Ominous

by Lisa Jackson

  “Sounds fair enough to me.”

  Morgan’s smile faltered, and he saw hurt in her eyes. He reminded himself that she was still raw inside.

  “Hey, I didn’t say I’d say ‘no,’ did I?”

  “But you didn’t say ‘yes’ either,” she countered. From the corner of his eye, he saw Shiloh approach. She’d released the mare, who was tossing her head and galloping to join the rest of the small herd, her coat glistening a fiery red in the late-afternoon sunlight.

  “She’s been workin’ me,” he said, motioning to Morgan with one hand.

  For that he received a glare silently calling him a traitor.

  “I said she could go if you okayed it,” Shiloh said.

  “You’re not my mother!” Morgan spat.

  “Whoa, whoa.” Beau held up his hands as in surrender.

  “No one said I was,” Shiloh retorted.

  “And I’m not your dad,” Beau put in quickly, “but right now, this is what we’ve got. The three of us have to figure this whole family thing out.”

  Morgan’s face crumpled into a scowl, and she crossed her arms belligerently over her chest.

  “The way I see it, you can go to Ayla’s. You’re talking about Ayla Dunbar, right?”

  Morgan muttered, “The only Ayla I know.”

  He ignored her jab and said to Shiloh, whose face was set in stone, “The Dunbars are good people. Frank, Ayla’s father, is an insurance salesman and does horseshoeing on the side. I’ve known him for years. His wife, Betty Ann, owns the bakery in town.”

  Morgan rolled her eyes.

  Shiloh nodded. “Then let’s set it up. I’ll call Ayla’s mom and introduce myself.”

  “How embarrassing!” Morgan cried. “It’s like you don’t trust me.”

  “I just don’t know the Dunbars,” Shiloh said, echoing Beau’s words of a week before. “I’ll talk to Betty Ann, and if it’s on, we’ll make it happen.” Shiloh paused.

  “Just let me shower first.” She brushed her hands together and whipped her phone from the back pocket of her jeans. Morgan seemed to want to fight, but she reluctantly checked her own phone and gave Shiloh the number to call Betty Ann. The whole exchange took less than five minutes. “Okay, we’re good to go,” Shiloh said and hurried up the back steps.

  “Can’t you take me?” Morgan asked Beau once the screen door banged shut.

  “What’s the problem?” In his opinion, Shiloh was handling the situation perfectly, and that surprised him.

  “I don’t know,” Morgan mumbled.

  “Give ’er a chance, Morgs.”

  “Easy for you to say.” With that she stomped off.

  Beau watched her leave, but his mind was still on Shiloh. He’d thought a lot about her over the years, but never had he thought she had any bit of maternal instinct.

  Beau Tate didn’t like to be wrong.

  Worse yet, he didn’t like admitting it.

  This time it looked like he’d have to.

  Chapter 8

  Shiloh parked her truck at the end of a long line of similar vehicles outside the Prairie Dog Saloon. Most of the pickups were dusty, with gun racks visible in the back windows and tool boxes spanning their beds. There were only two that were washed: a gray Dodge Ram that looked like it had been used hard, and a bright-red Ford F50 that gleamed beneath the sun, damn near enough to burn her retinas. No tool box on that one, but, oh yeah, the gun rack was there.

  The Dog, as the bar was called by the regulars, was a long-necked Budweiser kind of place with a dark interior, booths and tables scattered in the open area, and a bar that stretched across the back wall. Pool tables and neon beer signs vied with televisions turned on to muted sports channels. Country music filled the area. A bartender poured drinks and swabbed down the bar, while a thin woman in tight jeans and a black T-shirt with the logo of THE DOG stamped across the back worked the tables.

