by B. J Daniels
She reached for the phone book. It only took a few minutes to find out that the person the employment agency in town had sent out had never made it. No surprise either to learn that the agency had never heard of TD Waters.
Enid hung up, her thoughts at war. What was she going to do? Get rid of TD Waters before anyone else found out. Short of killing him, she wasn’t sure how to do that. Firing him now so close to the wedding would make Pepper suspicious, even if Enid could get him to leave without ruining everything. Maybe she could make a deal with him.
How had he found out? He must have known something to show up here. He’d played along because he’d been looking for answers the whole time. What had she told him? Too much. He’d tricked her. She’d thought he’d knocked up some woman. He’d played her for a fool. Not that she wasn’t a fool.
And now Pearl had let the cat out of the bag, so to speak. From what Pearl had said, he hadn’t known anything before he talked to her. Why else would he ask Enid about the Whitehorse Sewing Circle? He’d come here fishing and had just hooked on to the big one: he was a Winchester.
What would he do now? She hated to think.
One clear thought worked its way to the surface. Someone had talked.
Enid thought back to the night the baby had been born here at the ranch. She’d called her sister, Etta Mae, and begged for her help, since Enid knew nothing about delivering a baby. A mistake, she saw now. No one else knew what had happened to the baby after it was born. No one but her sister.
Why would her sister have told anyone? Enid had sworn her sister to secrecy with the threat of death. The answer made Enid groan. Money. She recalled the last time Etta Mae had called. They’d argued about money. She’d known Etta Mae was thinking of selling the information to the highest bidder she could find and selling out her sister at the same time.
Enid tried not to panic. But she couldn’t get that last conversation with her sister out of her mind. She must have already sold the information before she called!
“Haven’t you got your money from that old sow yet?” Etta Mae had demanded when she’d called. To look at Etta May you’d think that petite, cute, sweet-looking woman was an angel—not the devil herself.
“What’s it to you?” Enid had snapped.
“Things haven’t been going so good for me. I was thinking you might want to help me out.”
“Like things have been going that great for me?”
“Why don’t you get some money from your boss? She owes you for all those years you’ve put in there and all the secrets you’ve kept for her. Hell, she owes me, now that I think about it. I’ve kept the Winchesters’ secrets all these years. I’d think she would appreciate that.”
“As if that thought just came to you,” Enid had said with disgust. “If that’s the only reason you called me, I’ve got to get back to work. I suggest you do the same thing. Do I have to warn you what will happen if you open your big mouth? And don’t call me for money again.”
Enid had hung up, furious with Etta Mae. She’d realized then that her sister wouldn’t keep her mouth shut. That meant someone had to keep it shut for her.
But she hadn’t acted quickly enough. Etta Mae had talked to someone. Someone here at the ranch?
Enid picked up the phone again and dialed her sister’s number. She had to cover her tracks.
“ALL I KNOW ABOUT MYSELF is what I’ve been told, and I can’t even be sure that is true,” TD said as he drove away.
Lizzy knew that feeling. She couldn’t help thinking of the photograph of her father and Roger Collins at the McCormick Ranch. “You have no idea why the Clarksons were killed?”
“None, except that when I was taken away from here, I was told that I was also in danger.”
She looked over at him in alarm. “And you still came back here?”
“Had to know the truth,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s my fatal flaw.”
Lizzy doubted TD Waters had any flaws. Her heart went out to him as she saw him glance in the rearview mirror, still looking for answers. He’d been lied to, that much was certain. And now she was lying to him, as well.
She thought about her own childhood. Had she been lied to also?
“What will you do now?” she asked as they drove east, past Old Town Whitehorse and into open country again.
“Go back to the ranch and try to get some answers.” He glanced over at her. “What about you?”
She shook her head. What was she going to do? She needed to use her satellite phone and call her boss. She’d put off talking to Roger Collins after finding the photograph. Unfortunately, time hadn’t changed the uneasy feeling that had settled in her the moment she’d seen Collins on the horse next to her father.
Lizzy felt TD’s intense gaze on her. “What?”
“I was just thinking about the first time I saw you. I would have sworn you recognized me even in that split-second when our eyes met.” He frowned. “Did you think I was one of the Winchesters?”
She had trouble lying to him. “It was such a close call and happened so fast…but maybe that’s why you thought I recognized you.” She reminded herself that lying came with the job and this was an assignment. But she was having a hard time seeing him as a rogue agent.
Just the thought that she could be ordered to take TD in at any time felt like a noose around her neck that drew tighter the more she learned about him. She’d seen how vulnerable he’d been back there and had been forced to fight the urge to reach out to him—and confide her own fear about their boss.
“I suppose that was it,” he said, not sounding convinced. “I was just hoping since you spent time around here in the summers that you might know something about me.”
“I’m sorry.” And she was. She could see how hard this was on him. They had a few too many things in common: a connection to Montana, a connection to this area in particular and the big one, a connection to Roger Collins. That worried her. All the old questions about why she’d been sent here and why Collins considered Waters a rogue agent nagged at her again.
