by B. J Daniels
“No, I threw them away. They didn’t seem…serious at the time.”
“A death threat that didn’t seem serious?” Buford asked.
“I’ve had them before and nothing happened. Other musicians I’ve known have gotten them. They aren’t like, ‘I’m going to kill you.’ They’re more vague, like, ‘You have no idea what you’re doing to the kids listening to your horrible music. Someone should shut you up for good.’ That sort of thing.”
“I have a granddaughter who listens to your music,” Buford said. “She listens to Jett Atkins, as well. I think whoever wrote that note might have a point.”
“That’s another reason I wanted out of my contract,” she said. “Martin had total control of my career as well as the music. I hated what I was singing. I signed the contract with him when I was very young and stupid.”
“Your former band members aren’t the only ones in Montana. Your boyfriend Jett is here, as well,” Buford said.
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
The sheriff nodded. “No love lost there either, huh?”
“If you’re asking if I have enemies—”
“I know you do,” Buford said, cutting her off. “The brakes on your rental car had been tampered with. The death of the woman driving it has been ruled a homicide.”
Blythe felt all the air rush out of her. She shot to her feet and stumbled out of the room.
“If you know someone is trying to kill her,” she heard Logan say as she pushed open the screen door and stepped out onto the porch. Blythe didn’t catch the rest. Logan couldn’t blame the sheriff. She was the one who’d run. If she’d called the sheriff the moment she’d found Martin’s body—
She heard the screen door open behind her. The next moment, Logan’s arms came around her.
“Don’t worry,” he said as he drew her close. “I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.”
“YOU CAN’T ARREST HER GIVEN the circumstances,” Logan said when he and Blythe returned to the kitchen and the two sheriffs sitting there.
Buford studied him for a moment, then turned his attention to Blythe. “You should know that at least one member of your old band is dead. Lisa Thomas.”
“Luca?” Blythe said.
“Apparently she died recently,” Buford said. “In a hit-and-run accident.”
Logan saw Blythe’s expression. She had to be thinking the same thing he was. It had been no accident.
“I’m going to talk to the former members of your band again,” Buford was saying, “but in the meantime…”
Blythe glanced at her watch. “In the meantime, I have a job in town I need to get to.”
The sheriff raised two bushy eyebrows, but it was McCall who spoke before Logan could.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” the Whitehorse sheriff asked. “You seem to have a target on your back.”
“It’s a terrible idea,” Logan interrupted, but he saw the stubborn set of Blythe’s jaw.
“What am I supposed to do, sit around and wait for someone to come after me again?” she demanded.
Buford chuckled as he rose slowly from the kitchen chair. “What kind of job did you say this was?”
“Waitressing.” She raised her chin defiantly.
“Making it easy for whoever wants you dead to find you, huh?” He nodded smiling.
Logan stared at her. “You’re using yourself as bait? Have you lost your mind?”
“Could I speak with you outside?” she asked.
“You betcha,” he said taking her arm and leading her back out to the porch. “What the hell, Blythe?”
“I don’t expect you to understand this,” she said. “But ten years ago I signed away all control of my life when I took Martin Sanderson’s offer to make me a star. I have that control back and it feels really good.”
“You’re right, I don’t understand. There is someone out there who wants you dead.”
She nodded. “And I might have kept running like I did when I left my car beside the lake and climbed on the back of your motorcycle. But you changed that. I don’t want to run anymore.”
“You don’t have to run. You can stay here. I will—”
Blythe leaned into him and brushed a kiss across his lips silencing him. “I need a ride to town. I hate being late my first day of work. Is that offer to lend me a pickup still open?”
He didn’t know what to say. It was clear that she’d made up her mind and there was no changing it. He swallowed the lump in his throat, trying to fight back his fear as the two sheriffs came out onto the porch. All he could do was reach into the pocket of his jeans and hand her his truck key.
“I’ll get one of my brothers to come pick me up,” he said his voice tight.
“You sort it out?” Buford asked as Blythe headed for his pickup.
“Find out who is after her,” Logan said between gritted teeth. “Find them before they find her.” Meanwhile he was going to do everything in his power to keep her safe.
