Lone Rider

by B. J Daniels

  She told herself she could do this. She would survive this no matter what she had to do.

  * * *

  “I HEARD BO HAMILTON is missing,” Lynette “Nettie” Johnson Benton Curry said as she joined her husband for an early lunch at the picnic table beside the Beartooth General Store. The day had turned beautiful, bright and sunny with a hint of the warmth of the summer to come.

  “What?” The sheriff stopped digging out the sandwiches from the bag she’d brought to look at his wife. Her hair, a bottle red, suited her. She’d had her naturally curly hair cut short. That too suited her since she was a small woman, although he’d never thought of her that way. True, he towered over her, but Lynette was such a strong, determined, stubborn and infuriating woman that she’d always felt more like his equal.

  “Hadn’t you heard?” she asked, blue eyes sparkling with both surprise and pleasure. While she had tried to give up gossip, it still found her doorstep. And whether she would admit it or not, she still enjoyed knowing something that other people didn’t—and sharing it. “She went up into the Crazies camping Saturday, planning to be back yesterday, but no one has seen her.”

  “That much I know,” he said as he pulled out a sandwich and freed it from the plastic bag. “Her father called me. What I’d like to know is how you know.” He took a big bite of his sandwich.

  “Anita, who works at the café next to the Sarah Hamilton Foundation office, overheard one of the employees talking. She told her sister, who told Claudia Turner, who told Mabel Murphy—”

  “Who told you,” he said with a nod of his head. He took another bite of his sandwich. It always amazed him how fast gossip traveled in this county—and the circular routes it took before it reached his wife.

  Lynette leaned closer. “The reason everyone is in a panic is that an auditor was to meet with Bo at 11:00 a.m. yesterday morning. Guess why an auditor was called in.”

  Frank shook his head. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this, but something told him he needed to.

  “There’s money missing along with Bo Hamilton. Apparently, a lot of money. Someone has been stealing from the foundation for months.”

  He put down the half-eaten sandwich as his stomach did a slow roll.

  “What’s wrong? I thought you liked tuna fish,” Lynette said.

  “So the assumption on the gossip line is that she’s run off with the money?” he asked, feeling a little sick. Buckmaster hadn’t mentioned any of this, no doubt purposely.

  Lynette nibbled at her sandwich. “Oh, you know the grapevine. Speculation is that there is a man involved.”

  He bristled. “Why would people instantly think a man was involved?” he demanded more forcefully than he meant to, and more defensively. “Women steal all the time and all by themselves without any help from a man.”

  She eyed him over her sandwich, looking amused. “What else would make a woman like Bo Hamilton steal from her own mother’s charity foundation and take off if there wasn’t a man involved?”

  He stared at her, fascinated with how her mind worked. “I will never understand women.” He stood.

  “You aren’t going to finish your sandwich?”

  “I’ve lost my appetite.” He didn’t know why he was so upset. Another Hamilton in trouble, that’s all he could think, and now the foundation was involved. Not to mention that all the women in the valley were convinced a man was at the root of the problem.

  Lynette put his usual, an orange soda and a candy bar, back into his lunch bag. “Here, you’ll want this for when you get hungry later, especially since you didn’t finish your sandwich.”

  She knew him so well. He snatched up his sandwich and took a giant bite, chewing it as he looked at her, almost daring her to say anything.

  She smiled. “I love you, too.”

  He finished the sandwich before he took the bag she’d offered him. She was right. Later he would want the orange soda and the candy bar.

  Right now, he was angry with himself. He wished he had asked more questions about the missing Bo Hamilton when her father had called him. He wondered if he was losing his edge.

  “I suppose you don’t want to hear the latest on Sarah Hamilton, then?” she asked as he started to walk away.

  He sat back down at the picnic table, feeling his anger leave as he looked at his wife. Lynette was the love of his life. She frustrated the hell out of him sometimes, a lot of times, but he never wanted to live without her.

  “Nothing you can say will surprise me,” he said, realizing it had sounded like a dare. He didn’t want to dare Lynette.

  She chuckled and leaned toward him conspiratorially, signaling this was going to surprise him whether he liked it or not. With a sigh, he waited. There were no other people around since it was almost two in the afternoon. But still Lynette felt the need to whisper, which meant whatever she planned to tell him was going to be good.

  “As you know, when Sarah Hamilton suddenly showed up in the middle of nowhere outside Beartooth and stepped out of the trees in front of Russell Murdock’s pickup, Russell took her to the closest doctor, which just happened to be old Dr. Farnsworth.”

  Yes, he knew all this and said as much. Dr. Farnsworth was retired, lived just down the road from where Russell had found the woman and had moved to the area a few years ago with his wife, so he hadn’t recognized the senator’s first wife whom everyone else had thought dead for twenty-two years.

  Lynette nodded. “The doctor was checking Sarah for injuries and getting her cleaned up, since apparently she was scraped up along with being confused, so he had his wife help him with her.”

  Frank was losing his patience. “Lynette—”

  “The doctor’s wife saw something.”

