by B. J Daniels
He thought about what Jett had said about checking the brake line on her rental car. Jett thinking that someone had tampered with the car bothered him.
First Jett was so sure JJ had killed Martin. Now he was sure that JJ had been murdered. The man just kept changing his tune. Why was that?
After Buford hung up from talking to the officer who’d picked up Charlie Baker, he called the garage and asked for the head mechanic.
“Tom, anything on that convertible yet?”
“You had it pegged,” the mechanic said. “Someone tampered with the brakes.”
That explained why the woman driving the car hadn’t appeared to brake.
As he hung up, Buford wondered how it was that Jett had suspected foul play. Was he also right that one of JJ’s former band members was behind this? Apparently they all had it in for JJ, including Jett.
The big question now was: where was JJ? And how long before whoever tried to kill her tried again?
BLYTHE TURNED TO HIM, THOSE blue eyes wide with surprise, then regret.
“We both know your name isn’t Blythe.”
Her chin came up. “It’s Jennifer Blythe James.”
The afternoon sun shone into the truck cab, illuminating her beautiful face. “Why didn’t you just tell me you were this JJ?” he said with a curse.
Her smile was sad. “I’m sorry I kept it from you.”
“Why did you?”
She shook her head. “It’s such a long story.”
He shut off the engine. “I have nothing but time.”
Looking away, she said, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
With a sigh, she turned to face him again. “I saw a chance to put that life behind me—for even a little while. I took it.”
“Who was Martin Sanderson to you?”
“He was my music producer. Basically he owned me and my music,” she said with no small amount of bitterness.
“You knew he was dead before you got on the back of my bike, didn’t you?”
She nodded. “I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“That was exactly what I thought, but his death has been ruled a suicide.”
The news took her by surprise. “Suicide? No, that can’t be right. Martin wouldn’t—”
“Apparently he had cancer and only weeks to live.”
She shook her head, letting it all sink in, then she smiled. “The bastard. That explains a lot. He insisted I come to Montana so we could talk about him letting me out of my contract. He was threatening to destroy my career—such as it was—and take everything I’ve made. I didn’t care. I just wanted him to let me go.”
“Did he?”
“Just before I met you that night at the bar,” she said with a nod. “He told me to go have some fun and that if I didn’t change my mind, then he would try to work something out with me in the morning.” She let out a humorless laugh. “He knew he wouldn’t be around by then.”
“So you don’t know how he left it.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m done. If he sold my contract to someone else, let them take me to court. If they want, they can take every penny I made. I don’t care.” She smiled. “I have a job as of today. I don’t need more than that.”
Logan liked her attitude. He just wasn’t sure he believed she could go from being rich and famous to being poor and unknown.
“Anyway, it probably doesn’t matter,” she added with a shake of her head.
“What do you mean, it probably doesn’t matter?”
Again she looked away. He reached over to turn her to face him again. “What aren’t you telling me? What was the real reason you ran away with me?”
“I told you. It was my girlhood fantasy to run away with a cowboy,” she said.
He shook his head. “The truth, Blythe.”
She swallowed, her throat working for a moment, then she sat up a little straighter as if steeling herself. “Someone has been trying to kill me.”
BUFORD FELT HIS BELLY RUMBLE again with hunger. Clara was still putting hot chile peppers in everything, but he was building up a tolerance apparently. He couldn’t wait to get home for supper, but he didn’t want to leave until he heard back from Logan Chisholm.
When his phone rang, he thought for sure it would be Chisholm calling him back. He’d left a message at the ranch and been assured by Emma Chisholm that she would have her stepson call as soon as she saw him.
Instead the call was from a waitress from a café in Cut Bank, Montana.
“I saw in the newspaper that JJ was dead?”
“Yes?” Apparently she hadn’t seen the latest edition.
“Well, that’s weird because I saw her that day, you know, the day it said she died?”
Buford thought of the missing hours between when she’d left her car beside the lake and when she’d left Martin Sanderson’s house.
“What time was that?”
“It was late afternoon.”
Cut Bank was hours from Flathead Lake. “Where was this that you saw her?”
“Here in Cut Bank at the café where I work. I recognized her right off, even though she pretended it wasn’t her. I guess I scared her away. I should have been cooler.”
