by Cassie Miles
Looking over his shoulder, he watched Tab administer first aid with bandages and supplies from a well-stocked rescue kit. “Hey,” he called back to her. “How’s he doing?”
“Resting.” She spoke loudly over the sound of the rotors. “Having trouble breathing.”
He held the headset toward her. “I’ve got the E.R. at St. John’s on the line. Tell them what you need.”
As soon as she had the headset in place, Tab started rattling off medical jargon that sounded like a foreign language to him. Though triage wasn’t her specialty, Tab knew what she was doing. Her competence impressed him. Her cool courage amazed him.
Under pressure, she had performed like a champ. Nobody could have done better. He might have to rethink his objections to having her on his team. She was decisive and efficient. When he’d told her to stay hidden, she’d agreed without too much hesitation. When he’d needed her help, she was there.
After she finished talking to the docs, she left Wally and came forward to stand behind him in the cockpit. “How much longer?”
“Fifteen or twenty minutes.”
She gripped his shoulder and squeezed. “I think he’s going to make it.”
He looked up into her beautiful eyes. There was so much he wanted to tell her, but now wasn’t the time. “I’m glad we got to him in time.”
“He’s a tough old guy. The bullet wound and the blow to the head would have killed most people.”
“That has to be what the intruder was thinking. He wouldn’t want us to find Wally alive.”
“That ugly old buffalo robe might have saved his life by keeping him warm so he didn’t go into shock.”
Wally’s survival was the most important thing, but Aiden had to wonder about what the old man had witnessed. He knew something that made him a threat. “Do you know what he meant by a ‘two-face’?”
“It’s a monster used to scare kids. You know how it goes, clean your room or two-face will eat you.”
“Somehow, I can’t imagine your grandma using that kind of threat.”
“She never had to. She’s got an angry glare that always made me toe the line.”
“Tell me more about two-face.”
“He’s a huge ogre with one face in front and another in back so you can never sneak away from him. And he has claws like a grizzly, I think. If you’re naughty, he’ll come after you. First, he freezes you with an evil eye. Then, he eats you, starting with your toes.”
That was all they needed—a flesh-eating ogre. “When Wally comes around, he might be able to give us a better identification. What do you think he really saw?”
“Somebody wearing a ski mask?”
Good guess. He’d seen ski masks designed with monster faces or skull heads. If somebody came at Wally wearing one of those, he might think he’d seen a monster.
Tab leaned closer and brushed her lips against his cheek. Her kiss was so soft and so quick that he wasn’t even sure it happened. But he felt her nearness.
“I’m so proud of you,” she said.
“Why? I let the bad guy escape.”
“The way you picked Wally up and carried him was so terrific. You saw what had to be done, and you did it.”
“Anybody else would have done the same. Carrying him wasn’t hard.” He grinned up at her. “He ain’t heavy. He’s my brother.”
“And you’re my hero.”
After another squeeze to his shoulder, she returned to the rear of the chopper to tend to her patient while Aiden basked in the glow of her praise. He’d done plenty of emergency rescues and evacuations, but nothing felt as satisfying as this moment. Her appreciation meant the world to him.
As soon as they touched down, he needed to contact Sheriff Fielding and arrange for Wally to be guarded against another attack while he was in the hospital. The old man knew something or had witnessed an event that he didn’t realize was important. And the killer had come after him to make sure he didn’t talk. That was the only explanation that made sense. If Wally could remember what he had witnessed, he might be key to breaking open the investigation.
It worried Aiden that the attack had taken place at Maria Spotted Bear’s house. A coincidence? In his babbling, Wally seemed to be telling Tab that he’d come to the house because of her invitation. Had the killer been following Wally and tracked him to the house? Or was he already there, waiting and watching?
Tab was also a witness. She’d seen the face at the window. Had he been coming for her?
It was a damn good thing that she and her grandma were staying at the ranch. Tab needed protection. From this moment forward, Aiden wouldn’t leave her alone and unguarded. Not for a moment.
Chapter Fourteen
The next day, Tab didn’t wake until sunlight was streaking through the window blinds in her upstairs bedroom at the ranch. Something was wrong with her foot. She kicked and pried her eyelids all the way open. Misty was sitting on the edge of the bed by Tab’s bare feet.
“Brought you coffee, toast and a banana,” Misty said.
“What time is it?”
“After ten o’clock.”
“Were you pinching my toes?”
“A little bit.” Misty pushed herself upright and waddled to the bedside table where she’d placed a tray with the breakfast. “I thought you’d want to be up. You were always an early riser.”
If anybody else had been bugging her to rise and shine after the super-strenuous day she’d had yesterday, Tab would have growled for them to go away and snuggled deeper into the warm covers. But she had a soft spot for Misty. Ten years ago, in this very bedroom, they’d giggled and whispered and tried on lipstick. Rearranging the pillows so she could lean against them, Tab reached for the mug of hot black coffee.
After a sip, she studied Misty and decided that this toe-pinching wake-up call didn’t really have anything to do with her. Misty had something to say, and she’d chosen Tab as her confidante.
