.”
His words brought back the full force of the unease she’d awakened with last night. “What kind of trouble? I don’t know anything about—” She took a step to the edge of the porch stairs then stopped as her gaze slid past him to the faded red barn in need of fresh paint.
Her breath caught as she recognized the lathered-up horse standing next to it. The horse was still saddled, but there was no sign of its rider. Even from the distance she could see that the mare needed tending to at once.
She shoved off the porch steps and sprinted toward the barn. When she got hold of Dewey Putman she’d tan his hide for treating a horse like that. Even as she thought it, though, she felt that sliver of worry dig in deeper.
What was her tender doing back at the ranch? And what had a neighbor seen that would make him call a deputy instead of her?
Maddie reached the horse, her heart breaking at the shape it was in. The mare had been ridden hard. Her fingers brushed over a four-inch cut along one flank, and she saw that the mare was favoring one leg.
She dug her cell phone from her jeans pocket and tapped in the veterinarian’s number, then shoved open the barn door and called Dewey’s name.
Behind her, she was only vaguely aware that the sheriff’s deputy had followed her. In the dim light of the barn, dust motes twirled in the early-morning light as she called Dewey’s name again before the vet came on the line.
“I’ve got a horse that needs attention right away,” she said into the phone. “If you can’t come out...” She let out a relieved sigh. “Thanks, Doc. I appreciate it.”
As she disconnected, she heard a rustling sound deeper in the barn, then a whimper and what sounded like sobbing. She felt her chest tighten. Stuffing her cell phone back into her jeans pocket, she grabbed up a pitchfork as she followed the sound to a back stall.
A few feet from the muffled noise she felt the deputy’s large hand drop to her shoulder. He’d unsnapped his weapon and now motioned for her to stand back and let him handle it.
As a groan came from inside the stall, Maddie gave a shake of her head and banged the stall door open with the pitchfork.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Dewey Putman?” she demanded then froze as she saw her sheep tender cowering in the corner. Her gaze took in his bloodstained clothing, the scratches on his face and the terror in his eyes before he dropped his head into his folded arms again and wept.
“Come out of there, son,” the deputy said as he pushed past her.
She let out the breath that had caught in her throat at the sight of Dewey like this and slowly lowered the pitchfork. “You heard him. Come out.”
Dewey looked up. A lock of his dark hair had fallen over one bloodshot brown eye. She felt her stomach roil.
“Come on,” she said, gentling her voice the way she would have for a spooked horse. She dropped the pitchfork over the partial wall into the next stall and held out her hand.
But before Dewey could take it, the deputy stepped between them.
“I’m going to have to handle this,” he said to her then turned to Dewey. “What’s your name?”
“His name is Dewey Putman. He’s my sheep tender.” Then turning to Dewey, she said, “What I need to know is what you’re doing here, and where are Branch and my sheep?”
The deputy shot her a look that said he’d prefer to do this his way.
Before she could remind him that he was on her ranch or that she had two thousand sheep and possibly no herder, he said, “Could you please make some tea?”
Bristling, Maddie raised a brow. “Tea?”
“Or coffee if you prefer. Something to warm him up. Also, he’ll need a change of clothing. His clothes are soaked. If he isn’t suffering from hypothermia, he will be.”
Ready to do what came naturally and take care of things herself, she had to bite her tongue as she shot another look at Dewey. He was trembling like a dog cornered by a grizzly and in as bad shape or worse than his horse.
Something had happened in the sheep camp back in the Beartooth Mountains. Even before she’d seen the blood on his clothing, she’d known by the look in the young man’s eyes that he was in trouble. The deputy knew it, too.
Dewey was her employee, her responsibility. While her first instinct was to help him, she knew from the warning look the deputy had given her that Dewey’s welfare was now out of her hands.
“I’ll see to his horse,” she said. “There’s a pot of coffee on the stove. Help yourself.”
CHAPTER TWO
DEPUTY SHERIFF BENTLEY JAMISON watched the ranch woman stride off, before turning back to the young man cowering in the corner of the stall. He’d seen his share of young men with blood on their hands. None, though, had looked as terrified as this one.
“Son, I’m going to have to ask you to stand up now,” he said.
As Dewey Putman stumbled to his feet, Jamison searched him for a weapon or any sign of an injury that could account for the blood on the boy’s clothing. The tender was little more than a kid, late teens at most. He had no weapon and had no visible wounds. So there was a good chance the blood on his clothing wasn’t his.
“Let’s go up to the house,” Jamison said. “I’m going to need to call your parents. Can you tell me that number?”
The boy shook his head.
He figured Mrs. Conner must have it as he led the young man through the dimly lit barn.
As they neared the open barn door, Dewey balked. He shook his head, hugging himself and moaning under his breath as he looked toward the bright daylight outside.
It was one of those beautiful early June days in southwest Montana. A blinding sun hung in a cloudless blue sky. The breeze smelled of spring, but its cold bite was a reminder that summer in these parts was weeks off.
“It’s all right,” he told the boy. “It’s not that far to the house. I won’t let anything happen to you.” Still, he had to take Dewey’s trembling arm to get him to cross the patch of sunlit earth to the house. What, he wondered as an icy chill settled over him, had frightened this kid so badly?
At his patrol SUV, he took out the investigation kit he’d been given when he’d started as deputy. So far, he’d had no use for it. Crime in this part of the world was barking dogs, an occasional barroom brawl and traffic control when a semi blew over on the pass. It was a far cry from his job as a homicide detective in New York City.
On the porch, he had the boy strip off his wet, soiled clothing down to his underwear. He led him into the house and was looking for the bathroom when he heard Madison Conner come up the porch steps.
“Don’t touch those,” he said through the screen door as she knelt to pick up the boy’s dirty clothing.
She rose with an indignant sigh, took one glance at her half-naked tender then pulled open the screen door and walked past them. “The bathroom is the second door on the left,” she said, pointing down a short hallway without turning to look at them.
“I need to contact this boy’s parents or guardian,” he said to her retreating back.
“You’re looking at his guardian,” she said before disappearing into the kitchen.
In the green-and-white-tiled 1950s-style bathroom, Jamison turned on the shower and quickly ran the necessary forensics tests, scraping under the boy’s fingernails and swabbing his hands and wrists for gunshot residue, before he let him climb into the hot shower.
He left Dewey long enough to bag the boy’s clothing and load it and the specimens he’d taken into the patrol SUV before he returned to the house.
When he walked in, he found Madison Conner putting clothing outside the bathroom door. She gave him a look that made it clear she didn’t like him interfering with what she considered her business.
Since arriving in the state a few weeks ago, Jamison had learned how independent Montanans were—especially ranch women. Behind the often weathered suntanned skin he’d glimpsed an iron-strong will. He’d never seen more capable women.
Whether hauling trucks loaded with ranch supplies, feeding dozens of ranchers at brandings or jumping in to help with every chore on the spread, there was little these women didn’t know how to do—and well.
This was the first ranch woman, though, that he was about to butt heads with.
He took note of Maddie Conner’s clothing from her loose-fitting large flannel shirt and jeans. Her boots were as worn as her hands, and both were a sign of a hardworking rancher. There were fine lines around her cornflower-blue eyes. The set of her jaw bespoke of a stubbornness born of living in a man’s world. But while she might hide her femininity under a lot of attitude and loose clothing, there was kindness in her face that the years and her lifestyle hadn’t yet eroded.
As she straightened the stack of clothing she’d left for the boy he glimpsed a deep sadness in her expression, which she quickly masked. She made a swipe at an errant lock of her hair. It was long, the dark red of cherrywood with a few streaks of silver woven through. It surprised him to realize she was probably close to his own age.
As if sensing him watching her, she checked her expression and gathered up her thick mane. With nimble fingers she trapped it again in the large clip that held her hair off her neck. He couldn’t help noticing how pale and soft the exposed skin appeared.
“Yes?” she asked, irritation in her tone as her gaze met his.
“I need to ask you a few questions,” he said, embarrassed that she’d caught him staring at her. “You’re Dewey’s legal guardian?”
She gave him a grave nod. “Come into the kitchen,” she said, turning her back on him. She appeared reconciled to the questions and his being there, but definitely not happy about it. “The sooner you get your answers, the sooner I can see to my shepherd and flock.”
Jamison followed her into a sunlit yellow kitchen that looked as if it, like the bathroom, hadn’t been remodeled since the early fifties. The table was large and long with curved metal legs and a yellow checked top that matched the counter. The cabinets were knotty pine and the floor was a familiar linoleum pattern reminiscent of another era.
“How do you take your coffee?” she asked as she pulled down several mugs from the cabinet.
“Black.” He heard the shower shut off. “You said your tender’s name is Dewey Putman?” he asked as he produced his notebook and pen.
Maddie could tell by the way he said “tender” that he had no idea what that was. She put a cup of hot coffee in front of him. A pot was always on at most ranches. Hers was no different since she never knew who might stop by. Not that she got much company anymore. Her own fault for being so contrary, her husband would have said and would have been right.
She was too worried to sit, so she leaned against the counter, cradling her coffee mug, soaking in its warmth. She tried to remember the deputy’s name—something odd, she thought. All she could recall was his last name. Jamison.
“Dewey worked as the tender,” she said. “His job was to take care of the camp while Branch, that’s my sheepherder, took care of the sheep up in the high country for three months this summer.”
“The high country?”
“Back in the Beartooth Mountains—that’s where I graze a couple thousand sheep. The tender moves camp as needed. He cooks, comes down for supplies when they run low—”
“Would they have been running low?”
She shook her head. “Branch just took the sheep up to the grazing area four days ago.”
“And that’s where this boy has been?”
She nodded.
“When was the last time you heard from your sheepherder?”
“Four days ago when I helped take the sheep up. That was the last time I saw either of them until...” An image of Dewey’s horse, then the boy flashed into her mind. She gripped her mug tighter as she lifted it to her lips.
“Your sheepherder is named Branch?”
“Branch Murdock.”
Jamison looked up from his notebook. “His parents named him Branch?”
She gave a shrug. “That’s the name I’ve been putting on his paycheck for almost twenty-five years. Before that my mother wrote the checks.”
“Did everything appear normal when you left them up in the mountains?”
Maddie hated to admit she’d had misgivings about giving the boy the job. “Dewey’s a little green, I’ll admit, but I figured he’d learn well enough from Branch.”
“So the boy hadn’t been a tender before?”
“No.”
“How old is he?”
“Sixteen.” She saw the deputy’s eyes widen. “Plenty of men his age are doing a lot harder ranch work than being a sheep tender.” She knew she sounded defensive, but the deputy unnerved her with his intent silver gaze.
“If you’re his legal guardian, then where are his parents?”
“Divorced. I don’t know where his mother is off to. His father works odd jobs that take him north to the Bakken oil fields for long periods of time. That’s why Chester asked me to give the boy a job and made me his guardian.”
The deputy studied her for a long moment before he asked, “Has Dewey been in trouble before?”
“Who says he’s in trouble now?” she snapped, and looked away, angry with herself, Dewey and the situation. If this man would just let her talk to Dewey and find out what had happened up in those mountains, she could get this cleared up before Deputy Jamison jumped to the wrong conclusion.
