CHRISTMAS AT THE CARDWELL RANCH

by B. J Daniels

  Ace reached over and squeezed her arm. “I’m so sorry. If I hadn’t hired Mia in the first place—”

  “You sound like Tag. He blames himself for finding the thumb drive when I was there. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just that it was all for nothing. The names were of no use. Everyone was killing each other for nothing. The list was of no use because half the names were wrong on it, I heard at the marshal’s office. Apparently, Mia either messed up or they were onto her and gave her a fraudulent one.”

  Ace drove in silence the rest of the way to his apartment over the bar.

  “I’m going to my own house,” she said when she looked up and saw that her SUV was parked in the lot behind the bar.

  He started to argue, but she cut him off. “All the bad guys are locked up. It’s over. I want to go home. Need to go home.”

  “I don’t like the idea of you being alone,” her brother said.

  She smiled at him. “I need to be alone. I’ll drive down tomorrow. We can talk then. Right now—”

  “I know, you just need to be alone,” he finished for her, and smiled. “You’ve always been like that. I need people when I’m upset. You need solitude.”

  “Thank you for understanding.”

  “The marshal had your car picked up at Gerald’s motel and brought here,” he said. “Gerald stopped by earlier to say he was flying back to California. Does that mean you didn’t take him back? You aren’t reconsidering, are you?”

  “Would that be so bad?” She held up a hand as her brother started to tell her again what he thought of Gerald. He didn’t understand. Gerald offered her a quiet, safe life. Right now that sounded like just what she needed. She opened the passenger-side door of the Jeep and climbed out. “Tomorrow. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  With that she walked to her SUV, beeped open the driver’s-side door and climbed in. She needed familiar right now, her own things around her. She turned the key in the ignition. The engine roared to life.

  Her brother stood at the front door of the bar, waving as she left. She could tell he didn’t like letting her go—letting her even consider going back to Gerald.

  The past twenty-four hours were like a bad dream. Gerald showing up, making love with Tag, being kidnapped and held hostage and then Tag’s rescue and, ultimately, her own part in it.

  She could still remember the feel of the gun in her hand, the weight of it, the touch of the trigger. She’d let herself down. Let Tag down and almost gotten them both killed.

  Her phone rang. She glanced at the caller ID. Tag. She couldn’t bear to pick up. He would be flying home to his life in Texas. She’d heard him telling the deputy marshal of his plans.

  “I need to go back to Houston,” he’d said in response to the marshal’s question about where he could be reached. “My brothers and I own a barbecue business.”

  “You’re not staying for Christmas?”

  Tag had glanced in her direction, and then said, “No, I don’t think so.”

  He’d come over to her then and tried to talk to her, but she’d already put that cold, unemotional wall back up—the one Gerald had always admired about her. She could tell that Tag had been hurt and confused. He’d wanted to help her through this.

  She shook her head at the thought as she pulled into her drive. There were tracks in the snow. But she didn’t think too much about them. Everyone had been looking for her. Someone must have checked her house after the snow quit falling.

  Lily pressed the garage-door opener and watched the door slowly rise in the cold mountain air before she pulled in. She’d just cut the engine, the door dropping behind her, and gotten out when she realized she wasn’t alone.

  * * *

  AS TAG WAS getting ready to leave the marshal’s office, his father walked in. Tag wasn’t up to seeing anyone right now, still stung from the rebuke Lily had given him. She’d acted the same way the morning after their lovemaking. In those moments earlier, she’d made it clear that there was nothing between the two of them.

  So it wasn’t surprising that he felt a lethal mixture of emotions at just the sight of Harlan Cardwell right then.

  “Well, if it isn’t my father the agent.”

  “Retired CIA agent,” Harlan said.

  “Whatever.” He started to walk past him, but his father caught his arm. “We need to talk.”

  “Really? I flew all the way up here hoping that you might have five minutes for me. Now you want to talk? Let me guess. You want to talk about this case—not about you and me. You really don’t know how to be a father, do you?”

  “No, I don’t,” Harlan said. “I still need to talk to you.”

  Tag shook his head. He couldn’t help the well of anger that boiled up in his belly. When he’d flown up here for Christmas, he’d told himself he’d had no expectations. That had been a lie. He’d come hoping to find the father he’d never had.

  “Why don’t we step into Hud’s office?” his father said.

  “Are you ordering me?”

  “I’m asking.”

  They stood with their gazes locked for a few moments, before Tag relented and stepped into the office. “Okay, let’s get this debriefing over with,” he said as Harlan closed the door behind them and motioned his son into one of the two chairs in front of Hud’s desk.

  “I’m sorry,” his father said as he sat down. “You’re right. I know nothing about being a father.”

  “And you never tried to learn.”

  “I did at first, but I let my job get in the way. It seemed more important.”

  Tag saw how hard that was for Harlan to admit. “It still is.”