Cautiously, Tab asked, “How are you feeling this morning?”
“I’m okay.” She giggled. “The baby is even better, doing jumping jacks inside my belly.”
“Aiden said you wanted me to deliver your baby. Is that true?”
“Will you? Please say yes. I want to have my baby here at the ranch.”
Tab would check with her doctor to make sure there were no complications that might require hospitalization, but she didn’t expect problems. “I’d be happy to deliver the next generation of the Gabriel family.”
“All right.”
Misty did a double fist pump that reminded Tab of yesterday’s unfortunate football metaphor. “You were a cheerleader, weren’t you?”
“Head cheerleader.”
Tab figured that Misty had sailed through high school as one of the popular kids. She was pretty and smart and her family had money. “Prom queen?”
“Junior prom and senior homecoming queen.” Her giggle fell flat. “By senior prom, everybody knew I was pregnant. I wasn’t showing or anything, but they knew. They treated me different, like my life was over or something.”
Living a charmed existence and then having it taken away had to be difficult. Was that what Misty wanted to talk about? Her prospects for the future?
Tab picked up the plate with heavily buttered toast smeared with homemade chokecherry jelly. Taking a bite, she considered what to say next. She wanted to encourage Misty without sounding pushy or preachy. “Your life isn’t over. It’s just beginning.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. That’s what Aiden says, too.” She sat on the edge of the bed again. “He says that even with a baby, I can still go to college or law school or whatever.”
Her eye-rolling attitude showed an almost total indifference to this topic. What was Misty after? Tab didn’t have the patience for a guessing game. “You woke me up because you want to talk about something. What is it?”
“It’s Clinton,” she said. “We had a really big fight yesterday and it was kind of your fault. Because you talked to him and told
him he made a smart deduction.”
“Don’t you think he’s smart?”
“Sure, I do. When we’re alone and he’s not showing off, he’s got a lot to say. And he’s creative. He writes songs for me and the baby.”
“That’s sweet.” The more Tab found out about Clinton, the more she liked him.
“But now he thinks he can figure out who the killer is, and that’s stupid. Look what happened when he went and talked to Ellen about my wristwatch. Clinton ended up being a suspect.”
Though Tab had been pushing Aiden to let her participate in his investigative process, she had to agree with Misty. Clinton could say the wrong thing to the wrong person and end up in serious trouble. “What was he planning to do?”
“For starters, he was going to talk to Chuck and Woody. He thinks they know something.” She gave an unladylike snort. “Those two toads are lucky to remember their own names.”
Still, the toads would be more willing to talk to Clinton than the sheriff. “Did he do it?”
“I don’t know.” Her concern was evident in the lack of giggling, smirking and eye rolling. “I haven’t seen Clinton today, and we usually meet up the minute he comes to work.”
“You’ve had no contact at all?”
“A text message at seven o’clock this morning. It said ‘Luv U.’ I called, and he won’t answer his phone.”
“Try sending him a text.”
While Misty wrote her message, Tab finished off the toast and the coffee. Misty was right to worry about Clinton, especially after the assault on Wally. Playing games with a serial killer was like yanking a tiger’s tail. The beast could turn and bite.
“Done,” Misty said.
“I think we should tell Aiden.”
“Not yet. I don’t want to give him another reason to hate my boyfriend. Speaking of boyfriends…” Her giggle returned. “What’s going on with you and my brother?”
“What makes you think there’s something? Are you in on this matchmaking thing with your mom and my grandma?”
“I see how he looks at you. He likes you, Tab.”
It took all her self-control not to join in the giggles and start gushing. “We’re friends. That’s all.”
“We’ll just see about that.” Misty tapped a contact number on her phone. “He told me to call as soon as you were awake.”
“Now? You’re calling him now?”
“The perfect time.”
“Give me that phone.” Tab made a grab, but pregnant Misty was surprisingly quick.
She hopped off the bed and spoke into her phone. “Tab wants to see you. She’s still in bed.”
Tab panicked. Her long hair hung around her face in witchy strands. Her blue, cotton nightshirt was only as long as her knees, and the fabric was too thin and clingy. Looking down, she noticed a huge black-and-blue bruise on her forearm, which she must have gotten when struggling to treat Wally. And her teeth weren’t brushed. And she had to pee. And the bathroom was down the hall. She didn’t want Aiden to see her like this.
But he was already knocking at the door. “Can I come in?”
“No!” Tab yelled.
Misty opened the door and ushered her brother inside. Sweetly, she said, “I’ll leave you two alone.” And she closed the door behind her.
Tab pulled the covers up to her chin. “I’m not awake.”
“I can leave, but I thought you might want an update on Wally.”
“Well, yes.” And she was acting like a dope. There was no reason for her to be embarrassed. They were only friends, right? She cleared her throat, lifted her chin and said, “Tell me about Wally.”
He dragged a chair from the matching pine desk, placed it by the bed and straddled it. “Since last night, his condition has been upgraded to critical but stable. The doctors sound confident about his recovery.”
“That’s a relief.”
