Corralled

by B. J Daniels

  “So you were signed with him, as well. How does his death affect that?”

  Jett smiled widely. “Freedom. With Martin dead, JJ and I are both free. Well, at least I am. I owe her a great debt of gratitude.”

  When Buford was finished interviewing all of them, he asked them not to leave town. Betsy called for a taxi and the four of them left together, but the sheriff could feel the tension between them.

  As he watched them leave, he wondered where the missing JJ was and why they all seemed to think she had killed Martin Sanderson.

  BLYTHE KNEW SHE WAS TAKING a chance going home with this cowboy. But that’s how she’d always lived her life. She was convinced that if she hadn’t, she’d still be living in her mother’s trailer in the middle of the desert with some abusive drunk like her mother had.

  She had learned to take care of herself. She’d had to even before she’d left home at fourteen. There’d been too many nights when her mother would pass out and Blythe would hear the heavy footsteps of whatever boyfriend her mother had brought home from the bar coming down the hallway toward her room.

  She’d been eleven when she started keeping a butcher knife under her pillow. She’d only had to use it once.

  Blythe shoved that memory away as she watched the small Western town disappear behind them. The air was cooler now as Logan sped along the blacktop of a two-lane. The houses, she noted, were few and far between, and the farther they went, the less she saw of anything but open country.

  The land ran green in rolling hills broken only occasionally by a tree or a rocky point. In one such tree, a bald eagle watched them pass. Several antelope stood silhouetted against a lush hillside. Further down, a handful of deer grazed on the new green grass. One lifted his head at the sound of the motorcycle. His ears were huge, reminding her of Mickey Mouse ears at Disney World.

  Blythe stared at all the wild things they passed, having never seen them before except in magazines or on television.

  As Logan turned onto a gravel road, slowing down a little, she saw cattle in the distance, dark against the horizon. Closer, a couple of horses loped along in the breeze.

  When she looked up the road, she saw where the road ended. She really was out in the middle of nowhere. Alone with a man she’d didn’t know. For all she knew, he could be more dangerous than what she’d left behind.

  She could hear her mother’s slurred words, the words she’d grown up with all those years ago.

  “You think you’re better than me?” The harsh cigarettes-and-booze laugh. “I can see your future, little girl. No matter how you try to fight it, you’re headed for a bad end.”

  She had tried to fight it, and at one point, she’d actually thought she’d beaten her mother’s prediction. But by then her mother was long dead and buried and there was no one there to hear her say, “See Mama, you were wrong. Look at your little girl now.”

  Blythe laughed softly. Wouldn’t her mother love to be here now to see that all her predictions had come true. She would have been the first to tell her daughter that if you flew too high, too fast, you were headed for a fall.

  Clearly, she’d proven that she had too much of her mother’s blood in her. She’d flown high all right, but ultimately, it had caught up with her. She was now in free fall. And the worst part was, she knew she deserved it.

  As Logan turned down an even smaller road, she stared at the stark landscape and wondered what she’d gotten herself into this time. Logan, she thought, must be thinking the same thing.

  Maybe they were more alike than he thought.

  The last of the day’s sun had slipped below the horizon but not before painting the spring green rolling hills with gold. The sky, larger than any she’d ever seen, had turned to cobalt blue. Not even a cloud hung on the horizon.

  At the end of the road, she caught a glimpse of an old farmhouse. Past it were an older barn and some horses in a pasture.

  The house, she saw as they drew closer, had seen better days but she could tell it had recently been given a fresh coat of white paint. There was a porch with a couple of wooden chairs and curtains at the windows.

  “It’s not much,” Logan said as he parked the motorcycle out front and they climbed off.

  “It’s great,” she said meaning it. She couldn’t see another house within miles. She’d never been in such an isolated place. Here she could pretend that she’d escaped her old life. At least for a little while.

  As he opened the door, she noticed that he hadn’t bothered to lock the house when he’d left. Trusting soul. She smiled at the thought. The kind of man who brought home a perfect stranger. Well, not perfect, far from it. But still a stranger.

  BUFORD WAS GLAD TO HAVE turned the case over to the state crime techs. This would be a high-profile case and while he would still be involved, it was no longer solely on his shoulders.

  It would be getting dark soon and he was anxious to get home for supper. He just hoped Clara would lay off the hot peppers. The woman was killing him.

