by B. J Daniels
* * *
“MS. BLAKE,” SHERIFF CARTER JACKSON said, his hat in his hand. “I need to have a few words with you.”
Andi glanced toward the back of the newspaper office. Empty. “Please have a seat,” she said and turned back to lock the front door. “This won’t take long, will it?”
He shook his head.
She felt his eyes on her as she walked over to her desk and sat down behind it. He pulled up a chair next to it.
“I would imagine you know why I’m here,” the sheriff said.
She waited. It was a technique she’d learned quickly as a reporter. Let them do the talking.
“I know about the problems you had in Fort Worth,” he said. “Why didn’t you mention that you’d had a stalker after you in Texas yesterday when you were attacked?”
“I had no reason to connect the two,” she said carefully.
He frowned. “Two different men are after you?”
“Actually I just learned last night that my stalker in Texas has been caught so there is no way it was the same man. It turned out to be the boyfriend of a coworker who apparently wanted my job.”
“That’s good news about the stalker being caught,” the sheriff said. “May I see your throat?”
It was so badly bruised that she’d worn a turtleneck, not wanting to have to tell anyone about the attack. She pulled down the top of her turtleneck.
He whistled and shook his head. “That’s some bruising you got there. It must hurt to talk. I’ll try to make this quick. Did he say anything, make any kind of threat, demand your money?”
“You got there so quickly and scared him off, he really didn’t have time to tell me what he had planned for me.”
“Yeah,” Carter said and scratched his jaw. “That phone call still bothers me.”
“Me, as well.” She made a point of looking at her watch.
“Am I keeping you from something?” he asked.
“I have an interview. If there isn’t anything else...”
He studied her for a moment. His eyes weren’t as dark as his brother’s and while he was probably the better looking of the two men, he didn’t have the raw maleness that Cade had.
He slowly rose from the chair across from her desk. “What are your plans now?”
“My plans?”
He seemed to hesitate. “Now that it’s safe for you to return to Texas.”
She shook her head. “I have no plans to leave Whitehorse. At least not yet.”
“You do know you can come to me if you need help.” He said the words quietly. His gaze met hers.
“Thank you. I appreciate that.”
Andi watched him drive away before she put on her coat again and left the office, locking the door behind her. The wind whipped at her Texas-climate clothing and she knew it was time she took Cade’s advice.
Chapter Ten
JUST AS CADE was loading a few fishing supplies into his pickup, his brother pulled up in the patrol car.
Cade swore under his breath as Carter got out and walked toward him. A few more minutes and Carter would have missed him.
“I need to talk to you,” Carter said in his cop voice.
Cade nodded and reached for his keys to open his apartment door. “What’s up?” he asked, surprised how the snow had drifted around his back porch just in the time he was getting packed to go.
“When did you start locking your door?” Carter asked.
Cade didn’t answer as he unlocked the door and stepped inside to flip on the light. It was one of those dark snowy days when the only good place to be was sitting in a fishing shack on the ice.
Opening the refrigerator, he took out two beers. He shot a look at Carter. “Isn’t it your day off?” Carter grunted in response and Cade handed his brother a bottle. Carter took it reluctantly but didn’t open it as Cade screwed off the top of his and took a drink. He knew he was going to need it.
“What the hell, Cade?” Carter said, shaking his head at him.
Cade tilted his beer toward a chair in the small living room, dropping into one. He couldn’t remember ever seeing his brother this angry and was betting Carter had run Starr Calhoun’s name through the system as he’d requested. Once Carter saw a picture of Starr...
“I feel like running you in,” Carter said.
Cade took a drink of his beer, watching his brother over the bottle.
With a curse, his brother twisted off the cap on his beer and sat down, tossing the cap onto the end table.
“First you say you want to know about Grace’s parents,” Carter said, biting off each word. “Which we both know was bull. You wanted to know if Grace Eden Browning existed, but I suspect you wouldn’t have asked me to find out if you hadn’t already known that no one by that name did.”
Cade said nothing as his brother rushed on.
“Then you ask me to check out Miranda Blake, leading me to believe your interest in her was romantic.” He hesitated but seeing that Cade wasn’t going to comment continued. “Then you want to know about Starr Calhoun. When I ran the names I also requested photos. Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
Cade shook his head. “I was still trying to assimilate it myself.”
“Grace was Starr Calhoun.”
“So it appears,” Cade said. “I couldn’t come to you with this until I figured out some things for myself.”
“The Lone Ranger,” Carter said under his breath. “You’ve always been like this. Can’t stand to ask for help. You’re just like the old man.”
Cade couldn’t argue that.
“So what have you figured out?” Carter asked sarcastically.
Cade shook his head.
Carter glared at him for a long moment, then took a pull on his beer. He swallowed and put the bottle down on the table beside him. He pulled a thick file from inside his jacket and tossed it on the small coffee table between them.
“Starr Calhoun and her family of criminals.”