  Harlan shook his head. “I only got involved because I used to work with Mia’s father. I’ve known her since she was a baby. I could see that she was in over her head and yet...” He raked a hand through his hair. Tag noticed the streaks of gray he hadn’t before. He saw the lines around his father’s eyes. Saw how much he’d aged as if it had all been in the past twenty-four hours.

  He’d seen his father as a guitar-playing, beer-drinking good ol’ boy who just wanted to have fun. Now he saw the man behind that facade.

  “Stay for Christmas,” Harlan said.

  “Was the computer thumb drive really worthless?” Tag asked. “Or is that just another lie?”

  His father looked sad and disappointed for a moment that Tag had turned their conversation back to business, but finally said, “The original drive was corrupted.”

  Tag frowned. “Corrupted? Well, at least you have the list that Lily provided you.”

  “The names Lily McCabe decoded were incorrect. Useless, since there was no way to match up those ex-cons with the deaths of the law officers on the list.”

  Tag let out a curse. “Lily was so sure—”

  “Some of them were right. I don’t know why she wasn’t able to get the rest of them. But whatever the reason, it probably saved her life,” Harlan said.

  Tag felt his heart bump in his chest. He and Lily had tried so hard, but ultimately, they’d both failed. “So now what?”

  “I’m retired again. That’s why I’d like you to stay for Christmas.”

  A cheer came up from another part of the office. The dispatcher gave a thumbs-up and mouthed that Dana was going to make it.

  “I’ll think about it,” Tag said, and rose to his feet. His father did the same and held out his hand. Tag shook it, feeling his father’s strength in that big hand. “Did Mother know?”

  Harlan nodded. “She couldn’t live with never being sure if I was going to make it home for dinner.”

  Tag nodded.

  “I hope you stay for Christmas, but I’ll understand if you don’t.”

  At the cabin, he packed up his things, realizing he couldn’t leave without seeing Lily one more time a
nd saying goodbye. He swung by the bar to find it closed. After a few minutes of pounding on the door, Ace appeared.

  “Is Lily here?”

  “She was determined to go to her place. I tried to talk her into staying with me, but my sister is one stubborn woman.”

  Tag smiled. “Determined and strong.”

  “Well, she’s not feeling all that strong right now. She feels she let herself down and almost got you killed. I’m not sure she can ever forgive herself.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Tell her that.”

  “I’ve tried.”

  Ace glanced toward the old pickup Tag was driving. “You’re leaving.”

  “I am, but I don’t want to go without seeing her again.”

  “She says she needs to be alone. Sorry.”

  “Okay.” Tag turned to leave.

  “I suppose you won’t be back.”

  “Not likely,” he said as he walked to his father’s pickup and climbed in. The sun had come up behind the mountains and now washed the countryside with cold winter sunlight.

  As he drove out of Big Sky, Tag found himself mentally kicking himself. If he hadn’t gone to the bar that night and Mia hadn’t stumbled into him... If he hadn’t found that stupid thumb drive in his coat pocket and let Lily see it. If...

  His heart began to pound as he remembered something. He turned around to head back toward Lone Mountain and called his father. “About those names. You said the thumb drive was corrupted and so was the copy Hud made, right? Lily told me that she had decoded some of them, but hadn’t had a chance to finish. It was her former fiancé who gave us the list.” Tag swore. “I let him use the original flash drive.”

  Harlan instantly was on alert. “What’s his name?”

  “Gerald Humphrey.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “Nothing. Nothing except that it took him six months to show up after he’d stood Lily up at the altar. He supposedly already left on a flight from Bozeman to Los Angeles, California, today.”

  He heard his father clicking on a computer keyboard. “I’m showing that he was on the flight.”

  “Is there any way to verify that?” Tag turned onto Lone Mountain Road and headed toward Lily’s while he waited.

  “I can try to contact the airport.”

  “But why would Gerald corrupt the thumb drive or give Lily the wrong names?” He could hear his father clacking away at the computer keyboard.

  “He recently left his job in Montana to take a lesser one in California at a small private school,” Harlan said. “Wait a minute. Next of kin. Gerald Humphrey has a younger sister who was recently sentenced for embezzlement. She got fifteen years and is serving time in a prison in California near the private school where he is now teaching.”

  Tag’s mind raced. Was it possible Gerald was up to his neck in this? He hadn’t come back to sweet-talk Lily into taking him back. He’d come back because Mia worked at the Canyon Bar—and she had managed to get the list. Tag cringed. He’d given the thumb drive to Gerald to decode and now it was corrupted.

  “Lily mentioned something about Gerald taking a job in California,” Tag said to his father. “This co-op killing group isn’t just in Montana, is it? It’s nationwide?”

  “Tag—”

  He floored the old pickup as he headed for Lily, praying he wasn’t too late.

  * * *

  LILY FROZE AT the sight of a large dark figure standing in the doorway to the house. Her breath rushed from her as her heart took off on a downhill run.

  “Lily, I knew you’d come alone.”

  “Gerald?” He moved then into the dim light so she could see his face. The familiarity of it let her suck in a couple of calming breaths before she asked, “What are you doing here? I thought you flew back to California.”

