by Alice Sharpe
She shook her head. “I’ll have to call my father and inform him what’s happened. I can’t allow him to be dissuaded from doing what is right for Chatioux because I might be in danger.”
“Do you want to call now?”
Her smile was fleeting. “No, it’s early morning there, not the best time to reach him. I’ll get some sleep and call later.”
“Okay. One more thing. Who hired this bodyguard?”
“The general.”
“So Vaughn drives you into a trap and the general hires the bodyguard that turns out to be a drunk?”
“It looks that way. Maybe that’s why Mr. Harley wore sunglasses all the time.”
“To hide bloodshot eyes? Maybe.” He sighed deeply and her heart went out to him. It was true he dealt with lawbreakers, but she doubted he was any more accustomed to seeing a man choked to death than she was. And he’d had to go look a second time…?.
“I just want to get you off this ranch and back to Chatioux in one piece,” he said. “You have to be careful, Princess. Trust no one. Promise me.”
“Not even you?”
“You can trust me. I know my place. You’re safe with me.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said, amazed at how much had happened between them in so short a time.
His fingers quickly grazed her cheek. “I know. Get some sleep.”
SOMETIME DURING THE night she awoke with a start, heart hammering. She’d been in Chatioux, in her room. There’d been a knocking sound. She’d walked through the castle, through the endless corridors, up flights of winding stairs, around turrets and down through dungeons, looking for the cause of the knocking as it grew louder and louder until she’d found a pine casket on a stone floor. Horrified, she’d realized the sound came from inside the casket. And when she’d lifted the lid, she’d found her own lifeless face staring back at her.
Now she sat up as she finally realized there was someone knocking softly at the bedroom door.
Pierce got out of the chair near the window and moved silently to the door. “Who is it?” he asked in a very low voice.
The response sounded agitated. “It’s Lucas.”
Pierce opened the door, his form visible in the light cast by the other man’s flashlight. “What now?”
“There’s a fire in the maintenance barn. Some of the men are moving equipment—”
“That’s where the fuel truck is still kept, right?”
“All the big equipment. Jamie said to come get you.”
“Let me get my boots on. Damn, I can’t go, I have to stay here.”
“I’ll stay if you want.”
“No. Wait, okay, that’s a good idea.”
Pierce walked back into the room and switched on the lantern. He pulled on his boots as he spoke. “Just stay out in the hallway, outside this door. Are you armed?”
“No—”
“Then take the revolver,” Pierce said, handing the gun to the man in the hall.
Pierce grabbed his shotgun and coat off the bed, pulled on his hat, then paused by Analise’s bed. “You heard?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can. Don’t open that door for anyone but me.”
They both turned to the window when they heard a muffled explosion.
“Go,” Analise urged, freeing herself of the bedding.
“Come behind me and lock the door.”
She padded across the floor and did as he asked. The room was cold. She dressed in warm clothes including wool socks and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, seating herself on the chair by the window where she could see if a building suddenly shot up in flames.
She must have fallen asleep because suddenly she heard a voice.
Toby.
It was still dark, but he was calling to her. Where was Bierta? Taking the lantern off the bureau, Analise went to the door.
“Toby? Is that you?”
“Analise, I’m scared. Let me in.”
Without pause, she responded to the fright in his voice and yanked open the door.
Toby wasn’t alone.
Chapter Ten
The rising sun brought a slew of modest miracles as far as Pierce was concerned. For one, the snow had abated. Not stopped, but slowed way down. This was excellent news on a host of fronts. The police and emergency people could arrive and start an investigation into Darrell’s murder, the fire marshal could come out and investigate the fire, the helicopter could take all these visitors away—among them a killer—and he could get on with things like calling the insurance company and talking to his father and finding alternate housing for a ton of equipment currently scattered on the snow-covered field.
They’d managed to save most of it by moving it out of the building, but half the building itself was gone. When the fire had spread to a pile of tires and a few propane tanks, they’d lost most of the roof.
Thankfully, no livestock had been close by.
But how had it started in the first place? This building was a quarter mile from the pavilion where they’d held the campout so a stray spark wasn’t responsible. No one worked out here on a stormy night, no equipment had been left running.
Jamie speculated some cowhand got careless with a cigarette butt, but that seemed unlikely to Pierce. He didn’t know enough about fires to be able to tell if an accelerant had been used but his guess was that in light of Darrell’s murder, they were looking at arson.
He’d told Jamie about the murder and watched as the older man shook his head. “There’s never been anyone killed on the Open Sky,” he’d said. “Your father is going to blow a gasket.”
Of course, there was another possibility and Pierce intended to investigate it. The bodyguard was a smoker, a newcomer, a relative unknown or so it would seem. Had he started the fire, either purposefully as part of a diversion of some kind? Or maybe he’d awoken from where Lucas had stuck him, wandered out to the equipment barn, lit up and kaplooey.
Pierce was anxious to make sure Brad Harley was where he was supposed to be and also to bring his father up to date on events. No doubt the old man had heard all the commotion last night and who knew what Pauline had told him.
