Westin’s Wyoming

by Alice Sharpe

  “The Open Sky is no place for visitors. You should know that. Guess you forgot what real work is like. ’Course, Cody or Adam would have known how to get rid of them.”

  “No doubt,” Pierce said, hoping the princess had the sense not to take his father’s comments personally.

  Birch finally shook his head. “She can sit over there. Won’t bother me.”

  “I can stoke the fire for you,” Analise said, moving in front of the rock hearth. Firelight bathed the blue blackness of her hair, flickered over her flawless features as she threw a glance over her shoulder at Pierce. Suddenly ambushed by the desire to touch her, Pierce looked away. Why couldn’t the two of them be alone in this storm, in this room? Why did she have to be a damn princess?

  “It’s too dark in here for you to mess with the fire,” Birch snarled and as though on command, the lights flickered back on and the room was suddenly way too bright.

  Pierce caught sight of the shotgun resting near his father’s feet. “I see you’re armed and loaded. Just don’t shoot the—er, Ms. Emille, okay?”

  “You must have something better to do than stand in here yammering at me,” Birch snapped, and with that, the book flew open again and he buried his nose in the pages.

  Pierce stared down at him, frustrated by the old man’s habitual belligerence. For his dad, nothing had changed since Pierce was an eighteen-year-old screw-up who was in trouble more than he was out of it. There could be no redemption because Pierce wasn’t willing to pay the price.

  Truth: he wasn’t even sure what the price was.

  With an apologetic glance at Analise, he turned on his heels and left.

  Chapter Seven

  With the trees cleared from the power line, the electricity up and running and Analise surviving his father, afternoon drifted into evening in a nice, unhurried way.

  “Your people did a great job,” Analise said.

  They were standing in the pavilion where a huge fire roared in the center fire pit. Somehow Jamie and the hands had rounded up a few cows and convinced them to stay nearby while someone else had actually used the tractor to haul the old covered wagon out of storage and set it up under the roof. It was missing a wheel or two and sat at a rakish angle and the cloth was torn and stained, but so what? It gave the place a lot of atmosphere.

  Jamie perched on a bale of hay playing old songs on his harmonica while another longtime hand performed lasso tricks and a woman everyone called Sassy Sally made a big deal of heating a branding iron. Every once in a while, she’d pull it out of the coals and burn the Open Sky Ranch logo, an intertwined impression of OSR, into a piece of wood while Toby watched with great, huge eyes. Bonnie lay curled in the straw that was an almost exact match to her fur.

  Pots of bubbling food and smoke from grilling gave the air a pungent smell. Well, that and the cows and horses and the straw, some still in bales, some strewn around on the floor. All and all, with the night hovering around the perimeter and snowflakes revealed by the ambient light right out of reach, it made a cozy, if somewhat breezy, place to spend the evening.

  And Analise looked amazing. She’d produced a white Stetson with a feather headband and she wore it like a tiara on her dark hair. Her perfect-fitting jeans were now tucked into what appeared to be handmade ostrich Western-style boots.

  Must be nice to be rolling in dough.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked him.

  “Was I staring at you?”

  She sat down on one of the bales. “Yes.”

  He sat down beside her, unable to tear his gaze from her face. “Sorry. You’re just so damn over-the-top.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked, brows furrowing together.

  “It means you’re gorgeous.”

  “You think I’m gorgeous?” she asked, and he laughed at her innocent expression.

  “Yes, Princess, you’re gorgeous. I guess you hear that a lot.”

  She cocked her head and floated an eyebrow under the brim of her hat. “Now, why would I hear that a lot?”

  “Don’t the people around you say stuff like that?”

  “Not on a regular basis, no.”

  “How about Ricard?”

  “Why are you so interested in Ricard?” she asked, meeting his gaze.

  “You know why.”

  “No—”

  “Yes, you do. How about your posse? They must be full of compliments.”

  “My posse?”