“You might as well tell me if the boy’s been in trouble,” Jamison said. “I’ll find out soon enough.”
Silence stretched between them until she finally broke it. “Dewey got into some dustup at school. His father thought spending the summer in the mountains, away from his friends...”
“What kind of...dustup?”
“Boy stuff, I would imagine.” She glanced toward the sound of footfalls in the hallway. “I don’t really know,” she said quietly then turned as Dewey filled the open kitchen doorway. “Come have some coffee,” she called, moving to get him a mug.
Dewey came meekly into the kitchen, wearing her son’s clothing. He looked enough like her Matthew that it felt like being kicked by a horse. She already felt sick at heart as it was for Dewey, for his horse, for whatever had frightened him and maybe worse, whatever he might have done.
“Sit,” she ordered, and turned away to cut the chocolate cake she’d made only that morning. She’d planned to take the cake to the stock-growers’ meeting she had later in the afternoon, but all her plans would change now.
Dewey pulled out a chair at the end of the table, and she placed a slice of cake and a mug of coffee in front of him. She automatically reached for the sugar and cream because that was the way Matthew had always taken his coffee. Dewey ignored both and began to slurp up the hot coffee as if dying of thirst.
The deputy was watching the boy closely. She felt her chest tighten at the thought of what kind of trouble Dewey might be in. “Dewey—”
Jamison cut her off. “That cake looks awfully good, Mrs. Conner. Mind if I have a piece?”
Maddie tried to still her impatience as she sliced the deputy a large portion and topped off his coffee even though he hadn’t touched it. She desperately needed to know what had happened and what she was going to have to do about it.
“Mrs. Conner here was just telling me—”
“Maddie,” she interrupted.
Jamison shot her an annoyed look before turning back to the boy again. “Maddie was just telling me you were hired on as the sheepherder’s tender.”
Dewey nodded but kept his eyes on the cake he was in the process of devouring. He acted as if he hadn’t eaten in days. She realized with a start that Branch wouldn’t have let the boy go hungry—that was, if he’d been able to take care of the two of them.
Did that mean something had happened to Branch? Her stomach dropped at the thought. What of her sheep? She’d been hanging on to the ranch by a thread for so long...
“Son, can you tell me what happened?” the deputy asked.
The fork froze in Dewey’s hand, and then slowly he began to scrape the crumbs from the plate, never taking his eyes off the table, before dropping his fork and washing the cake down with the rest of his coffee.
“How about we start at the beginning?” Jamison said. “For the past four days, you’ve been up in the mountains with the sheepherder, is that right?”
Dewey nodded.
“Where is Branch now?” Maddie asked, ignoring the warning look the deputy shot her.
“I don’t know,” the boy said, dropping his voice and his head.
The deputy cleared his throat. “When did you last see him?”
“Just before bed last night. He said he’d been having trouble sleeping. The noises were keeping him up.”
“The noises? You mean the sheep?” the deputy asked.
Dewey lifted his head and frowned at the silly question. “Branch was used to the sheep. He said he could tell if they were happy or scared just by the sounds they made at night.”
“Then what was keeping him up at night?” the deputy asked.
“The strange sounds...” Dewey glanced back down at the table “...the...crying.”
Maddie couldn’t help herself. “Crying?”
“I’m not making it up,” the boy said, lifting his head to plead his case with her. Tears filled his eyes, and he began to tremble again. “I swear. We heard awful...crying on the wind.”
“You have heard the sound of wind or a coyote calling at night, haven’t you?” Maddie asked in exasperation.
“It weren’t no coyote,” the boy snapped. “It weren’t just the wind, either. It was...something else. Even old Branch was spooked by it.”
“Are you sure Branch didn’t just wander off?” the deputy asked.
“Maybe. His horse was missing this morning. I called for him and looked all over.”
Maddie doubted Dewey had done much searching for the sheepherder given how scared he was.
“How did you get the blood on you?” the deputy asked.
The boy wagged his head without looking up. “One of the lambs. She was hurt. I tried to help her.” He was close to tears again. Maddie remembered her son at that age, so tough and yet so tender, a boy on the edge of manhood doing his best to measure up. If only Matthew was here now, she thought with that unbearable grip at her heart.
“How did you and Branch get along?” Jamison asked.
“Fine,” he said to his empty plate.
Maddie took the plate and cut him another slice of cake. She could feel the deputy’s irritation with her, not that she gave a damn as she slid the second slice of cake in front of Dewey and refilled his mug. She noticed the deputy had hardly touched his cake or his coffee.
“I would imagine with only the two of you up there all alone, you might have had disagreements on occasion,” the deputy asked.
Dewey said nothing as he dived into the cake and coffee she’d set before him. She felt torn between wanting to shake the truth out of Dewey and wanting to protect him. All her instincts told her that the boy needed protecting.
“Branch hard to get along with, was he?” Jamison asked.
“Meaner than a rabid dog when he drank.” The kid, realizing he’d just spilled the beans, shot Maddie an alarmed look and quickly gulped out, “Not that he drank usually.”
Maddie groaned.
“If you had something to do with Branch going missing up there—”
“I didn’t!” he cried. “I swear. I don’t know what happened to him.”
She felt her stomach go tight with fear as a thought hit her. “Where’s Branch’s dog, Lucy? That dog would never have let him out of her sight.”
Dewey shook his head and began to cry.
“Son,” the deputy pressed. “If you know something, you have to tell me.”
“I don’t know. I’m telling you. I...I don’t know anything.”
“I’ve had enough of this,” Maddie said as she shoved off the kitchen counter.
Dewey looked up, startled, as if he thought she planned to beat it out of him.
“I have two thousand sheep up in those mountains, and I can’t be sure anyone is watching them,” she said to Jamison.
“Right now, I have bigger concerns than your sheep,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’m going to have to hold the boy until I know what happened up there. I’m afraid this warrants investigating.”
“Then you see to your investigation, Deputy. I’m going to check on my sheep.” What she couldn’t bring herself to say, let alone admit to this Easterner, was that the future of her ranch was riding on this year’s sheep production.
Not that she wasn’t even more scared out of her wits that something bad had happened to Branch. He wasn’t just her sheepherder. He was as close to a grandfather as she’d ever had. He was also her closest friend.
But if she had tried to explain it to the deputy she would have been fighting tears. And she never cried. She’d done all her crying a long time ago.
As she started down the hallway toward her bedroom, she heard him coming after her. “Mrs. Conner—”
“Maddie,” she snapped without turning around. She had no idea what had happened back in those mountains, but she was scared, sick over the pain she saw in that boy sitting in her kitchen and worried as the devil about Branch, as well as her sheep.
She didn’t have the time or patience to deal with the law right now.
Jamison caught up to her halfway down the hall and grabbed her arm, forcing her to stop and face him. “Maddie, I can’t let you go up there alone.”
“No offense, but a greenhorn like you would just slow me down.”
“I’ll do my best not to,” he said. “But I’m going with you.” His gaze softened as he seemed to notice the tears in her eyes. She wiped at them, as angry with herself as she was with him for noticing.
“Right now I’m concerned about my sheepherder. Branch has been with my family for years. He wouldn’t leave the sheep unattended. Either Dewey is wrong or—”
“Or your sheepherder met with some kind of accident.”
She connected with his gaze. “He’s my responsibility. I really don’t need your help.”
“Did you notice the kid’s knuckles?”
Maddie started. She hadn’t.
“He’s been in a recent fistfight. And that cut over his eye? He didn’t get that from falling down. On top of that, he’s lying about something.”
“You don’t know—”
“I might be a greenhorn in Montana, but I know when a suspect is lying. Before I took the job as deputy here, I was a homicide detective.”
A dark, cold lump formed in her chest. A suspect? Homicide?
“I’m sorry, Mrs.—Maddie, but I’m afraid under the circumstances, neither of us has a choice right now. You have a missing sheepherder and sheep you need to see to. But I can’t let you go up there alone and destroy what I suspect is going to be a crime scene.”
CHAPTER THREE
NOTHING MOVED FASTER in the near ghost town of Beartooth, Montana, than gossip. Even the powerful, fearful winds that blew down out of the Crazy Mountains were no match for the wagging tongues.
This morning the gossip was about Maddie Conner and the Diamond C Ranch’s young tender.
Every morning Lynette “Nettie” Benton crossed the street from her store to the Branding Iron Café to get a cinnamon roll and coffee and the latest gossip. She could always depend on the regulars to dish up tasty tidbits of news or scandal.
In fact, she prided herself on knowing everything that was going on in town. She spent much of her day at the front window of the Beartooth General Store watching the world go by. True, the world passed more like a glacier in Beartooth.
The town, in the shadow of the “Crazies,” as the locals called the Crazy Mountain range, had once been quite the wild mining town back in the late eighteen hundreds. Now, though, other than a bunch of deserted old buildings, there was only her general store, the post office, the Range Rider Bar, a community church and the café, which suited most folks in the area just fine since the larger town of Big Timber was only twenty-some miles away.
In Montana traveling twenty miles was nothing. Many traveled much farther and often on dirt roads just to get to a store—let alone to catch a flight or shop at a big-box store.
Nettie liked to say that she knew more about the people in the area than they did about themselves. And she’d never been shy about spreading what she knew, either, which was why she’d become known as the county’s worst gossip.
She didn’t mind. Let them say what they would. Most days, the tidbits she picked up weren’t all that exciting. This morning, though, she’d hit the mother lode when she’d overheard Fuzz Carpenter.
Fuzz was sitting at the front table at the Branding Iron Café with the rest of the ranchers who gathered there every morning when she heard him mention the woman sheep rancher and her young tender.
Historically sheep ranchers, in what had originally been cattle country, weren’t all that popular. While cattle and sheep ranchers now got along, it was still rare for a woman to be running a sheep ranch. Not to mention the fact that Maddie Conner didn’t take any guff off anyone—especially male ranchers who thought she needed their advice.
“Covered with blood,” Fuzz was saying. “Didn’t take more than a look in that boy’s eyes. Somethin’ bad happened back in those mountains. Mark my words.”
Nettie’s first thought was to call Sheriff Frank Curry and find out what was going on. But then she heard Fuzz say that he’d talked to some new deputy because the sheriff was out of town.
“Bentley Jamison,” Fuzz mocked with the worst impression of a New York accent Nettie had ever heard. “What the hell kind of name is that?” The ranchers all laughed. “Wait until he meets Maddie Conner.” That brought on more laughter. “I wouldn’t even want to take her on.”
Nettie was thinking about the sheriff being out of town. No doubt Frank was visiting his daughter, she thought with a chill.
* * *
SHERIFF FRANK CURRY nervously turned the brim of his Stetson in his fingers as he waited. He was a big man, a throwback from another era with his thick handlebar mustache and longish hair. He could have been a sheriff from a hundred years ago.
The nurse had told him to sit down in one of the chairs in the glassed-in solarium, but he could no more sit than he could fly. He stood at the window, looking out at the rolling land and counting his regrets. They’d been few—before a seventeen-year-old young woman named Tiffany Chandler had shown up at his door. Actually the first time they’d met, he’d caught her in his house going through his bureau drawers as brazen as any thief he’d run across.