She wasn’t surprised. Last night, they’d waited until the surgery was complete and the doctors gave them a positive prognosis. Wally’s organ damage was limited to a collapsed lung, which was serious but not life-threatening. He had no broken bones. His concussion would bear watching, but there was no bleeding in the brain. The worst problem was a heavy loss of blood from the wounds.
“The docs also said that your first-aid compress to slow the bleeding probably saved his life.”
“I can’t take all the credit,” she said. “There were a couple of bloody rags in the stall with Wally. He must have tried a compress of his own.”
“Does that mean I sacrificed my undershirt in vain?”
“Not at all.” She’d gotten a very nice view of his bare chest. “It means Wally started his own first aid before we came on the scene. Has he been awake?”
“A couple of times,” Aiden said. “The police in Billings have a man posted at his bed to make sure he stays safe.”
“Have they been able to ask any questions?”
“They’ve tried but haven’t gotten any coherent answers. According to Wally, a two-face monster attacked him.”
To avoid looking at him, she burrowed more deeply under the navy-blue comforter. When she spoke, her voice was muffled. “I wish we knew what happened to him.”
“The doctor had a theory. Want to hear it?”
“Yes.”
“Would you come out from under the covers? I feel like I’m talking to a navy blue lump.”
“I told you I was still asleep.” She slanted a glance toward him. His hands rested on the back of the chair and his chin rested on his hands. His eyes were trained on her, and she didn’t want to face him. “If you don’t like it, you can—”
“Fine,” he said. “According to the doc, Wally was shot twice in the back at close range. One of the bullets lodged inside, and the other went all the way through.”
“The injury on his chest was from an exit wound,” she said. “That’s why it bled so much.”
“It also explains why Wally isn’t dead. The shots were aimed at his heart, but the angle of his body meant the bullets went high. The doctor thought Wally might have been on the ground, crawling to get away.”
“The killer must have hit him in the back of the head. Then Wally went down. While he was attempting to crawl away, the shots were fired.”
She hated to imagine the old man in his buffalo robe fleeing from a stone-cold killer. Wally must have been terrified and confused. No wonder he couldn’t remember anything.
Her grip on the covers loosened. Her embarrassment about her messy hair and lack of hygiene were petty problems when compared to the attack on Wally. It was time for her to grow up. “If we hadn’t found him when we did…”
“He wouldn’t have survived.”
“It almost seems like the killer led us directly to him.”
“That’s been bothering me,” he said. “He must have thought Wally was already dead. Leading us to the barn was a bit of misdirection because his car was parked the other way.”
Turning her head, she looked directly at Aiden. He was shaved and showered, neatly dressed in a plaid shirt and jeans. His combed brown hair made her acutely aware of the tangled mess on her head. She reached up to shove a chunk of hair off her forehead.
“Your arm,” he said, “what happened?”
“I don’t remember when I bruised it. It must have been when I was struggling with Wally.”
Gently, he took her arm and studied the ugly mark above her wrist. His hands were cold from being outside. “Does it hurt?”
“Not really.”
Her gaze met his, and she sank into the depths of his cool gray eyes. In the facets, she saw flecks of forest green and pure silver, a mesmerizing combination of dark and light. She couldn’t stop staring.
Their position should have felt more intimate. She was in bed, after all. If she encouraged him, he might be tempted to lie beside her. But there was no way she’d cuddle when she had to go to the bathroom. Kissing with her unbrushed teeth was absolutely out of the question.
; She snatched her arm from his grasp. “What else have you been doing this morning?”
“Talking to the law.” He resettled himself in the chair. “Early this morning, Joseph Lefthand went to your grandma’s house to investigate. He didn’t see any sign of a break-in, but he found a blood trail in the barn that seemed to indicate Wally was shot there and then crawled into the horse stall. And he pulled some fingerprints that he’s sending to the sheriff for identification.”
“Good for Joseph Lefthand. What about Sheriff Fielding?”
“His new favorite theory, based on the tire tracks from David’s van near the dump site for Ellen’s body, is that David was the serial killer but wasn’t working alone.”
“He’s not still considering a gang, is he?”
“Now, he thinks there were just two of them. David had a partner, and this partner killed him and attacked Wally.”
“That’s good news for Misty. It means the sheriff doesn’t suspect her anymore.”
“I’m just not sure that it’s the truth,” Aiden said. “I’ve heard of dual serial killers before. Usually, one is dominant and the other does his bidding.”
From the little they knew about David, she doubted he’d be the boss. As a child, David had been shuttled back and forth between his alcoholic father and his strict uncle Bert. His unrequited crush on Misty seemed immature. Aiden called it stalking, but she thought David was one of those guys who drove past his supposed girlfriend’s house and sent her unwanted gifts.
She remembered the story Misty had told about her encounter with David. He seemed easily manipulated. A con man like Aspen Jim would be quick to take advantage of someone like David.
But it wasn’t really fair for her to draw these kinds of conclusions. Tab had never spoken to David. Though she’d probably seen him around town, she’d never noticed him.
“It’s hard to know what’s true,” she said.
“And there’s not much in the way of evidence.” He swung his leg off the chair and stood. “What are your plans for the day?”