The problem was that the woman was as stubborn as a damned mule. But he was glad that Blythe seemed her former strong, determined self again. Not that he wasn’t worried about what she would do next.
Chapter Eleven
Betsy came out of the shower to find Loretta and Karen sitting on the ends of the bed, glued to the television screen. Her heart kicked up a beat. “What’s happened now?” she asked with a sinking feeling.
Loretta grabbed the remote to turn up the volume. A publicity shot of JJ flashed on the screen, then a news commentator was saying that an inside source had confirmed that the body found in the rented sports car convertible was not pop rocker JJ.
“Authorities are asking anyone with information regarding JJ to call the sheriff’s department.” A number flashed on the screen.
“I don’t understand,” Betsy said. She knew now why she never watched the news. It depressed her.
“JJ,” Loretta said. “She’s not dead. She wasn’t driving the car that crashed.”
“Then who was?” Betsy asked.
Loretta shrugged.
“Then where is JJ?” Betsy asked.
Karen looked over at Loretta. “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?”
Loretta was already heading for the door. “I need a drink. Call me if you hear anything. I already asked Jett about JJ. He swears he doesn’t know where she is. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the two of them cooked this up. When I find JJ, she is going to pony up some money for this wasted trip. I swear, that bitch is going down.”
As she went out the door, Karen sighed.
“Does she really believe that Jett and JJ cooked up letting some poor young girl die in JJ’s car?” Betsy asked. “Is that really what she thinks?”
“Loretta has always had her own way of thinking,” Karen said distractedly. “Just as she sees this as JJ owing her.”
“What do you think about all this?”
Karen seemed surprised that Betsy would ask her. But Karen had always seemed the most sensible one in the band and Betsy said as much.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I have no idea. The police will sort it out. In the meantime, I wish I knew where JJ was.”
“You miss her, don’t you?”
Karen smiled. “Hard to believe after what she did to all of us, huh.”
“She was just offered an opportunity and took it,” Betsy said. “I don’t blame her. But you were just as good as she was, if not better. I’ve never understood why Martin chose her and not you.”
“I guess he saw something in JJ that I lacked.”
“Do you still play and sing?”
“I don’t really have the time,” Karen said, but Betsy knew it was more than that.
“It hurt us all when the band broke up. Don’t you think we could have found another lead singer? I mean, we didn’t have to break up the band when JJ left.”
Karen smiled as she turned back to her. “We’ll never know.”
“Loretta says that J
J’s leaving was like having the heart ripped out of us because we felt betrayed,” Betsy persisted. “Is that how you felt?”
When the door opened and Loretta came in with Jett, Betsy noticed that Karen seemed glad for the interruption. Clearly, she hadn’t wanted to talk about JJ anymore. Or how she felt about the girl she considered her sister walking out on her.
“It’s all over Twitter,” Jett announced. “JJ was seen east of here.”
BLYTHE HAD SOME TIME TO think on the way into town. She needed an apartment so she could walk to work. She couldn’t keep driving around town in a Chisholm Cattle Company pickup. But she knew that wasn’t the real reason she couldn’t stay with Logan any longer.
She couldn’t put him in any more danger than she already had.
What she’d told Logan had been heartfelt. He had changed everything. She would have kept running, but he made her want to end this so she could get on with her life—and she hoped Logan would be in it.
But until she found out who was after her, she had to put some distance between them. Whoever had put the note on Martin Sanderson’s body could have killed her that morning at the Grizzly Club. She figured the only reason they hadn’t was that they wanted her running scared still.
She wouldn’t let them use Logan Chisholm to do it.
As she drove into the small western town of Whitehorse, she spotted the local newspaper office. The idea had been brewing all the way into town, but as she pushed open the door to the Milk River Courier, she was aware that what she was about to do could be the signing of her death warrant.
“Can I help you?” The young woman who rose from behind the desk had a southern accent and a nice smile.
“Are you a reporter?” Blythe asked.
“Andi Jackson, at your service,” she said, motioning to the chair across from her desk.
Blythe saw that the small newspaper office was deserted as she took a seat. “You’re a weekly paper? Is it possible to get a story in this week’s paper?”