Now, at the sound of footfalls behind him, he braced himself and turned to see his daughter and a nurse come into the room.
“Hi, sweetheart,” he said.
Tiffany looked paler than he remembered, thinner, too. She’d cut her long blond hair, hacking it short and choppy with a pair of scissors she’d somehow gotten her hands on.
“How the hell does a mental patient get hold of scissors?” he’d demanded when he’d received the call from the hospital.
“Your daughter is a very...determined young woman,” the nurse had told him. The woman meant sneaky, cunning, shrewd, manipulative—deadly. Determined was a kindness to him that sounded more like pity.
Frank knew what extremes Tiffany would go to once she set her mind to something. She’d almost killed him, after killing something he’d loved.
Looking at her now, he could see there was still a lot of hate and anger in her. He knew that defiant, hurt look too well and liked to believe it masked fear rather than soulless hatred.
Tiffany glared at him with huge blue eyes that dominated her waiflike features. She had refused to let anyone repair the damage she’d done to her hairdo. He’d always noticed a fragility about her, but now it was heightened.
He felt desperate to take her in his arms and protect her—just as he had last February when he’d learned who she was. Until then, he hadn’t known he had a daughter. Still didn’t, actually.
After she’d tried to kill him, the county attorney had sent her for a mental evaluation to see if she could stand trial. The state had also insisted on running a paternity test to see if the teenager actually was Frank’s birth daughter.
The report had come in a large brown envelope, but Frank had never opened it. He felt Tiffany was his responsibility no matter what blood ran through her veins because she was the creation of his vindictive ex-wife.
When he thought of his ex-wife, Pam, he often thought of killing her. That thought only lasted an instant because he wasn’t a killer—and because he had created Pam, just as she had created Tiffany. Pam had kept the pregnancy from him, raising the girl alone and programming her to ultimately take revenge against the man they both now hated.
“How are you doing?” he asked Tiffany, gripping the brim of his hat when he wanted more than anything to hold this poor child. But the nurse had warned him not to try.
“How do you think I’m doing in this crazy bin?” Tiffany spat.
Better than prison, he wanted to tell her. But he couldn’t be sure that prison wasn’t still in her future. It would be up to the state eventually. Right now, he was fighting to keep her from going before a judge on attempted-murder charges against an officer of the law. He feared she would be tried as an adult, and he couldn’t bear the thought of her in prison.
“Is there anything you need, anything I can get for you?” he asked.
“You’ve done quite enough. If that’s all...” She started to turn away.
“Tiffany, the doctor said you haven’t been cooperating.”
She raised one very pale blond brow at him as she let her blue eyes return to him.
“If you get well—”
“Is that what you’re telling them?” She crossed her skinny arms over her skinny chest. “That I’m unwell? Crazy? A lunatic just like my mother?” The nurse put a hand on her shoulder, but Tiffany shook it off. “I’m just fine. And so was my mother before she met you.”
He hated that she wouldn’t take responsibility for what she’d done any more than her mother had the one time he’d talked to her after he’d found out about Tiffany.
“You tried to kill me,” he said to the girl now.
Her eyes glittered an instant before she gave him a slow smile. “I’m just sorry I failed.”
“It’s talk like that that will end you up in prison. Don’t you understand I’m trying to help you?”
“By pressing charges against me?”
“That was the state because I am a county sheriff.” And Tiffany was dangerous, no matter how much he might want to argue otherwise. He sighed, his heart breaking with frustration. He wanted to help her. Why couldn’t she see that?
“Tiffany, I love you. You’re my daughter. I want time to make up for the past since I didn’t even know you existed. Give us that time by working with the doctor so you can get out of here.”
Tears suddenly filled her eyes. “You turned my mother against me.”
His fury at his ex-wife boiled to the surface. She’d sent her only child to seek revenge in the most deadly, destructive way for both him and Tiffany. And now she’d washed her hands of the girl. What mother could do such a thing?
Pam was the one who needed to be in a mental institution, he thought, tamping down his murderous rage. “You know I have no control over your mother. She wants to hurt us both. By making you think I’m responsible, it’s just another way for her to drive us apart.”
Tiffany shook her head, tears now streaming down her face. “She said you would blame her.”
Frank balled his fists at his sides. He didn’t know where Pam was, afraid sometimes of what he would do if he found her. He unclenched his fists, not wanting to give his daughter any more ammunition against him.
“This is your fault,” Tiffany cried. “If you had loved my mother and not that horrible Nettie Benton...”
Frank felt his heart clinch at his former lover’s name on his daughter’s lips. There was only one other person Tiffany and her mother hated more than him.
“None of this has anything to do with Lynette,” he said, using the name he’d always called Nettie. “She was married to Bob when your mother and I were together, and there was nothing going on between us.”
“Mother said you never got over the bitch.”
He would have loved arguing that, but he couldn’t. His daughter would have seen the truth. “I married your mother because I loved her.” That much at least was true. Pam’s jealousy had destroyed the marriage, but Tiffany wouldn’t believe that. He hated even thinking about those dark days, never knowing what mood Pam would be in when he returned home.
“Mother said you never tried to get her back.”
They’d had this discussion too many times, and nothing he could say weakened the venom Pam had injected into their daughter’s veins.
“I can’t change the past. Had I known about you, I would have gone after your mother and brought you both back. She never gave me that chance.”
The girl shook her head, her big blue eyes filling with tears. “If I had known that Nettie Benton was the woman you were in love with...” She didn’t have to continue. He knew. Tiffany had come to Beartooth with a gun and a heart full of hate.
She knew where to find him, but she’d been looking for Lynette Johnson. That had been Lynette’s name when the two of them were in their early twenties and lovers. Tiffany hadn’t known that Lynette went by the name Nettie Benton.
Frank wished more than anything that he and Lynette had married and had children of their own. Instead Lynette had married Bob Benton. And years later, he’d foolishly married Pam Chandler. Their marriage had been short and far from sweet.
It wasn’t enough that Pam and Tiffany had brought him to his knees. But he lived in fear that Tiffany, if released, would go after Lynette, the woman he’d loved and lost years ago and still loved now.
Or that Pam, realizing her daughter might never be free again, might decide to take matters into her own hands.
* * *
JAMISON CALLED HIS office in Big Timber and discussed the situation with the undersheriff in charge. They both agreed he should go up into the mountains with Mrs. Conner.
“At this point, it doesn’t warrant sending search and rescue up there,” Undersheriff Dillon Lawson said. “We don’t know that a crime has been committed or even if the sheepherder is actually missing.”
They wouldn’t know about the blood on the boy’s coat until the forensics came back from the state lab, and who knew how long that would take?
“The boy’s been in a fight,” Jamison said. “Something happened up there. Something bad enough that the boy is terrified. But you’re right—there’s no smoking gun.” Not yet anyway.
“Okay. This could take you a few days, though. You’re scheduled off this weekend. If this case runs over...”
“I doubt it will. If it does, it isn’t a problem.”
“Let me know what you find—if you can get cell-phone coverage from one of the higher peaks up there, call me. Coverage up there is sketchy at best. If it becomes a rescue operation or worse, we can send in a helicopter once we have the location. So it is just going to be you and Maddie Conner going up there?”
“She’s not keen on my going along.”
Dillon chuckled. “I’ll just bet. Good luck.”
Jamison hung up and went to check on Dewey Putman. He got the feeling that the undersheriff thought his going up into the mountains would be good for him. Knock some of the back-East off of him. Apparently Maddie’s reputation had also preceded her since the undersheriff found some humor in his going with her.
In the kitchen, he saw that Dewey had finished his cake and coffee, shoved his dirty dishes away and, with his head cradled on his arms, had fallen into an exhausted sleep on the table.
He knew Maddie Conner was holding out hope that Dewey hadn’t done anything wrong and that they would find nothing out of the ordinary back in her summer sheep camp. He wished he could share her optimism.
“For all you know that is lamb blood on that boy’s jacket, just like he said,” she’d argued before he’d gone out to make the call to the office.
“Maybe. I think you should call the boy’s father. Meanwhile, I’m afraid he’ll have to be held in custody at the jail since his guardian will be in the mountains with me.”
“I already called the oil company and left a message for his father. Since there is no one else, I guess that’s the best we can do for now.”
“We shouldn’t be gone that long,” Jamison had said.
She’d given him a disbelieving smile. “There is only one way to get back where we need to go, Deputy, and that’s by horseback, so it’s going to take a while. You ever ridden a horse? Never mind. I’ll saddle you a gentle one. But you’re going to need some boots and some practical clothes. I think some of my husband’s will fit you.”
Before he’d been able to ask about her husband, she’d disappeared down the hall. He remembered the way Maddie had been looking at the kid earlier, so much heartbreak in her eyes. It had made him wonder where she’d gotten the clothing she’d given Dewey. Did she have a son of her own?
Leaving the sleeping boy, he stepped back in the living room and looked for family photographs. While he waited for Maddie, he couldn’t help being curious. To his surprise, he found no family photographs. That seemed strange. She’d mentioned a husband and she’d produced boys’ clothing, but there was no sign anyone lived here but her.
“I put some clothes out for you,” she said from behind, startling him. As he turned, she gave him an irritated look as if she knew he’d been snooping. “I put them in a room down the hall. I’ll get what we’ll need together and go load the horses.” Without another word, she disappeared out the front door.
Jamison found a flannel shirt, canvas jacket, a yellow slicker, jeans and several pairs of heavy socks along with a pair of cowboy boots waiting for him in what appeared to be a spare bedroom. He was surprised when everything fit fairly well.
Having changed quickly, he came out of the bedroom and listened for a moment to make sure Maddie had left the house before sticking his head in the other rooms. He found Maddie’s bedroom and the family photos he’d been looking for. In a wedding-day photograph, he studied an innocent-looking young Maddie standing next to a handsome young man.
She’d been beautiful. So fresh and sweet looking. She’d had that “I’m ready to conquer the world” look in those blue eyes of hers. She’d looked...happy.
There were later photos of the husband and Maddie and finally some of a son. So where were this son and husband now?
Stepping back out of the room, Jamison went into the kitchen to check on Dewey again. The boy still slept as if he hadn’t so much as dozed in days. In the living room, Jamison put in a call to the sheriff’s office again.
Lucille Brown, a good-natured older woman, was working dispatch today. She’d put through the earlier call from Fuzz Carpenter and had given him directions to the Diamond C.
“Can you provide me with some background information on Madison Conner?” he asked. Through the window, he could see Maddie talking to a man he suspected was the veterinarian she’d called earlier about Dewey’s horse.
“Maddie? What do you want to know? She raises sheep. She still sends her flock up into the high country every summer. Last of the ranches to do that. Gotta hand it to her. She’s tough as any woman I’ve ever met.”
Jamison could sure as hell attest to that. He’d probably met a more stubborn, headstrong woman in his life, but he couldn’t recall one.
“Does she have a son?” he asked just as Maddie turned and started back toward the house.
