One Hot Forty-Five

by B. J Daniels

  “Texas. I’m up here on business. In fact, I think you can help me. I’m looking for someone. Her name’s Dede Chamberlain, and I have a feeling you know where she’s gone off to.”

  Violet’s dead grandmother was the only one who wasn’t surprised when the man pulled the gun.

  Chapter Nine

  Lantry started to reach for his cell phone, then glanced back at the van, hesitating. There was nothing now that could be done for the driver of the van or the other escapee.

  Who knew where Violet Evans was?

  But if he made the call right now to his brother at the sheriff’s department, he knew that Dede could be too easily tracked down. He had to find her first, get her to some place safe where they could open the box from Frank and figure this out.

  Which meant he had to move fast. While there was little traffic because of the slick roads and the storm, he couldn’t chance that someone would come along soon, discover the van, call it in.

  He stared at the tracks in the snow. Deep shadows filled in the trail she’d left. He squinted in the direction the tracks led, seeing the path she’d taken. First to the horses, then clearly riding one of them bareback toward the foothills of the Little Rockies and the ponderosa pines.

  It still grated at him that she’d lied about being able to ride—not that he didn’t understand why she’d done it. He’d lied to her, as well—and to himself. He would have let Shane take her this morning if she hadn’t taken off—and apparently they’d both known it.

  There was really no debate. Both the driver and Roberta were dead. Dede was still alive. At least, he prayed she was.

  He had to find her. She would be cold and wet. She’d have to find shelter. There were cabins up in the pines. That’s where she would head—just long enough to warm up, rest…and then what?

  She didn’t know the area, didn’t have anyone she could contact for help. She was alone and afraid. And he was the last person she would want to see.

  Lantry busted his way through the snow back to his pickup and drove up the highway looking for a secondary road that would lead him to the cabins up in the mountains.

  He took the first side road. It had been plowed sometime during the storm so the snow wasn’t but a few inches deep. Still, Lantry had to buck a few drifts as he watched for Dede’s tracks. She would have to cross this road to reach the shelter of the pines and eventually one of the cabins.

  He hadn’t gone far when he saw where she’d reached the road and rode up it. He followed the tracks into the foothills until they left the road. Pulling over, he glanced back toward the highway. He couldn’t see the van from here.

  Which meant whoever discovered the van wouldn’t be able to see his pickup.

  Getting out, he kept to the trees as he followed horse and rider up the mountain. Snowflakes floated in the cold mountain air, glittering in the sun like crystals. The snowcapped pines groaned under the weight of their white burden. He busted through the deep snow, following her tracks, glad when he finally caught sight of a cabin through the pines.

  He’d been betting Dede would have been so cold and tired that she would look for shelter in the first cabin she came to. Apparently she had, since the tracks snaked up the hillside toward the cabin.

  Lantry felt his cell phone vibrate in his coat pocket. He didn’t need to check. His brother had been trying to reach him ever since their last call. Had someone reported the van and the gruesome scene below?

  He’d gone only a few yards farther when he smelled it. Smoke. Of course, Dede would have made a fire to warm up. She would have felt safe enough and been desperate to dry her clothing before she could go on.

  As he followed the scent of wood smoke through the trees, he worried what kind of reception he would get when he found her.

  “WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?” VIOLET asked the man holding the gun on her.

  “You can call me Ed. I’m a friend of Dede’s. So where is she?”

  Any other time, Violet might have found this funny as she watched the man pull off in a plowed, wide spot next to a stand of ponderosa pines.

  “How should I know where she is?”

  “Because you were in the van with her back there,” he snapped and thrust the gun at her. “You had to have seen where she went.”

  Violet had watched Dede wading through the deep snow as she crossed the pasture, thinking how stupid the woman was.

  But Violet hadn’t tried to stop her. She’d been more interested in saving her own neck. As far as she’d been concerned, Dede was on her own. They all were.

  “What’s it worth to you?” she asked the man with the gun.

