by Kat Martin
She was in love with him. More every day. But Kade was Kade, and she was a woman who valued her independence above all things. Every day she spent with him would only make their parting more painful.
Ellie clung to him as he moved inside her, carrying her once more toward the peak. In the end, she would have to give him up, but for now Kade was hers. Ellie intended to enjoy every moment.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
AFTER THEIR EXHAUSTING NIGHT OF FIREFIGHTING, THEY SLEPT LATE into the day. It was early afternoon. Ellie was buttoning her plaid flannel shirt, Kade pulling on his jeans, when her cell phone rang. Recognizing Anna’s number, she pressed the phone against her ear.
“I got your message,” Anna said. “I meant to call sooner, but one of the neighbors stopped by, and it just slipped my mind.”
“It’s easy to do. With kids and a husband, you have a lot going on. I wanted to ask about a pub in Vail called Bullwinkle’s. You know it, right? I think most of the locals do.”
“I know it. My husband and I go there sometimes, mostly during ski season.”
“It’s been there a while,” Ellie said. “Do you remember if Heather went there when she came to visit? You said she went out by herself sometimes.”
“We went there nearly every time she came to Vail. We were younger. Sometimes Heather went alone. It was the place everybody went back then. I guess if you’re single, it still is.”
“There’s been another murder, Anna. A woman from Denver named Barbara Meeks.”
“Oh no.”
“Barbara was killed under circumstances similar to what happened to Heather. They found her body in the same mountain park on the outskirts of Boulder.”
“That’s terrible news. I feel so sorry for her family. But surely the police can’t believe it’s the same man.”
“I know eight years is a long time, but there’s a chance it’s him. A woman who works at Bullwinkle’s saw Barbara with a man the weekend before she was killed. She’s doing a sketch with the Denver police. I’d like you to look at it once it’s finished. You might have seen him somewhere back then.”
“Yes, absolutely. I’ll talk to Gretchen, make sure she sees it, too.”
“That would be great. I’ll let you know as soon as I have something to show you.” Ellie hung up and looked over to find Kade watching her.
“So Heather went to Bullwinkle’s to pick up men,” he said darkly.
“We don’t know for sure that’s what she did there, but it’s certainly possible.” She walked over to him, gently laid a hand on his cheek. “I warned you when we started that dredging up the past would be painful.”
He caught her hand, turned his face into it, and kissed her palm. “I’m not sorry. If we’re right and the same man killed both women, he could kill again. We need to find him and stop him.”
“We’re going to find him,” Ellie said. “Which means I need to get to work. I’ve got some things to check on the internet.” Ellie’s cell phone rang. She grabbed it off the dresser.
“It’s Zoe,” she said to Kade. Zoe was working the Keller case, looking for proof that the man had been paid and, if so, figuring out who’d paid him.
“I’ve got good news and bad,” Zoe said. “The good news is Frank Keller made two ten-thousand-dollar deposits into his Wells Fargo account in Denver.”
Adrenaline jolted through Ellie. “Which confirms what we figured, that someone hired him to cause Kade trouble.”
“Yes, that’s the good news. The bad news is the deposit was made in cash, so there’s no way to track who paid him.”
Ellie looked over her shoulder to find Kade anxiously watching. “Even so, that’s good work, Zoe.”
“I wish there was more I could do. Maybe one of us will think of something.” There was a different tone to her voice, a lightness that hadn’t been there the last time they had spoken.
“You sound good.” Ellie turned away from Kade’s impatient glare. “You sound happy. What’s going on?”
“Chad and I got back together. I really love him, Ellie. When I saw him again, I knew he was the one for me. Chad said he’d never stopped loving me, and I realized when it’s right, it’s really not that hard to commit.”
Ellie ignored a pang. “I’m really glad things worked out. I’ll call you back and get all the warm and fuzzies when Kade isn’t standing here glowering at me for news.”
Zoe laughed. “Talk to you later.”
The call ended, and Ellie turned to Kade. “Keller made two ten-thousand-dollar deposits into his bank account in Denver. Unfortunately, they were made in cash.”