“Scared her away? You saw her leave?”
“Yeah, I watched her and her boyfriend leave on his motorcycle.”
Bull’s-eye, Buford said under his breath. “What did the boyfriend look like?” He listened as she described a blond cowboy on a Harley, the same description the guard at the Grizzly Club had given him. Logan Chisholm.
“Did you see what direction they were headed?” he asked.
“East.”
East, toward Whitehorse, Montana. East, toward the Chisholm Cattle Company ranch.
Buford thanked her for calling. The moment he hung up, he called Sheriff McCall Crawford in Whitehorse.
BLYTHE HAD FEARED HOW LOGAN would take the news. She had to admit he’d taken it better than she’d suspected. He was angry with her, but it was the disappointment in his expression that hurt the most.
“Someone is trying to kill you?” He sounded skeptical. She couldn’t blame him. She didn’t want to get into this with him, but she could see he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
“I started getting death threats a few months ago. I didn’t think too much about it. People in the glare of the media often get letters from crazies.” She shrugged, and she could see that he was trying to imagine the life she’d been living.
“Something happened to convince you otherwise,” he said.
“There were a series of accidents on the road tour. The last time I was almost killed when some lights fell. You have to understand. I had wanted to quit for months. I guess that was just the last straw.”
“You went to the police, of course.”
“I did, but then Martin leaked the story to the media and it turned out looking like a publicity stunt. For a while, I thought it was. I thought Martin had hired someone to scare me back in line.”
“Martin Sanderson really would have done something like that?” Logan asked, clearly unable to comprehend it.
She let out a humorless laugh. “Martin was capable of anything, trust me.”
Logan took off his Stetson and raked a hand through his hair. “The note you dropped at the café in Cut Bank, is that part of this?”
She couldn’t help her surprise.
“Yeah, I picked it up. It didn’t seem important until now. You’re next?”
“It was pinned to Martin’s robe the morning I found him lying dead next to the fireplace. I thought whoever had killed him—”
“Was coming after you next.” Logan nodded. “That explains the way you came flying out of the club and why you climbed on the back of my motorcycle.”
“Not entirely. When I saw you… I wanted to run away with you and would have even if none of this had happened.” She could tell he wanted to believe tha
t, but was having a hard time.
“You thought whoever killed him left the note for you.”
She nodded.
“Why do I get the feeling that you know who’s after you?”
She looked into his handsome face. It had been so long since she’d opened up to anyone. When had she become so mistrustful? She’d told herself it was the dog-eat-dog music business that had turned her this way. It was hard to know who your friends were, since it felt as if everyone wanted a piece of you.
But she trusted Logan. He hadn’t asked anything of her. Still wasn’t.
“I made a lot of mistakes in my life, especially when I signed with Martin Sanderson. Ten years ago, I was in a small all-girl band called Tough as Nails with some friends. Then Martin ‘discovered’ me.” She couldn’t keep the regret from her voice. “I wanted to get away from my life so bad then that I signed on the dotted line without thinking, let alone reading the contract. I dumped the band and my friends, latched onto that brass ring and didn’t look back.”
He frowned. “So you think this is about your former band members? Why now? Why wait ten years? Unless something changed recently.”
She loved how quickly he caught on. “Martin was waiting up for me the night after I met you at the bar. He had some news, he said. He was planning to get Tough as Nails back together for a reunion tour and he’d invited them to Montana to knock out the details. He said after that, then he would let me out of my contract.”
“You refused.”
“I didn’t trust him, let alone believe him. I’d lost track of the other members of the old band. As far as I knew, they’d all moved on, and since I hadn’t heard anything about them, I’d just assumed they weren’t involved in the music industry anymore.” She looked out the side window for a minute. “Also we hadn’t parted on the best of terms. They felt like I deserted them. I did.”
“Still that doesn’t seem like enough to want you dead.”
She laughed. “You really don’t know the music business.” She quickly sobered. “But you’re right. There was more. There was this young musician who was part of a band that we used to open for. His name was Ray Barnes. He’d been dating my best friend in the band and the others, as well. When I left, he left, too. With me. Today he’s best known as Jett Atkins.”