  He blinked in surprise. “What’s it worth to you? If you don’t start talking, I’m going to blow your brains out.”

  “I really doubt that,” Violet said and brushed a lock of her straight, mousy-brown hair behind her ear. “In the first place, you don’t want blood all over your rental car. In the second place, killing me won’t help you find Dede. So what’s it worth to you?”

  The man looked furious, but he put the gun back in the shoulder holster and pulled out his wallet. “I’ve got two hundred dollars,” he said, counting as he thumbed through the bills.

  When she didn’t say anything, he looked up, realization dawning in his eyes as he saw the gun. Apparently, he hadn’t realized that whoever had shot those people back in the van might be armed. Or had he thought Dede had the gun—wherever she was? Clearly he didn’t know Violet Evans, didn’t have a clue whom he’d picked up beside the road, she thought. His mistake.

  “Now,” Violet said as she reached over and took the wallet from him. “I’ll take that gun, as well. Lift it out carefully. I would really hate to have to shoot you and get blood all over this nice car—and keep in mind I’m one of the crazy ones.”

  He did as she told him, but she could tell she would have to make sure she never ran across this man again. Had she told him where she’d last seen Dede, she was sure he would have disposed of her at the next wide spot in the road.

  The car engine was still running. She whirred down her side window and threw his gun out into the deep snow.

  “Now put down your window.”

  He frowned but did it.

  “Now get out,” she said.

  He hesitated, just as she knew he would. His second mistake.

  The gun blast inside the car was deafening even with her side window down. His scream of pain lasted longer.

  “Out,” she ordered, waving the gun at him.

  This time he didn’t hesitate. She noticed with annoyance that his arm was bleeding all over the car as he fumbled to get the door open before stumbling out into the deep snow, falling and then staggering up again.

  Violet put up her window, then slid over under the wheel. She slammed the driver’s side door that he’d left open.

  He was standing a few feet away in the snow, holding his upper arm where the bullet had grazed it. She whirred up the window, waved and drove off.

  In her rearview mirror, she saw him scrambling to find his gun, and laughed, enjoying this more than she knew she should. Maybe she really was crazy. She shrugged. There was no way he could find the gun in time to stop her, so what did it hurt?

  She was free. Again. Now she had a car and two hundred dollars in cash and some credit cards. Nothing could stop her.

  “You know you have to go back to Whitehorse, don’t you?” asked her grandmother from the backseat.

  AS LANTRY NEARED THE CABIN, HE heard the snort of a horse and saw the thin trail of smoke rising from the chimney.

  He slowed, reminding himself that Dede might be armed. Whoever had killed the van driver and Roberta had a gun—no doubt the driver’s weapon.

  Cautiously he followed the tracks in the snow around to the back of the cabin. The horse was tied with clothesline to a tree. Dede’s footprints led to the backdoor.

  Creeping up to the backdoor, Lantry listened for any sound inside. He was pretty sure he hadn’t been spotted. Dede wo
uld have been watching the hillside, ready to run if she saw anyone. She would have taken the horse.

  No sound came from inside the cabin. He noted the shattered glass where she’d broken the windowpane to gain entry. She was using some of his techniques, apparently.

  He tried the knob. She hadn’t bothered to lock the door. He pushed, and the door swung inward, creaking just enough that he knew he had to move fast.

  He charged in, hoping to take her by surprise. But she must have heard him. She’d picked up the poker from beside the woodstove and now brandished it, making him glad it wasn’t a gun.

  “Take it easy,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender. “I’m here to help you.”

  “Sure you are,” she said, narrowing her gaze at him and tightening her hold on the poker. “Just like you helped me earlier?”

  “I had nothing to do with you getting caught.”

  “And you wouldn’t have turned me in first chance you got?”

  “Why do you think I’m here? I heard from my brother that you’d been picked up and were on your way back to the hospital,” he said as he took a step closer. “I couldn’t let that happen.”