“Matthew. Lost him and her husband in a tragic accident four summers ago. Everyone thought she’d sell out and leave after that. But not Maddie. It’s her family’s place, but word around town is that it might not be for long. She’s had some tough breaks. If Fuzz is right and something has happened to Branch...”
“We don’t know that,” he said.
Just as Maddie reached the porch steps, a Sweetgrass County patrol car pulled in. “I’ve got to go,” Jamison told Lucille, and disconnected as Maddie came through the door.
“Ready?” She had a resigned look on her face as if braced for not only being forced to allow him to go along, but also for whatever she had to face up in those mountains.
Jamison had noticed the tall antenna on the roof when he was walking Dewey back to the house from the barn. He assumed it was for a radio and now saw the base unit on a table in the corner of the living room.
“Have you heard anything from Branch?” he asked, motioning to the two-way radio receiver.
“I haven’t talked to either of them since I left them four days ago. I already told you that.”
“But you tried to reach them.” She’d left an earlier coffee mug by the base unit. He was betting that the coffee was cold from this morning. So she had been worried, just as he suspected.
She swallowed and let out a sigh before she answered. “I tried to raise Branch this morning.”
“You couldn’t?”
“It doesn’t mean anything. He doesn’t like carrying the radio, so he often leaves it in camp.” She sounded defensive and not for the first time today.
“Why did you try to reach him this morning?”
“I was just checking—”
“You were worried because of Dewey.”
Her gaze came back to his, as determined as the set of her shoulders. “Are you trying to put words into my mouth, Deputy?”
“Sorry. What were you checking on?”
“Just to make sure they were doing all right.”
“You do that often?” He wondered if she’d lie and was glad when she didn’t.
“No. I was concerned that Dewey might be...homesick. His father was determined that sheep camp was just what his son needed. He wanted Dewey away from his friends, and with his father gone so much of the time...”
“But you had your doubts.”
She gave him an impatient look. “Not everyone can spend that much time alone.”
“But Branch was with him.”
She let out an amused snort. “Branch isn’t much of a talker. He could go for days without a single word, so yes, Dewey would have had a lot of time to himself. Just because he got scared and came out of the mountains, doesn’t mean—”
“Please try to reach Branch,” he said, motioning to the radio.
She did as he asked, though with apparently the same result as she’d had earlier. “Like I said, he probably doesn’t have the radio with him.”
“Or he’s unable to answer. Does he have a cell phone with him?”
“No, but they aren’t worth a hill of beans back where we’re going. Not really anywhere to plug it in, either, when it runs out of juice.” She turned and started out the door, clearly over his interrogation.
“So where exactly are we going?” he asked as he went after her. Even with his longer legs, he had to walk fast to keep up with her.
“Up there,” she said without slowing down as she descended the porch steps and strode across the yard toward the barn. She waved a hand past the low sheep barns to the snowcapped mountains rising to dizzying heights in the distance. “It’s a good day’s ride.” She shot him a look, assessing him, as he caught up to her. He could see that he came up lacking in her estimation.
“A whole day?” That surprised him. He looked again to the mountains. He’d come out here wanting to lose himself in this wild remote country, but he hadn’t meant literally.
“We’re getting a late start,” she said as if his questions were slowing them down even more. “We’ll be lucky to reach camp in two.”
Jamison had looked at a map of the area before he’d left New York and had been in awe at the way the mountains to the south of Big Timber ran all the way to Yellowstone Park with the only access from this area by foot or horseback.
As he stared at the snowcapped peaks, he couldn’t imagine what it must be like way back in such an isolated place, let alone how difficult it would be to survive in such unforgiving, wild country. It had to mess with a person’s mind. He wondered what it had done to Dewey Putman.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE PICKUP RATTLED up the road, the horse trailer with two horses inside knocking along behind it. As Maddie drove, the road narrowed until it was little more than two ruts. They followed the Boulder River through a tight canyon of rock and pines, the road winding deeper into the mountains.
Jamison looked over at the ranch woman. She had a tight grip on the wheel, her eyes on the road ahead and a determined set to her jaw. He wanted to ask about her husband and son as well as how far they would drive before they would unload the horses and head up into the mountains.
But he held his tongue, sensing the last thing she wanted to do right now was talk to him, especially about her husband and son.
So he focused on the road ahead and tried not to let his thoughts get too far ahead of him—or behind him for that matter. When he’d left New York for Montana, he’d promised himself that he wasn’t going to belabor that former life with thoughts of if only.
But he couldn’t help thinking about Maddie’s ranch house with its 1950s decor and its family photos in her bedroom—and the high-dollar, high-rise apartment he’d shared with his now ex-wife and the complete lack of family photographs anywhere in it.
Lana had insisted on a professional decorator who had assured her that family photographs on the mantel were tacky.
He’d given her free rein, not caring at the time. He’d just wanted Lana to be happy.
“So have you always done this?” Jamison asked, needing to break the silence and avoid thoughts of his ex-wife and that other life.
Maddie shot him a glance. “Driven a truck with a horse trailer on the back?”
“Raised sheep.”
“It’s my family’s ranch, so yes, five generations worth of sheep ranchers. You know anything about sheep?” She continued before he could answer. “Sheep don’t like to walk in water or move through narrow openings. They prefer to move into the wind and uphill rather than downwind or downhill. They see in color but have poor depth perception. That’s why they avoid shadows and always move toward the light. They have excellent hearing, so they’re more sensitive to high-frequency sounds. Loud noises scare them. They’re actually quite timid, easily frightened and defenseless against predators. A sheep falls on its back? It can’t right itself. It will die right there if someone isn’t watching over it.”
“I...I didn’t know—”
“Sheep are nothing like cows,” she said as if he hadn’t spoken. “Cattle need to be fenced in or handled by a bunch of cowboys on horseback. With sheep, all it takes is one experienced sheepherder. He can handle over a thousand head of sheep alone with no fence, no night corrals, just him, his horse and his dog.”
“Why are you—”
“Because you don’t know anything about sheep or where we’re headed. I’m willing to bet you’ve never been in country like this. It’s rugged and wild, isolated and unforgiving—not the kind of place to take a greenhorn. So it’s not too late to change your mind,” she said.
“Change my mind?”
“About going with me. I’d be happy to let you know what I find.”
He shook his head. “I’ll be fine.”
She scoffed at that. “When was the last time you spent two days on horseback at over ten thousand feet above sea level?”
“I’ll try not to be a bother to you.”
She sighed. “If you can’t keep up, I’ll leave you behind.” She shot him a look. “I’m serious. I need to get to the sheep camp and check on my sheepherder. I won’t let you slow me down.”
“Agreed.” He glanced at the .357 Magnum pistol strapped on her hip. “As long as it isn’t your policy to shoot stragglers.”
“Best not find out,” she said, slowing the pickup. Ahead he saw a wide spot next to the river. Beyond that was a Jeep trail that rose abruptly, and beyond that was nothing but towering pine-covered mountains.
“This is where we leave the truck,” she said and climbed out.
* * *
NETTIE BENTON HATED to think of Frank up at the state mental hospital visiting his daughter. She’d known right from the start that there was something wrong with Tiffany when she’d rented her the apartment over the store. But it wasn’t until she’d seen the girl’s demonized drawings of Sheriff Frank Curry that she’d realized Tiffany was dangerous.
She shook her head, remembering how that girl had almost killed him. Just the memory made her heart pound. Poor Frank. Nettie had tried to warn him, but Frank being Frank had thought the girl harmless. Tiffany and her horrible mother had put him through the wringer, and they weren’t through with him yet.
“Don’t be jealous of my daughter,” Frank had said when she’d tried to talk to him about Tiffany.
“You don’t even know if she’s really your daughter.”
“Lynette—”
“Frank, she tried to kill you!”
He’d just shaken his head and given her one of his patient smiles. “I have to try to help her. Please try to understand.”
She understood that he’d been scarce as hen’s teeth since the girl showed up in town and worse now that Tiffany was locked up miles away at the state mental hospital.
Nettie missed him stopping into the store for his usual: an orange soda and a candy bar. She’d always thought he dropped by as an excuse to see her. She’d even thought they might have a second chance together—after her husband, Bob, had left for good, after deciding he wanted to live in Arizona, and before Frank’s daughter had come into his life. If she even was his daughter.
Nettie shoved away the heartbreaking thought that maybe she and Frank had missed their chance for happiness a second time as she listened to the men in the café speculate on what could have happened to Maddie’s young sheep tender.
Sensing there was nothing more to be gained this morning at the café, Nettie made her way back across the street to the two-story Beartooth General Store. She’d married the store, choosing Bob instead of Frank at her mother’s encouragement. She regretted the Bob part, but the store was her life. Especially now that her husband—soon to be ex—had deserted her for a trailer in an Arizona desert. Running the store had kept her mind off her unfulfilled marriage and the regret that had eaten away at her for almost thirty years.
The only bright spot in her day had been Sheriff Frank Curry’s occasional visits. With those few and far between lately, Nettie felt at loose ends. Even the latest gossip about Maddie Conner’s tender couldn’t lift her mood.
As she neared the store, she saw a customer waiting for her in the shade of the wide store porch that ran the width of the building.
“If you’d read the sign on the door, it would have told you to come over to the café to get me.” She squinted against the bright spring day and did a double take as she recognized the man waiting for her. “J.D.?”
* * *
J. D. WEST STEPPED out of the shadow of the Beartooth General Store porch, a grin on his handsome face. In his mid-fifties, J.D. was one of those men who only got better looking with age—much like Sheriff Frank Curry, Nettie thought.
“How ya doin’, sweetheart?” He had dark hair and eyes and a grin that had made many a young woman drop her panties before he’d left town.
She couldn’t have been more surprised to see him. It had been years since he’d left on the run after a row with his older brother, Taylor, and the law hot on his trail.
Nettie had heard J.D. had gotten caught and done some jail time over in Miles City, Montana. Rumors had circulated about him over the years, and alleged sightings all over the West had been reported. Most everyone either thought J. D. West was in prison somewhere or dead.
“You look like you’ve just seen a ghost,” he said with a laugh.
His laugh took Nettie back, and for a moment they were both teenagers again. She’d always liked J.D. even though she’d never succumbed to his charm.
You like men who live on the edge. It was Bob’s voice in her head. That’s why you’ve been carrying a torch for Frank Curry all these years. She would be so glad when she could shut Bob up for good.
“What are you doing here?” she blurted out.
He laughed again. “Here as in Beartooth? Or here as in standing on your porch waiting for you?” He didn’t give her a chance to answer. “I decided to pay a visit to my old stompin’ grounds. When I saw your sign in the window...” He grinned.
For a moment, she didn’t know which sign in the window he was referring to. But glancing past him, she saw her apartment-for-rent sign. The apartment over the store had been empty since Tiffany Chandler had been arrested and taken away.
“You want to rent my apartment?”
“I sure do. That is, if you’ll rent it to me for a week to start. Then we’ll see after that.”
She wasn’t surprised he had no plans to stay with his brother, Taylor, out at the West Ranch. As far as she knew, the trouble between the two had never been reconciled. The two brothers couldn’t have been more different. Taylor was a family man who’d never been in trouble in his life. J.D. had been in trouble almost since the day he was born.