“So no way to track who they came from.” Kade tucked his denim work shirt into his jeans. “At least we know for sure Frank was working for someone else.”
“Yes, and according to Earl, that was the person who killed him.”
“Someone Frank knew from the mine.” Kade sighed. “It’s something. Just not enough.”
Ellie silently agreed.
* * *
It was late afternoon of the following day, the sky graying toward dark, when Kade swung down from Hannibal and glanced around for Billy. It took a moment to spot him, riding next to Ellie toward the barn, leading the little palomino filly.
Lately, Kade had been giving the boy more and more responsibility. He was planning to hire another stable hand so Billy could spend more time working with the horses.
Kade led his buckskin into the barn at the same time Ellie and Billy rode in. Ellie dismounted from Painted Lady and flashed Kade a smile so warm it made him wish they were back in the shower.
“I was desperate for a little fresh air,” Ellie said. “Billy was working Sunshine on a lead line. I talked him into combining his efforts and going for a ride with me. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Not a bit. I was glad to be out of the house myself.” He turned to Billy, who swung down from a very reliable bay gelding named Ringo that he was using to pony Sunshine. “The filly needs the work,” Kade said to him. “Looks like you’re doing a good job.”
“Sunshine likes to learn, and she’s really smart. She’s going to be one of your best horses, Kade.”
Kade ran a hand over the palomino’s golden neck. “You just keep doing what you’re doing, and I’m sure she will be.”
While the hands washed up for supper, Kade walked Ellie back to the house. The aroma of baked ham and biscuits filled the kitchen. Maria and her new assistant, her cousin Dolores, were bustling around, their movements not quite in sync. Learning each other’s routines took time. As Dolores hurried over to set the table, she bumped into Kade, and her cheeks reddened.
“Please excuse me, Señor Kade.” She was a year younger than Maria, round-faced and a little plump, with a sweet disposition. Kade liked her.
“It’s just Kade, Dolores, and we’ll get out of your way till supper’s ready.”
“All right . . . Kade.”
Kade felt the pull of a smile as he urged Ellie out the door toward the living room. “It’s been a long day,” he said. “I could use a drink.”
“I wouldn’t mind a glass of white wine,” Ellie said as they walked into the high-ceilinged room that didn’t get used nearly enough.
Kade went over to the cedar-slab bar, pulled a chilled bottle out of the under-counter fridge, and poured a glass, then took down a heavy, crystal rocks glass, added ice, and poured himself a whiskey, Stranahan’s Rocky Mountain single malt.
The first sip spread the burn out through his limbs, relieving some of the tension. They carried their drinks over to the sofa and sat down on the burgundy leather. As Ellie took a sip of wine, Kade noticed the faint worry lines across her forehead.
“Something’s going on in that head of yours.” He caught her chin, forcing her to look at him. “What is it?”
Ellie sighed. “I’m afraid to say it out loud. I’m afraid you’ll think I’m crazy.”
“Try me.”
She set her wineglass down on the coffee table. “O
kay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Kade just waited.
“Coffee Springs is a rural community, right? Aside from what happened to Heather, murder doesn’t commonly occur around here.”
“Couple of rustlers were hanged back in the Wild West days, but that was over a hundred years ago.”
“And yet we have two dead men in Routt County—Frank Keller and Earl Dunstan, murdered about thirty miles from here, just across the county line. Eight years ago, Heather was murdered, and now Barbara Meeks, who may have been killed by the same guy who killed Heather. Four people dead, Kade. I keep asking myself why they all have some connection—no matter how remote—to you.”
Kade frowned. “Wait a minute. You think Keller, Dunstan, and the dead women are connected? Tell me how it fits together.”
Ellie picked up her wineglass, walked over to the window, and stared out at the snow-capped range in the distance. “I’m not sure.” She turned to face him. “I told you it was going to sound crazy.”
“Maybe it’s all just coincidence.”
“As I recall, neither of us believe much in coincidence.”