They reached the spot where she’d left her car and TD pulled over. “Earlier, you said I should warn the Winchesters. What is it you think the McCormicks might do?”
She struggled with her loyalty to Anne even in spite of her friend’s betrayal. But after what had happened earlier with Anne and Janie….
“That’s just it. I don’t know. What I do know is that they’re angry at the Winchesters and blame them for what happened to their mother. We know Janie is blackmailing Worth Winchester…” It wasn’t just that, she realized. “I also saw Janie coming out of an old shed on the ranch. When I went to check it out, I saw that she’d padlocked the door and covered the windows.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” he said. “Some of these old sheds have explosives in them. Ranches have always used dynamite and blasting caps to take out stumps.”
She nodded, not surprised he was voicing her very concerns.
“Being a blackmailer is one thing, but is there a chance Janie might be violent?” he asked.
Lizzy looked away for a moment. “I once saw her beat a horse that had thrown her. If her stepfather hadn’t pulled her off that horse…” She shuddered and told him how Janie had threatened her. “I can’t go back there, but I can’t leave. I’m afraid Anne’s in trouble.”
“I need to see what’s in that shed,” TD said.
“It’s too visible from the house during the daylight.”
“Then we’ll have to go tonight. I need you to show me where that shed is. You’ll have to come stay with me.”
She felt her eyes widen in alarm. She shook her head even as her brain was telling her this might work out perfectly. Roger Collins would be delighted she’d gotten this close to his rogue agent. “That wouldn’t be a good—”
“There are four bunk beds in that cabin where I’m staying. You can take your choice.” He held up his hands.
“You have my word I won’t do anything you
don’t want me to.”
That was exactly what she feared. “Bunk beds?”
He grinned. “Four. You take your pick.”
How could she say no? Like him, she felt she had to find out what was in that shed. She also still had a job to do—even if it was becoming almost impossible to see TD Waters as one of the bad guys.
“HELLO?”
The voice on the other end of the line was female, but not Etta Mae’s.
“Who is this?” Edna demanded even though she knew.
“Charlotte.”
Etta Mae’s roommate. “Where is my sister?”
“Dead.”
“What? She died?”
“Got hit by a car. Actually, a bystander said it was a dark-colored pickup.”
“When was this?”
“Four days ago. The police asked about next of kin, but Etta Mae had scratched your name out of her address book. I couldn’t even read the phone number she had for you and I couldn’t remember your name, and knowing how she felt about you, I knew she wouldn’t want me to even tell the police she had a sister.”
Enid bit back a nasty retort. “You say she was hit by a dark-colored pickup. Did the witness get a license plate or any other information?”
“Not according to the police. Did break the headlight, though, so they’re looking for a dark-colored big pickup with the left headlight broken out—or recently replaced.”
“Charlotte, you are just a wealth of information,” Enid said sarcastically.
“I should tell you, she didn’t leave you anything. Etta Mae left me her apartment and everything in it. She said it would be over her dead body before she’d let you have any of it.”
Probably Charlotte had whatever money her sister had gotten for selling the information about the baby born twenty-seven years ago.
Enid hung up and went to the window. So the police knew that her sister had been run down by a dark-colored pickup four days ago. Enid studied the dark-colored ranch pickup parked outside the window, the one she’d borrowed four days ago. It was dirty enough she didn’t think anyone would notice that the left headlight had been replaced.
MCCALL WAS STILL SHAKEN by what she’d overheard on the ridge earlier today. She hated that her first thought had been that all three of them had been in on it.
She felt bad about that now, but since the time she was old enough to understand, she’d heard stories about the Winchesters—especially her grandmother, Pepper. And now that she’d met her grandmother, she still thought Pepper pretty much capable of anything, including murder, and as they say, the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree.
She reminded herself that her own genes were those of the Winchesters, not to mention Ruby. Had she not become a sheriff, she hated to think what she might have become, and said as much to her fiancé when he met her for dinner in town.
Luke laughed as he reached across the table to take her hand. “There is no one like you, McCall.”
“I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”
“You know damned well it is.” He was smiling at her and she wanted to pinch herself. How had she gotten so lucky? “I can’t wait to marry you.”
“Well, you don’t have to wait long. I wanted to ask you…” He looked uneasy. “Do you want to spend the night before the wedding—”
“Please. You aren’t going to suggest we spend it apart? Not after being inseparable for months, are you?”
He grinned. “I just thought maybe you—”
“Wanted to become conventional just because I was getting married?” She laughed and reached over to cup his strong jaw with her free hand. “I’m not going to change on you, Luke, just because we’re getting married. I want to wake up every morning lying next to you.”
He rose to come around to her chair. He pulled her up into his arms and kissed her in the packed restaurant. She melted into his arms and his kiss to the sound of applause.