“I’ll pay in cash,” he said, seeing her hesitation.
She couldn’t say no. Not to J.D. Also, she hadn’t had any other takers for the apartment. She had hesitated more out of surprise than anything else.
“Of course I’ll rent it to you,” she said as she climbed the steps to the porch. “Come inside and I’ll show it to you. It’s nothing fancy, mind you.”
“Not looking for fancy, but I’ll bet it is real nice.”
She turned to look back at him as she entered the store. “Have you been out to the ranch yet?”
J.D. chuckled. “Not yet. I’m getting up my courage. Not expecting a brass band, but even a lukewarm welcome would be appreciated.”
“I hope it goes well,” she said. She opened the inside door to the apartment and climbed the stairs.
“That is real sweet of you, Nettie.”
It wasn’t every day that a man told her she was sweet.
“Damn you look good,” J.D. said, grinning when they reached the apartment.
She felt herself flush. “You always were the worst liar.” Her hand went to her new hairdo. She patted her out-of-the-bottle red curls, pleased.
He shook his head, his gaze softening as it met hers. “I mean it, Nettie. You’re a sight for sore eyes. I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed you and Beartooth. So fill me in on everything that’s been going on,” he said as he moved through the apartment.
She loved nothing better than telling him what she knew about Beartooth. He was especially interested in the latest about Maddie Conner and her tender, and Fuzz Carpenter’s speculation that Branch Murdock was dead—murdered—up in the Beartooths.
“I didn’t know anyone was still running sheep up there,” J.D. said distractedly as he moved to the front window and glanced out.
“Maddie’s the last, and if Branch is dead, well, this will probably be her final year. So what do you think of the apartment?”
J.D. turned to smile at her. “I love it.”
As she watched him pull out money for a week’s rent, Nettie couldn’t help but wonder what he was really doing back in town. J. D. West wasn’t the kind of man who got homesick. He was the kind who’d put Beartooth in his rearview mirror years ago—and never looked back.
* * *
TO MADDIE’S SURPRISE, the deputy offered to saddle his own horse. “You ride?”
“Before I moved to the city, my family had horses.”
She raised a brow. “What kind of horses?”
He hesitated just long enough that she knew they’d been fancy, expensive horses. “Thoroughbreds.”
She chuckled. Didn’t he realize how obvious it was that he came from wealth? Apparently not. How interesting that he wanted to play it down.
“Did your family race them?” she asked as she hefted her saddle up onto the horse’s back.
“No. My sister was involved in some jumping competitions. I preferred to just ride the horses.”
As if that made him less of an elitist. She could hear the Ivy League education behind his words. “Harvard? Princeton?”
“Harvard,” he said as he clinched up his saddle. “Law school. I was an attorney at my wife’s father’s firm for ten years before becoming a cop.” He chuckled and looked up at her. “Aren’t you going to ask how I ended up a deputy sheriff in Big Timber, Montana?”
She’d noticed the pale line on his ring finger and the way he nervously touched the spot when he thought she wasn’t looking. The missing wedding band was like a phantom limb, she thought. It was still there in a way he couldn’t seem to get past. She assumed its loss was too fresh. Which she’d bet explained what he was doing in Montana.
“Nope, that’s sufficient information,” she said.
He laughed. “It seems only fair you tell me something about you.”
She shook her head. “I only asked you those things because I just needed to know if you could ride a horse and were smart enough to stay out of my way,” she said as she swung up into the saddle. “Ready?”
“I’m ready if you are,” he said as he mounted the horse.
“I hope so,” she said, glancing over at him. “We have a long ride ahead of us.” She had no idea how far they would have to go. It would depend on where Branch had last made camp with the sheep. She knew where they should be, but she wasn’t betting on anything at this point.
Just as she doubted the deputy was any more ready for what was ahead of them than she was. But it was clear that neither of them was turning back.
* * *
“WHO WAS THAT?”
On the porch of the general store just after lunch, Nettie turned in surprise to see Sheriff Frank Curry standing behind her. She hadn’t heard him drive up. For a moment she was so happy to see him that she didn’t even register the disapproval in his tone.
“Don’t tell me that was who I think it was,” he said, sounding upset.
“Well, if you think it was J. D. West, then you’re right.” J.D. had professed to love the apartment, paid in cash for a week and told her again how wonderful she looked.
Then he’d bought her lunch, bringing sandwiches over from the café so the two of them could sit on the store porch and eat them. Just moments before the sheriff had appeared, she’d been watching J.D. drive away, warmed by his return to Beartooth.
“What’s he doing in town?” Frank demanded, frowning after J.D.’s pickup.
She definitely didn’t like his tone. “Visiting his family.”
“How long is he staying?”
“As long as he wants to.” Her hands went to her hips. “What’s with all the questions?”
He blinked before turning his frown on her. “He’s trouble.”
“You haven’t seen him in years. Maybe he’s changed.”
Frank scoffed at that.
It had been weeks since she’d seen Frank. This wasn’t how she’d hoped things would go when he stopped by the store again.
“Well, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt,” she said, feeling her indignation as well as her temper rise.
“Of course you are.”
He was making her mad now. “What does that mean?”
“It means, Lynette, that you have always had a soft spot for J.D.” Frank was the only one who called her by her given name. Normally just the sound of it on his lips would have made her day.
“Frank Curry, that’s not true! That was more than thirty years ago, but you were always the one who—” She caught herself before she said, “—I was soft on.”
“You can bet he’s here for more than a visit.” Frank’s gaze narrowed at her. “What did he want with you?”
She bristled. “Maybe he just stopped in to say hello or buy something.”
Frank shook his head. “He’s a lot cagier than that. Believe me, he wanted something.” He shoved back his Stetson, his gaze on her face. “What did he want?” Clearly he was determined to wait her out. She realized he must have overheard J.D. saying he would be back.
“You’ll find out soon enough anyway, I guess,” she said with a sigh. “He asked about renting my apartment.”
“I hope to hell you didn’t rent it to him.”
“As a matter of fact, I did.”
Frank swore again. “What were you thinking, Lynette?”
“That maybe he deserves a second chance? People change, you know.” She knew this was aimed more at herself and Frank and had little to do with J.D. It was she and Frank who deserved a second chance. Why couldn’t he see that?
He eyed her warily. “What are you getting so mad about?”
“You. I haven’t seen you in weeks, and you suddenly show up and...” She choked on the words, unable to say more for fear she would cry. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been brought to tears, but standing out here on the store porch, the spring air warm and scented with pines, wasn’t going to be one of them.
“I want you to stay clear of him.”
She stared at Frank in disbelief. “If I didn’t know better I’d think you were...jealous.”
“Jealous? Isn’t it possible that I worry about you? That I don’t want to see you make an even bigger mistake?”
“I’m sorry, but what was the first big mistake you’re referring to?”
He pulled his Stetson off and slammed it against his leg as if to knock off invisible dust. He had to know he’d stepped in it this time.
“Well, Frank? Surely it wasn’t me not marrying you.”
He stuffed his hat back on his thick, blond-and-only-slightly-graying hair. If only he wasn’t so good-looking.
“Sometimes, Lynette,” he said and, without another word, turned and strode across the street toward the Branding Iron.
Nettie watched him go, wanting to call him back and start over. She realized she should have asked about Tiffany. She also shouldn’t have gotten mad and said what she had. More than anything she wanted him to have been as happy to see her as she’d been to see him.
It wasn’t like him to let someone like J.D. upset him like that. Frank hadn’t been himself for months now. She worried about him—when she wasn’t furious with him. How long was it going to take for him to come to his senses and ask her out? They’d both be ninety with one foot in the grave by the time he finally got around to it. If he ever did.
“Stubborn damned fool,” she said under her breath, all the time hoping he would look back before he disappeared into the café. He didn’t.
* * *
THE FIRST THING Deputy Jamison noticed after they left the truck and horse trailer behind and rode into the mountains was the quiet. It hung in the dark, dense pines. The sound of the horses climbing the mountain seemed small and isolated as if nothing could truly disrupt the mountains’ eerie silence.
Just when he thought he would give anything to break that quiet, the wind came up. A dust devil spun off to his right, appearing to come out of nowhere, and then it was all around them. The wind blowing off the snowy peaks was icy cold and unforgiving. It quickly became a dull roar that was as grating as the silence had been.
As they rode deeper into the mountains, the gale shrieked. It lay over the tall grass and whipped the pine boughs. He caught glimpses of the terrain ahead, a tableau of sheer rock cliffs and grassy bowls above the tree line.
With a start, he realized he’d never been this far from civilization before. He could feel the temperature dropping as they ascended the mountain. The day wore on with the gentle rocking of the horse and creaking of his saddle.
He didn’t know how far they had ridden, only that the air had gotten colder as the weak spring sun inched its way to the west and finally dissolved behind the farthest peak.
While he’d ridden a horse before, never had he ridden one for this long. He was growing weary of being in the saddle, when Maddie reined in ahead of him. As she dismounted, he glanced at his watch. There was still at least an hour of daylight. “Why are we stopping?”
“This is where we spend the night,” she said without looking at him.
He glanced around. She’d stopped at the edge of a stand of pines under a sheer rock face. Ahead there was nothing but wide-open windswept country and more mountain peaks as far as the eye could see.
“I was hoping we might get far enough that we could see the sheepherder’s camp before dark,” he said.
“In the first place, we don’t know where that is,” she said, still not looking at him as she began to untie her saddlebag. “Second, this is where we make camp for the night.”
He couldn’t help himself. “There isn’t a better place to camp?”
Maddie finally turned to look at him. “This is where we make camp,” she repeated. “Why don’t you make yourself useful and scare up some wood for the fire.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said and slid down from his horse. The ground felt good beneath his feet. His posterior ached from the hours in the saddle, but he wasn’t about to mention that to the woman. Nor did he let himself limp in her presence until he could stretch out his legs again.
“Don’t go too far,” she said, reaching for his reins. “There are grizzlies up here with heads the size of semi steering wheels.”
“Are you trying to scare me, Mrs. Conner?”
She chuckled as she led the horses down a small slope that ended in a spot below the rock cliff. Looking closer, he made out what appeared to be a lean-to deep in the pines out of the wind. Closer, the pines at the edge of the stand had been twisted from years of wind and bad weather into grotesque forms.
Jamison set about gathering firewood. By the time he joined her down by the lean-to, she had unpacked their gear and the food she’d brought.
This close to the cliff, the wind was no longer buffeting him. It felt good to get out of it for a while, even though he could hear it in the tops of the pines overhead. The boughs moaned and swayed back and forth in a sky that was losing light fast.
He felt the cold chill of the upcoming night and looked to the mountains ahead, wondering where the sheepherder would be spending it. Or if he was in any shape to care.
CHAPTER FIVE
“I SUPPOSE YOU don’t know how to make a fire,” Maddie said as the deputy dropped his load of firewood next to the ring of charred rocks. The ground inside the ring was blackened from other fires. Jamison wondered how many times she’d made camp here, how many fires had burned to ashes to the sound of the wind overhead.
