Montana Connection

by B. J Daniels

  Roz had hoped everyone had gone to bed. She could feel the approaching storm in the air as she walked quickly up the steps and across the porch. She was relieved that the porch light was on and the front door wasn’t locked. She felt a little chilled and couldn’t wait to have a hot bath as lightning flickered in the distance, thunder echoing behind it, the night suddenly feeling colder.

  She hurried inside, trying to be as quiet as possible in hopes of avoiding running into any of the family again tonight—just in case any were home.

  She didn’t see anyone as she closed the front door behind her and started up the stairs. From the kitchen came the clatter of pots and pans, but no other sound.

  Roz hurried up the stairs, trying not to think about Ford Lancaster. Impossible. If even half of what he’d told her was the truth—

  As she passed the second floor, she heard nothing but silence. Was it possible even Suzanne had gone to the hospital? Could she be wrong about the level of their concern for her father?

  She was tired. Exhausted with worry and from being around these people. Biting her tongue took so much energy. Not that she’d done much tongue biting tonight.

  She opened the door to her room, thankful now that it hadn’t been changed. It felt like a sanctuary in this house and she needed that right now. She closed the door and caught the scent of chocolate—her one weakness.

  In a dish next to her bed were two perfect pieces of her favorite Swiss chocolates—and a note. “I thought you might enjoy these after the day you’ve had, Drew.”

  How thoughtful. Roz popped one of the chocolates into her mouth and closed her eyes, letting the rich, smooth delicacy melt on her tongue. “Ahhhhh.”

  She’d save the other one for after a hot bath.

  As she turned, she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. Her pulse jumped and she had to stifle a scream.

  It was only the curtain billowing in on a gust of wind. Her relief was short-lived. She hadn’t left the window open. Maybe Drew had opened it to let in some fresh air. Odd, though, she couldn’t imagine anyone doing that with a thunderstorm on the way.

  A cold draft of damp air curled around her neck as she went to the window, frowning as she looked down. Past the narrow window ledge was a drop of three stories to the garden below. She glanced up through the limbs of the large tree directly outside her room and caught sight of a dark figure moving along the garden path toward the guest house. Ford?

  She started to close the window but stopped as she noticed how close the branches of the tree were to her room. It would be easy for someone to climb the tree and right into her room.

  She shook off the thought as she closed the window and locked it. Why would anyone go to the effort, let alone the danger of falling from a rain-slick tree limb to climb in her window? Especially when the window had been closed and locked when she’d left earlier. Hadn’t it? It had definitely been closed. She couldn’t swear it had been locked though.

  She turned to survey the room, her gaze settling on her open suitcase.

  Earlier when she’d left, her suitcase hadn’t been open on the trunk at the end of her bed.

  But it was now.

  She stepped to it, seeing at once that the contents had been gone through—and not very neatly—as if the person had been in a hurry. Drew? It seemed unlikely that it had been him. He wouldn’t leave her chocolates and a note, and then rummage through her suitcase in such a way that she’d notice. Someone else had been in her room!

  Her mouth went dry as she looked around. What had someone been searching for? Had he climbed the tree?

  Or just left the window open to make her think the intruder had come from outside the house—rather than from within?

  Ford Lancaster looked more than capable of scaling that tree and coming in through her bedroom window. That image tantalized her imagination a little too much and she quickly moved on to other suspects.

  Emily was nosey enough that Roz could easily see her going through the suitcase. But she was also cheap enough that she wouldn’t leave the window open. Too much heat loss.

  Roz sighed. As far as in-house suspects, that left Suzanne. Suzanne didn’t seem motivated or sober enough to go through her suitcase let alone open the window to make her think someone had just left moments before Roz arrived.

  Roz looked out, thinking of Ford.

  That pretty much left Ford. She’d just seen him from the window. He could have scaled down the tree only moments before. That had been him she’d seen heading for the guest house, hadn’t it? He’d certainly made good time walking back, even though Timber Falls was small and the hospital was only a few blocks away.

  But what would Ford have been looking for in her suitcase? What would anyone have been looking for?

  She locked the window and froze as she heard a familiar song playing in the room next door, her mother’s sewing room. The song was her mother’s favorite—and the same song Roz heard in her nightmares.

  Heart pounding, she moved across her bedroom and opened the door to peer out. The hallway was empty. She was only imagining the music—just as she had earlier tonight. Just as she had right after her mother’s death. Just as she did when she dreamed about her mother’s death.

  But this time it sounded so real. And this time there was no mistaking where the music was coming from.

  She tiptoed down the hallway, stopping at the sewing room door. The knob felt cold to the touch. It turned in her hand and the door swung open.

  The room, like her own, was exactly the same as it had been ten years ago. Some of her mother’s fabric was still spread out on the cutting table, the scissors lying next to it, as if any moment her mother would pick them up.

  The song stopped, and in the silence that followed, she thought she really had imagined it. But then the record began to play again, startling her and she saw why.

  Her mother’s old automatic phonograph. The single 45 spinning on the turntable. The record scratchy, the speakers tinny sounding.

  She stepped into the chilly room, lifted the needle off the 45 and turned the record player to off. Silence filled the room.