  He nodded in the general direction of the rest of her crew. He’d spent the afternoon telling every man or woman on the ranch to keep an eye on this band of no-goods, but they weren’t prisoners and so he had no way to demand they all stay in one spot where they’d be easy to track. Right now he could see Vaughn over by the chuck wagon talking to Pauline, his foot keeping time to the music; the maid sitting by herself on a bale of straw looking miserable and out of sorts. Kaare was nowhere in sight.

  Pierce looked around for Darrell Cox, the man Lucas Garvey had enlisted to help him act as an unofficial bodyguard for the princess. He’d seen Darrell an hour or two before, decked out in a bright blue kerchief knotted around his huge neck, keeping an eagle eye, but right this moment he was missing. Garvey was standing close to the cows, though he seemed as mesmerized by the princess as the other men whose gazes darted to her over and over.

  “General Kaare cares about my position, not me,” the princess said in what he was beginning to understand was her frank and unpretentious way of looking at her world. “Mr. Vaughn is something of a zealot. Bierta is afraid of me for no good reason. The bodyguard—where is Mr. Harley, anyway?”

  Pierce looked around. They were some distance from the house and for the first time, he realized he couldn’t see any lights coming from that direction. As the pavilion was lit only by lantern and firelight, he wasn’t sure when the electricity had gone out again.

  “If I were you, I’d fire that guy,” Pierce said as he stood, but a far more ominous reason to be concerned about him crossed his mind. He was the hired replacement for the injured bodyguard from Chatioux, hired by whom? Pierce made a mental note to find out. For now, he needed to get the generator up and running. Wouldn’t do to have these people ferried back to the house only to be shown to their rooms with flashlights.

  She touched his hand as she stood beside him. “What about my mother’s request? I know other things have happened that may make this seem trivial to you, but it’s not. Have you thought any more about it?”

  He looked down at her anxious face, her blue eyes piercing him, and wished he could hand her what she wanted. “I might know the place she’s talking about, Princess, but there’s no way we can get there now. The storm made that impossible.”

  “But by tomorrow—”

  “Maybe,” he said, resisting the urge to take her hand. At the moment she looked so earnest and so young and so vulnerable, it aroused every protective bone in his body and he had to admit that was annoying. He’d given that up years before when Patrick died and Erin left. Now he used his protective instincts to safeguard his business, not loved ones.

  Well, in a way, the princess was a business, right? The ranch sure as hell was a business and right now, his to take care of. He felt better. “Let’s see what happens,” he told her. “It’s up to the weather.”

  “Then I’ll pray the weather gods are smiling down on us.”

  “It’s that important to you?”

  “It’s that important, period.” He followed her gaze to her cousin who had drooped onto a bale of hay, eyes half-closed, toy gun dangling from weary fingers. Talk about innocent and vulnerable, and yet again a knot formed in his throat.

  “I think Tex is about done in,” she said. “So am I, for that matter.”

  He was loath to have her out of his sight.

  Once again he looked around for her bodyguard or Lucas Garvey or Darrell Cox and saw none of them. Things were definitely winding down, though. Ranch hands were beginning to clear tables and lead livestock away, th
e music had stopped, the fire was dying down. “We’ll send Toby back with Pauline and Mr. Vaughn and the maid. It’s hard to tell for sure but it sure looks like the power went out again. Where’s the general?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I would appreciate it if you’d stay with me until I can personally lock you in your room.”

  Her gaze darted every direction, fear creeping into her eyes. “I don’t know if that’s necessary.”

  “We could see if Dad is still awake if you’d prefer.”

  “I think once today was enough for him,” she muttered.

  “Probably.”

  While she convinced her maid to go on without her, Pierce arranged transportation with Pauline and sent someone off to look for the general. He found Lucas Garvey drinking coffee by the covered wagon, back behind the tattered cloth. He was obviously taking his job as bodyguard seriously, for Pierce noticed a gun holstered on his hip.

