by B. J Daniels
“Thanks, I really need the moral support.” Carter didn’t ask why Cade hadn’t wanted to come originally. He’d probably just assumed that it was because of Grace. He had no idea just how true that was.
“So you’ve bought the ring I assume?” Cade asked.
“Dad gave me Mother’s,” he said a little sheepishly.
Of course Dad would have given it to Carter, their mother’s favorite. “Cool,” Cade said. “That’s great.”
“Dad didn’t think you’d mind.” Carter stepped to him, surprised Cade by pulling him into a hug. “I’ve missed you, bro. It’s good that you’ll be there this Christmas.”
Cade felt bad that he’d been a recluse for the past six years. He’d burrowed in with his pain, just wanting to be alone to grieve.
He’d been so much better this year. Until that damned reporter had shown up.
Carter drew back looking a little embarrassed. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do about finding Grace’s parents.” He smiled. “And I’ll also check on the new reporter for you. I’ve heard she’s a stunner.”
“She is that,” Cade agreed. She sure as hell stunned him.
Chapter Six
THE WHITEHORSE MUSEUM was housed in a small building on the edge of town. A couple of elderly ladies were behind the desk as Andi entered.
They greeted her warmly.
“Are you doing a story on our museum?” the shorter of the two asked. “She’s the new reporter at the Examiner,” the woman informed her coworker who nodded.
Andi couldn’t help being amused. So few newcomers moved to Whitehorse that apparently she stood out even before she opened her mouth. The way news traveled in this town, she wondered why they even bothered with a newspaper.
On the way to the museum, she’d driven by the bait shop and seen a sheriff’s department patrol car parked out front. That worried her. She had no idea what Cade would do.
Had he called his brother and told him about Starr Calhoun? she wondered, as she paid her admission price and wandered through exhibits that chronicled everything from the story of the hundreds of thousands of buffalo that had roamed this prairie to the coming of the railroad and the birth of present day Whitehorse.
She found the outlaw exhibit at the back. Apparently Shirley was right. This part of Montana had remained lawless late into the 1800s. Along with Kid Curry, Whitehorse had seen Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid and other less known outlaws. It had been a place of murder and mayhem. Curry had been the leader of the notorious Wild Bunch, was alleged to have killed ten men, although it was said he’d grown up reading the Bible.
According to the museum exhibit, there’d been Western holdup artists, bank robbers, road agents, killers and railroad thieves.
While interesting, Andi was wondering what something that had happened so long ago had to do with Starr Calhoun when she spotted a name that leaped out at her. It was in the part of the exhibit detailing an outlaw named Long Henry Thompson.
Long Henry was credited with having belonged to the Henry Starr gang out of Texas that robbed everything they could, along with stealing livestock on the Texan-Mexican border. Long Henry, wanted in Texas for these crimes, had allegedly hired on to bring cattle to Montana along with some others from the Starr gang.
Andi had heard of Henry Starr. He was descended from the Starr criminal dynasty that began with Tom “Giant” Starr and his son Sam.
Hadn’t she read somewhere that Hodge and Eden Calhoun had named their daughter Starr after the famous Henry Starr criminal family that had operated in Texas during the 1800s?
And now it seemed at least one of the Starr gang had ended up in Whitehorse, Montana, back when this part of the country was known for its outlaw hideouts.
Was this the Calhoun connection to Montana? Was this why Starr had come here—just as some of her namesake had more than a hundred years before? The Texas outlaws had changed their names, she realized, and reinvented themselves.
Just as Starr had done.
Was that why she’d been given the Kid Curry clipping? Was whoever had sent her the clippings just seeing whether or not she would follow up each lead?
That would mean, though, that she was being watched. She glanced toward the large plate-glass windows, but all she could see was the falling snow.
She turned back to the exhibit, studying the black-and-white photographs of robbers—not unlike the one she had of Starr, she thought as she heard the tap of boot heels behind her and turned to see Cade Jackson.
He glanced at the outlaw exhibit and she caught his surprised—and worried—expression. “We need to talk.”
* * *
CADE WALKED OUT to his pickup. This woman had knocked him for a loop. And now to find her standing in front of the outlaw exhibit... Idle curiosity? Or something more?
He feared he knew exactly what that more might be. But how had she found out?
Because she was hell-bent on finding out everything there was to know about Grace. And, in turn, him.
If he’d doubted before that the woman meant business, he no longer did. His whole life was about to be opened up and every detail exposed to the media. And he didn’t need Miranda Blake to tell him that a story like this would go nationwide.
He was losing his past like a shoreline being washed away by waves. He could feel a little more of it drop out from under him, swept out by the storm.
And Tex was that storm. She’d blown in and now she was causing havoc in his life. Worse, with Grace’s.
“How did you know I was here?” she asked, stopping short of his truck as snow fell around her.
“I called the newspaper. Shirley said you were at the museum. Get in.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him, unmoving. “What did you want to talk to me about?” Her dark hair sparkled with ice crystals as snow fell around her.
