Trouble in Big Timber

by B. J Daniels

  “I said get out of your vehicle now!”

  “Okay, but this is highly unusual. Kind of like your ring...” He spotted the man’s name on his shirt. “Officer Birch.” His heart was now a hammer in his chest. Shyla’s husband. The ring. The grille guard on the pickup that tried to run Hitch down. “I feel as if I’ve seen that ring before,” he said, praying that Hitch was still on the line, that she was hearing this.

  Movement in his side mirror. “Rachel? No wonder you weren’t worried about her. She just climbed out of your patrol car.”

  “What the hell?” Birch said and spotted the phone lying on the seat next to Ford. The cop leaned in, snatched the keys from the ignition and, shoving Ford back, scooped up the phone. He swore and quickly ended the call, but hopefully Hitch had heard it all.

  * * *

  HITCH HAD BEEN going through the evidence on the Collinwood case when she’d gotten Ford’s call. “Hello? Hello?” She could hear Ford talking and realized he wasn’t talking to her but to someone else. As his words registered and the call ended, she threw down the photos she’d been studying, grabbed her gun and her purse, and raced out to her patrol SUV, her heart in her throat.

  Her mind whirred as she played what she’d heard over and over again. He’d been headed for Big Sky. But Rachel had called. Whatever she’d said had him headed for her ranch, where he was pulled over by Officer Rick Birch. Why had Birch pulled him over by the creek? And why was the deputy demanding Ford get out of the car? As Ford said, very unusual. And the ring...

  She felt her pulse thundering through her veins. If she was right, Ford was in serious trouble. He’d passed as much of a message as he’d been able to before the call had been disconnected.

  With her siren blaring and lights flashing, she sped out of town, across the bridge over the Yellowstone River, headed north. She had a pretty good idea of where Ford had been pulled over. He’d said by the creek. It was the turnoff to the Crazy Mountains. She zipped past several cars that had pulled over at the sound of her siren. She took a few curves and hit the brakes as she saw the turnoff ahead.

  But she couldn’t see if Ford’s pickup and the deputy’s cruiser were still parked down by the creek yet. It had taken her only minutes to get here, but what if she was too late?

  * * *

  “LET ME HANDLE THIS,” Rachel said as she walked up to the driver’s-side window and pushed the deputy aside.

  “I see that you’re feeling better,” Ford said, wondering what these two thought they were going to do as he opened his glove box to take out his gun. With a sinking feeling, he saw that it was gone.

  As he turned to look at her, Ford foolishly still believed that they weren’t going to kill him. He heard the deputy come around to the passenger side of the pickup and open the door. They wouldn’t kill him—not right here beside the main highway north. He turned back to Rachel, since she was clearly in charge, saw the expression on her face and knew that he was a dead man.

  He had only a second to react. Way too little time to see the syringe in her hand before she stabbed the needle into the back of his shoulder. He tried to grab for it, but the deputy was on him, restraining him until she pulled the needle from Ford’s flesh. By then, it was too late. He already felt the drug rushing through him.

  “What the hell, Rachel?” he managed to say.

  “Drag him over to the passenger side,” Rachel said, reaching in to unsnap his seat belt. The deputy grabbed him. Ford tried to fight him off, but he could feel his muscles already going slack. “Now give me the keys and wait for me in your car for a moment.”

  Birch looked as if he didn’t like taking orders from a woman, but with a grunt, he snapped Ford’s seat belt in place, climbed out, slammed the passenger-side door and returned to his patrol car, parked behind Ford’s pickup.

  “Rachel?” He felt dizzy, his vision beginning to blur. Whatever she’d injected him with, it was fast acting. His fingers felt like they were no longer his own as he tried unsuccessfully to unhook his seat belt. He heard Rachel lock his door with the child safety lock system.

  “Sit tight for a moment,” she said and closed the driver’s-side door. He could see her walking back to the cruiser in his side mirror.