JETT ATKINS. LOGAN REMEMBERED seeing JJ with Jett in one of the photographs he’d uncovered on the library internet. “So you and Jett are—”
“History. A long time ago. But another one of my regrets.”
“Who was the girl he was dating?”
“Karen Chandler, or Caro as we called her. But I think he might have been seeing the others at the same time. He was like that.” Logan heard her remorse, saw the pain. He could understand why she had wanted to start her life over. “I don’t want to believe it is Karen, but I hurt her badly. She and I grew up together. I should have fought harder for the band. After I left, it fell apart. Any one of them probably wants me dead.”
Logan shook his head. “Isn’t it possible the band would have fallen apart even if you’d stayed?”
“We’ll never know, will we? But if Martin was telling the truth, then he got their hopes up. He was threatening to tell them I refused to be part of the band anymore, that I was too good for them. It wasn’t true, none of it. He admitted he had never planned a reunion tour of Tough as Nails. He was just using them to get back at me.”
Martin Sanderson really had been a bastard. He played with people’s lives with no regard for them. Logan could understand why Blythe had wanted out, why she had felt desperate. Especially after Martin had apparently killed himself. Had he tried to make it look as if she had murdered him? Then why the note, he asked, voicing his thoughts.
“When I found Martin dead and saw the note pinned to his body…” She shuddered. “I couldn’t be sure his killer wasn’t still in the house and that I was next.”
“So you think he wrote the note? Or someone else?”
She shrugged. “Maybe it was his final hateful act.”
“I’m glad I was there when you needed me, but you can’t keep running from this, Blythe. You have to find out who’s after you—if they still are—and put an end to it. The Flathead County sheriff is going to figure out that you weren’t in that car, if he hasn’t already.”
She nodded. “I would have told you the truth, but I wanted you to like the girl who always wanted to ride off into the sunset with a cowboy.”
“I do like her,” he said as he reached across the seat for her. “I like her a lot.” He cupped her cheek, his thumb stroking across her lips.
She leaned into the warmth of his large callused hand and closed her eyes. Desire thrummed through her veins.
“Blythe?” His voice was low. The sound of it quickened her pulse.
She opened her eyes. Heat. She felt the burn of his gaze, of his touch.
He dragged her to him and dropped his mouth to hers. She came to him, pressing against him with a soft moan. Her arms wrapped around his neck as he deepened the kiss and her blood turned molten.
“I want you,” she whispered when he drew back. “Here. Now.”
Chapter Nine
“Come on,” Logan said as he opened the pickup door and pulled Blythe out behind him. Warm sunlight filtered through the new leaves of the cottonwoods. A warm spring breeze whispered softly in the branches as he led her along the riverbank.
At a small grassy spot, he turned and drew her close. His face was lit by sunlight. She looked into Logan’s handsome face and felt her pulse quicken.
She’d wanted this from that first night they’d danced together at the country-western bar. There was something about this man. Being in his strong arms, she’d never felt safer—and yet there was a dangerous side to him. This man could steal her heart and there was nothing she could do about it.
As he pulled her closer, she swore she could feel the beat of his heart beneath his Western shirt. Her nipples ached for his touch as they pressed against the lace of her bra. His kiss, at first tender, turned punishing as the fever rose in both of them.
She grabbed the front of his shirt and tore it open, the snaps giving way under her assault. She pressed her palms to his warm, hard chest, breathing in the very male scent of him along with the rich primal scents of the riverbottom.
Logan pulled back, his gaze locking with hers, as he tantalizingly released each of the snaps on her Western shirt. She felt her blood run hot as his gaze dropped to her breasts. He freed one breast from the bra, his mouth dropping to the aching nipple. She arched against him, moaning softly like the trees in the spring breeze.
As he slid her shirt off her shoulders, he unhooked her bra freeing her breasts, and pulled her against him. Blythe reveled in the heat, flesh against flesh, as they stripped off the rest of their clothing, then dropped down in the sweet, warm grass.
Later she would remember the wonderful scents, the soft sounds, the feel of the Montana spring afternoon on her bare skin. But those sensations had been lost for a while in the fury of their lovemaking. It was Logan’s scent, his touch, his sounds that were branded in her mind forever.