  “Saw something?”

  Lynette leaned closer. “A tattoo.”

  “A lot of people have tattoos.” He told himself this wasn’t news, and yet when he thought of fiftysomething Sarah Hamilton, she was the last person he’d expect to get a tattoo.

  But he reminded himself that the woman couldn’t account for twenty-two years of her life. Who knew what could have happened to her during that time? Did any of them know this Sarah Hamilton?

  “Not everyone has a tattoo like this one.” Lynette was still looking like the cat who’d eaten the canary.

  “Like what?” he demanded.

  “Very unusual. The doctor’s wife had never seen another one like it.”

  “How many tattoos has the woman seen?” he grumbled. “Is she an expert in tattoos? The woman is in her seventies. I really don’t think—”

  Lynette reached into her pocket and pulled out a small white piece of paper. “I had her draw the design to the best of her memory.” She held the paper out triumphantly. “I thought you might also like to know where this tattoo is located.” As he started to tell her he was getting tired of having to guess, she held up her hand and said, “On her right buttock. Kind of like the way you brand your cattle.”

  He took the scrap of paper and looked down at the crudely drawn design. Then he looked at his wife. “What the hell is it?”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say it was a pendulum.”

  “A pendulum? Why would someone get this tattooed on their butt?”

  His wife shrugged.

  “But what does it mean?”

  “You’re the detective. I can’t do it all for you,” she said as she finished her sandwich. “You have to admit it’s interesting, isn’t it?”

  He wanted to grab her and kiss her. “I really should hire you for the department,” he said as he looked again at the design. It did remind him of a brand. “A pendulum, huh?”

  “I have to get back to work.” She’d married the Beartooth General Store when she married her first husband, Bob Benton. He had hated the store. He gave it to her in
the divorce because she loved working there. After it burned down, she’d sold the property, thinking she’d put that part of her life behind her.

  But now she was back working for the new owner part-time because the store was still her baby, the only baby she’d ever had. Also, the store was the epicenter of the county’s gossip and, like it or not, Lynette was a gossip magnet.

  “Hey,” he said as she put her trash in her paper lunch bag and stood to leave. He rose, as well. Taking her arm, he drew her to him. “You really are something.”

  “I know. That’s why you married me.”

  “That was one reason,” he admitted with a chuckle. Then he kissed her, picked up his bag with his soda and candy from the picnic table and headed for his office, hoping someone somewhere could tell him what this tattoo meant, because it damned sure meant something.

  * * *

  “TELL ME AGAIN about how you met Sarah.”

  “Angelina, must we do this now?” Buckmaster asked with a groan. He suspected she was merely trying to keep his mind off Bo. All through lunch, he’d been looking out the window, praying that he would see her come riding out of the pines in the distance.

  “Please just indulge me.”

  “I’ve told you. I took a load of horses up into the park for the summer. I was unloading them when I noticed her standing next to the corral.”

  “So it was love at first sight?”

  He heard the edge to her voice. Why did she put herself through this? She’d never shown any jealousy before Sarah’s return. Or had he just missed it?

  “It wasn’t love at first sight.” As he said it, he realized how true that was. Sarah had been cute, but he came across a lot of cute girls. At twenty-five, he hadn’t even given a thought to settling down... But somehow that had changed the day he met Sarah, he realized.

  “Who made the first move?” Angelina asked.

  He let himself remember. He could almost smell the dust, the horses and the pines. The warm, early summer breeze stirred her long blond hair. Even now he could feel the summer sun on his back.

  “Have you ridden all of these horses?” she had asked.

  It had seemed like an odd thing for her to say. Most girls said things like “I love horses” or “Would you show me how to ride one?” Things he’d heard many times before.

  He’d looked at the horses he’d released into the corral and laughed. “Yep, I think I have ridden them all.” They took only the gentlest of horses to Yellowstone for the tourists to ride, so these had been around the ranch for some time.

  “Which is your favorite? Wait. Let me guess.” She seemed to study the horses as they milled around the corral, her gaze so intent he’d wanted to laugh again.

  “That one!” she’d finally said excitedly. “What’s her name?”

  “What makes you think that horse is a mare?”

  She’d smiled at him. “I’m right. She’s your favorite, isn’t she?”

  Sarah had chosen a palomino mare named Sunny, a mare who just happened to be one of his favorites. He’d given Sarah another look. It wasn’t just because she was flirting with him. He had time to kill. He didn’t have to be back to the ranch until morning.

  “You must be psychic,” he’d said as he joined her at the corral fence.

  They’d got to talking, and the next thing he knew, he’d asked her to the movie in Gardiner. Had it been her idea? He couldn’t remember. She could have asked what was showing and said she was dying to see it. He couldn’t be sure.

  He frowned. She’d definitely come on to him.

  “Well?” Angelina asked.

  “Well what?”

  “Was she the instigator?”

  “What if she was?” he demanded. “What does that prove?”

  “That she knew who you were, knew you were bringing horses up that day, knew you were the son of Senator B. D. Hamilton.”