  Ford knew he had to do something, but with his coordination getting worse as the drug took hold, he realized even if he could get out of the pickup, he probably couldn’t stand, let alone run.

  At the sound of a gunshot, he flinched.

  The driver’s-side door of his pickup opened a moment later and Rachel climbed in.

  “What did you do?” he asked, his words slurred. He tried to get his arms to move, thinking he would go for her throat, but both arms hung useless at his sides.

  “I didn’t do anything,” she said as she wiped the pistol in her hand clean with a handkerchief. He recognized it as his own gun. “You did.” Then, taking his right hand, she pressed his palm, then trigger finger into the cold steel. Using the handkerchief, she tossed his gun behind the pickup seat.

  When had she gotten it out of his glove box? Or had it been Birch who’d taken it on one of the occasions Ford had stopped by the ranch to see Rachel? Had she been planning this the whole time?

  She started the pickup and headed down the dirt road toward the Crazy Mountains. He didn’t bother to try to ask what she planned to do with him. His tongue felt too large and useless in his dry mouth to waste speech on a question when he already knew the answer. She planned to kill him—just as she had her accomplice.

  * * *

  HITCH RACED UP to the turnoff. It wasn’t until she dropped off the highway into the creek bottom that she could see the sheriff’s deputy’s patrol cruiser still parked there. But there was no sign of Ford’s pickup. She could, however, see that Deputy Birch was sitting behind the wheel.

  She quickly pulled up behind the cruiser and, gun drawn, stepped out to cautiously approach. The deputy was wearing his Western hat. He appeared to be looking down at something in his lap. He didn’t move as she inched along the driver’s side of his vehicle.

  As she drew nearer, she could see that his window was down. The summer breeze coming up off the creek was warm. It made a slight whistling sound through the patrol cruiser’s antenna. Hitch came alongside, the weapon pointed at the man’s head, and grabbed the door handle and pulled. It took her a moment before she realized that she wouldn’t be needing her gun. Officer Rick Birch had already been shot in the side of the head.

  Slamming the door, she looked up the road and spotted dust boiling up some distance away between her and the Crazies. She glanced around to see if there were fresh tracks where someone had turned around. There weren’t.

  Her nerves were taut as she rushed back to her rig, jumped in and took off. As she did, she called DCI and gave them the information as to where they would find sheriff’s deputy Rick Birch. Disconnecting, she drove, following the dust trail, praying she was right about the vehicle kicking up the dust being Ford’s pickup. If she was, then Rachel was with him. Which meant that if Ford was still alive, it wouldn’t be for long.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “You wanted so badly to hear the truth?” She glanced at him before going back to her driving.

  Ford saw the gleam in her blue eyes. She wanted to tell him. She wanted someone to know how clever she was.

  Rachel suddenly hit the brakes so hard that even with his seat belt on, he flew forward. She caught him before his head hit the dash. “You’re not wearing a wire, are you? Surely there wasn’t time after my call.” She tore open his shirt, checked under the waist of his jeans and then behind him before she sighed. “Of course you’re not. And I have your phone. Even if I didn’t, you wouldn’t be able to record me.” She laughed as she got the truck going again.

  “You want my confession? You got it. I killed him. I set the whole thing up. It wasn’t that hard,” she said, warming to her story as
she drove through the foothills toward the mountains. “I planned it for months, stashing away any money I could get my hands on. When he found the birth control pills... Well, I hadn’t planned on that. He was so furious. I realized he really might divorce me. I followed him into town. I knew he’d go to that girl. I wanted to have the argument at her house. I wanted people to see it. Then I drove home. I’d already torn up the kitchen, breaking everything by the time he came home from town.”

  He thought about how Humphrey’s fingerprints hadn’t been found on any of the broken dishes on the floor—a red flag that Hitch had picked up on right away. If he had torn up the kitchen, his prints would have been on at least some of the shards. He wanted to tell her that it had been one of several mistakes she’d made, including killing Birch—and now him, but he could no longer speak. All he could do was listen and pray that Hitch had gotten the messages he’d tried to pass.