  Shiloh searched the dim interior but didn’t see Kat among the patrons, who sat on stools near the bar or crowded into booths and around tables, deep into conversation over pints and peanuts. A couple of guys were arguing over a baseball play, and she thought she recognized them as two ranch hands who had been around town years before. It took a moment, but she came up with their names. One was Scott Massey, who Beau had said worked with him at the Kincaid ranch. He’d done something with the rodeo too, back in the day. Like Kat’s brother, Ethan Starr, who’d been a bronc rider until he’d broken one too many bones. Massey wore a Dodgers baseball cap as he huddled over his beer. The second man was harder to recognize, but she felt she’d seen him somewhere before. He slid a glance her way, and when their eyes met she felt a little shiver run down her spine. Hank Eames was peering at her from beneath the brim of a black Stetson. He had always nailed people with a cold, fish-eye stare, ever since he got injured in a tractor accident. He had worked for the Kincaids, the last she knew, and he was also a friend of Larimer Tate’s.

  As if he read her thoughts, he smiled coldly at her with a hated recognition.

  She turned away first and almost made her way back out the door, but she held her ground, scolding herself for her cowardice. She had nothing to worry about. As far as she knew, Hank wasn’t dangerous. But anyone associated with Tate gave her pause. She’d even questioned her own mother’s sanity for staying with such a slime.

  As Hank turned back to the game, she noticed two men playing pool, their long-necked bottles resting on a nearby table, billiard balls clicking with each shot.

  She’d never been in The Dog; she’d been too young to patronize the bar before she left, but this was the place Larimer Tate had called home more often than not. Her stomach turned at the thought, but she told herself to bury the past. If she could. Living on the same plot of land as his son made it difficult at times.

  “Shiloh?” A deep male voice caught her attention.

  She jerked involuntarily as she spied one of the men who had been playing pool approaching. “Shiloh Silva?” He was still carrying his cue in one hand, while his opponent sent a withering glance his way, returning his stick to the rack mounted on a plank wall.

  He was vaguely familiar, slightly older than she was, but she couldn’t place him. His jaw was covered in a three-day growth of dark beard, and his skin was dark, from hours in the sun.

  “We went to school together,” he said. “A long time ago.” He waved to the passing waitress. “Mellie, can you get me another?” He jiggled his empty at the waitress. “And one here, for my friend.”

  “I’m meeting someone,” Shiloh interjected, just so he didn’t get the wrong impression.

  With a lift of his shoulder, he said, “It doesn’t hurt anything to have a beer before he shows up.”

  “She,” Shiloh interjected.

  “All the better. We can sit here, and you can watch the door for your friend.”

  She hesitated.

  His smile was dark, his eyes a bit dangerous. Dressed in a western-cut shirt and faded jeans, he stuck out his hand and introduced himself. “I’m Rafe.”

  Now it clicked. “Rafe Dillinger.”

  “That’s right.”

  Rafe was some kind of distant Dillinger cousin, a black sheep of the family. He’d been ahead of her in high school, at least when he attended, but everyone knew Rafe as the bad boy of Prairie Creek. He and Courtney Pearson had been an item for a while: two delinquents in love. She shook his hand carefully.

  “You’ve been big news around here,” he said. “Or at least you were awhile back. I’ve seen pictures.”

  Her skepticism must’ve shown on her face as he went on, “And I heard about your mom. It’s still a small town.” He slid into one side of a booth, she opposite him, just as the waitress delivered two frosty glasses and a couple of beers to the table. “Put it on my tab, darlin’,” Rafe said, and Mellie cast him a saccharine smile. To Shiloh, he said, “Sorry for your loss.” Ignoring his glass, he took a long swallow from his bottle.

  She pulled her bottle closer. �
�Doesn’t she get offended when you call her something like ‘darlin”?”

  “Probably.” His lips twisted into a smile that said, “Who the hell cares?” Another swallow. “I can’t spend my time worrying about what does or doesn’t offend others. All that PC bullshit. Not into it.”

  “So … I hear there’s a wedding coming up.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Colton and Sabrina?”

  He looked away, and Shiloh realized he might be persona non grata or the fallen son of the family. “There’s a good chance I’m not invited.” And this time there was no humor in his eyes.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not invited either,” she said, wondering why she bothered being nice to Rafe Dillinger, who’d barely acknowledged her back in high school. “I have to admit, I’m surprised to see you here. I heard you skipped town too.” She didn’t add that she’d heard he’d left to escape charges in the abduction of Courtney Pearson.