Jamie was taking care of ranch business, assigning crew to use the big tractors to haul feed to the herd. Pierce could remember a similar storm that had arrived a few weeks later right at the height of calving season back when he was in high school. No one had slept for the better part of a month, so it could be worse.
Glancing up, however, he had to admit the chances were good the weather would turn again sooner rather than later. As it was, he kept to the plowed roads between buildings, meeting up with Jamie again midpoint and holding a brief conversation.
As he continued on, he looked up at the house to the window of the room where Analise slept, and a smile made its way to his lips. He could live to be eight hundred years old and he would never forget how she’d looked tumbling out of bed in the middle of the night wearing damn near nothing, her nipples hard against her sexy top thanks to the cold room, her black hair floating around her face and shoulders.
Whew.
The woman was an eyeful. It flitted through his mind that he might be able to romance her into a night of passion if there was time and if circumstances didn’t continue to conspire to make her visit into a nightmare.
His cell rang as he walked into the barn where Lucas Garvey and the others had stashed the bodyguard. He could see by the caller ID that it was his partner, Bob Turner.
“They’ve upped the offer,” Bob said.
“Not a good time for a chat,” Pierce grumbled.
“But Unitex added twenty percent.”
“And Sue is pressuring you to get married and start a family. She wants to raise kids in the same town you both grew up in. I know this.”
“Maybe what you don’t understand is that I want the same things,” Bob said softly.
Whoa. No, he hadn’t understood that, not really. Maybe he could buy out Bob’s
share and run the company by himself. He could do it if he gave up things like eating for a couple of years.
“Don’t you think about settling down, Pierce?”
“No.”
“I can’t believe you still enjoy being on the road eleven months out of twelve.”
“I settled down once,” Pierce said. Hadn’t he just had this conversation with the princess the night before?
“Yeah, well, it doesn’t have to be something you just do once, buddy.”
Pierce had stopped walking as he talked, and stood there in the middle of the barn, head down, studying the toes of his ash-covered boots. Had there always been that note of longing in Bob’s voice?
Yes…you’ve ignored it. You’ve recognized it and ignored it, you jerk.
“Give me until tomorrow to see if I can buy you out,” he said at last. “If I can’t swing it, okay, we’ll sell and go our separate ways.”
“We wouldn’t have to,” Bob said quickly. “We could be partners again. With what we get for Westin-Turner, we could start over. I mean, the contract stipulates we couldn’t go into direct competition with the new owners, but we could stay stateside. Sue has lots of family in Montana. Who knows, she might be able to set you up with someone nice. You’d be closer to home.”
Home.
“I’ll call you tomorrow night,” Pierce promised, then pocketed the cell.
“One disaster at a time,” he muttered aloud, looking up and catching the eye of the pinto. He gave Sam a pat and moved on past Jamie’s bay mare, then past two more horses to the last three stalls that were usually kept empty to store feed and tack. No bodyguard. No sign there had ever been a bodyguard. The man was an enigma.
Or maybe he was something worse. Maybe he was behind everything that had happened, alone or perhaps in collusion with another one of the princess’s party. Just because he’d been hired after the attack on the original bodyguard didn’t mean he was in the clear, and being a drunk wasn’t much of an excuse, either.
Why sabotage the generator unless it was to decoy Darrell who he’d been seen talking to not long before the murder? But why kill Darrell?
As Pierce turned to get the conversation with his father over with, Sassy Sally walked into the barn. At six foot even and built like the Vegas showgirl she’d once been for a couple of years, she was always an eyeful, but this morning, she was really something. Hours of work dealing with fire and smoke had left her sooty and rumpled, and her platinum hair stuck out in a hundred directions.
“Take the morning off,” Pierce said. “You earned it.”
“I will after I muck out a few stalls and feed these guys,” she said, gesturing at the horses who had all stuck their heads over their gates and were making hungry noises in their throats.
“Did you happen to run into the bodyguard?”
She grabbed a pitchfork. “Mr. Sunglasses? Nope. Haven’t seen him since last night. You know who else I haven’t seen? Darrell.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her about Darrell’s murder, but he decided against it. Fact was he was kind of surprised Lucas hadn’t told anyone before getting stuck inside the house all night. He’d kept his word. Lucas Garvey seemed to be made of better stuff than his brother, Doyle.
“The bodyguard passed out drunk in the snow after the party,” he told her.
“First I heard of it.”
As he crossed the yard, Pierce gazed into the gray sky again. Were the clouds thicker, had the temperature dropped again? Where the hell were the police? He took a moment to plow through the deeper snow and make sure the lock on the generator shack was still in place. As he rattled it, his mind zapped back to the gate he’d found with the cut chain. Had that really been only twenty-fours before?
A few minutes later, he was standing in his father’s small cabin, sidling up to the fire, his fingers tingling as they defrosted. Melted snow dripped from the brim of his hat so he took it off and hooked it atop the fireplace poker to dry off. “I’m calling the fire department,” he said after his brief report. “They can investigate the cause.”