  “You should have seen Humphrey’s face when he walked into the kitchen and saw the mess. He actually looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. He really thought it was about that waitress at the café in town.” She laughed. “He was going to help me clean up the mess. But before he could pick up anything, I jabbed him with the syringe—just like I did you.” She chuckled. “It’s fast acting, as you know, but he still managed to take a couple of steps toward me, so I pulled the gun. He looked dumbfounded for a moment, then demanded I hand the gun over.” Her smile sent ice down his spine. It was worse than her laugh. “Oh, I gave it to him, all right.”

  “So you shot him before you pretended to be beaten by him.” His words came out so slurred, he couldn’t imagine how she had made sense of them.

  “Pretended to be beaten?” she demanded. “Are you serious? You saw how badly I was injured.” She sounded as if for a moment she believed her own lies. “Rick got a little carried away. I told him to make it look real. He certainly did that.”

  But he’d forgotten to take off his ring. Rachel must have noticed at some point. That would have been when they took off Humphrey’s ring and the deputy used it to hit her. He’d seen the deputy’s ring only minutes ago and recognized it from the bruise photo Hitch had shown him this morning, asking if he’d seen a ring that could have made that mark.

  “That was the tricky part,” Rachel was saying. “I needed someone I could trust. Rick was more than up for the job. But the fool actually thought that we would be together once I was exonerated.”

  Ford thought of Paul Townsend. How many other men had Rachel “interviewed” for the job before she got the deputy to help her?

  She gave a slight shrug as if Birch had been dispensable, just like Humphrey. He felt his anger, once molten with rage, stir in him, cold as this woman. He knew he could kill. He had in the war. He wished he could get his hands around Rachel’s neck right now. She hadn’t given a thought to her best friend, Shyla.

  “You probably are wondering where you came in,” Rachel said to him as the foothills were behind them and he was looking out at the mountain road ahead.

  * * *

  HITCH SAW THE vehicle still a long way ahead of her slow and turn. She felt relief wash over her. It was Ford’s pickup—just as she’d thought. Her instincts had been right. She called for backup, explaining that Deputy Birch had been shot and killed and that Rachel Collinwood appeared to have taken Ford Cardwell captive. They were now headed into the Crazy Mountains. She gave the dispatcher the name of the road they were on and disconnected as Ford’s pickup disappeared into the pines as it headed up the mountainside.

  She told herself that Ford was still alive. She had to believe that. Rachel hadn’t killed him and wasn’t only driving up into the mountains to dump the body. If she’d done that, she would have needed the deputy’s help. So what was her plan?

  The deeper they got in the mountains, the more worried she became. She felt helpless because no matter what she did, it might only put Ford in more danger. Rachel had already killed twice. There was nothing keeping her from killing again.

  All she could assume was that Rachel planned to end it and take Ford with her. The woman couldn’t possibly think that she could still get away with what she’d done, could she? Probably, Hitch realized, remembering Rachel’s arrogance.

  As she closed the distance between her rig and the pickup, Hitch worried that Rachel would spot her. The mountain road, bordered on each side by pines, climbed in a series of switchbacks up the steep peak.

  Hitch had lost sight of the pickup as she drove up the road in the shadow of the mountain. Her heart was thundering in her chest. She could feel the clock ticking. If Ford was still alive... She sped up, realizing she couldn’t be that far from the top.

  * * *

  RACHEL’S VOICE BECAME an annoying drone in his ears as he listened to how cleverly she’d planned to kill her husband. “So Humphrey’s lying on the floor dead. Rick has finished beating me when I call you, Ford. I scream and cry and finally grab the gun and fire a shot out the open kitchen door and disconnect, tossing it into Humphrey’s blood and my own on the floor. I wait until Rick is gone before I call 911.”

  She didn’t know about the cartridge casing Hitch had found just outside the kitchen door that had fallen through the deck slats. He made a disgusted, pained sound, thinking of his once best friend and this woman who’d come between them. She’d killed Humphrey, her deputy lover, and now she was about to kill him—unless somehow she was stopped.