  “I left, I came back, I left again.” He shrugged. “I guess this town’s like a bad addiction. Hard to shake it.”

  At that moment, the guy he’d been playing pool with stopped by the table and slammed a couple of twenties onto the hard surface. “There ya go,” he said a little bitterly. “I’ll get ya next time.”

  “If there is one.”

  The opponent, shorter than Rafe by a couple of inches, was muscular, tightly compact, with a horseshoe mustache and deep-set eyes. Shiloh thought she recognized him too, but she couldn’t place this one.

  “Oh, there’ll be one,” he blustered. “And next time, I’ll be collecting.”

  “Wouldn’t count on it.”

  The guy finally looked at Shiloh, and his eyes narrowed at her.

  A warning bell went off in Shiloh’s brain.

  “Shiloh Silva,” Rafe introduced. “You remember Jimmy Woodcock?”

  The muscles tightened in Shiloh’s body. “Oh yeah,” she said without enthusiasm. A little older than she, he was the son of the owner of the local paper. Back in school, Jimmy had earned a reputation as a bully. “The mustache threw me off, but I remember you,” she said, thinking of a girl who had been crying in the lavatory at a basketball game because Jimmy had smacked her around in the parking lot.

  “Wondered when I’d run into you,” Jimmy said, his face becoming more animated. He looked like a young Yosemite Sam. “I run the paper now, Prairie Winds, you remember?” She made a noise of acknowledgment. “It’s been fifteen years since some of the local girls went missing, and I was thinking of doing a story about them. Your take on it and what happened to you would be an interesting angle.”

  “No, thanks.” The only thing Shiloh would gain from the publicity would be trouble.

  Ignoring her reticence, he plowed on. “Oh come on, maybe we could generate some interest in what happened to them—you know, get the police interested again? Get some computer-enhanced pictures made of what the girls would look like now.”

  “But nothing happened to me,” she reminded him. So this was going to be how it was, everyone in town wanting to hear her tale? “I just left, and my mother knew that. I was never a missing person.”

  “It would still be a great perspective.” He reached into his pocket and slid a business card across the polished wood. It landed against her sweating empty glass. “Think about it,” he suggested, and it sounded almost like an order.

  “The lady doesn’t want to,” Rafe said.

  “The lady can handle herself,” she said evenly.

  Jimmy sent Rafe a satisfied look, as if he’d won that round, before he walked out the door.

  “I don’t need anyone fighting my battles,” Shiloh told Rafe. Part of her wished she’d never sat down with him, though, in truth, she would have drawn more attention to herself if she’d taken a seat alone.

  “Okay, okay. Just so you know, Woodcock’s a dick. Been with the paper for years, inherited it from his old man. And he can’t play pool worth shit.” He folded the twenties and dropped them into his breast pocket.

  At that moment, Kat walked in, and Shiloh breathed a little easier since she now had an excuse to get away from Rafe. Though she didn’t love the way Rafe eyed her petite friend with interest, Shiloh could see why. Still trim, with shoulder-length hair, Kat had an energy about her that drew attention. She’d always been quick, her humor and temper at the ready. Spying Shiloh, she headed to the table, but stopped short when she saw Rafe.

  “Must be your date,” Rafe said casually. “The lady cop.”

  “You know each other?” Shiloh asked.

  “Of each other,” Kat replied.

  “We could be closer … ,” he said with a smile. Kat regarded him with cool tolerance as she slid onto the bench he’d so recently occupied. He tipped his hat to her as he made his way out of the bar.

  “Making new friends already,” Kat observed dryly.

  Shiloh grinned. “Geez, it’s good to see you,” she said and felt a small lump form in her throat. For all her talk of hating Prairie Creek, all her determination to brush the dust of this little town from her boots, there were good things about it too, things she’d missed. Katrina Starr was definitely on the list, though they’d steered clear of each other after that fateful night.

  “How are you, Kat?” she asked as they sat on opposite sides of a booth on the wall opposite the bar.

  “All right.” She set her purse on the bench beside her. “So you know Rafe Dillinger.”

  “Not really. But he recognized me … acted like I was some kind of celebrity or oddity.”