  She wasn’t going to cry. Wasn’t that exactly what someone wanted her to do? Why else had they turned on the phonograph? But how? Wasn’t everyone at the hospital?

  As she started to turn toward the open doorway to leave, she heard a soft click behind her and froze.

  An instant later the phonograph needle began to scratch across the record again.

  CHAPTER SIX

  As Ford walked to the guest house from the hospital, the town of Timber Falls was quiet and dark as if holding its breath before the next rainstorm hit.

  He stopped on the porch, took out his keys and started to unlock the guest house door. He froze, the hair rising on the back of his neck. The door was already open and he had the feeling that whoever had broken in either hadn’t been gone long—or was still inside.

  He reached into his pocket for his penlight but didn’t turn it on as he slowly pushed open the door. It was black inside the guest house except for a sliver of light under his bedroom door. He could hear a faint rustling on the other side.

  Cautiously, he moved closer. A floorboard creaked under his shoe. The light under the door went out. He snapped on the penlight and threw open the door just in time to see a dark figure rush out through the patio doors and out into the night.

  He gave chase but the intruder was quickly swallowed up by the rainforest. Ford swore under his breath. He couldn’t even be sure if it had been a man or a woman. Nor could he make out a footprint in the mossy ground outside.

  Closing the patio doors, he found marks where a tool had been used to break the lock. So why had the front door been open? Had someone just wanted him to believe they’d broken in when in truth, the intruder had used a key and not closed the door properly?

  He closed the drapes and pulled a chair up under the doorknob of the patio door for the night. He would do the same to the front door when
the time came.

  As he turned back to the room, he saw that his things had been gone through. His papers were scattered on the floor where they’d been dropped.

  Adrenaline shot through him. Where was his laptop computer?

  He hurried around the bed, relieved to see it lying next to the bed on the floor. Even before he reached for it, he knew that the disk would be gone.

  It was.

  He swore again. Whoever had stolen the disk now knew as much about Liam Sawyer’s find as Ford did. But then again, whoever had broken in here had already known something or he wouldn’t have come here tonight.

  Ford mentally kicked himself. He’d provided the thief with the perfect opportunity by staying away so long. But that was the least of his worries. That disk had more than Liam’s find on it. If any of that information should get to Rozalyn—

  He rubbed his sore shin where she’d kicked him earlier in the garden and thought about, of all things, the kiss.

  He’d lied. It hadn’t been nothing. In fact those few delightful moments in the garden made him curious enough to want to kiss her again. He swore at the thought, reminding himself of the kind of woman Rozalyn Sawyer was. The kind who would risk her life for a phantom stranger at a waterfall.

  Just his luck that the one person who actually might be able to help him would be the least predictable and the most honest.

  * * *

  ROZ STOOD, her back to the sewing room as the heartbreakingly familiar record began to play on the phonograph again. A chill skittered across her skin, the tiny hairs on the back of her neck rising. That same song had been playing the day her mother jumped from the fourth floor widow’s walk to fall to her death. No one had believed Roz that the song had been playing any more than they believed that she’d heard voices in the attic before her mother was found.

  Nor would anyone believe that Roz had turned off the record player.

  And that someone had turned it back on.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she spied her mother’s scissors on the cutting table. Holding her breath, she grabbed for the scissors. The instant her hand closed over them, she whirled around, brandishing the sharp weapon.

  There wasn’t another soul in the room. Just as she knew there wouldn’t be. The record whirled on the phonograph. The music filled the room. She was completely alone.

  Tears of terror blurred her eyes as she rushed back in, grabbed the cord and jerked the plug from the wall. A final note hung in the air as the needle scratched across the vinyl, the arm dropping away from the record.

  She stood over the phonograph, the silence louder and more eerie than the music had been. She stared down at the 45 as if she half expected the record to begin spinning again and the needle to rise and drop to the scratchy vinyl surface.

  The scissors clattered to the floor. She grabbed the record from the turntable and began to break it into tiny pieces that fell to the floor like dark confetti until her trembling hands were empty and she ran from the room, slamming the door behind her.

  She wanted to keep going, out of this house, out of this town, away from all the painful memories. But she couldn’t leave her father. She ran to her bedroom and hurriedly locked the door behind her.

  Nor would she be frightened away.

  Checking under the bed, in the closet and even behind the shower curtain in the bathroom, she tried to still her panic.

  Lightning splintered the sky beyond her window, followed moments later by a deafening boom of thunder. She cried out, backing up against the wall as she watched the sky outside flash with light.

  She had to calm down. Someone was trying to scare her and damn but it was working. Exhaustion made her brain foggy. She tried to think, tried to get her composure back. Her mother’s spirit hadn’t started that phonograph playing. Nor was it the electrical storm or some quirk of nature. Someone had to have rigged the phonograph to keep playing even when she’d turned it off.

  Emily! The woman had resented her from the beginning. She definitely didn’t want her here. Drew was the only one who seemed to care anything about her.