“You want to talk about this out in the middle of a snowstorm? Go right ahead, Tex. I’ll be in the truck.” He didn’t wait for an answer.
“As I told you before, my name is Miranda. Or Andi. Not Tex. Remember?” she snapped as she got in and he started the engine.
Miranda sounded too old. Andi was a little too friendly and he was feeling anything but friendly.
“I saw your expression in there,” she said. “What was it about the outlaw exhibit that ties in with Starr?”
He shook his head, not in answer, but in awe. The woman was like a bloodhound on his scent and she was tracking his life with an instinct that scared him.
“Don’t even bother to tell me that you don’t know what I’m talking about,” she said, sounding angry. “You know something about all this. You couldn’t have lived with Starr and not suspected something. Why do you keep fighting me?”
He looked over at her. “Because it’s my life you want to destroy for a damned news story and fifteen minutes of fame.”
She looked chastened. “I’m sorry. I know how hard this must be on you. But this isn’t going away just because you want it to.”
“You’re not going away, you mean,” he said, trying to curb the anger he felt the instant he was in her presence.
“Even if I left tomorrow, do you really think whoever fed me the information about Starr is going away, as well?”
He didn’t know what to think. Or feel. Other than numb. Just not numb enough.
“There’s something you should know. Lubbock Calhoun, Starr’s brother, was recently released from prison. Apparently he’s broken his parole. No one knows where he is.”
Cade shot her a look. “You think he’s the one who sent you the tape?”
“Well, if it’s him, then he’s already in town,” she said. “The envelope was postmarked Whitehorse.”
Cade swore. Just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse. Wha
t a fool he’d been to think that this might all blow over. “What does he want?”
“Probably the money. Until the three million is found...” She looked up as he backed out onto the highway and turned north. “Where are we going?” She sounded worried.
“I thought we’d take a ride.”
“I put the original cassette tape with a copy of all my notes in a secure place,” she said, looking away. “In case I should disappear.”
He laughed. “I wasn’t planning to kill you, Tex.”
She glanced over at him. “I guess neither of us have anything to worry about then.”
He wished that were true as he drove north out of town on the wide two-lane. A few locals were trying to get the highway across what was known as the Hi-Line made into a four-lane. They had some crazy idea that it would bring more people to this isolated part of the state.
He wasn’t opposed to the idea, he just knew it would never fly—not when he could go for miles and never see another car on the highway.
“Tell me about Starr Calhoun,” he said after Whitehorse disappeared in his rearview mirror.
The question seemed to take her by surprise. “Like what?”
“Everything you know about her.”
“Okay.” She took a breath and let it out slowly. “She is one of six children born to Hodge and Eden Calhoun.”
Eden? Grace had picked her real mother’s name for a middle name. He felt sick. There was no doubt about who Grace had been.
“Her parents took all the kids with them when they robbed banks until they were captured and the children were put into foster homes.”
Grace had been in a foster home? He couldn’t help but feel for her, just as he couldn’t help but think of her as Grace even if she really had been Starr Calhoun. “What happened to the kids?”
She shrugged. “They grew up. Some of them made the news as they followed in their parents’ footsteps.”
“And the parents?”
“Hodge and Eden died in prison a few years apart. Hodge was killed by another inmate. Eden killed herself.”
He practically drove off the highway. He remembered how sad Grace had looked when she’d told him that both her parents were deceased. Killed in a plane crash, as he recalled. A lie. On top of the biggest lie of all.
“All of the kids dropped off the radar until one after another all but one turned up on police reports,” she was saying. “Amarillo, the oldest, died in prison of hepatitis C. Dallas is doing time in California. Houston has been missing since the robberies six years ago. Worth seems to be the only one who went straight. He was the youngest of the boys so he was probably adopted and his name changed. Lubbock...well, who knows where he is?”
Cade couldn’t believe what he was hearing about Starr and her family.
“For all we know, Houston could be living in Whitehorse,” she was saying. “Did Starr ever mention her family, her brothers?”
“She told me she was an only child.” Another lie. “You know an awful lot about the Calhouns,” he said.
She looked out her side window even though there was nothing to see but snow. “I’m a reporter. I do a lot of research.”
There was more to it, he thought. He couldn’t wait to see what his brother found out about Andi Blake. “That’s all you know about Starr?”
“I know she robbed a bunch of banks and disappeared,” Andi said bristling. “And now I know where she disappeared to—at least for a while.”
“What does that mean?”
“Are you sure she’s dead?”
“What?” he snapped. “I buried her. You think she walked away from that car accident?”
“Someone died in that car, but how can you be sure it was your wife?”
“She was wearing the wedding band I bought her.” He wished he’d left Tex at the museum.
“Was an autopsy done? Was any DNA taken?”
“You think she faked her death?” he asked incredulously.
“She had three million good reasons to fake her death.”
“She had at least one damned good reason not to,” he snapped and shook his head, wondering how this could be any more painful. If it hadn’t been the middle of winter he might have just dumped Tex off beside the road. Let her find her own way home.