  He tried to ask if it was worth it, but nonsense came out of his mouth. She didn’t seem to be listening anyway. What galled him was that she really thought she was going to get away with all of it—and she just might.

  Unless Hitch had gotten the message he’d tried to pass to her. Hopefully she’d heard enough of the phone conversation to figure it out. If anyone could, it would be her, he thought, his heart aching. He’d found her and now would lose her. But he knew that Hitch wouldn’t rest until she took Rachel down for all of it.

  Rachel would never see the outside again. She’d told him that she’d worried about her next meal as a child. She wouldn’t have to worry about it in prison. Nor about what to wear. And she deserved everything she would get and more.

  “You probably want to know if I took the foundation money,” she said as she drove up the mountain road. “I had no choice. Humphrey had cut off most of my credit cards and threatened to put me on a budget. I’m sure it was his father’s idea. I had already lived hand to mouth. I wasn’t going to do that again.” She looked at him. “I suppose you’d say I could have gotten a job.” She scoffed at that. “I was Mrs. Humphrey Collinwood and I wasn’t giving that up without a fight.”

  She was quiet for a few minutes as the road topped the mountain. Where was she taking him? He had no idea. But he knew how it would end. He could see how agitated she was. She wanted all of this behind her.

  “Humphrey loved you like a brother and blamed me for you dropping out of his life,” she said, shifting the pickup into four-wheel low as the road became more rocky and rough, the trees more sparse. “He saw us, Ford. At the wedding.”

  He had started inside, the bitter taste of regret in his mouth.

  “I made sure Humphrey saw what he thought was you practically assaulting me. It worked just as I’d hoped. You couldn’t stay in our life, Ford. I needed him dependent on me and no one else. If you’d been around, he would have seen through me so much sooner. He didn’t want to believe it, but only the two of us knew the truth. I wasn’t ever going to tell him, and you were gone from our lives.”

  But Humphrey had still tried to contact him several times. Had he seen through Rachel even back then? Or had he needed Ford to tell him the truth? Ford realized if he had, he might have saved the man’s life.

  * * *

  AS HITCH REACHED the top of the mountain, the pines seemed to open up, but the road still twisted and turned. She was forced to drive slowly over the rocks sticking up in the road. E
ach corner she came around, she feared she would suddenly come up on the pickup stopped in the road and have no time to react.

  It was a relief when the trees opened up even more and she could see farther ahead. She came around the edge of a wall of rock and suddenly there was the back of the pickup. It appeared to be parked at the edge of the rocky peak. Beyond it, there was nothing but blue sky and empty air.

  In that split second, she knew. Ford must have told Rachel what he’d been doing when he’d gotten her call. Hitch hit her brakes and quickly backed up so her SUV was hidden from view. She killed the engine and, grabbing her gun, jumped out. As she neared the pickup and the edge of the mountain, the wind howled, bending the branches of the pines. No wonder they hadn’t heard her driving up the mountain behind them, she thought.

  She moved quickly, staying at the edge of the trees as she kept her gaze on the two in the pickup. Rachel was behind the wheel—just as Hitch had suspected. Ford appeared to be half slumped in the passenger-side seat. For a moment, she feared he was dead. But Rachel seemed to be talking to him.

  As Hitch drew closer, though, her heart dropped when she saw how close Rachel had parked from the edge of a cliff. The engine was still running. Hitch’s stomach dropped as she realized what the woman planned to do.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Ford couldn’t feel his body. His mind, though, was sharp, and there was nothing wrong with his hearing. He tried not to think about what was going to happen or why living now meant so much to him. Hitch. They’d only just started, and now...

  “I didn’t want it to end this way, but you have to admit, you gave me the perfect way to get rid of you.” Rachel chuckled. “If you hadn’t told me about how I’d saved your life with my phone call... Well, I would have found another way, but you did make this easy. I appreciate that.”