“But you didn’t call them last night,” his father said.
“No. The storm was too big for them to get here. We dealt with it ourselves.” He took a deep breath and added, “There’s something else you should know about.”
It took him only a few moments to relate what had happened to Darrell. His father grew very still as he spoke, his eyes watchful. He’d been eating eggs and bacon, but he laid his fork aside as though news of a murder on Open Sky land stole away his appetite. Pierce didn’t blame him one bit.
“I’m not sure what to say,” Birch Westin said after Pierce finished. “Hell of a thing to happen. You called the police?”
“They’ll be here today.”
His old man’s gaze darted to the window and the snowy skies outside. “Maybe, maybe not.”
“The shed is locked but that’s why we’re still without power. I don’t want to compromise the murder scene.”
Birch nodded. “I sure as hell wish Cody or Adam were here.”
“So do I. Did you know Darrell?”
“Huh?” Birch looked up from his plate and shook his head. “Know him? Not well. He was new this year. Jamie hired him. Heard someone say he was going with the Lindquist gal. I know of her ’cause she used to hang around the ranch before Darrell got here. Had eyes for one of the other boys, I suppose. Does Pauline know about this?”
“Yes. I asked her not to say anything until I could speak to you myself.”
“That might explain why she was so quiet this morning,” Birch said.
“I’ll try to help her out today,” Pierce said.
“That’s good. Don’t ask that Analise gal to help. Pauline doesn’t like other women messing around in her kitchen. Barely tolerated Cody’s wife. I had half a mind to make Pauline come live in the cabin with me when your brother got married.”
“Why didn’t you?” Pierce asked.
“Wouldn’t have been proper.”
Pierce made sure his lips didn’t twitch. “Well, why didn’t you marry her then and make it proper?”
He was treated to a swift upward glance from beneath heavy brows. “That’s none of your business.”
“You’re right, it isn’t,” Pierce said. He picked up his hat. It had warmed up in the few minutes it sat close to the flame and felt good as he pulled it on. “You need anything?”
Birch waved Pierce away with his fork but before Pierce could get out the door, he changed his mind.
“Send Analise over later and we’ll play chess again. She beat the socks off me yesterday.”
“I’ll tell her,” Pierce said.
Since when was his father pleased to be beaten at anything?
Chapter Eleven
The house smelled like hot coffee and fresh bread. One thing about ranch life—a man was always hungry and on the Open Sky, at least, the food was plentiful and hearty.
As he sat on the bench in the mudroom and pulled off his muck-encrusted boots and the coat he’d worn which was now covered with soot and smelled like smoke, Pauline opened the connecting door. “I put fresh clothes in the shower room for you.”
He glanced at the small bathroom adjoining the mudroom and saw jeans and a shirt folded over the towel rack.
“No offense, but you smell like an ashtray,” she added, and closed the door.
No offense taken. He took a brief but scalding shower and put on the clean clothes and felt better for it. In his current line of work, he didn’t go around dirty all the time. He wasn’t used to this kind of schedule and the truth was he was weary. What he needed was a hearty breakfast and eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Pauline met him with a steaming mug of coffee. “That’s better,” she said approvingly, glancing down at the cleaner version of the same clothes he’d worn the day before right down to the boots which were actually a pair of Adam’s. Bonnie, curled up on a rug when he came into the room, shuffled over to wag
her tail against his leg. “Who’s up and about?”
“The general and the other man. The general came down and ordered rolls and coffee for both of them to be served in his room.”
Like she was their damn servant. “And the princess?”
“Still asleep, I guess. The little boy must be plain tuckered out if he’s still down, too.”
“Lucas have any trouble last night?” Pierce asked as he hooked a warm yeasty roll off the cutting board.
“I guess he had the same trouble as the rest of you with the fire and everything,” she said, loading a tray with butter, honey and cutlery, a covered basket of rolls balanced atop the plates.
He gestured at the tray. “This go upstairs? I’ll deliver it for you. Lucas wasn’t at the fire with us. I left him up in the hall keeping an eye on things.”
“The general didn’t mention him,” Pauline said. “Wait a second and I’ll stick on another mug and some more rolls. The poor boy must be ready to gnaw on his own arm.”
“Did the police call?” Pierce asked, lowering his voice.
Pauline’s hand trembled as she pulled another red mug from the iron rack. In all the years he’d known her, he’d never seen her cry, and it was a little unnerving to find her eyes filled with tears now. “No, they didn’t call, but Miley Lindquist did, wanting to talk to Darrell because he didn’t answer his cell phone. I didn’t tell her he was…dead. I didn’t know if I should. I didn’t even mention it to your father and I never keep secrets from him. Those two men up there—one of them murdered Darrell, didn’t they? Or maybe it was that awful bodyguard. How can someone as sweet as the princess be surrounded by such people?”
He put an arm around her shoulders. “I don’t know who killed Darrell, but to be on the safe side I’m going to ask everyone to stay upstairs until the police can talk to them. That will make more work for you, I’m afraid. Hopefully the cops will get here while there’s a break in the weather.”