  Kat glanced at the doorway where Rafe had disappeared. “He left town about the time you did, and that’s when the disappearances stopped.”

  Shiloh too swung her gaze to the door, but Rafe was gone. “Those disappearances have been on my mind ever since I got back. You think Rafe was involved?”

  “Hard to say. My father has an unofficial list of suspects, and Rafe’s near the top. Doesn’t mean anything to anyone but him … and me … because the girls are still considered runaways.”

  “Rafe recognized me.”

  Kat said, “He could’ve just recognized you from seeing your picture in the paper. You were big news back then, for a while. Until your mom said she’d been in contact with you.”

  “I took off a few times, but it was bad when I returned, so that time I left for good.” Shiloh didn’t want to think about how she’d had to up and leave and let her mother worry for days before calling.

  “Your stepfather?” Kat guessed.

  “Yeah, well, he was a bastard.” She drew a breath and exhaled. “So, you’re a cop now, right? A detective. Like your dad.” Shiloh finally took her first sip of the beer Rafe had bought for her.

  Kat smiled faintly. “Who woulda thunk?”

  “Me,” Shiloh said. “I’m not surprised.”

  “Maybe me, neither,” she said truthfully. “I’m sorry about your mom.”

  Shiloh nodded. “Me too.” She cleared her throat and looked away. “We, um, weren’t that close.”

  “Still …”

  “Yeah.” Then she added, “And yours too. That was bad.”

  “It was a long time ago.” Kat made a face. “Hard on all of us, at the time, but we got through it. Ethan left for a while. Came back a few years ago. You still into horses as much as he is?”

  “He’s a bronc rider. But, yeah, I’m still into horses. I work on a ranch in Montana.”

  “Ah. Ethan was a bronc rider,” she corrected. “Now he’s a horse trainer, and a coach, and a whole lot of other things.”

  “How is he?” Shiloh asked.

  “Fine. We see each other some. He lives his life, and I live mine.”

  “Doesn’t exactly sound like brotherly and sisterly love.”

  “Well, you know, you work through things. He’s happy, I think.”

  And what about you, Kat?

  Mellie floated over, a tray of drinks balanced in one hand. “Ready for another?” she asked, and Shiloh shook her head. �
��Still working on this one.”

  The waitress turned her attention to Kat. “How about you?”

  Kat eyed the beer, then said, “Club soda.”

  “You got it.” She turned her attention to another group.

  Shiloh guessed, “You’re on duty.”

  “Wouldn’t look good for me to be knocking back a beer in the middle of the day.”

  “This is kind of a special occasion,” Shiloh said. Kat regarded her thoughtfully and Shiloh asked,

  “What?”

  “I was just thinking … about everything.”

  “Yeah.”

  Kat had come into The Dog tense and somewhat stern, and now she took a deep breath and seemed to force herself to relax as Mellie brought her her soft drink. Maybe that’s what being a cop was all about, Shiloh thought.

  They brought each other up to date on their lives. Kat explained that she’d lived in Prairie Creek until her mother’s death, then went off to college and came back after graduation. Shiloh, in turn, told how she’d hitchhiked out of town to get away from her stepfather and eventually landed at a farm in the Dakotas, where she’d earned her keep mucking out stalls and caring for the horses. When it was apparent she had a connection to the animals, the elderly couple who’d taken her in and let her sleep in what had been their son’s room helped her start training horses. When they had to sell the place, she moved on, working from one ranch to the next, gaining a solid reputation, until she settled in Grizzly Falls, Montana, in the Bitterroot Valley, not far from the Idaho border, which was where she still was.

  “And so now I’m back,” Shiloh said as she finished her beer.

  “Fifteen years …” Kat made a face. “Half the town still thinks you and the other girls that went missing met with the same fate.”

  “Maybe we all did. Maybe you and your father are wrong about them being missing.”

  “So far, you’re the only one who came back. Rachel, Erin, and Courtney didn’t. No one knows what happened to them.”

  “Maybe they’ll turn up. Like me.” Shiloh heard the lack of conviction in her voice just as Mellie drifted over. “You still good?” she asked them.