  “Have you seen the man called Harley? He’s the official bodyguard with this party.”

  Lucas shook his head. “Not for a while.”

  “Where was he when you last saw him?”

  Lucas threw the last of his coffee onto the straw-covered ground and set the tin cup aside. “It was an hour or so ago. He was standing near the barn talking to Darrell.”

  Pierce hooked his hands on his waist, looked around at the departing guests and the waiting princess and sighed. “Okay, you find Harley and tell him to hightail it to the house and do what he was hired to do. Then you come along and bring Darrell if you can find him quickly.”

  He and the princess took off through the snow to the outbuilding where the generator was housed, holding their hats on their heads against the wind. The storm had abated some but it was still slow slogging their way through the elements.

  Using the wavering beam from the flashlight, Pierce slid the wooden door open and they stepped in out of the worst of the weather. He closed the door behind them. The light played over the generator as they stepped inside. It was the same old gasoline model that had been out here for twenty or thirty years. Melted snow on the cement floor suggested someone had been there before them. Pierce checked the gas gauge, relieved to see it had fuel, but why hadn’t it started? As Analise stood close by shivering, he switched it on and pulled the choke, then yanked the cord.

  Nothing.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said, noticing the batteries in his flashlight were running low. The light was wavering and growing weak. He handed it to Analise. “Look around and see if there’s a lantern on the bench over there. Dad used to keep two or three out here for emergencies. I don’t need to see this thing to pull the cord.”

  She took the light and moved off toward the bench as Pierce once again put some muscle into the job. He was in the middle of another attempt when Analise screamed and dropped the flashlight. With a crack, it hit the cement floor and went out. The room went from shadowed to pitch-black.

  A small sob filled the darkness.

  Chapter Eight

  “Princess!”

  Analise stood stock-still, afraid to move, shaking so hard her teeth rattled.

  Maybe the man wasn’t dead. She had to check.

  Even as she knelt, she knew there was no point. She’d seen the horrible bulging of his eyes, the purple tongue. Even now his open eyes seemed to stare through the cold black air right into hers…?.

  “Princess Analise, answer me. Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay,” she whispered, but it carried in the still air like a shout. Her knees hit the floor and she put out her hands, searching for the flashlight, jumping when she felt cold flesh instead.

  “Stay where you are. I’ll find you,” Pierce said. She was vaguely aware of the sound of him moving toward her. A moment later, his voice was closer. “Are you hurt?”

  “It’s not me,” she said. “It’s a man. I—I think he’s dead.”

  Pierce knelt beside her, directed by her voice perhaps, his shoulder bumping into hers, his hand closing on her arm.

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. I think he was strangled.”

  She felt Pierce moving beside her, his hands searching the floor in front of them just as she had. A grunt disclosed he’d found something. She stopped breathing. The next thing she knew, he’d stood up and pulled her to her feet.

  Wrapping his arms around her, their hats bumping together, he spoke softly into her ear. “I don’t know who it is, but you’re right, he’s dead.”

  “Oh my God,” she said through chattering teeth. “I—I thought I saw something twisted in a blue scarf.”

  “Did you say the scarf was blue?”

  “Yes.” She swallowed a sob as the next words tumbled out. “It clashed with his face.”

  “Blue,” he repeated, then his grip on her tightened.

  “Do you know who it is?” she asked, voice trembling.

  “I think so.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered against his neck.

  “Sorry? About what?”

  “I’ve never seen a dead man before. I mean on television, yes, but not for real. I shouldn’t be trembling. This isn’t about me.”

  “Shh,” he said softly. “You have nothing to be sorry for. Listen, Princess, there isn’t anywhere in this building for a killer to hide, but there’s forty feet between us and the house, and if someone wants to ambush us there’s not a lot to stop him except my Smith & Wesson. Stay behind me, okay?”

  He opened the door and they waited for a second, listening. The wind rattled a window somewhere, sent tree limbs scratching against metal somewhere else. The falling snow was barely visible. The world was a dark place, a secret place.

