High-Caliber Christmas

by B. J Daniels

  “I won’t.”

  “I know.” Ava smiled. “Now get up. We’re going to take a ride.”

  “No,” Kayley said, realizing she had no choice. But she feared she’d never come back if she went anywhere with this woman.

  “Don’t be silly. We’re just going to meet Jace. He won’t be happy that we fought and that you got hurt, but he knows he has to end this with you. He has to tell you about us, about our baby, about our life far away from here and how you can’t be a part of it.”

  “I don’t believe we’re going to meet Jace.”

  The woman reached for something on the kitchen counter, then surprised Kayley by grabbing a handful of her hair. She jerked Kayley’s head back, making her cry out in pain.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you force me to. Now, let me help you up.”

  Kayley felt the painful, sharp tip of a knife pressed against her throat.

  “Gently,” Ava said. “Knives are so dangerous if you don’t know how to use them. Fortunately for you, I am very good with knives.”

  MCCALL WAS WAITING outside the autopsy room when coroner George Murphy came out. “Well?”

  George shook his head in obvious amusement. He was a large, young, florid-faced man who’d thrown up at his first murder scene—not that she’d ever told anyone. McCall had expected him to have quit by now, as squeamish as he was.

  “There is something macabre about always finding you waiting here.” She’d never been able to wait for the official report to get typed up, and since the local coroner assisted with the autopsies, she could get a jump on things by grilling him right away.

  “Well?” she repeated, anxious to get moving again. Ava Carris was still missing. The crime techs had scoured the area where Ty Reynolds’s body had been found. No Ava.

  Which was no surprise to McCall. She just worried where Ava would turn up next. She’d called Jace and warned him. Last she’d heard from him, he’d gone to check on Kayley, although he was sure she’d driven to Billings yesterday to spend a few days with a friend.

  McCall had been glad to hear that, though she worried that Jace was in more trouble than he realized. Apparently Ava’s diminutive size and apparently sweet-looking face had fooled Ty. She hoped Jace was smarter.

  “Cause of death,” she said impatiently now to the coroner.

  “Overdose of a strong barbiturate. The lab will have to run the toxicology before we know what, exactly. “

  McCall blinked in surprise. “I saw knife wounds.”

  “Uh-huh. But they didn’t kill him. The large quantity of drugs he’d ingested killed him before the stab wounds, while deadly, could do him in.”

  McCall rocked back, trying to make sense of this. “Why stab him if he was almost dead?”

  “To make a point?”

  “George, was that a pun? You’re starting to like this job,” she joked.

  “Not likely. Why is it that the moment I become coroner, people start getting murdered?” He shook his big head. “The coroner from the crime lab is finishing up. I’m sure his report will be on your desk by this afternoon. I’m going back to bed.”

  McCall watched him shuffle down the hall. Ava Carris couldn’t have carried Ty out into the field where McCall had found his body. That meant he’d gone out there with her. She shook her head, trying to imagine a scenario where a man would follow a woman out into a snowstorm.

  Apparently Ava Carris was very persuasive.

  It didn’t skip her mind that Ava had murdered her husband with a butcher knife. Eleven stab wounds.

  “George,” she called after him. “How many stab wounds?”

  He turned to look at her as if her question was too ghoulish for the hour of the morning. “Eleven.” He yawned, turned and left.

  JACE KNEW THAT KAYLEY wouldn’t be home. Cade had told him she’d left town for a few days. He’d thought she’d probably left with Ty. That would explain why Ty hadn’t shown up at the Realtor’s office.

  But now, knowing that Ty hadn’t been with Kayley but instead had been with Ava—

  He’d had to bust through snowdrifts to get out of his road to the highway and had expected to have to do the same when he reached Kayley’s. But as he slowed to turn onto her road, he saw that a vehicle had already been down the road. Twice, it appeared.

  Or someone had been in and out this morning.