  He saw indecision cross her features and plunged on. “I called my secretary in Texas. I was wrong. Frank did leave me something.”

  Her eyes widened. He could see that she wanted to believe him, but she was afraid to. “You were so certain he hadn’t, and now you find out he has?” she asked suspiciously. She took a step back at his approach, keeping the poker ready.

  “Apparently he left it at my office after I came to Montana.”

  “Isn’t that convenient.”

  Lantry supposed he couldn’t blame her for not trusting him. “It’s a small wooden boat, possibly a replica.”

  Her face crumbled. “He gave you the boat?” she asked in a whisper.

  “You know about the boat?”

  She looked up at him, a painful sadness in all that blue. “I should. My grandfather made it when he was stationed in Panama during World War Two. He was a boatbuilder. He and his father before him.” She lowered the poker, and he stepped to her, taking it from her.

  She slumped against him for a moment before she stumbled back and sat down hard on a wooden bench by the woodstove.

  There were a dozen questions he wanted to ask, but he knew they didn’t have time for that now.

  “Claude, the driver of the van…” Her voice broke. “He told me that Frank is dead.”

  Lantry nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  “They killed him because of me.”

  “No. They killed him because of whatever he was involved in. You couldn’t have saved him. He was dead before you left Texas.” He pulled her to him. “We have to get out of here.”

  She looked numb. “Tell me why I should trust you.”

  “Because I’m here. Now let’s go.”

  ED DUG IN THE SNOW UNTIL HE found his gun, but by then his rental car was just a speck on the empty, snow-covered horizon.

  He stood, breathing hard from the fury and the cold and the pain. His blood had left bright red splotches on the snow. His shirtsleeve was soaked, the blood freezing against his skin.

  He looked up and down the long highway. Not another car in sight. He couldn’t just stand here and wait.

  In the first place, who was going to stop for a man standing beside the road, coatless and bleeding, wearing a shoulder holster and holding a gun?

  He tucked the gun into the shoulder holster and checked his wound. It hurt like hell, but the bullet had only creased the flesh. She hadn’t hit the bone. He should be thankful for that.

  Up the highway, he saw what looked like a building in the distance. He started walking, knowing he had to keep moving. The cold was already starting to settle. To keep warm, he thought of Violet Evans.

  Just the thought of the woman made him burn with fury again. For the moment, Dede Chamberlain was forgotten. He would deal with her after he dealt with Violet Evans. Violet had made this personal. He would find her, and she would deeply regret what she’d done to him.

  Ed hadn’t gone far up the highway when he spotted a car coming toward him. He squinted against the bright sun reflecting off the fallen snow. The vehicle looked familiar. His heart skyrocketed.

  He told himself he must be hallucinating from the pain. Why would Violet Evans be headed back toward Whitehorse when she’d been so anxious to go south?

  Unless she’d come back to finish him off.

  He smiled as he pulled the pistol from his holster. He didn’t bother trying to hide. Where would he have hidden anyway? On both sides of the highway, there were high snowbanks from snow and ice thrown there from the plows. Beyond that was nothing but more cold white. Both lanes were glazed, as well.

  He stood in the middle of her lane. Even if there had been somewhere to hide and ambush her, he was sure she’d already seen him—just as he’d seen her.

  He waited, the pistol ready as the car sped toward him.

  FROM SNOW-COVERED SAGEBRUSH and scrub juniper to towering ponderosa pines, the land rose into the Little Rockies before falling as it dropped to the Missouri Breaks.

  “Where are we going?” Dede asked, worried as Lantry turned onto the main highway and headed south. Back up the road toward Whitehorse, she could just make out the van in the ditch. She shivered and turned away.

  “We’re going to Landusky. It’s a small town down the road. I know someone who has a cabin on the edge of town. We can stay there for the time being.”

  “Landusky,” she repeated.

  “It’s an old mining town, has a great history. At one time it was as wild as any town there was. Smart men who wanted to keep breathing avoided Landusky, Montana.”