“Grace didn’t fake her death,” he said, trying to keep his voice down. “I know because...” He took a breath and let it out. “Because she’d gone shopping in Billings for my Christmas present. She called on her way home to tell me she had a surprise for me and couldn’t wait to tell me. An early present.” He glared over at Andi. “She’d been to a doctor. She was pregnant with our baby.”
He took satisfaction in the shock he witnessed on Andi Blake’s face before he turned back to his driving and fought to swallow back the gutting pain of the memory. “The woman who died in that car on the way back to Whitehorse was two months pregnant with my child. And yes, I know that for a fact. I got a copy of the results from the doctor after she died.”
Andi stared at his granitelike profile for a moment before turning to gaze out at the snow-covered landscape. It suddenly felt colder, definitely more isolated.
Starr had been pregnant. The story just kept getting better and better. All she had to do was keep badgering Cade, keep getting the bits and pieces he was trying so hard to keep from her.
She knew she was treading on thin ice. She’d hurt this man, angered him and feared what he might do if she pushed him too hard. She was 99 percent sure he hadn’t known who Grace was. But he had to have suspected something wasn’t right.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Starr hadn’t just married Cade Jackson, but she’d also gotten pregnant with his child? That didn’t sound anything like the woman Andi had read about in the police reports. Nor the one planning the robberies on the cassette tape.
Starr Calhoun hadn’t been talked into robbing banks. She’d been the ringleader. Even if she was pregnant, it didn’t mean she’d died in that car six years ago. There was no way of knowing if Starr Calhoun was dead without doing an exhumation.
But Andi wasn’t about to voice that. Especially right now, she thought, looking out at the desolate landscape. She couldn’t even be sure where they were let alone where they were headed.
Ahead all she could see was snow. It filled the sky, drifted in the barrow pits, clung to the fence posts on each side of the road and covered the rolling hills for miles.
And it was still falling. Earlier on the radio she’d heard something about a winter storm warning alert—whatever that was.
The women at the museum had told them as they were leaving earlier to bundle up because there was a storm coming. Another foot of snow was expected and temperatures were going to drop. She couldn’t imagine it getting any colder.
She saw Cade look in his rearview mirror as they topped a hill. Glancing back she saw nothing but empty highway. As she turned around she felt a little sick. The lack of contrast gave her the feeling that the earth was flat white and that if Cade kept driving, he would drive right off the edge of it.
Cade slowed the pickup and turned off the highway. She caught a glimpse of a sign that read Sleeping Buffalo.
“What was that?” she asked as they passed a manger-like structure that housed two large rocks. She hoped he was taking her somewhere public. Being alone with him was wearing on her nerves. She didn’t like how upset he was.
“It’s Sleeping Buffalo,” he said. “During the Ice Age, glaciers carved this country leaving behind a field of large boulders the Native Americans thought looked like buffalo. The buffalo had been scarce. When the Natives saw the two rocks, they thought they were buffalo and rode toward them. Just as they reached the rocks, though, they saw a huge herd of buffalo beyond them. The two buffalo-appearing rocks were then considered sacred, having led the h
unters to the buffalo. The rocks are kept so the Native Americans can pay their respects by leaving tobacco on them.”
She took that in as they passed a cluster of buildings that according to the sign was Sleeping Buffalo Resort. She recalled something about a shoot-out there a few months ago. If she had any doubt she was in the Wild West, all she had to do was read the old newspaper stories.
Over the next rise, she saw an expanse of ice dotted with a half dozen small fishing huts. “People really don’t fish when it’s this cold, do they?”
“If cold stopped ’em, nobody in Montana would fish,” he said. “And I’d be out of business.”
They drove in silence as the snow-packed road narrowed and a few houses gave way to nothing but rolling, snowy hills. Out here there was no hint of the fast-approaching holiday. Just as there was no Christmas tree or any decorations at her apartment. Or at Cade’s. No reminder that Christmas was just days away.
“So what’s your life story, Tex?” Cade asked. “Let’s hear it. Seems only fair since you’re so interested in mine.”
She ignored the “Tex.” “I don’t have a story.”
He let out a humorless laugh. “We all have a story. Isn’t that how your profession works? You prey on our life stories for the amusement and edification of your readers? But your life is private?”
She didn’t answer, more concerned about where he was taking her.
“Wasn’t there some man you left in Texas?” he asked, glancing over at her. He must have seen the answer in her face although he misread it. “That’s what I thought. And you give me a hard time for trying to run away from this?”
“You’re mistaken.”
“Right,” he said with a laugh as he slowed to turn on an even narrower road, the deep snow scraping on the undercarriage of the pickup as he busted through drifts, snow flying.
Andi held on for dear life, afraid now of not only where he was taking her, but also what he planned to do when he got there.
“A woman who dresses like you working for a weekly newspaper in Whitehorse, Montana, and you’re telling me you’re not running away from something?” He had to fight to keep the pickup in the narrow tracks. “Save your breath.”