“Actually, I do know how to build a fire,” he said, kneeling next to the fire ring.
She glanced at him, pretending surprise. “They taught that at the fancy summer camps you went to?”
“You don’t like me much, do you?” he said as he set about getting a fire started.
“It’s nothing personal.”
He chuckled at that. “I shouldn’t take you calling me a greenhorn personally? Or that you make fun of the way I was brought up?”
“You are a greenhorn and you were privileged.”
“But it’s more than that,” he said, looking up at her.
Her eyes were the deep blue of the sky they’d ridden under all afternoon. Her expression softened. He could see the fear even before she voiced it.
“I don’t like you coming up here to make a case against Dewey.”
“If Dewey is innocent—”
“You’re already convinced he’s not.”
“I have my doubts about his story, yes.” He lit the small kindling under the larger logs. The flames licked at the dry wood and began to crackle. “I don’t make assumptions. What I know is that Dewey’s lying about something and he’s terrified, not to mention his clothing was covered in blood. Also, according to Dewey, your sheepherder is apparently missing.”
“Once we find Branch...” Maddie looked past the fire to the peaks in the distance “...I’m sure he’ll clear this all up.”
Jamison heard the hope and saw the worry. It mirrored his own.
Maddie cooked a simple meal that they ate around the fire, both quiet, both lost apparently in their own thoughts. The only sound was wind high in the pines and the soft crackle of the fire as darkness seemed to drop over them without warning.
Jamison had never seen such blackness. Up here in these mountains the dark appeared to have a life of its own. It became a hulking beast crouched just beyond the glow of the campfire.
While it made him uneasy not knowing what was out there—maybe whatever had scared Dewey Putman so badly?—Maddie seemed content here. Jamison had little fear of the animals. It was humans and what they were capable of that kept him awake at night.
The fire flickered, casting golden light on Maddie’s face, and he glimpsed the beautiful woman she’d been when she was younger. It was nothing like the quiet beauty she had now, though. There was a tranquil magnificence in her that sneaked up on him. That she was capable and self-assured only added to that beauty.
She brushed back an errant strand of hair as if she felt him watching her. He saw irritation in the movement. She was a woman used to spending most of her days alone, he realized. She wasn’t used to a man looking at her—maybe especially the way he was. He found her intriguing equally in her strength—and her vulnerability.
“I really would like to know more about you,” he said as the silence stretched taut between them.
She glanced up at him, pretending to be surprised to find him sitting across from her. “Are you asking as a deputy?”
“No, I just thought since we’re going to be spending time together—”
She rose abruptly, dusting her hands off on her jeans. “Then I can’t imagine why you’d have any interest in me. We leave at daybreak. I’d suggest you get some sleep.”
He watched her walk over and pick up the saddlebags with the food she’d brought. As she moved to tie them to a rope hanging from a nearby tree, he got up to help her.
“You’re putting our food in a tree?” he asked as he reached to help hoist the bundle higher.
She refused to relinquish the rope, forcing him to step back as she finished tying it. “Bears,” she said as if he should have known that.
He glanced at their sleeping bags stretched out beside the small campfire.
“Grizzlies,” she said, and he saw the first hint of mischief in those blue eyes.
“Seems a little silly tying up a small amount of food when the bears will have us to eat.”
“I’m not worried,” she said, stepping past him toward the fire. “They’ll be full by the time they finish with you.”
He smiled as she walked over and climbed fully clothed into the sleeping bag on the other side of the fire. She lay down, her back to him.
“The woman has a sense of humor after all,” he said loud enough he was sure she could hear. He considered sitting on the overturned stump by the fire until the blaze burned out. He felt antsy, certainly not ready to go to sleep this early.
Looking up, he caught a glimpse of stars through the swaying pine boughs. The sky seemed alive with them. He stepped out of the trees so he could see the amazing sight. It was magnificent. He gaped at the ceiling of darkness and light in awe. He’d never seen so many stars. Nor had he ever seen such an expansive sky. It arced between the horizons, a midnight-blue canopy bespeckled with millions of twinkling stars.
Away from the fire, though, he was instantly cold. Even standing by it, only the parts of his body near the flames were warm. He walked back, but the fire had died to only a few glowing embers that gave off little heat.
Maddie hadn’t made a peep. He wondered if she was asleep. He thought about looking for more wood for the fire, but changed his mind.
He’d never slept in his clothing in his entire life. Even as cold as it was up here, he slipped out of the canvas coat she’d lent him, then the flannel shirt down to his T-shirt. Goose bumps rippled across his skin. He considered taking off the jeans she’d provided for him, but one glance around and he decided he might have to get up in a hurry, and would be better off at least partially dressed.
The lining of the sleeping bag was ice-cold against his bare arms, and it took him a moment to warm up. He rolled up his coat and shirt for a pillow then curled on his side to watch what was left of the fire die away. He thought about what they might find tomorrow and how he would handle it.
It kept his mind off everything but Maddie Conner.
* * *
SHERIFF FRANK CURRY couldn’t help being mad at himself on so many levels. Right now, though, it was the way he’d handled things with Lynette.
After their run-in, he’d gotten something to eat at the café, half hoping Lynette would come over and join him. She hadn’t. Too upset to go to his empty house, he’d driven over to Bozeman and gone to a movie. Now, on the way home, he couldn’t even remember what it was about.
Driving through the darkness toward his ranch east of Beartooth, he mentally kicked himself for not calling Lynette. He could have patched things up by asking her to the movie. What would it have hurt? He could have called her, apologized... But what did he have to apologize for? She was the one who’d rented her apartment over the store to J. D. West and thought nothing of it.
His chest ached at the thought of J.D. pulling the wool over her eyes. Why was Lynette so blind when it came to men?
“So what are you going to do about it?” he demanded of himself as he drove down the narrow dirt road toward home. What could he do?
Nothing right now. He felt like a single parent. He knew that was silly. But he now had all the responsibilities that came with being a single parent. Tiffany needed him since Pam had deserted her daughter. He was all the girl had now. So when he wasn’t working, he went up to the state hospital to see her.
But that wasn’t the only reason he’d stayed away from Lynette. He was afraid for her because of Pam and Tiffany. He thought that if he put distance between them, then maybe it would keep her safe.
So the situation frustrated the hell out of him when he was around her. He wanted Lynette, needed her, but right now the best thing he could do was give her a wide berth. Who knew what would happen with Tiffany’s case? What if she did get out of this?
He couldn’t forget that Tiffany was a danger to Lynette. And Pam...well, who knew how dangerous she was to them all?
When he’d found out about Tiffany, he’d tried to find Pam. Apparently she hadn’t wanted to be found, which shouldn’t have come as a surprise after what she’d done.
He’d hired a private investigator to get her number for him. He’d talked to her once—for all the good it had done. She had pretended not to know what he was talking about when he’d accused her of poisoning Tiffany against him, programming the child to kill him.
Months later he’d called again and found the line had been disconnected. Which was just as well, he told himself. He was afraid of what he would do if he knew where she was.
He figured she’d probably taken off. Done her damage to him and Tiffany and then gone off, her mission over. But to add fuel to the fire, she’d managed to tell Tiffany that the reason she was running away was because she was afraid of him. Tiffany, unfortunately, believed her mother’s lies.
Sometimes in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep he thought about how to find her. The fantasy—he had to think of it as that—always ended the same. It ended with him murdering Pam with his bare hands.
It was those dark thoughts that plagued him, that and worry over Tiffany. Worry also about Lynette.
“With good reason,” he muttered under his breath as he turned into his ranch. Lynette had proven she had terrible taste in men when she’d married Bob thirty years ago instead of him. Now she’d rented her apartment to J. D. West? Worse, she thought the man deserved a second chance?
He felt himself getting upset again. J.D. had gotten more chances than he deserved before he had even left Beartooth all those years ago. To think Lynette might be taken in by him upset him more than he wanted to admit.
And she thought he was merely being jealous? He let out a curse as he neared his house.
Automatically he slowed. Not that long ago, he would have been anxious to return home. He liked his small house, his few animals, the wide-open spaces the ranch provided him.
Back then he’d had a family of sorts waiting for him. A family of crows had taken up residency in his yard. He’d come to think of them as his own and had spent years studying them, intrigued how much they were like humans.
They would always be waiting for him as he drove in and would caw a welcome. He’d gotten where he could tell them apart by their greetings.
Now, though, the telephone line was empty, just like the clothesline and the ridge on the barn. Tiffany had killed one of them to get back at him. Crows, being very intelligent birds, had left. He’d learned from studying them that they would warn other crows about the danger at his house. They wouldn’t be back nor would others come if they felt threatened.
With a heavy heart, he pulled in and climbed out. The night was dark here in the valley with clouds shrouding the stars. He stood for a moment, staring up at the empty telephone wire, feeling the terrible weight of all his losses.
The sudden sound of glass breaking somewhere inside his house startled him from his dark thoughts. Drawing his gun, he sprinted toward the open front door.
* * *
MADDIE LISTENED TO the wind whipping the tops of the pines. Closer, the fire crackled softly as it burned down. The familiar sounds were comforting—unlike the sound of the deputy across the fire from her. He moved restlessly in his sleeping bag. She’d bet this was the first time he’d slept under the stars—let alone in the middle of nowhere on the side of a mountain.
She could have erected the tent that was kept here along with a few supplies. It hadn’t been all orneriness that had made her dismiss the idea. True, she hadn’t wanted to take the time to put up the tent. Nor had she wanted to expend the energy, and she’d figured the deputy would have been no help.
But those weren’t the real reasons. If she was being honest, she hadn’t wanted to be in the close confines of a tent with her worries—or the deputy. Not tonight.
She mentally cursed herself. What was she doing here with such a city slicker? He didn’t know the country. Worse, he didn’t know how dangerous it could be. What was he doing in Montana, anyway?
It irritated her that she’d had to bring him. But her other choice was letting him look for the sheep camp alone. Better to take him up here to alleviate his concerns. She desperately wanted to prove him wrong.
Jamison was the least of her problems and she knew it. She closed her eyes against the fears that had haunted her from the instant she’d seen Dewey in the back of that stall.
What had happened? She clung to the hope that when they reached the camp, they would find Branch sitting outside his sheepherder wagon whittling on a piece of pine, his dog, Lucy, at his feet, and all two thousand sheep in a grassy meadow behind him, safe and growing fatter.
It was conceivable that the boy had gotten scared when he couldn’t find Branch. When he found a dying lamb, just as he’d said, he would have foolishly thought he could save it. Failing that, he’d panicked and hightailed it out of there. It could have happened just that way, she told herself.
Which meant that when they reached the sheep camp, Branch would give her hell for hiring Dewey, something she had to admit she deserved. She’d take the deputy back down out of the mountains and get Branch a new tender, someone older, someone with experience.
Even as she thought it, she knew how hard it was going to be to find a tender. No one wanted to spend three months back in the wilds. Even sheepherders were hard to find, for that matter. Good thing Branch enjoyed it, but he was getting old—just a few months short of his sixty-eighth birthday. It wouldn’t be long before he couldn’t make the trek, she thought, refusing to let herself accept that this might be his last year—no matter what they found back in the mountains.