  Unfortunately, he couldn’t quit thinking about the case, especially what might have been pinned to the man’s robe. Too bad someone had taken the note.

  He told himself the crime techs would be especially thorough on this one, since clearly Martin Sanderson was somebody. Not only did he own a place in the Grizzly Club, he was apparently some hotshot music producer from Los Angeles.

  The club liked to play down the identities of their owners, how much money they had and how they made it. No need to announce it anyway, since the residents probably all knew much more about each other than any of the staff or people outside the club ever could. After all, if they had the dough to buy a place behind the gate, then they were instantly part of the club, weren’t they? Clearly Kevin was merely staff.

  Buford stopped at the guardhouse to ask about the woman visitor who’d at least said she was JJ when she’d picked up her key. He found it irritating that the residents who left the names of their guests didn’t even want the guards to know exactly who was coming for a visit.

  “These are people who have to be very careful,” Kevin had said when Buford had questioned why they needed so much secrecy. “They worry that they could be kidnapped or their children kidnapped. They aren’t like you and me.”

  “They die when they’re shot in the heart just like you and me,” Buford pointed out and warranted himself a scowl from Kevin.

  At the gate, the guard was more than glad to talk to the local sheriff about the guest allegedly known as JJ. He described a dark-haired good-looking woman. “She left in a hurry, I can tell you that. She barely waited for the gate to open.”

  “What was she driving?”

  The guard described a silver sports car convertible. “I can give you her license plate number. We take those down on anyone coming or going.”

  Buford thanked him as he glanced at the plate number the guard gave him. It began with a 7, which meant a local Montana Lake County plate, probably a rental. “How did the woman seem to you when she left?”

  “I didn’t speak to her, barely got a glimpse of her.”

  “She was going that fast?” he asked in surprise since there were speed bumps near the gate.

  “Well, she was moving at a good clip, but I was also about to check the guy on the motorcycle who was coming in just then.”

  “A club resident?”

  He shook his head. “Not one I’d ever seen. But I didn’t get a chance to talk to him. As I started toward him, he swung around and took off after the woman in the sports car.”

  “He followed her?”

  The guard hesitated. “I saw him look at her as she left and then he seemed to go after her.”

  “He knew her?” Buford asked.

  “I got the feeling he did.”

  “You didn’t happen to get the plate on the motorcycle, did you?”

  “No, but I’m sure our cameras caught it.”

  Buford waited. It didn’t take long before the guard produced the bike plate n
umber. He pocketed both, anxious to run them. But as he left the guard station his radio went off, alerting him of an accident on the road back to town.

  A car had left the highway and crashed in the rocks at the edge of the lake. Firefighters and emergency medical services were on their way to the scene.

  Buford turned on his flashing lights and siren. It was going to be a long night the way things were going.

  AS BLYTHE STEPPED INTO Logan’s farmhouse, she wasn’t sure what she would find. She half expected a woman’s touch. She’d taken him for being about her own age, early thirties, which meant he could have been married at least once or at least lived with someone. But she was pleased to see that there was no sign that a woman had ever lived here.

  “Like I said, basic,” he noted almost apologetically.

  “I like it. Simple is good.” He had no idea how she’d been living.

  She walked around, taking it in. The place was furnished with apparently the only thought to being practical and comfortable. There was an old leather couch in front of a small brick fireplace, an even older recliner next to it and a rug in front of the couch on the worn wooden floor. The kitchen had a 1950s metal and Formica top table and four chairs. Through a door she spotted a bathroom and stairs that led up to the second floor, where she figured there would be bedrooms.

  “Why don’t I show you up to your room in case you want to freshen up,” Logan said, shrugging out of his leather jacket.

  She couldn’t help noticing his broad shoulders, the well-formed chest, the slim hips, the incredibly long legs. It brought back the memory of being in his arms on the dance floor and sent a frisson of desire through her.

  Logan headed up the stairs and she followed. Just as she’d figured, there were two bedrooms, one with a double bed, one with no furniture at all, and another bathroom, this one with a huge clawfoot tub.

  One bed. She realized she hadn’t thought out this part of her great escape. That was so like her. Not that the idea of sharing his bed hadn’t crossed her mind. After all, she was the one who’d wanted to run away with him. What did she expect was going to happen?

  He must have seen her expression. “You can have this room,” he said motioning to the bed. “I’ll take the couch.”

  “I don’t want to take your bed.”