  He looked over at her when she said nothing. “I don’t blame you for not feeling you can trust me. I thought a lot about the things you told me. When I talked to my secretary and found out Frank had sent me a present…”

  “The boat.” She shook her head. She couldn’t believe Frank. “I wondered what he’d done with it.”

  The highway ahead ran straight south, snow piled deep on each side, the pines on the hillside laden in white. “I’m surprised it wasn’t destroyed when your house was ransacked.”

  “I was so upset I didn’t even notice that the boat wasn’t there,” she said. “Frank must have already gotten it out and hid it until he sent it to you. That means he’d been planning this for some time.”

  “You’re that sure he hid something in the boat for safekeeping?”

  “It has to be in the boat,” she said. “If not, then you will go back to thinking I’m lying to you. Worse, that maybe I am as unstable as Frank led you to believe.”

  “You did lie about being able to ride a horse,” he said after a few moments.

  “I didn’t lie. You asked if I rode. I said I didn’t. Not anymore. I take it Frank never told you anything about me.” She could only guess how Frank had portrayed her. “Never mind. I can imagine what he told you. I’m not originally from Houston. I was born and raised on a ranch in Wyoming.”

  Lantry tried to hide his surprise.

  She smiled, anticipating his reaction. “I grew up drinking cowboy coffee and eating fresh-killed meat over an open campfire and riding horses.” She took a breath and let it out slowly. “I had an accident on a horse before I left Wyoming. I hadn’t gotten back on one until, well, not until this morning, when I had no choice. But if I never ride another horse, I’ll be glad.”

  He didn’t seem to know what to say. “What ranch?”

  “The T Bar Double Deuce.”

  “I’ve heard of it. That’s a big spread.”

  “I grew up hauling hay, slopping out barns and helping with branding and calving.”

  “So you’ve driven a four-wheel-drive truck in a blizzard before,” he said, nodding.

  “Just not in a blizzard like last night.”

  “You sound as if you liked ranching,” he remarked with a look that said she continued t
o surprise him. “What made you leave?”

  “I loved it. I would still be there if…” She looked up, hesitating. How much did she really want to tell him?

  “Your horseback accident?”

  “That was definitely part of it,” she said noncommittally.

  He nodded. “A man was involved, right?”

  She smiled. “The first man I ever loved. My father. He sold the ranch after my accident.”

  “Oh. I thought—”

  “I know what you thought.”

  He’d thought that her father was a ranch hand or maybe the ranch manager. Even when she’d said she had her own money, he hadn’t really believed her. Just as it had never dawned on him that her father had owned the T Bar Double Deuce Ranch or that she’d been telling the truth about coming from money.

  “I knew Frank let you believe I married him for his money.” Her chuckle had a bite to it. “But I told you I had my own money. My father gave me my inheritance when he sold.”

  “I…” Lantry shook his head. “I’m sorry. I did have preconceived notions about you, apparently most of them wrong.”

  “Most?” she asked and felt his gaze go to her mouth. For a wild moment she thought he would lean over and kiss her—and run off the road.

  “The road…” she said.

  He turned back to his driving as the pickup got a little too close to the snowbank on the edge of the highway.

  Lantry swerved, the rear end of the pickup fishtailing a little before righting itself. She heard him swear. She’d gotten to him, and what made it worse for him was that she knew it.

  FARTHER SOUTH ON HIGHWAY 191, Ed stood on the snow-packed pavement, waiting. As the car rushed toward him, he raised the handgun and pointed it at the spot just behind the steering wheel. His finger brushed lightly over the trigger.

  He was going to kill this crazy bitch. Blow her away and take his car back.

  The roar of the engine carried across the Arctic landscape.

  He would have only one chance. Fire the gun. Dive for cover.

  Well, not exactly cover—just a frozen snowbank. And if he didn’t clear the top of it, he could be caught between the hard-as-concrete bank and the grill of the car.