  He’d been so sure Kayley had left yesterday, he hadn’t called her. He’d decided that these four days she was gone, he would get some things taken care of, get his head on straight.

  Putting off the sale of his property had been the first step.

  Now, as he drove into Kayley’s yard and parked, he could see that the blinds were closed, no lights on inside.

  Still, he climbed out, noticing the footprints in the snow. Small tracks. Like a woman’s. Was it possible Kayley had asked one of her friends to come over and watch the place while she was gone?

  He glanced first toward the garage and made his way over there to find Kayley’s pickup sitting in the dim darkness inside.

  What the hell?

  Maybe she went to Billings with a friend, he told himself as he walked up the porch steps. At the door, he knocked. Of course, no one answered. Then he peered in the window through a crack in the blind, feeling like a Peeping Tom but unable to shake the bad feeling he’d gotten the moment he’d seen that someone had been down the road this morning.

  The living room looked just as it had the night he’d visited Kayley, nothing out of place, everything neat and clean. No wonder his mother had loved this woman and wanted him to marry her, he thought, trying to shake off his growing uneasiness.

  He moved down the porch to peek in the kitchen window. With a start, he saw that one of the stools was lying on its side, a pan next to it.

  His heart began to pound. Kayley would never leave her kitchen like that. He hurried back to the door. The knob turned in his hand. She hadn’t locked the door—even though she had left town for a few days?

  Alarm bells went off in his head as he moved quickly to the kitchen, only to find broken dishes on the floor and a trail of smeared blood.

  “Kayley!” he called as he ran through the house, praying she was here, all the time knowing she wasn’t. “Kayley!” She wasn’t in the house.

  He told himself maybe she’d cut herself, called a friend and was on her way to the hospital at this very moment.

  Jace reached for his cell phone.

  But before he could make the call, his phone rang. Let it be Kayley. Let there be a good explanation for what I’m seeing.

  But as he answered, he felt his stomach drop at the sound of Ava Carris’s voice on the other end of the line. He’d known even before she told him.

  Ava had Kayley.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jace felt his guts liquefy at Ava’s words.

  “I have Kayley. If you don’t want her death on your conscience, then you will do exactly as I say.”

  His throat ached from the fear. “Don’t hurt her.”

  “That’s up to you. If you betray me again by going to the sheriff, I won’t have any choice.” She sounded as if she was talking about taking in a movie. Her lack of emotion terrified him all the more.

  “I won’t do that. I promise. Just tell me where to meet you. I’ll come alone.”

  “Good. We’re waiting for you. I’ve had a lot of time on my hands, so I’ve been reading up on the history of your hometown and the area around it.”

  She sounded so damned normal that he had to shake himself. What the hell was she talking about?

  “I’m fascinated by the gold rush and these old gold mines around here,” Ava was saying. “Do you know the one north of your ranch?”

  His heart was pounding. “That mine is dangerous.”

  “But you like danger. Isn’t that why you left Whitehorse to become a spy?”

  “I’m not a spy.”

  “No, you’re like some undercover James Bond.”
/>   “Hardly.”

  “Oh, don’t be modest. You’re a hero. But I must warn you not to try anything heroic with me. I don’t want to kill Kayley, but you know I will if you force me to. Do we understand each other?”

  She was playing with him. “Yes, we understand each other perfectly.” He would strangle this woman with his bare hands when he got hold of her.

  “I’m looking forward to seeing you again,” she said. “We have had so little time to just talk. I really think you will find that we have a lot in common.”

  He swore silently. “I’m headed toward the mine right now. I just want to make sure we’re talking about the same one.”

  “It’s the one you and Kayley used to ride your horses to when you were kids.”

  He caught his breath. How…? Of course. She’d been in his house numerous times. She’d had a key made. She’d put away his clothing, left him presents. Why hadn’t he realized she wouldn’t hesitate to go through his mother’s things, especially her photo albums of him and Kayley? And all those letters she saved not only from him but from Kayley.

  He cursed himself for not realizing that Ava Carris’s obsession with him might lead her to Kayley.