  He didn’t give her a chance to argue the point. “I’ll see what’s in the fridge. Are you hungry? You didn’t eat much at the last place we stopped. I could fry up some elk steaks.”

  She smiled, giving herself away. She couldn’t explain this ravenous hunger she had except that maybe she was just tired of going to bed hungry and for all the wrong reasons.

  “You’ve never had elk, right?”

  “How did you know?” she said with a laugh.

  “You’re going to love it.”

  “I thought you raised beef,” she said.

  “I try to kill an elk every year or so. A little variety, you know?”

  She thought she did know.

  “There are towels in the cabinet in the bathroom. I just put clean sheets on the bed before I left. Holler if there is anything else you need,” he said, and tromped back down the stairs, leaving her standing in his bedroom.

  She glanced at the bed, tempted to lie down for a while. The ride here had taken five hours, which wasn’t bad, but she hadn’t slept well last night and for some time now she’d been running on fear-induced adrenaline.

  The memory of what she had to fear sent a shaft of ice up her spine. She shivered even in the warm bedroom. The weight of her life choices pressed down on her chest and she had to struggle to breathe. Did she really think that she could escape the past—even in this remote part of Montana, even with this trusting cowboy?

  “There’s a price that comes with the life you’ve lived.” Not her mother’s voice this time. Martin Sanderson’s. “And sweetheart, your bill has come due.”

  Chapter Four

  The ambulance was there by the time Sheriff Buford Olson reached the accident scene. He parked along the edge of the narrow road where a highway patrolman was directing traffic. A wrecker was in the process of pulling the blackened car up from the rocky shore where it had landed, but he could still smell smoke.

  As Buford walked to the edge of the road, he could see where the car had gone off, dropped over the steep edge of the road to tumble down the rocks before coming to a stop at the edge of the lake.

  He noticed no skid marks on the pavement or in the dirt at the shoulder of the road. The driver hadn’t even tried to brake before going off the road and over the rocky precipice?

  “The passengers?” he asked as he spotted one of the ambulance drivers.

  “Just one.” The man shook his head.

  Buford walked over to one of the highway patrolmen at the scene and asked if there was anything he could do to help.

  “Pretty well have it covered,” the officer said. “Looks like the driver was traveling at a high rate of speed when she missed the curve, plummeting over the edge of the road and rolling several times on the rocks before the car exploded.”

  Buford turned to watch the wrecker pull the car up from the edge of the lake, then asked to see the patrolman’s report. He did a double take when he saw the license plate number the highway patrolman had put down.

  He hurriedly pulled the slip of paper the security guard at the Grizzly Club had given him. It matched the sports car the woman guest had been driving earlier that morning.

  “You get an ID when you ran the plate?” he asked the patrolman.

  “The car was a rental. Rented under the name of Jennifer James yesterday.”

  JJ? Had to be, since the license plate was the same one the guard had given him.

  As Buford left the scene, he couldn’t help thinking how coincidental it was that one of Martin Sanderson’s guests was now also dead. Of course, it could be that the woman had been killed because she was driving too fast away from the murder scene. That would have made a great theory if it hadn’t been hours since she’d left the Grizzly Club driving too fast then too—before she’d apparently gone off the road and died at the edge of the lake.

  So where had she been during those missing hours? The crash had occurred only miles from the Grizzly Club turnoff. And why hadn’t she tried to brake?

  Martin Sanderson had approved six guests. Jett Atkins was accounted for and possibly JJ, along with three members of the all-girl band. Luca was apparently dead.

  But it was the elusive JJ who captured his thoughts. That and the safety pin and missing note on Sanderson’s robe.

  Unfortunately, the woman who’d been driving this car was now on her way to the morgue and she might have been the only other person in the world who knew what that note said and why Martin Sanderson was dead.

  LOGAN WENT DOWNSTAIRS AND dug some steaks out of the freezer. He had no idea what Blythe was doing here or what she was thinking. Or what she might be running from, but she was sure as the devil running from something.

  He told himself it didn’t matter, although he feared he could be wrong about that. Apparently the woman wanted a break from whatever life she’d been living. He didn’t even know what that life had been or if he should be worried about it. But she triggered a powerful protective instinct in him that had made him throw caution to the wind.

  Too bad she didn’t trust him enough to tell him what was going on, he thought, then remembered the scrap of yellow paper he’d retrieved from under the booth table back at the café. He quickly reached into his pocket.