Kade carried his whiskey over and joined her at the window. “All right, just for drill, let’s run with it, see how it plays out.”
“We’ll have to theorize some of it.”
“We have to start somewhere.”
She nodded. “Okay, let’s begin with Frank Keller. Someone hired Keller to cause Kade Logan trouble.”
He nodded. “We’ve always figured the man who hired him wanted payback for something I did.”
“And he shot two men in cold blood, so we know he’s a killer.”
“True enough,” Kade said.
“So let’s go further, say he wants more than just payback. Say he hates you, he’s obsessed with you for some reason.”
“Well, he sure as hell doesn’t like me.”
Ellie grinned. “Right. So what if he’s the guy who killed Heather all those years ago? Maybe he murdered her for the same reason he hired Frank Keller. Because he hates you and wants to punish you for whatever it is you’ve done—or he thinks you’ve done.”
Kade took a drink of whiskey. “If he killed Heather because he hated me, why did he wait eight years to come after me again?”
“I’m not sure, but . . .”
“But what?”
“All of this started after the police found Heather’s car. More coincidence?”
The ice rattled in his glass as he took a drink. “I see what you mean.”
Ellie sighed. “I don’t know all the answers, but it’s my job to find out.” She looked back at the snow-capped mountains. “And I still think all of this—even Barbara Meeks—has something to do with you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
ELLIE’S THEORY DROVE KADE CRAZY THAT NIGHT. HE WOKE UP groggy and foul-tempered, tried not to take it out on his pretty bedmate and instead made love to her before he got up to shower and pull on his jeans and boots.
Desperate to clear his head and keep his mind off the possibility he was somehow responsible for the deaths of four people, he rode out with his men and didn’t return until dark. He couldn’t make sense of it, but he had come to trust Ellie. If she thought it was possible, he’d keep an open mind.
He found her in her bedroom when he walked into the house at the end of the day. Ellie rose from her seat at the Victorian writing desk, came over, and looped her arms around his neck.
“So how was your day?” She smiled and pressed a soft kiss on his lips, and something warm expanded inside him.
It had been years since anyone had welcomed him home at the end of the day. As he thought back, Heather had usually been busy doing something else when he came in at night.
He lifted a russet curl off her cheek. “Long and exhausting, but better now that I’m home.” With you. But he didn’t say that. He was still trying to get a handle on the feelings that continued to grow inside him.
“You want a drink before supper?” she asked. “That seemed to help last night.”
“Sounds good. Let me go wash up first. I’ll meet you in the living room.”
He returned ten minutes later in fresh jeans and a dark gold thermal to find a cozy fire burning in the big rock fireplace. Ellie greeted him with a glass of the same whiskey he’d poured himself last night.
“A guy could get used to this.” He accepted the drink, took a swallow, and enjoyed the burn. They carried their glasses over and sat down on the sofa as they had before.
“I talked to the fire guys mopping up the blaze near the east pasture,” he said. “They should be done by tomorrow, latest.”
“They did a good job.”
“They’re good men.” He sipped his drink, leaned back on the sofa, and stretched his arm across the back. “Between moving cattle and working on that road we’re building up to the summer camp, I thought about your theory off and on all day. I couldn’t get it out of my head.”
“Come up with anything?”
“My mind keeps going back to Earl Dunstan. Before he died, Earl said Frank knew the guy who killed him was from the mine. Frank worked at the Red Hawk. The only three people we could find at Mountain Ore who knew Frank and could afford to pay him the twenty grand we know he got were Clive Murphy, Tony Russo, and Rick Egan.”
Ellie nodded. “The top execs make enough too, but Phillip Smithson said he didn’t know Keller, and Jane says she and the CEO don’t deal with employees at Frank’s level.”
“I can’t figure why Murphy, Russo, or Egan would have a beef with me, and none of them looked like a killer.”
“You can’t tell by a person’s looks, Kade.”
Amusement touched his lips. “I know, but it always seems to dead-end there.”