  “I was so sorry to hear about the baby you and Kayley lost.”

  Jace felt an icy steel shaft of fury move through him. He warned himself not to let his emotions make him more careless and stupid than he had been already. He had to think like the operative he was. The problem was that those jobs hadn’t been personal. This was beyond personal. A crazy woman had Kayley.

  “I want to speak to Kayley.”

  “Now, Jace, you don’t get to ask for anything.”

  “I speak to Kayley, or I’m not meeting you at the mine.” He had to demand proof of life, and yet he realized he wasn’t dealing with a normal kidnapper. He wasn’t dealing with normal at all.

  He listened to the silence, his heart in this throat, petrified that she’d hung up on him. That she would just kill Kayley out of spite. That he’d blown it.

  “I’ll have to get her. You don’t mind holding, do you?”

  “I’ll be right here.” He drove down the road and turned in at the mailbox that read Dennison, his mind racing as to what to take up to the mine. He would have to be ready for anything. A mind like Ava’s could be diabolical in its complexity for deception, for intrigue, for cruelty.

  All his instincts told him she would want to punish him. She knew about him and Kayley, knew that they’d gotten close again.

  He couldn’t keep beating himself up over that. He’d let a woman like Ava Carris get so close that she now was holding the only woman he’d ever loved hostage.

  Whatever it took, he would free Kayley—or die trying.

  He’d just entered his uncle’s house when he heard Ava come back on the phone.

  “Keep it short,” he heard her say.

  “Jace.”

  He closed his eyes at the sound of Kayley’s voice, trying to breathe with his heart near bursting. If Ava didn’t kill her, Kayley could be killed in a cave-in. That mine tunnel was as unstable as Ava Carris.

  “It’s okay,” he said, fighting to keep his voice from giving away his emotions. “I’m coming for you.”

  “No Jace, she’s—”

  He winced at the sound of Kayley’s cry, fisting his free hand in fury.

  “I’m getting impatient, Jace,” Ava said in her soft, innocent voice after just hurting Kayley. “I don’t think you want me to have too much time on my hands, now, do you?”

  “No.” It was all he could do not to reach through the phone for the bitch’s throat. “I should be there within twenty minutes. I’ll call back in ten minutes to make sure Kayley is still able to speak on the phone.”

  Ava chuckled. “Okay, Jace, but that won’t be necessary. We’ll all be here waiting for you. Did I mention that my sister is here? She has the worst crush on you, so this should be very interesting. All these women willing to die for you.”

  He heard Ava make a sound like she’d just had the air knocked out of her. He could hear a struggle in the background. “Ava? Ava?” The phone went dead.

  Even more worried now, Jace moved quickly through the house. His uncle Audie had been a hunter and active outdoorsman. Everything Jace might need inside the tunnel was here.

  Rope. Small, folding shovel. Headlamp. Weapons.

  He’d never told his mother, but Uncle Audie had once taken him inside the mine. That alone should have panicked Jace, since he knew how dangerous it was. He and Audie had set off a cave-in by accident and had to dig their way out.

  They’d been lucky. Jace hoped to hell that luck held today.

  He filled an old backpack, taking the .357 Magnum but knowing that would be the first thing Ava would insist on taking from him. He holstered it and grabbed one of his uncle’s hunting knives, then a smaller, sleeker one for inside his boot, thinking about how much Ava apparently enjoyed knives.

  Ava would expect him to be armed.

  He didn’t want to disappoint her.

  Slinging the backpack strap over his shoulder, Jace headed for his uncle’s three-quarter-ton, four-wheel-drive pickup. He wanted to make sure he didn’t get stuck going out to the mine. He couldn’t take any chances with Kayley’s safely.

  He tried not think about what Ava had done to her so far. Or what he was going to do to Ava. One thing was certain. Ava Carris would never have to worry about being sent back to a mental institution.