  They moved slowly, fumbling their way in the dark, holding hands so they wouldn’t get separated, the snow up to their knees in places. The forty feet took forever to cross. The steps to the house rose out of nowhere and they stumbled up them. Pierce pulled her into the deepest shadows of the porch as they circled the house. “We’ll go in the kitchen door,” he whispered.

  Soft, flickering light showed through the kitchen windows now that they were almost on top of them and they found the door with little trouble. Pierce pulled it open quickly and they catapulted inside what appeared to be an anteroom to the kitchen, heaving, covered with snow. He clicked the dead bolt and quickly pulled the curtain across the window. It all happened in a blur.

  They burst into the kitchen a second later. Pauline backed up to the sink, candles in her hands. “What the blazes?” she cried as Bonnie jumped to her feet, her growl turning to a tail wag in the blink of an eye.

  “Keep the doors locked,” Pierce commanded. “Don’t open them. I’ll explain in a minute. Do you have a flashlight we can use?”

  “I sent them all upstairs with the princess’s party,” Pauline said, her gaze flicking over Analise. “My dear, are you all right? You’re pale as a ghost.”

  Analise didn’t trust herself to speak, but the soft feel of the Lab’s warm body pressed against her leg was oddly comforting. After the nightmare of the past few minutes, it was a shock to find the house so quiet and warm and normal.

  Pauline plucked an electric lantern off the counter and handed it to Pierce. “Take this. I’ve got lots of candles down here. What’s going on, Pierce? Why didn’t you start the generator?”

  “There’s been an accident in the shed,” Pierce said softly. “I think it’s Darrell Cox.”

  Her eyes widened. “I’ll go—”

  “No! Stay inside. Lock the doors. I’ll see the princess to her room and then be back. Trust me, there’s nothing we can do for whoever is out there, not now.”

  “It wasn’t an accident, was it? That’s why you want me to lock the doors. Oh, poor Darrell. He and the Lindquist girl just announced their engagement.”

  “Have you seen Lucas Garvey or the princess’s bodyguard?” Pierce asked Pauline.

  “Not for a long time.”
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br />   “Keep Bonnie with you, okay?”

  There were more candles on the dining room table and spaced throughout the house leading toward the stairs. They moved quickly.

  “Where will your maid sleep?” Pierce asked Analise as they reached the stairs.

  “In my room. There’s a day bed as well as a queen—”

  “And Toby?” he interrupted.

  “He has the room next door to mine.”

  “There are twin beds in that room,” he said at the same time he opened the door to Analise’s room. It, too, was bathed in soft light, this from two kerosene lanterns. Bierta, wrapped in a dark green robe, was in the process of laying Analise’s nightgown on the bed. She looked up at them, her face a pale oval.

  “Come with us,” Pierce said.

  “But—”

  “Just come,” Analise coaxed though she had no idea what he had in mind.

  Bierta paused for a second before dutifully following them from the room. Using the flashlight, Pierce led them the short distance down the hall to the next door and opened it. An electric lantern like the one Pauline had given to Birch sat atop the dresser and revealed the still form of a child asleep in the bed closest to the window. Toby’s red hair was all that showed of him. Pierce urged Bierta inside. “Quiet, don’t wake the boy.”

  “But the princess,” Bierta protested, eyes beseeching Analise. “Your Highness, please, I’m frightened, I don’t understand—”

  “I’ll explain everything in a minute,” Analise promised with a gentle touch on her maid’s arm. Explain this? How?

  Pierce closed the door and faced Analise, towering over her, the tension in his handsome face visible despite the spotty lighting. “Take this,” he said, pressing the revolver into her hands. “Sit at the desk in there and point that gun at anything that moves. If your maid sneezes, shoot her.”

  “And shall I shoot Toby if he rolls over?” she snapped and was immediately sorry she had. It wasn’t Pierce’s fault all this was happening—it was hers.