Montana Mavericks, Books 1-4

by Diana Palmer

  Rather facetiously, Tracy thought. She noticed he wasn’t trying to get his hand loose from the treacly female, whose name she couldn’t recall. But she was married to Dugin Kincaid.

  “Hello, Mrs. Kincaid,” Tracy said brightly, bustling in and breezing toward her own office. She noticed the china plates, the silverwear and napkins on Judd’s desk, all showing signs of a recent meal. She did a slow boil. “You brought lunch. How nice.”

  “The cook out at the ranch knows how much I like Cornish pies,” Judd hurriedly said. “Mary Jo brought two in. I insisted she eat with me. We talked about the case.”

  “It’s so interesting. I’d no idea a forensic detective could tell so much just by digging around and looking at old bones.” Mary Jo gave her a gentle smile. “The news report said it was a cowboy. However could you tell that?”

  Tracy felt like a heel. The woman was extremely nice. “By the shape of the pubic bone,” she said.

  “Oh,” Mary Jo said. She actually blushed. “Oh, I see.”

  Judd covered a grin as Tracy stared in astonishment. She hadn’t known anyone was that inhibited in this day and age.

  “Well,” Mary Jo said, getting to her feet. “I suppose I’d better go. I have some errands to run.”

  Tracy murmured a farewell and closed the door to her room. She replaced her evidence and went over all the reports, including her own, to make sure she hadn’t missed anything.

  Judd came in a few minutes later. He propped himself on the corner of the table. “Did you have lunch?”

  She shook her head.

  “I assumed you would eat before you came back. That’s why I invited Mary Jo to share the lunch with me.”

  “And she was so interested in the case, especially your injuries, I noticed,” Tracy replied sweetly.

  “Jealous, Trace?”

  She took a deep breath, aware of his dark gaze on her every second. “Yes,” she admitted.

  “Then you know how I feel about your old friend Jackson Hawk and your new friend Rafe Rawlings.”

  “Yes, I understand.” She faced him. “Judd, where do we go from here?” It was an issue she didn’t want to discuss, but she had to know.

  “I wish the hell I knew.” He lifted her hand and clasped it between his palm and his thigh. “I only know I don’t want you to leave. I can’t give you up, not yet.”

  To her, that implied he could give her up when he’d gotten his fill of her. She wondered how long that would take.

  Tracy stretched her weary back. She and Rafe Rawlings, who’d volunteered to help her on his day off, had searched the area along the base of the cliff for hours. She’d spent the rest of the week combing the narrow bank in hopes of finding something.

  Disgruntled, she sat on a boulder and ate an apple while staring at the creek. The water was at its lowest level now, but in spring, with snowmelt from the mountains, it turned into a dangerous torrent. No telling where or how far debris might be carried in the rushing current.

  “Giving up?” Rafe asked.

  She nodded. “This could take years.”

  He hobbled over, then plopped down beside her. He looked at the river. “Yeah.”

  “Yet I have this feeling….” She shook her head. She knew there were more clues, if only she could find them. She sighed, then laughed. “I’m like a prospector. I’m sure I’m going to find gold around the next bend.”

  “Why don’t you ask Winona for help?”

  “In case she can see where the other bones are?”

  “Yeah. Why not?” he asked at her surprised glance. “What do you have to lose?”

  “You’re right.” She jumped to her feet. “I’ll take a bone to her.” She laughed at how that sounded.

  “Come in, you two,” Winona called from the door.

  “Help me watch for those damned goats,” Judd told Tracy.

  She handed him the crutches after he’d maneuvered himself out of her compact car. Reaching in the back seat, she withdrew the bag with the pelvis inside, having decided that it was the most likely bone to invoke a sense of who the person had been.

  “How’s the missing-persons search going?” Winona asked, holding the door open so Judd could get inside.

  “Well, we have a few possibilities. Judd has been checking the state and FBI lists through the computer for me this week.” Tracy took the crutches and set them out of the way when Judd was seated. She pulled the footstool over and propped his leg up. “Is that comfortable?”