All good reasons to give up herding the sheep to high grazing pasture each summer season, she told herself.
She heard the deputy roll over again and felt a stab of guilt. She shouldn’t have mentioned grizzlies, but smiled even as she chastised herself for purposely trying to scare him. He was probably worried about bears and wouldn’t get a wink of sleep.
Maddie thought about telling him that she had her shotgun as well as her .357 Magnum pistol within reach. Also, she could mention that with two thousand sheep not far away, the grizzlies would rather have lamb than either one of them.
But a moment later, Jamison seemed to settle down, and as he did, she heard him snoring softly.
Irritated he could fall asleep so quickly, she snuggled down in her sleeping bag and prayed. It had been so long since any of her prayers had been answered, though, that she didn’t have much hope these would be, either.
* * *
FRANK KNEW HE should call for backup, but the last time he’d caught someone going through his things it had turned out to be his daughter.
He moved cautiously up onto the porch. The front door was ajar. He hadn’t noticed when he’d driven up because he’d been grieving for the loss of his crows.
But now he was paying attention. He glanced back over his shoulder. Where had the intruder parked? Not by the barn or he would have seen the vehicle when he drove in. Whoever it was must have used the back road, parked behind the house and sneaked around to the front to get inside.
That meant the person knew about the back way into the property. It was no leap to assume whoever was inside his house knew him and knew he never locked the front door.
Standing to one side, Frank eased the door all the way open. The living room was dark, but a light was on down the hall. It cast a faint yellow glow that weakened as it reached the living room. But it was enough light to see that the place had been ransacked.
A thief would have gone straight for the guns in his den or the television and stereo, even the old laptop he kept on the small desk in the spare room. A thief wouldn’t have bothered tearing up the living room, which was only sparsely furnished and clearly had nothing of any real value.
As Frank stepped in, he was pretty sure he wasn’t dealing with a thief—but a vandal with a grudge. He’d made enemies as sheriff, but not that many in his career. Avoiding the floorboards that creaked, he moved through the house toward the sound of the racket going on in his bedroom. He could hear his vandal destroying everything within reach.
Frank had never gotten very attached to things, so he had little regard for the furnishings in his home. All were replaceable. Maybe his intruder didn’t know that about him. Or care. It sounded as if the person was working out some anger issues on his house. As he moved closer to the open door to his bedroom, he was anxious to know just who it was.
Nearer the open door, he stopped. He listened to things breaking for a moment. Then cautiously, he peered around the doorframe.
Frank almost dropped the gun in his hand. As it was, he hadn’t been able to hold back the shocked sound that escaped his lips.
His intruder turned. In the single light glowing overhead in the room, a woman stood holding a baseball bat. He felt his knees go weak as he stared in shock at his ex-wife.
He hadn’t seen Pamela Chandler in almost twenty years. Nor had he given any thought to her—until February when he’d found out they had possibly conceived a daughter she hadn’t mentioned. Since then, whenever he did think of Pam, it was only with one desire: to kill her.
He stared at her as if seeing an apparition. When they’d married, she’d been fifteen years younger. She’d been too young for him, too young period. He felt he’d since grown into his age. He couldn’t say the same for Pam.
The past two decades hadn’t been kind to her. She looked stringy thin, her pale skin stretched over her facial bones. Her hair had grayed without her putting up a fight with a dye job. But the eyes were the same—a fiercely bright brittle blue—much like her daughter’s.
She stood with the baseball bat in both hands, caught in a backswing after smashing his bedside lamp to smithereens. She didn’t look surprised to see him. Hell, she was even smiling. It was that smile he’d thought of most recently and how he would wipe it off her face once he had his hands clamped around her throat.
“Hello, Frank.” She said it as if she’d merely seen him in passing on the street and not standing in the middle of his bedroom surrounded by the destruction she’d caused. She said it as if they were old friends—not like a woman who’d poisoned her own child with her lies and bitterness.
When he finally spoke, his voice didn’t sound like his own. “What the hell, Pam?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
He shook his head, shaken by how surreal this felt. He’d dreamed of finding Pam, of catching her off guard and cornering her somewhere, stopping her from terrorizing Tiffany. Of making sure she never hurt anyone again.
Late at night, he would plan her murder, her disappearance. He’d been in law enforcement long enough that he knew how to get rid of her for good. No one would ever know what had happened to her. She would just be...gone.
Four strides. That was all it would take to reach her and take that baseball bat away from her and—
“What’s the matter, Frank? Can’t pull the trigger?”
He’d forgotten he was holding his gun. It hung at his side, his hand having dropped with his shock at seeing his ex-wife vandalizing his house.
Still smiling, Pam took a step toward him. She clutched the baseball bat in her hands, evil intent glowing in those blue eyes as hot as the hell she brought with her. Her smile dared him to lift the gun and shoot her.
In his fantasy of murder, Pam was always afraid. Maybe even a little sorry. Not like the woman now moving toward him.
Frank felt his hand slowly rise until the barrel of his weapon was pointed at her heart. She kept coming, the baseball bat cocked back, ready to swing.
He saw himself emptying the gun into her. But even as he envisioned it, he wondered if it wouldn’t take a wooden stake to put this woman down.
“Well, Frank?”
He realized he was shaking his head. “Don’t,” he heard himself say as she kept moving toward him. He felt his finger on the trigger. Another step and—
The blow caught him in the back of the head. Until that moment, he’d been too surprised to think clearly. But in that instant, he realized his mistake. If he’d been acting like a sheriff, he would have figured out that Pam wouldn’t have come here alone. Pam was too calculating—and knew him too well.
He felt his body go slack from the brain-numbing blow. His legs buckled, his thoughts scattering like dried fall leaves blown across his yard.
As he dropped to his knees, his gaze met hers. He’d never seen so much hatred, so much anger, so much evil—and absolutely no fear.
“You really didn’t think I was done with you, did you?” she said and swung the baseball bat.
CHAPTER SIX
MADDIE WOKE TO the sound of fire crackling in the pit next to her, the smell of bacon and daylight. She rolled over quickly, shoving the bag down as she attempted to climb out. She was surprised she’d slept so soundly. It had taken her a long time to fall asleep last night, her thoughts and the deputy keeping her up. She’d finally drifted off long after the campfire had burned out.
She blinked at the day’s brightness, momentarily confused as to where she was. But the moment she spotted Jamison, it all came back to her.
Deputy Jamison stood next to the creek, his broad naked back to her. He’d stripped down to nothing but his jeans and boots and now washed himself in the icy cold stream. The sun shone on the water on his back, making it glisten.
A ripple of need shot through her so sharp and shocking that it hurt. She hadn’t felt anything close to it in years. Maybe never. Its fierce intensity made her weak with a wanting she’d thought she’d put behind her. Until that moment, she realized, she hadn’t thought of herself as a woman for a very long time.
She quickly turned away, shaken and upset by the alien feelings. She told herself that her reaction was normal given that all she’d seen in Deputy Jamison before that moment was a lawman butting into her life and her livelihood. It didn’t matter that he had a badge.
Now she saw the man and had to grudgingly admit he was nice looking if you liked that type. Still, he was nothing like the men she’d known all her life, although he was smart, that went without saying, and not as much of a greenhorn as she’d feared.
When she turned back around, she found herself staring at his bare chest as he walked back toward the fire. It was broad and muscled like his back. Light brown hair formed a V that continued past the top button of his jeans.
“Good morning,” he said cheerfully and pulled on his shirt. “I didn’t realize you were up.”
She nodded and turned to roll up her sleeping bag. A groan rose in her throat. She’d seen half-naked men before. So why was she acting like a schoolgirl? It was enough to make her furious with herself.
“I thought we should have breakfast before we head out,” he said behind her. “I hope you don’t mind. I took the food down from the tree. It will only take me a moment to finish cooking it.”
The last thing she wanted was breakfast—let alone for the deputy to cook it for her.
“I don’t really want—”
“I’m not all that hungry, either, but I figured we might need it before the day is over,” he said, cutting off her protest.
She hated what she’d heard in those words. It bespoke his fear of what they were going to find up ahead of them. With a start, though, she realized that wasn’t why he’d cooked.
He’d made breakfast for her because he suspected she was the one who would need all the strength she could muster today. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had done something so thoughtful just for her. She didn’t want to be touched by his kindness. But she was.
He also expected the worst and, with a sinking heart, she feared he might be right. To think yesterday she’d been ready to face whatever had happened on this mountain by herself. Right now, she was actually glad he’d come with her.
He looked up from his cooking. “Your hair is beautiful.”
His compliment knocked her off balance—and just when she was starting to accept his being here with her.
Her mop of hair had come loose in the night. She hadn’t realized she’d been working her fingers through the thick strands to get the tangles out until he spoke. Now she felt self-conscious.
She glanced at the reddish locks that tumbled over her shoulder. Lately she’d noticed the spun silver intertwined with the red. It had startled her since she hadn’t been aware of the passing of time or how she’d aged with it.
He looked away to tend to breakfast as if sensing her discomfort. She’d never much cared about the way she looked in the mornings—at least not since losing Hank. Nor did she want to start again.
It was another reason she dressed the way she did. There were a couple of old widower ranchers who had been giving her the eye. Dollars to doughnuts they just wanted her land. It didn’t matter even if they really were attracted to her. She wasn’t interested.
Jamison looked up again, and she quickly pulled her hair up, turning her back to finish the job. She thought she could feel the deputy’s gaze warming her back as she worked her fingers through it.
She cursed herself for letting him make her feel self-conscious. Worse, unnerve her. Her heart pounded with a long-forgotten pleasure from the compliment and a flicker of her earlier desire. Both burned through her body, igniting emotions she’d buried with her husband and son four years ago.
For so long she hadn’t let herself feel. Every day, she rose with only work in mind. Running the ranch and trying to keep her head above water had taken all her energy. She’d had little time to think of anything else.
Each night she’d fallen into bed, so exhausted that the only thing she had wanted or needed was sleep.
The last thing she needed was for a man to make her feel, let alone want again, especially when it was this greenhorn.
* * *
JAMISON REALIZED HE’D upset Maddie and regretted saying anything. He noticed the way her fingers trembled as she fought her beautiful long mane into an obedient plait that trailed down her strong back.
She seemed to take a steadying breath before she slapped on her hat and turned back to him and the fire. Her cheeks were heightened in color, her blue eyes bright as diamonds. She ducked her head as if afraid of what he might see in those eyes.
He suspected it had been some time since anyone had complimented her on her appearance. He hadn’t meant to embarrass her. The words had just come out without thinking.
“I didn’t know what you liked to eat,” he said as he offered her a plate of thick bread slices he’d toasted over the fire with strips of bacon, scrambled eggs and cheese tucked between them.
She took it without much enthusiasm as if no hungrier than he was. Sitting, she balanced on one of the log stumps as if she’d done it hundreds of times. She probably had. This was her country. She knew it no doubt better than anything else in her life. It sustained her sheep and a part of her as well, he thought. She was at home here, more content than his wife had ever been in their expensive high-rise apartment in New York City.