“We’re getting married!” he announced as if everyone in three counties hadn’t heard.
McCall couldn’t take her eyes off him as he returned to his seat. She’d thought about telling him what she’d overheard today on the ridge, but she didn’t want to talk about it or what she’d realized. It was too painful. She told herself it could wait until after her wedding, but she wasn’t even sure that was true.
“To us!” Luke said raising his glass of beer. “I know it should be champagne but—”
“We don’t like champagne. We like beer,” McCall said, raising her own glass. They touched glasses with a soft clink, smiling at each other across the table, and she promised herself that she wasn’t going to let anything spoil this night with Luke.
“It’s going to be a wedding we’ll never forget,” he said.
Her fear exactly.
AS TD DROVE INTO THE Winchester Ranch, the thought hit him like a brick. He’d been born here. He was a Winchester. Was it true? Of course he’d noticed the resemblance, but it had never crossed his mind…
At the top of the hill, he looked down on the ranch dwellings and felt a start. The yard was full of vans and trucks and people. He slowed, wondering for a moment what was going on.
Caterers and florists and party rental crews were unloading box after box as he drove on past and parked down by his cabin. Lizzy pulled in beside him. As they both got out, they looked back at where all the activity was going on.
He spotted Enid standing outside overseeing the unloading. She saw him and pretended to be busy. “Make yourself at home in the cabin,” TD said to Lizzy. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
As he approached the elderly cook, he saw her tense. “We need to talk.” He drew her over to the side of the lodge away from prying eyes, then checked to make sure no one was within hearing distance.
“You told me that you were on this ranch even before Pepper came here as a newlywed, right?” he asked.
Enid nodded. She looked nervous.
“So you’re the one person who should know if I was born here.”
“What?” It was a halfhearted attempt to seem surprised.
“Are you the one who called me?”
This time her surprise seemed real. “Called you?”
“Asking for fifty thousand dollars to tell me the truth about my birth mother.”
Enid groaned. “Fifty thousand?”
Only the amount seemed to shock her.
“Someone called me from here. Any idea who that might have been?”
“From this ranch?”
“You and I spoke that night after I got the call.”
Her eyes widened with the memory. She let out a curse, then seemed to catch herself.
“Talk to me. If anyone knows the truth, I’m guessing it’s you.”
She looked around as if searching for a way to escape.
“Am I a Winchester?”
He saw the answer in her face. “Fine, if you don’t want to tell me, then I’ll ask Pepper.” He started to step away but she grabbed his arm with her bony fingers.
“I’ll tell you. She doesn’t know.”
“Doesn’t know what? Who gave birth to me? Or that I’m a Winchester?”
Enid leaned back against the outer wall of the lodge as if needing support. “She doesn’t know you’re alive. She thinks you died the night you were born. She thinks you’re buried in the family cemetery up on the hill.” She motioned to a hill beyond the barn.
His heart felt lodged in his throat. “Who was my mother?”
Chapter Eleven
TD stared at the elderly cook, trying to decide if she was serious.
“It’s true,” Enid cried. “Pepper Winchester is your mother. She was forty-five when you were born. Rather a surprise to us all. That’s the real reason she became a recluse twenty-seven years ago. She was pregnant with you. That’s why she sent all her grown children away so that they wouldn’t find out.”
He shoved back his Stetson and rubbed his forehead. “Pepper? But I thought you told me her husband Call had
been dead for forty years or so?”
“Call wasn’t your father. He was already dead and buried, so to speak.”
“Then who was my father?”
Enid seemed to hesitate. He took a step toward her. She held him off with a look that said she’d been threatened by the best and to not even bother. “Hunt McCormick.”
He stared at her aghast. “I was the product of this tragic affair that caused the bad blood between the families?”
“What can I say?”
“How about the truth?”
“I’m telling you the truth,” Enid snapped. “But you can’t go to Pepper with this.”
“Can’t I?”
She grabbed his arm again. “I told you. She doesn’t know you’re alive. She isn’t going to believe you.”
“I think you’ll be surprised.” He’d seen the way Pepper had been watching him. Had she seen something in him that reminded her of her other offspring?
“I’m begging you,” Enid said, a note of panic in her voice. “Don’t do this now. The wedding is tomorrow. Pepper has waited for this day for months. Let her get her granddaughter married, then… You’ve waited this long. What is another day?”
He looked at the old woman. He knew she was trying to save her own neck. She’d lied about the baby dying and sent her sister to the Whitehorse Sewing Circle to get rid of the infant.
“Why did you let her believe the baby died?” he asked, then realized he already knew the answer.
“Money. One more Winchester after the ranch.”
“And the fortune that goes with it,” she snapped.
“But that wasn’t the only reason. Look at the bang-up job Pepper did with her other children. She didn’t need another one to raise. Not that she was interested in the first place. She didn’t even look at the baby, made us take it away.”
Because she thought the baby had died.
“What about my father? Was he told I died, as well?”
Enid looked away.