  “Yes,” he said grumpily. “You don’t have to wait on me hand and foot. I’m fine.”

  “He’s been on his feet way too much this week. Kane saw us at the café last night. He checked Judd’s leg and told him to stay off it and keep it propped up until the swelling has gone down,” she explained to Winona, ignoring his scowl as she put a pillow under the cast.

  Winona sided with Tracy. “You should take care of yourself,” she told Judd. “You’ll end up with arthritis in that leg, then you’ll be sorry.”

  “Is that a prediction?” he snapped. “I’m sorry,” he went on before she could speak. “I’m in a hell of a mood.”

  “If you’d take the painkillers Kane gave you, you might feel better,” Tracy put in with no sympathy.

  “All right. Give me two. And don’t complain when I fall asleep in the middle of dinner.”

  “We wouldn’t think of it,” Tracy told him coolly. “Winona, I brought the pelvis with me. Do you feel up to doing anything with it, or would you rather wait until after we eat?”

  “Let’s do it now.”

  Tracy nodded. She removed the evidence from the bag and carried it to the psychic.

  “What do you want to know?” Winona asked, laying it in her lap and placing both hands on the bony structure.

  “Who it belongs to?” Judd said dryly.

  Tracy gave him a be-quiet-and-don’t-be-so-cynical look. “Or where the skull is,” she added. “That would help a lot.”

  Winona closed her eyes. Tracy pulled a chair close and sat down quietly. They waited.

  A minute went by. Another. Five minutes. Six.

  Winona opened her eyes. “Nothing is coming to me, except a few vague images. I can’t force it,” she apologized.

  “I know.” Tracy patted her arm.

  Winona gasped and pulled away.

  Tracy shot a questioning look at her, but the older woman’s eyes were closed. “Tell me what you see, no matter how odd,” she requested, bending close but not touching.

  “A child, alone and frightened, crying…dark…woods all around…he’s lost…falling…falling…you must save him….”

  Tracy was disappointed. She knew the vibes Winona was picking up came from Rafe Rawlings. His personal quest to find his parents was messing up her quest to find the rest of the bones, darn it.

  She laid a hand on Winona’s shoulder. “It’s okay. You can let it go.”

  Winona moved away as if stung. Tracy hesitated, not sure what to do. She’d never seen her friend so pale.

  “Leave her alone,” Judd said quietly. “What do you see?” he asked the psychic.

  “The woman, the two-faced woman. Two men, fighting.” She shook her head. “Too many images…too hard to see…a child is crying…Tracy…crying…help her, Judd, help Tracy.”

  Tracy looked at Judd, but his attention was glued on Winona. She swallowed against the knot of emotion that had formed at the mention of a child. Her own memories must have interfered with the reading, even though she’d made her peace with the past. Or perhaps it was the future Winona was seeing.

  Winona opened her eyes. She handed the pelvis back to Tracy. “I’ll try and describe the images I saw as they came to me. First, I saw two men fighting, then they disappeared. Next there was a child lost in the woods. That was after you touched me. It wasn’t Thadd,” she quickly stated.

  Tracy looked up to find Judd watching her with concern. The longing that had grown all week surfaced. She wanted another child with him. She wanted him
to ask her to stay and make a new life. She wanted him to tell her how very much he loved her.

  But he hadn’t, and she couldn’t ask.

  “It was Rafe Rawlings,” Tracy explained. “He worked with me at the site today. He was probably the child you saw lost in the woods. That was where he was found, remember?”

  Winona nodded. “But then the first image came back—the two men fighting. One of them was the person whose bones you found. I’m sure of that. The two-faced woman was there. But then the scene shifted and I saw you and Judd and many others.” She frowned as she studied Tracy. “You were worried about someone. That was all. I don’t know if any of the images were connected. They could have been entirely random events.”

  “Yes,” Judd said sardonically. “There seems to be a lot of skeletons in a lot of closets in the county.”