“It would be pushing my deadline, but if it’s a story that has to run, I can probably get it in tomorrow’s paper,” Andi said.
“It is. My name is Jennifer Blythe James, better known as JJ, and until recently everyone thought I was dead.”
Andi picked up her notebook and pen and began to write as Blythe told her JJ’s story, starting with the small trailer in the middle of the desert, then a band called Tough as Nails and ending with her waitressing at the local café in town.
“This is one heck of a story,” Andi said when Blythe had finished. “I’m curious how it’s going to end.”
Blythe laughed. “So am I.” After Andi took her photo, she bought a paper so that she could look for an apartment after work, then she headed for the Whitehorse Café. The last thing she wanted was to be late for work her first day.
“YOU AREN’T GOING TO HAVE to babysit me much longer,” Emma said when Logan came through the back door into the kitchen. “Your father has hired someone to keep an eye on me so you can all get back to ranching. The woman is supposed to be here by the weekend.”
She glanced at him as he dropped into a chair at the table. “Logan?”
He blinked and looked over at her as if seeing her for the first time that morning. “Sorry, I was lost in thought.”
“I can see that.” She’d never seen him this distracted and would bet it had something to do with the young woman he’d brought to supper last night.
Having just taken a batch of cranberry muffins from the oven, she put one on a plate for each of them and poured them both a mug of coffee before joining him at the table.
“Okay, let’s hear it,” she said as she sliced one muffin in half and lathered it with butter.
“It’s Blythe,” he said with a curse.
She laughed. “Big surprise.” Emma took a bite of the muffin. It was warm and wonderful, the rich butter dripping off onto the plate as she took another bite. She really had to quit baking—worse, eating what she baked. “So you’ve fallen for her.”
“No, that is…” He started to swear again but checked himself. “I’ve never met anyone like her.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Someone is trying to kill her.”
Emma leaned back in surprise. “It must be something in the water around here,” she said, and then turned serious. “Why would anyone want to hurt that beautiful young woman?”
“It’s a long story,” Logan said with a sigh.
Emma listened, seeing how much this woman had come to mean to him. Chisholm men were born protectors. What they didn’t realize sometimes was that they were also attracted to strong women who liked to believe they could protect themselves. Hoyt was still learning that.
“It doesn’t sound like there is much you can do if she’s set on doing things her way,” Emma said. “But you certainly don’t have to hang around here babysitting me today. I’ll be just fine.”
Logan shook his head, grinning across the table at her. “Blythe reminds me a lot of you.”
“That’s a good thing, right?” she asked with a laugh.
“Stubborn and a woman hard to get a rope on,” he joked.
“You Chisholm men. When are you going to learn that you have to let a woman run free if you ever hope to hold on to her?”
“It’s a hard lesson,” Logan said. “I’m not sure I can do that.”
“But then again, you’ve never been in love before. Love changes everything. Have you told her how you feel?”
“About her determination to stick her neck out and get herself killed?”
“No, Logan, how you feel about her.”
“It’s too soon.”
“Or is it because you’re afraid you’ll scare her off?” she asked, eyeing him.
He chuckled. “You see through me like a windowpane. You have any more of those muffins? Also, I need to borrow your computer. I have to find out everything I can about who’s after Blythe. So far, they don’t know where she is. But once they find out…”
AFTER HER INTERVIEW WITH THE newspaper, Blythe hurried to the café to get to work. Within minutes after putting on her apron, she was waiting tables and joking with locals as she refilled coffee cups and slid huge platefuls of food in front of them.
It was like riding a bike, she thought.
As she worked, she tried not to glance out the front window at the street or the small city park across from the café. The newspaper article wouldn’t come out until tomorrow. Reporter Andi Jackson had told her the Associated Press would pick up the story and it would quickly make every newspaper in the state.
“You realize your story is going to go viral after that,” Andi had said. “With communications like they are, everyone in the world will know that JJ is waitressing in Whitehorse, Montana.”
That was the plan, Blythe thought.
Still, she couldn’t help but feel a little nervous about the repercussions that were to come when Logan found out—not to mention the fact that the story was bound to bring a killer to town.