  “I couldn’t leave just yet,” he said. “Are you going to just stand in the garage all day or come inside?”

  She bristled at his tone, but quickly quelled her irritation. There was a reason Gerald treated her like a child. Around him she felt like one.

  He was still blocking the door as she approached, but he moved aside at the last minute to let her into her own house. She glanced around. Everything looked just as it had yesterday before she’d left to meet him. Yesterday she’d been so sure of herself. So sure she wanted something different. Someone more exciting.

  “I’m glad you didn’t leave,” she said as she took off her coat.

  “Really?” Gerald took the coat and hung it up.

  She noticed his was also on the coatrack by the front door—in the same place it had been just two nights before. He’d certainly made himself at home, she thought, noticing that he had a small fire going in her fireplace. She’d picked up the hint of smoke as she’d come in, but hadn’t registered why until this moment.

  Lily resisted the part of her that resented Gerald thinking he could just come in and do as he pleased in her house.

  “How did you get into the house?” she asked suddenly, and glanced toward the front door, recalling locking it before she left.

  “Through the garage. You do realize I am smarter than your garage-door opener, don’t you?”

  She studied him, faintly aware that he seemed different. That alone threw her since Gerald had always been so solidly...Gerald.

  “I’ve never questioned how smart you are.”

  “Really?” he said as he moved around the dining room table, his thick fingers dragging along the smooth edge of the wood.

  She saw him slow as he reached her computer and realized that all the paperwork she’d left on the table was gone. She shot a look toward the fire. One of the papers hadn’t completely burned.

  Her heart began to pound so hard she thought for sure he would hear it. She glanced toward the computer screen but couldn’t read what was on it.

  “I’m surprised that you never asked me why I decided to move to a small private school in California,” Gerald said, drawing her attention back to him.

  “I didn’t really get a chance to ask before...” She let the rest of what she would have said yesterday die in her throat. She wasn’t up to a fight with Gerald. His standing her up at the wedding no longer mattered. It seemed a lot more than six months ago.

  “Yes, the wedding,” he said, and stopped moving to look at her.

  “I don’t want to argue about—”

  “I didn’t come here to try to change your mind.”

  That surprised her. “Then I guess I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t you? I would have thought you of all people would have put it together by now. You were my best student. You disappoint me, Lily.”

  She frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The code.”

  With a sigh, her body heavy with exhaustion, weary from the events of the past twenty-four hours, she said, “None of that matters. The names were wrong anyway. I almost died for nothing. I almost got Tag—” She stopped herself.

  “Tag. What kind of name is that anyway? Like Ace? Another name you might call your dog?”

  Lily studied Gerald then, feeling the weight of the world settling on her shoulders, and said, “I’m sorry if I hurt you, Gerald. Is that what you need me to say? Is that what you’re doing here? Because I just don’t know what you want from me.”

  He took a step toward her. “There was a time you would have known.” He shook his head as he stopped within inches of her and reached out to touch her cheek with his fingers.

  She closed her eyes, trying not to think of Tag’s touch, of Tag’s embrace, of Tag.

  “But that time has long passed.”

  She opened her eyes, hearing the thinly veiled anger in his voice. “That’s why you missed your
flight? You just wanted to tell me you don’t love me anymore?” A stab of anger made her heart beat a little faster. “Fine. Give it your best shot. I’ve disappointed you. I’m not good enough for you. Whatever it is, let’s hear it. Then leave.” She had started to step past him when he grabbed her arm.

  “You can’t possibly think that I have gone to all this trouble just to have the last word. Don’t you know me any better than that?” he demanded. “Are you so besotted with that cowboy that he’s turned your brain to mush?”

  She tried to jerk free of his hold, but he only tightened it. “So this is about jealousy? You didn’t want me but you don’t want anyone else to have me, either?”

  “So he has had you.” He swore, something she’d never heard him do before. He’d always said that cursing was a lazy, uneducated waste of the vernacular.

  She shot him a withering look.

  “Stupid cow,” Gerald snapped. “Didn’t you even question once why your code and mine were so different?”

  Lily blinked, thrown off for a moment from the lightning-fast change of topic. “You said mine was off—”

  “And you believed me.” He laughed. “I guess I will always be the teacher and you will always be the pupil.”

  She stared at him as if seeing a stranger. She had wondered why she’d gotten some of the names right and yet others Gerald had said were wrong. If her original decoding had been accurate, then...

  “I just assumed you were right and I was wrong,” she said more to herself than to him. She saw how foolish that had been, not only with the code but also with her entire relationship with this man.

  “Come on, my little pupil. Think. Don’t you remember me telling you about my younger sister who lives in California?” His fingers clutching her arm tightened painfully.

  “You’re hurting me, Gerald.”

  “I told you how proud I was of her, that she was even smarter than me,” he said as if he hadn’t heard her or was ignoring her. “Well, guess what? All that money she was making hand over fist? It was one big lie. Embezzlement. She used that magnificent brain of hers to steal, and worse, she got caught!”

  “I don’t understand what that—”