Cade looked down at the file, but didn’t pick it up.
“Why do I have the feeling that nothing in there is going to come as a surprise to you?” his brother asked.
Cade said nothing, waiting for Carter to run out of steam. He knew his brother. Carter needed to get everything off his chest, then they could talk.
Carter took another drink of his beer. “How long have you known that Grace was Starr Calhoun?” he asked more calmly.
“Not long.” He’d been two steps behind on all of this from the time he’d seen Grace on the highway that summer day more than six years ago.
He wasn’t equipped to handle any of it given the way he’d felt about her. Worse, his brother was right about him. He wasn’t good at asking for help. But right now he wanted nothing more than to turn this all over to him. Carter was the sheriff. He would know what to do when Cade didn’t. Mostly it would take it out of his hands.
“I’ve been behind the eight ball on this from the moment I met Grace... Starr,” he corrected.
“Then you had no clue she wasn’t who she said she was?”
“I knew something in her past was bothering her. I thought she was still in love with some man.” He chuckled at his own foolishness.
Carter shook his head and took another drink of his beer as Cade told him about Miranda Blake showing up at his door with the photograph of Starr Calhoun. “I still have trouble believing it, let alone accepting it.”
“I assume you know about the bank robberies.”
Cade nodded. “And before you ask, I don’t know anything about the money.”
“Three million dollars,” Carter said. “Never found. On top of that, one of Starr’s brothers was released from prison about three weeks ago. He’s broken his parole and no one knows where he is. He�
��s considered dangerous. Name’s Lubbock Calhoun.”
His brother must have seen his expression. “So you know about that, too.” Carter swore. “Then you know the connection between the Calhouns and Miranda Blake.”
Cade frowned. Connection?
“Other than the fact that they were both from Texas, it turns out that Ms. Blake’s father was killed in a bank robbery. He was gunned down by Amarillo Calhoun, the eldest son of the Calhouns. It’s all in the file, including the fact Miranda Blake was there that day at the bank.” He nodded at Cade’s no doubt shocked expression. “It gets better. Both she and Starr Calhoun were there. They were both about five at the time.”
Cade couldn’t have spoken even if he’d wanted to. Andi and Starr. Hadn’t he known there was more to the story?
“What does Miranda Blake want out of this?” Carter asked.
“The story,” Cade said slowly, still stunned by the import of what his brother had told him.
“You don’t think she might be looking for a little revenge?” Carter asked.
“For her father’s death? I would imagine there’s some of that, too.”
“You don’t really believe it’s a coincidence that both Starr and Miranda ended up here, do you?” Carter asked.
Cade smiled ruefully. “Someone wanted her to uncover this story. They’ve been giving her information anonymously.”
“And that doesn’t worry you?” Carter snapped.
“Yeah, it worries me. Especially after what you just told me.”
“Especially after whoever was at her apartment last night,” Carter said. “Three million dollars. Men have killed for a lot less. And so have women.”
“Andi isn’t after the money,” Cade said.
His brother raised a brow. “And you know that how?”
Cade glanced at the file on the coffee table, no longer sure of anything.
“There’s something else in that file,” Carter said. “It’s about Houston Calhoun, the brother Starr allegedly robbed the banks with.”
“I know he’s been missing—”
“Not anymore,” the sheriff said. “That body we found in the abandoned Cherry House down in Old Town a while back? Well, I finally got an ID on it. It was Houston Calhoun.”
Cade took the news like a blow.
“We were able to identify the remains through DNA. He’d had his DNA taken the last time he did prison time.”
Cade swore, knowing what was coming next.
“You still have that .45 Colt Dad gave you?” Carter asked.
“I haven’t seen it for a while,” Cade said, surprised how calm he sounded when his whole life was about to blow sky-high. “Why?”
“Because Houston Calhoun had a .45 slug embedded in his skull. That’s right, big brother. Houston was murdered and you better hope to hell you can find that gun and it doesn’t match the slug taken out of the back of your former wife’s brother’s skull.”
“Stop looking at me like I’m a suspect,” he said, more angry with himself than his brother. He’d gotten himself involved in this when he’d fallen for Starr Calhoun. Not just fallen for her, but married her and fathered their child. A woman he’d never really known.
“Did you ever meet her brother?” Carter asked, sounding more like the sheriff than his brother.
“No. I didn’t even know she had a brother. She told me she was an only child.”
“He would have been a threat to your life with her,” Carter said. “Based on the way the body decomposed, the anthropologist at the crime lab says Houston Calhoun died before winter set in approximately six years ago.”
Cade swore. “I didn’t know who Starr was or that Houston Calhoun even existed. And I sure as hell didn’t kill him.”
“Someone did. Knowing what we do now, he probably came to get his share of the money.”
Cade watched another chunk of his life with Grace wash away. Soon there wouldn’t be anything left but the lies. He had to face the fact that she might have killed her brother—and possibly with Cade’s own gun.