  He shook his head. He was often confused lately by what Angelina was talking about. “Even if all of that were true, what possible difference could it make now?”

  “Admit it. She came after you. She must have had a reason.”

  “Think about what you’re saying, Angelina. What? Did she trick me into marrying her, hoodwink me into impregnating her with six daughters so she could try to kill herself and disappear later for twenty-two years?”

  “There has to be a reason for all of this,” Angelina said stubbornly.

  He couldn’t see that there was a reason for anything and said as much. “You’re going to drive yourself crazy looking for sense in something that makes no sense.”

  “That’s what she wants you think,” Angelina said cryptically. “You wait and see. Sarah knows exactly what she’s doing.”

  * * *

  JACE HAD AWAKENED before the crack of dawn. The night had been long. He’d dozed, but his sleep hadn’t been restful. All night, his senses had been on alert to any sound other than the usual forest hum.

  He’d had a dream, one of those crazy ones that hadn’t made any sense and yet had been disturbing. It had been about the night his parents had died. Even with the light of day, he could still feel a cloying darkness, imagine the smell of the smoke rising up from the wrecked plane and hear the heart-rending cries of his little sister.

  Unsettled by the nightmare, he’d eaten some jerky and saddled up, anxious to find Bo Hamilton and put his waking nightmare to rest.

  Riding to a high ridge, he tried his cell phone. He wanted to see if Bo had returned. He got a few bars and punched in Senator Buckmaster Hamilton’s number.

  The man answered on the second ring. “Have you found her?”

  “Not yet.” He’d hoped that somehow Bo had surprised him and found her way back to the ranch. He knew it was wishful thinking that she might have returned on her own. He’d picked up her horse’s tracks again this morning. They were headed up the ridgeline and deeper into the Crazies.

  “I’d hoped...” Jace could hear the distress in the older man’s voice.

  “I’m on her trail, headed deeper into the mountains.” Jace heard nothing but silence and looked down to see that he’d lost the senator. He tried again but couldn’t get enough service for the call to go through this time.

  He had wanted to ask whether Bo had been seeing someone. It could explain why the only other tracks he’d found were a man-size boot print that had crossed her path several times. He knew that was a long shot. The two probably weren’t connected.

  The tracks bothered him. He should have seen other horseshoe prints. If Bo were meeting someone, wouldn’t the man be on horseback? Had something happened to his horse? Or was it a backpacker? Most backpackers didn’t wear cowboy boots with worn soles, though.

  It was almost as if the man had been tracking Bo on foot.

  As he looked ahead into the shadowy, dense pines, he worried even more about who was up on this mountain with him and Bo.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SARAH FELT AT loose ends. She hadn’t seen Buck for days now. She wanted to know how her daughters were doing. If she didn’t get out of this cabin, she would go stir-crazy.

  Russell had left last night, saying he had some business to take care of at his ranch but he’d check in later with her today. She knew calling Buck, the man she still considered her husband, was probably a mistake. Russell didn’t think she could trust Buck.

  “Did I catch you at a bad time?” she asked when he answered.

  “No. In fact, I was just thinking about you,” Buck said. “I have something for you.”

  “Buck, I don’t need—”

  “Please, let me do this. Is there any way I can see you?”

  Sarah hesitated. Russell would be furious with her, but he didn’t understand that in her mind, Buck was her loving husband with whom she’d had six childr
en. Those missing years were just that: missing.

  “I could give you the directions to where I’m staying,” she said. “Just be careful so no one from the press—”

  “I will.”

  Thirty minutes later, he drove up in front of the cabin. Every time she saw him, she felt those old emotions roiling inside her. This was her husband. This was the man she loved.

  But then she would hear Russell’s voice in her head. If you loved him so much, why would you have driven your car into the Yellowstone River in the middle of winter in an attempt to kill yourself? Then, when that failed, why would you leave for twenty-two years?

  That was the question, wasn’t it? Maybe that was what she hoped to find out by seeing Buck. But as she watched him climb out of his SUV, she reminded herself that this man was married to someone else now and on his way to the White House. A whole lot had changed since that night she plunged into the Yellowstone.

  “So this is where Murdock’s been keeping you,” Buck said and shook his head. “Did he mention that I want you to move onto the ranch?”

  She nodded.

  “And?”

  Not wanting to argue with Buck for the short time they would have together, she said, “I’m thinking about it.”

  That seemed to appease him. He relaxed a little, reminding her of the old Buck Hamilton she’d fallen in love with.

  “I want you to have this,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the handgun.

  Sarah stared at the .22 pistol as Buck laid it on the table. From his other pocket he pulled out a cell phone.

  “I want you to be protected. I also want you to be able to call me anytime—and not with Russell’s phone.”

  She didn’t want him going off about Russell, so she asked, “Protected from what?” She still hadn’t touched the gun, could barely look at it.

  “I don’t know. Whatever.” He waved an arm through the air impatiently. “Until I’m around to make sure you’re all right...”