Ellie nodded. “I guess we were thinking alike, because I went online and made another run at the same three men.”
“And?”
“I didn’t find anything that raised an alarm. I’ve got Zoey looking at DMV records. If one of them owns a Hummer—”
“Sheriff Fischer is looking into that.”
“The sheriff doesn’t have any evidence that connects those three men to Keller.”
Kade took a drink of whiskey, and Ellie sipped her wine.
“I don’t know what Murphy and Russo drive,” she said, “but I found pictures of Rick Egan on Facebook in front of a white Porsche 911 GT3.”
Kade nodded. “Guy definitely looks like the foreign sports car type. Can’t see that pretty boy driving a Hummer.”
Ellie cocked her head in his direction. “Maybe not, but then most people wouldn’t peg you for the Mercedes-Benz type.”
He smiled. “Good point.”
“Zoe’s going to text and let me know.”
“So how does Frank’s killer connect to Heather and Barbara?”
“Savannah said the guy Barbara left the bar with was dark-haired, athletic, and attractive,” Ellie said. “To some extent, Murphy, Russo, and Egan all fit that description.”
“I guess. All three of them are decent-looking men.”
“So maybe you can tell a killer by his looks. From the beginning, I’ve been searching for someone Heather would have been attracted to. Unless Clive Murphy was a lot better-looking eight years ago, I think we should move him down our list. He just doesn’t look like a guy Heather would have been interested in.”
Kade thought of how beautiful Heather had been. She could have had any man she wanted. Clive Murphy wouldn’t have stood a chance. “You’re right. At least for now, let’s concentrate on the other men.”
“Phillip Smithson has the kind of good looks that would attract a beautiful woman.”
“He said he didn’t know Keller.”
“That’s what he said, but there’s no way to know if it’s true. Maybe Smithson, Russo, or Egan is the guy Barbara slept with. Maybe he’s the same guy Heather slept with years earlier—and he’s the same guy who killed them. It would link you to all four murders.�
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Kade fell silent, his mind spinning at the thought. “We need to see that sketch Savannah is working on.”
Ellie’s phone started ringing. She pulled it out of her jeans and pressed it against her ear. “Hello, Jonas.”
Kade could only hear half the conversation, but when her gaze cut to him, his jaw tightened even more. Just the fact the bastard was calling her set his teeth on edge.
“Okay, great,” she said. “We’ll follow up with Mrs. Morgenstern. Thanks for calling.” She flicked Kade another glance. “I’m afraid I’m busy,” she said into her phone. “No, that won’t work, either. I have to go, Jonas. Thanks again for the help.” Ellie hung up her cell.
Kade had to force out the words. “How the hell does Jonas Murray have your number?”
Ellie’s chin went up. “I gave it to him when we were in town asking about the Hummer. Jonas said he would check with his son and his customers, see if anyone had seen a vehicle like that around. Apparently the lady who lives in a house just south of the post office, Mrs. Morgenstern, got up in the night to let her dog out and saw a Hummer on the road through town. It was a little over a week ago on Wednesday night. No idea why she remembers the date, but that was the night Earl Dunstan was killed.”
Kade ignored the information they already knew. “Jonas asked you to go out with him. He has no business asking you for a date.” His voice was stone-cold.
Ellie’s hand trembled as she set her wineglass down on the coffee table and rose from the sofa. “We’ve talked about this, Kade. I just can’t handle it anymore. I’m not like Heather. Either you trust me or you don’t. I have a life, a job I enjoy, and friends. I’m not giving any of that up because you’re too jealous to deal with it.”
Kade said nothing.
“I’m going back to Denver in the morning. I shouldn’t have stayed this long in the first place.”
Kade’s chest clamped down. “You can’t leave. You work for me, and you haven’t found Heather’s killer yet.”
“I’ll keep working the case. I can do everything I need to do back in the city. I’m sorry things didn’t work out, but it’s probably for the best. Good night, Kade.” Ellie walked out of the living room, and Kade felt as if the breath had been sucked out of his lungs.