  Tracy fetched him water and two tablets. “Let me help you with supper,” she suggested to Winona.

  It was time for a lighter mood. Judd was obviously tired and in pain. She didn’t feel good either, in spite of a week of ecstasy in Judd’s arms. It was only while they were making love that she could forget the distance between them. At those moments, they were of one mind, one body…but not one heart.

  Judd was keeping his under lock and key.

  “Is it that bad?” Winona asked softly when they were in the tiny kitchen.

  Tracy glanced over her shoulder. Judd was catching the evening news on TV. He couldn’t hear them. “What do you mean?”

  “You sighed as if life were a burden you’d as soon put down.” Winona checked the vegetable stew in the Crockpot. “From what I’ve heard, things are pretty cozy between the sheriff and the FBI lady these days.”

  “Lily Mae, no doubt,” Tracy said with a wry smile.

  “And others. Don’t give up on him. You two shared something precious once. You can have it again. If you’re not afraid to ask for it.”

  “He hasn’t asked me to stay.”

  Winona gave an impatient snort. “Have you told him you want to? He’s not a mind reader, you know.” She grinned. “In fact, he’s damned obtuse, if you ask me. He’s waiting for you to make the first move.”

  “Do you think so?” Tracy wanted to believe her mentor, but uncertainty rose, jarring her confidence.

  The rest of the evening passed in a pleasant blend of food and conversation. They sat outside while the sky changed from twilight to dark. At ten, Tracy herded Judd into the car.

  Winona gave her a meaningful stare before they drove off.

  The dark interior of the car held a quiet, intimate ambiance that Tracy didn’t want to break. She’d wait until they arrived at the house before she said anything, she decided.

  Fear ate at her. The seventeen-mile trip had never seemed shorter. Once home, she fussed over Judd, getting him inside and settled on the family-room sofa, then dashing off to bring him a glass of water and two of his pills. She knew he was hurting. He looked very grim and tense around the eyes.

  “Will you stop fluttering around?” he finally snapped. “You may as well tell me what’s on your mind.”

  She sat in an easy chair. The time had come to ask what his intentions were for their future.

  What if he didn’t want her to stay?

  Twelve

  “I talked to my boss on this project Monday afternoon,” Tracy began tentatively. “As of now, I’m off the case. We agreed, if I didn’t find anything else this week, to call it quits. As far as the federal government is concerned, it’s your bailiwick now.”

  “Yeah, I heard the conversation.” His face held no expression that she could detect. He kept his gaze focused on the TV, which he’d turned to a news channel, but with the sound off.

  “The tough lawman who doesn’t let emotion cloud his life,” she muttered, feeling it was useless to talk to him. She’d felt that way before. She closed her eyes and pressed her thumb and finger against her forehead, where a faint headache nagged.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means I can walk out of here tomorrow and never darken your door again…if that’s what you want.” She tried to smile, but her mouth wobbled.

  The silence trembled between them. She recalled Winona’s advice about speaking her mind and heart.

  “Or I can stay…longer,” she added, unable to ask for a lifetime. “I have some time before I report to a dig.”

  “A dig?” He glanced at her, then away.

  “A Smithsonian fellowship to examine a find in South America. The bones may be Spanish. If so, the Conquistadors penetrated farther south during that era than previously thought.”

  “I see.” His wariness was a barrier between them. Perhaps the chasm of distrust was too wide to ever be breached.

  She hoped not. She was filled with so many wants. She wanted his love, his faith in their future. She wanted him to love her, to believe in her and her love. They’d had all that at one time, but somehow it had been lost, tragedy added to tragedy.

  She knew now she wanted to go forward. She wanted a new life…with this man.

  “Once,” she said, “we needed each other, but we failed, both of us. You walked out when I needed you. I did the same to you.” She stopped as sadness threatened to overtake her. “You told me, that day I went to the cemetery, that you were sorry. I’m sorry, too, for turning away when you came to me.”