  Roz saw the second piece of chocolate on the plate by her bed and almost dove for it. Once in her mouth, the rich chocolate began to melt, and Roz felt her heart rate drop a little. She would never be able to sleep unless she got a hot bath even as late as it was. She was too worried about her father. Too keyed up over everything.

  But she’d also seen too many movies where the heroine foolishly climbed into the tub not realizing the killer was in her bedroom. She double-checked the closet, under the bed and made sure the window was locked, then she barricaded herself in the bathroom after first looking behind the shower curtain again.

  The chocolate was starting to take effect. She felt a mellowness wash over her as she turned on the faucet and the large claw-foot tub began to fill.

  She could hardly hear the thunder rumbling outside. Without a window, she couldn’t see the flashes of lightning. Maybe by the time she was through bathing, the storm would have died down to just rain.

  She tried not to worry about her father, praying he would have regained consciousness by morning. She also tried not to think about the phonograph. Or the open window she’d found earlier in her bedroom. Or the fact that someone had gone through her suitcase.

  As the tub filled, she opened the bottle of jasmine bubble bath that had been set out for her and poured a large dollop into the water. Drew again?

  She yawned, stripped off her clothing and stepped into the tub, groggily sinking neck-deep into the warm water and jasmine-scented bubbles. The water felt like silk as it caressed her skin, warming her to her core. She closed her eyes.

  Heaven. She was surprised how drowsy she felt suddenly, and behind her lids, saw a figure in a yellow raincoat running through the golden beams of her highlights and the pouring rain, heading for the brink of a waterfall.

  Her eyes flew open. She shoved the image away. She didn’t want to think what the sheriff would find at Lost Creek Falls.

  As she lay back in the tub, she let herself drift to the soft lap and warm feel of the water, pretending she was supine on a raft under the summer sun, the ocean beneath her the color of Ford’s eyes.

  Her eyes closed, her lids too heavy to keep open. Ford’s image appeared as if conjured up. Those insolent sea-green eyes met hers. His gaze caressed her face, her neck, her—

  Her eyes flew open and she sat up, sloshing water in the tub. She looked around the room. His image had been so real that she expected to see Ford standing over her. The room was empty. Of course it was. The door was locked. She must have dozed off. She could have drowned.

  “That’s enough of that.” It seemed to take all her energy to pull herself from the tub, rub herself dry with the towel, don the long white cotton nightgown she’d brought and unlock the bathroom door let alone climb into bed.

  As exhausted as she was, she found herself fighting sleep, afraid to close her eyes for fear of what she might see. Worse, what she might hear—the unbroken favorite 45 playing again on her mother’s phonograph in the next room.

  She stared hard at the ceiling, willing her lids open. It took all her effort. The old house creaked and groaned. Lightning flashed beyond the window curtains, thunder rattled the glass, echoing like a heartbeat inside her. Roz didn’t even remember closing her eyes.

  * * *

  FORD COULDN’T SLEEP. After tossing and turning for a while, he finally gave up. He pulled on only a pair of jeans and padded barefoot into the kitchen to make himself a drink. He could feel the electricity in the air and smell the scent of the approaching rain as he took his glass out to the covered porch.

  The wind groaned in the swaying tops of the trees, as lightning cut huge zigzagged seams in the darkness and thunder cracked like a shot overhead. He waited out the storm, restless and edgy.

  The first sip of Scotch burned all the way down. Just what he needed. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep until the storm moved on, until the rain fell in
a monotonous downpour.

  He looked toward the house, wondering if Rozalyn was asleep. She’d looked exhausted at the hospital. Why wouldn’t she be asleep after the night she’d had. He tried not to feel sorry for her. A weird stepfamily. Her father in the hospital in a coma. And maybe even worse, Ford Lancaster dropping into her life. Talk about bad karma.

  And there was her past. Her family’s history of instability. He knew how that could haunt a person. It certainly could explain her reaction at Lost Creek Falls tonight. Of course, he hadn’t seen a thing. Another sore point between them. Another reason she wouldn’t want to trust him. As if she needed any more reasons.

  He took another sip of his drink and smiled ruefully. He’d pretty much blown it with her. Except maybe for the kiss. For that moment he’d thought he had her right where he wanted her. She had been responding quite nicely. Until she kicked him.

  He shook his head, amazed she’d come back here after her mother had committed suicide in that house. The woman had grit, that was for damned sure. Look at how she’d stood up to Emily and the rest of them. He smiled to himself. Look how she stood up to you.

  He walked to the edge of the porch railing. This was the last place in the world he wanted to be. Worse, he hated what he was going to have to do. One thing was for certain, he couldn’t let Rozalyn find out the truth from whoever had taken the disk. Not before she helped him find whatever it was Liam Sawyer had discovered in the woods before his injury.

  Ford glanced toward the main house again. He couldn’t see most of the structure because of the trees. But he could see the attic windows clearly. At first he thought he’d just imagined the flicker of light behind one of the windows.

  He waited for the light to come on again.

  It didn’t.

  Lightning ripped through the darkness in a blinding flash. A heartbeat later, thunder boomed.

  Still no light flickered in the attic. Odd. Maybe he had just imagined it. Or the glow had been the reflection of lightning on the windowpane.