Taking a small polite bite, she chewed for a moment. Her gaze sprang up to his as she swallowed. “It’s...good.”
She sounded so surprised it made him laugh. “Thank you for that grudging compliment,” he said with a grin.
“I didn’t realize you could cook.”
“I’m glad I can surprise you.”
“Summer camp?”
“Actually Boy Scouts.”
“I’d have to see the badge to believe that.”
He couldn’t help being pleased. He’d teased a smile out of her.
“Thanks for...cooking.”
He gave her a nod.
She ate quickly after that, no doubt as anxious as he was to get moving. Since he’d awakened, he’d been unnerved by the sudden quiet that had settled around them. The wind had stopped sometime during the night, and now a hush had settled over the mountainside.
“I’ll get us saddled up,” she said when she’d finished the breakfast sandwich. He noticed that she’d eaten it all, just as he had. Like him, she must fear she was going to need the strength later today.
As she readied the horses, he broke camp, packing up the rest of the food and putting out the fire.
“How much farther?” he asked as they swung up into their saddles.
“We should find their camp by afternoon.” He could see how hard her next words were for her. She hadn’t wanted him along, didn’t want him interfering. Maybe more to the point, she didn’t want to have to worry about him along with her other concerns. “Are you doing all right?”
He smiled. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
She snorted at that as she spurred her horse out of the pines and into the clear blue Montana morning.
* * *
WHEN SHERIFF FRANK CURRY opened his eyes, he was on his bedroom floor. He hurt all over, so at first it was impossible to know how badly he’d been injured. He couldn’t even tell where all the pain was coming from.
As he tried to sit up, his head swam. His vision blurred to pinpoints, forcing him to lie down again. He lay on his back with his eyes closed and tried to make sense of what he was doing on his bedroom floor with the room in shambles around him.
What had happened? The last thing he could recall was seeing Lynette at the store, wasn’t it?
As he gingerly touched his aching shoulder, his memory came back in a flash, along with the pain of being hit with a baseball bat. Pam! The pain and anger threatened to blind him. He sat up, gripping the edge of the bed for support. Pam had been in his house. She’d—
He glanced around the room, at the destruction. It made no sense. If it wasn’t for the mess she’d left behind he might have thought he’d fallen, hit his head and dreamed it all.
As he started to get to his feet, he looked around for his gun. It wasn’t in his holster and yet he remembered pulling it. He remembered Pam daring him to use it. He hadn’t, though, had he?
No, if he had, Pam would be lying here in a puddle of blood.
So why hadn’t she taken the gun and used it on him? “Why didn’t you just kill me?” he bellowed even though he knew Pam was long gone, and just as he was well aware of why she hadn’t used his gun on him.
Pam had no intention of going to prison for killing him. Not when she could just torment him and get away with it.
But not this time. She’d been in his house. She’d torn it up. She and whoever she’d brought with her had attacked him. She wasn’t getting away with this.
He got to his feet and took a wobbly step. As he bent over to see if the gun had been kicked under the bed, everything started to go black again. He gave it a minute then looked again. No gun.
Pam must have taken it. Great. He pulled out his cell phone. It dawned on him that the first call he should make was to the hospital. His temples throbbed, and when he touched the back of his head, he could feel the crusted blood in his hair. He was sure he had a concussion. How bad of one, he didn’t know. It would depend on how long he’d been out.
Through the window he could see the sun coming up. It was late when he’d come home from the movie in Bozeman and heard someone in his house. But still he’d been out for hours.
His left thigh ached, and when he touched it, he could feel that it was badly bruised. The memory of Pam swinging the baseball bat came back. He was amazed he didn’t have some broken bones or that she hadn’t beaten him to death once he was down.
He guessed that she’d stopped because she’d made her point. No sense in beating a dead horse, right?
As he dialed 9-1-1 and asked for an ambulance and the undersheriff, he recalled her last words.
You really didn’t think I was done with you, did you?
* * *
RIDING BESIDE MADDIE, Jamison crossed a wide meadow between two mountain peaks before working his way along the bottom of a sheer granite cliff that shot up to dizzying heights over them.
Sunlight traveled down through the pine boughs to bathe them in flickering golden beams. He breathed in the sweet scents of pine and new green grasses, the morning air crisp and cold. He feared the air was so clean it would intoxicate him since he had never breathed anything like it before.
The air, the altitude or Maddie Conner would be his undoing, he thought. He didn’t doubt that if he couldn’t keep up, she would leave him behind. Didn’t they shoot animals that couldn’t keep up with the herd?
Once they left the pines, the sky overhead seemed as endless as the wide-open mountain slopes in front of them. The huge expanse was a startling clear blue, no clouds on the horizon that he could see.
The wind kicked back up the higher they went. Above the tree line, it swept across the grassy slope in a blistering howl of undulating tall grasses that looked like waves rushing to shore. Water gushed from a plethora of small creeks as higher snowfields melted slowly. It was still early in the year up this high. The sun had a lot of climbing to do before summer warmth ever reached these mountains.
Still, the view was breathtaking. The land seemed alive with color from the dark silken emerald of the trees to the vibrant chartreuse of the grass. All this was in contrast to the dark rocky peaks with their cap of blinding white snow and the clear, deep blue sky overhead.
He’d heard Montana called God’s country but until that moment he’d never understood it. The beauty made him ache. Just as the high altitude made him light-headed. Maddie was right about him. He was a fish out of water up here.
“How high are we?” he asked as they crossed a windblown ridge, the horse hooves clattering on the rocks.
“Close to ten thousand feet.”
The last time he was this far above sea level, he’d been in a plane.
He didn’t know how far they’d ridden. He hadn’t felt the hours slip past, lulled by the gentle rocking of his body in the saddle and the mesmerizing beauty juxtaposed against the remoteness and endless isolation. It gave him an odd, alien feeling and added to his apprehension about what they would find over the next mountain.
He didn’t realize anything was wrong until Maddie suddenly pulled her horse up short. “What is it?”
She didn’t answer, but seemed to be listening, though he couldn’t imagine what she could hear over the relentless wind.
Reining in, it took him a moment to hear anything but the deafening gale. When he finally did hear what had caught her attention, he felt the hair on his neck shoot up as goose bumps skittered over his skin.
An eerie keening sound rode the wind.
Last night, he’d heard coyotes calling in the distance. But this was no coyote. If this sound was human, the person was in terrible pain.
“Where is it coming from?” he asked as he eased his horse up next to Maddie’s.
She shook her head, still listening as if trying to pinpoint the sound. But with the wind shifting around them, he couldn’t tell any more than apparently she could.
Maddie cocked her head. Her expression gave little away, but he could tell that, like him, she was shaken by the spine-chilling sound. Unlike him, though, he had a feeling she knew what it was.
“This way,” she said after a moment. He glimpsed her face just before she rode off. There was more than determination etched in her expression. There was pain and regret. She had come to a sad conclusion based on what, he didn’t know.
He followed, riding up along the edge of the wide basin then across another high rocky ridge. The view took his breath away and gave him vertigo. He swore he could see forever and yet he still couldn’t see what was making that heart-wrenching sound.
The keening grew louder just before he and Maddie dropped off the high ridge and over a rocky rise. He could feel the wind in his face, wearing away at his skin the way it had worn away at the land.
They hadn’t gone far when Maddie pulled up again.
He reined in just an instant before he saw the dog. A small Australian shepherd mix of a mutt was sitting on a rocky knob below them. Its head was thrown back, and long, mournful howls were emitting from deep within its throat.
Something was crumpled on the ground below the dog in the rocks. He caught only a glimpse of dark red plaid fabric, and then Maddie was racing down the mountainside toward the dog.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MADDIE’S HEART SANK at the mournful cry of the dog—let alone whatever was lying at the dog’s feet just over the rocky ledge. She braced herself for what she would find and yet she was already fighting tears before she reached the animal.
She’d been so sure she was going to find Branch Murdock’s body just below the dog on the mountainside that she was startled when the familiar red-and-black-plaid fabric just over the edge of the ridge was only that—the red-and-black plaid of the sheepherder’s coat.
Maddie slid off her horse, still stunned and even more confused when she saw that the coat had been spread out like a bed for the dog.
It was what a hunter did when he lost one of his bird dogs and couldn’t find the animal before dark set in. He would leave his coat with his scent on it. The dog would hopefully find it and stay there until he returned. With luck, the hunter would find the dog lying on the coat, waiting for him, the next morning.
How long had Lucy been waiting for Branch? And why would he leave his coat here for the dog? Branch and Lucy were inseparable.
As Maddie approached the dog, Lucy quit howling for a moment, but started up again. It was the most heartbreaking sound Maddie had ever heard on that lonesome mountain ridge so far from everything.
“Where’s Branch?” she whispered as she squatted down next to the dog. She remembered when Branch had adopted the puppy. Just the thought of the two of them crossing the ranch yard, Lucy still a puppy, running hard on her short legs to keep up with Branch’s long stride, broke her heart.
As she put her arm around Lucy, she heard the deputy dismount and come toward them, his boots crunching on the rocky ground. Not his boots, she reminded herself. Her husband’s. That thought shot like an arrow through her heart.
Her husband.
The loss often hit her out of the blue as if until that moment, she hadn’t realized Hank was gone and never coming back.
She blinked back tears as she knelt by the dog. “It’s all right,” she whispered to Lucy, even though she suspected it was far from it.
Picking up Branch’s coat from the ground, she held it close. The coarse wool smelled of a strong mixture of tobacco, campfire smoke, sheep and dog. She breathed in the familiar scents that would always remind her of Branch as she looked out across the mountain—just as Lucy was doing. There was no sign of her sheepherder—or her sheep.
“May I see that?” Jamison asked and held out his hand for the coat.
She hesitated, feeling protective and afraid, but grudgingly she handed it over to him and watched as he went through the pockets then checked the fabric. For bloodstains? Bullet holes?
He didn’t seem to find anything of interest, she saw with relief. She watched him sniff one of the pockets, then the other one.
“He took his tobacco with him and whatever tool he carried in his other pocket,” the deputy said.
“A knife. He always carried a pocketknife.” She watched as he shook out several flakes of loose tobacco from the one pocket. The wind caught the stray tobacco leaves and sent them whirling off over the side of the mountain on a downdraft.
Jamison turned the other pocket inside out to show her where the pocketknife had worn a hole in the fabric. “Why would your sheepherder leave his coat here and take everything else with him?” he asked as he eyed the dog.
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B.J. Daniels
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Big-city detective Bentley Jamison is a long way from home in the Beartooth wilderness when one of local rancher Maddie Conner′s ranch hands goes missing. Towering mountains and a small, tight community are as unfamiliar to Jamison as herding sheep, but he’s never shied away from a challenge.As the new deputy sheriff, he’s sworn to protect every inch of this rough terrain – starting with unravelling a mystery that has left Maddie a wide-open target. Maddie’s as beautiful – and untameable – as the land around them. Like Jamison, she won’t back down from danger. But desire that flares hotter than their tempers only raises the stakes when a fierce storm traps them in the high mountains.Caught in a killer’s sights, Jamison and Maddie must trust one another, because now survival… and love… are all that matter.