  As he drove toward the foothills where the gold mines had been dug deep into the cold darkness of the hillside, he tried to reassure himself that Kayley was all right. She was the strongest woman he’d ever known. That scene back at her kitchen proved that she wouldn’t go down without a fight.

  He felt the lump rise in his throat as he recalled how she had tried to warn him not to come for her. He shook his head, amazed at the irony of it.

  It had taken him so long to admit to the mistake he’d made twelve years ago. Kayley had waited for him because she’d known they belonged together. She’d never lost faith in them. In him.

  After all these years of fighting it, he now knew that he wanted her more than life itself—and he was going to have to prove it. Because if he wasn’t the best trained killer he could be, Kayley was going to die.

  “WE FOUND THE HOUSE Ava has been renting,” the deputy said when the sheriff answered.

  It had been the craziest of mornings after the big storm. Normally there were the usual accidents, people snowed in and needing help. This morning McCall had a murder on her hands—and a missing psychopath. On top of that she had two different parties stranded to the south by Fourchette Bay down on Fort Peck Reservoir.

  Both had campers, food and fuel and said they could last for several days, so she’d kept her deputies working on the murder case—and searching for Ava Carris.

  The county would be plowing, getting roads open, and all other law enforcement—including her game-warden fiancé, Luke Crawford—were helping in the search for Ava or assisting motorists.

  “It’s over here in Dobson,” the deputy said.

  “I’ll be right there.”

  McCall made the drive in thirty minutes even on the snow-packed, slick road. She felt as if a clock was ticking, no doubt because Ava Carris was a live time bomb.

  The house on the far edge of the neighboring town of Dobson was small and white with a one-car garage. She could see how Ava had managed to seemingly disappear. Dobson was a tiny town, with little more than an independent convenience store and a school.

  The deputy was waiting for her with the owner of the house, a tiny, elderly man who was full of questions about why the sheriff was looking for such a sweet woman.

  “What could she have possibly done, a little, meek thing like her?” the owner said.

  McCall asked him to open the door and please wait for them outside.

  “You aren’t going to try to tell me this woman is dangerous,” he said with a laugh, then sobered as h
e caught the look the sheriff and deputy exchanged before pulling their weapons and stepping inside.

  The interior of the house was as McCall would have expected. Small, old and scented with that unique smell closed-up old houses always had. The furniture was minimal as they moved through the living room, checked the one bedroom and bath before entering the kitchen.

  In here, the smell was convenience-store fast food. Several bags were in the garbage can by the back door.

  McCall spotted a paper bag on the floor by the table and stepped toward it, stopping short when she saw the knife lying on the floor in the shadow of the table.

  “See what else you can find,” she told her deputy as she holstered her weapon and pulled out an evidence bag and latex gloves. She bagged the bloody knife, then looked around. Why would Ava leave this just lying here?

  McCall reminded herself that she wasn’t dealing with a necessarily logical-thinking woman. As she stepped into the bedroom, the deputy motioned to the closet and the suitcase open on the floor next to it.

  “She was either packing or moving in,” he said.

  McCall would guess packing, assuming that for some reason she’d left in a hurry since she’d apparently been stopped in the middle of the job.

  She moved to the end table beside the bed. A stack of vacation brochures from the area cluttered the small scarred table.

  “Did you find any sign that Kayley has been here?” he asked.

  Something caught her eye.

  “Did you find something?” the deputy asked.

  McCall carefully picked up one of the brochures about Montana’s history. Someone had circled a section about some old gold mines.

  Why would Ava Carris be interested in gold mines?

  “Where are the closest old gold mines around here?” she asked the deputy.

  “Used to be a lot of gold in the Little Rockies.”

  McCall remembered when the mines had shut down about ten years ago. Everyone had thought Whitehorse would wither and die because the town had become so dependent on the money the miners spent.

  Whitehorse, even though it was an hour away, had been the closest town, where everyone had shopped for groceries and supplies. People joked about the last person in town turning out the lights on their way out.