  He closed his eyes. His face wore a stricken expression. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “It does to me.” She gathered her courage. “I want to stay, at least for a while longer. Once we had something special. I’d like to find it again. If you want the same thing, then you must tell me,” she said in a strained voice. She couldn’t keep the tremor out of it. She stared at the man on TV, his mouth moving but no words coming out.

  “What if we don’t find it?” Judd asked. “Then what?”

  “I don’t know,” she said truthfully.

  She held the despair at bay. Somewhere in her heart, she believed he loved her, but the years of separation would take time to heal. If he never trusted her enough to let that love show, then she would have to accept that.

  Uncertain and afraid, she nevertheless went to him, taking a seat beside him on the sofa. She needed the comfort of his nearness. He put an arm around her and held her close.

  “Stay,” he finally said. “We’ll take each day as it comes.”

  “Yes.” She’d have to accept that…for now.

  Tracy walked along the bluff. Behind her, Rafe paused and inspected the spot where Judd had gone over the ledge. She stopped and waited for him. After wiping her face with a handkerchief, she took a long drink from her canteen.

  “Who else has been up here?” Rafe asked.

  “Sterling helped me find Judd.”

  “Um, this must be his print then.”

  “It couldn’t be. It’s rained since then.”

  “Then someone else has been scouting around. Here’s where he stopped and looked at the place where the rock broke off.”

  She went over and examined the area, dropping to her haunches beside the young cop. When he pointed, she saw the prints, side by side, the boot heels digging deeper into the thin dirt beside the rocky outcropping.

  “Whoever it was, he was sitting here just like we are, checking the evidence.”

  Goose bumps ran up her neck. She glanced behind them uneasily. It was unnerving that a killer might be on the loose and watching everything they did. He had already tried to put Judd out of the way.

  Briefly, Tracy wondered if the wolf monster had thought the sheriff was more of a threat than she, the forensic expert. Or was the person merely in a panic and trying to scare everyone away from the spot?

  She studied the land. There was more evidence to be found. She could feel it in her bones. She had to smile at her own play on words.

  “I want to check around at the limestone knob. Somehow I think we’re overlooking something.”

  “Right.”

  R
afe gave her a hand up, and they trudged along the steep slope to the “egg rock”, as she’d dubbed it to herself. She knelt and peered under the jutting edge of the overhang. It formed a cozy little cave. High enough to sit in. For a short person. Such as a kid.

  “Um,” she said.

  “What?”

  “This would make a neat cave for a kid to play in. As an adult, they’d remember it.”

  Rafe nodded. “I follow you. Someone who found the cave when they lived in the area as a kid might come back to it if they needed a place to hide something.”

  “Right. Let’s do some more digging.” She took her rock pick and began testing the floor of the shallow cavern. To one side, where the crack in the overhead limestone admitted water, she found dirt. She realized that erosion had formed a runoff channel, which had filled with dirt and debris over time. She began excavating.

  “Let me,” Rafe requested when she grew tired. He took over the job of breaking the hard soil and moving it out from under the rocky overhang. She sifted through it, but found nothing.

  “Be easy,” she said. “If there is bone, I don’t want to shatter it.”

  “No problem.” He handled the pick almost tenderly.

  Two hours later they took a break.

  “So, looks like things are back on for you and the sheriff?” Rafe asked as they each drank a cold soda from a cooler he’d toted up from his truck.

  She smiled. That was the question on everyone’s mind, it seemed. The townsfolk weren’t hesitant about voicing it, either. Lily Mae had announced the news for all and sundry at the Hip Hop Café when Tracy and Judd had joined the widow for dinner two nights ago.

  “For now,” she admitted.

  “And tomorrow?” he asked softly.

  She managed a smile. “Who knows what tomorrow will bring?”

  “Yeah.” He stared out at the lush valley, lost in his own thoughts, which Tracy thought were sad.

  Before she had time to reflect on the man who’d been abandoned in the woods by his family, she detected a movement at the far edge of her vision. Every nerve in her body sprang to instant alert.