He told himself if she’d done it, she did it because Houston was threatening to expose her. She would have wanted to stay and have Cade’s baby, to put that old life behind her, to protect him from her past.
“If Grace killed him, she’d only been defending herself.” Cade just didn’t want to believe it had been about the money.
“No way to ever prove that now,” Carter said. “You should be more concerned about keeping yourself out of prison.”
“Damn, Carter, I’m your brother. You really think I shot that man and hid his body in the old Cherry House?”
“No. But you have to admit given all the facts, including that the body was hidden in an old house that you and I used to play in when we were kids, makes you look damned suspicious.”
Cade knew what his brother was saying. How had the killer known that the house was abandoned, boarded-up and marked with no-trespassing signs? Or that the house was considered haunted by most everyone in Old Town Whitehorse?
“You ever mention the place to Grace? Maybe even show it to her on your way out to see our old ranch?” Carter asked, then read his expression and swore. “Damn, Cade, this is one hell of a mess.”
Andi had been right. He was up to his neck in this whether he liked it or not with little way out unless he could prove he didn’t know Grace was Starr Calhoun.
And there was little chance of that.
* * *
AT THE MERCANTILE STORE, Andi told the clerk that she needed some Montana winter clothing.
The clerk laughed. “Did you have something in mind?”
“Whatever it takes for me to be warm.”
Forty minutes later, Andi left the store carrying her business suit, leather coat and stylish boots in a large bag. She wore flannel-lined canvas pants, a cotton turtleneck, a wool sweater, a sheepskin-lined coat, heavy snowpacks on her feet and a thick knitted wool hat, leather mittens with wool liners and a knitted scarf.
She felt like a sumo wrestler, but she was finally warm. She smiled as she called the local automotive shop to see about getting a head-bolt heater for her car and whatever it would take to get it running.
Once she had her car, she went looking for Cade. She had to tell him the truth about last night. He was in this almost as deep as she was. He had to be careful.
At his bait and tackle shop, she found a note on his door: Gone Fishing!
Great. At the convenience store, she filled up with gas and asked where everyone fished.
“This time of year?” the clerk said. “The reservoir. Drive north. You can’t miss it.”
The clerk was right. About fifteen minutes out of town, Andi spotted the white, smooth surface of the reservoir wedged between the low hills, and realized this was where Cade had brought her, only she didn’t recall how to get to his cabin.
She parked on the edge of the ice, debating what to do. She could see four-wheelers and pickups parked out on the ice beside a dozen or more fishing shacks spread along the reservoir, but she wasn’t about to drive her car out there because she could also see places where the ice looked thin or had a break in it. One of those shacks was Cade’s.
At the sound of a four-wheeler coming across the ice, she got out of her car and waved down the man driving.
“You can drive out on the ice, it’s plenty solid,” the fishermen said over the thump of the four-wheeler’s engine.
Andi stared out at the frozen expanse. She could see places where the ice had buckled. There wasn’t a chance she was going to drive out there. It had been frightening enough just driving out from town on the snow-packed highway even with the new tires the automotive shop had put on for her when they’d added the head-bolt heater for the engine to keep it warm.
As if seei
ng her hesitation, the fisherman added, “Or I could give you a ride.” He motioned to the seat behind him on the four-wheeler.
At least a four-wheeler would be lighter than a car, and the man obviously knew where to go to avoid any thin ice. At least she hoped so.
“Thank you. I will take you up on your kind offer,” she said.
“Best get your warmest clothing out of the car,” he suggested.
She grabbed her hat, mittens and scarf from the car and waddled over to the four-wheeler to awkwardly climb on behind him. She would never get used to all this clothing.
He gave the four-wheeler gas and they sped off down the rocky shore bouncing along until they hit the ice of the reservoir.
They raced across the frozen expanse, the cold air making her eyes tear. She hung on for dear life expecting to hear the crack of the ice followed by the deadly cold splash of the frigid water.
After what seemed like forever, her driver slowed the four-wheeler, coming to a stop next to what looked like a large outhouse. To her surprise, she could see that it had a stovepipe and smoke was blowing horizontally across the gray sky the moment the wind caught it. Snow had been packed around the bottom of the shack except in front of the door.
“Cade,” the man called. “You’ve got a visitor.”
* * *
CADE WAS HALF-AFRAID it would be his brother with an arrest warrant.
The first thing Cade had done after talking to Carter back in town was head out to the cabin. He owned half a dozen guns that he kept in a safe in the back room of the cabin. He used to hunt with his father and he kept a .357 Magnum out for protection although he’d never had to use it for that.
Once inside the cabin, he’d gone right to the back bedroom, opened the closet and turned on the light so he could open the safe. It held twelve rifles. He had only three in it and a couple of shotguns along with the .45 his father had given him.
As he turned the dial, his fingers trembling as he tried to remember the combination, he recalled the day Grace had asked him what was in the safe.
“Guns.”
She’d raised a brow and he’d laughed.
