Linda Lael Miller Montana Creeds Series Volume 1: Montana Creeds: LoganMontana Creeds: DylanMontana Creeds: Tyler

by Linda Lael Miller

  “And you think you’re not going to the emergency room?” Kristy challenged tersely, when he’d finished. “Think again, buckaroo. I’ll be on my way as soon as I make sure Susan or Peggy can stay until closing time—”

  Dylan thought of the shooter, possibly still out there in the orchard or the cemetery or someplace even closer, with a bad attitude and plenty of ammunition. Or careening along the country roads, primed to open fire on the first car he met.

  “Stay put, Kristy,” he said, closing his eyes. “Sheriff Book is on his way out here right now. As soon as we know for sure what the situation is—”

  She hung up on him.

  He held the receiver out a little way and stared at it, confounded.

  Kristy arrived at the ranch house at the same time Sheriff Book did, pale as milk and stiff-jawed.

  Floyd took charge right away. Asked a lot of questions. Called in the state police for backup, since neither of his two deputies was available.

  Once they arrived, bent on swarming over the whole ranch looking for either the shooter or some evidence of his identity, Kristy insisted on driving Dylan to the clinic in town. Bonnie stayed with Briana and Logan and the boys.

  He didn’t have a concussion, as it turned out; just a few sprains. The doctor gave him a prescription for pain pills, which he crumpled up and tossed into the waste can outside the clinic’s front door.

  Kristy was still so pale that Dylan thought she should have been the one to see a medic. “Who would do a thing like this?” she fretted, steering Dylan toward the front passenger door of her Blazer and all but wrestling him inside.

  He tolerated the fussing. In fact, he kind of liked it.

  “Damned if I know,” he answered, when Kristy had rounded the rig and climbed behind the wheel. She stabbed at the ignition three times before she got the key in. “Gunnar Wilkenson probably wouldn’t mind taking a potshot at me, but he isn’t agile enough to come all the way down from that shack of his and hide out in the trees. Anyway, all he’s got for firepower, as far as I know, is that old shotgun of his. It wouldn’t have the range a rifle does.”

  “As far as you know,” Kristy pointed out. “How about Zachary’s son? What’s his name—Caleb? You had a run-in with him over Sundance, didn’t you?”

  “He was pissed off for sure,” Dylan admitted. “But trying to shoot me out of the saddle seems a little drastic.”

  “Isn’t shooting at someone always drastic?” Having said that, Kristy began to tremble. Then tears swelled in her eyes.

  Since they were still sitting in the clinic parking lot, Dylan leaned across the console and pulled her into his arms.

  “Hey,” he murmured. “You heard the doctor. I’m all right.”

  She gave a great, snuffling sob, and he felt her tears soaking through his shirt.

  He held her for a long time, his chin resting on top of her head, then said, “Swap seats with me, babe. You are in no condition to drive.”

  She drew back, looked up into his face, her eyes still swimming. “Neither are you.”

  Dylan chuckled. “We can spend all day going back and forth about this, or we can trade places, go back out to the ranch to get Bonnie and find out if Floyd and the staters found anything.”

  She sighed heavily. Opened her door, got out and came to his side of the Blazer, resigned.

  Dylan kissed her lightly on the mouth and a minute or so later, they were cruising past the city limits.

  There were Smokies all over the place when they arrived at the ranch, radios crackling, the transmissions being picked up on every scanner in the county, most likely. And there were a lot of scanners—the locals loved them, listened to police and fire and ambulance calls like it was their civic duty.

  What was keeping that pack of reporters that had been bothering Kristy since the bodies were found?

  Logan was pacing the front porch, restless as a tiger just snatched from the jungle and tossed into a cage. Clearly, he’d have preferred to be on the scene, with Floyd and the investigators he’d called in, but he had a family now. A wife, a couple of stepsons—loved ones to protect.

  It made Dylan smile as he strolled up the walk, Kristy double-stepping alongside him, like she thought he might topple over any minute now.

  “Any news?” Dylan asked his brother.

  Logan folded his arms, leaned one shoulder against one of the posts supporting the porch roof. The pose was probably meant to look casual, but instead, Logan came off as what he was—frustrated and annoyed.

  “They found a shell casing and some footprints,” Logan said, sparing a reassuring grin for Kristy. “Whoever did the deed is long gone.”

  “Good,” Kristy said, passing Dylan to mount the steps and pass Logan, too. “I need to see Bonnie.”

  With that, she was inside the house, the screen door banging shut behind her.

  “I take it you’re going to live,” Logan said calmly, watching Dylan.

  Dylan nodded, not bothering to climb the porch steps. “Let’s go out there and see what’s going on,” he murmured. “With all these cops around, the women and kids aren’t in any danger.”

  Logan grinned. “We’d better be quick,” he said, with a glance over one shoulder. “If Briana spots us, we’re busted.”

  That made Dylan laugh, despite the aches and pains, which were bound to get worse before they got better. He tossed Kristy’s Blazer keys into the air, caught them again. They both headed for the rig, Dylan hobbling a little, Logan at a sprint.

  It wasn’t hard to find Floyd and the scene-investigation crew from Missoula; there were half a dozen cars and official vans nosed up to the edge of the orchard. The police seemed oblivious to the seventy head of cattle milling around, bawling and flinging up dust.

  By Dylan’s reckoning, it was a miracle old Cimarron, the white bull, hadn’t moseyed over to conduct an investigation of his own. He scanned the field with a sudden turn of his head—one he immediately regretted—and sure enough, there was his rodeo nemesis, looking on from within charging distance, one forefoot pawing at the ground.

  “Uh-oh,” Dylan said.

  The bull lowered his massive head.

  “Should somebody yell ‘olé’?” Logan quipped. He’d always been a bold bastard, even in his prerodeo days. Now, the damn fool seemed to like the idea of being skull-butted over the top of the tallest tree in the orchard.

  “Somebody,” Dylan answered evenly, “should yell ‘look out.’” He squared his shoulders, took a slow step in Cimarron’s direction. “It’s me he’s after,” he added, shaking off his brother’s hand when he reached out to grab his arm. “Tell Floyd and the boys to get into their cars. Now.”

  He took another step.

  Cimarron pondered his options, tossed his head.

  “Damn it, Dylan—” Logan protested.

  “It’s all right,” Dylan said, without stopping or turning around. He made himself bigger in his mind, a trick a veteran rodeo clown had taught him, and took care not to look the bull directly in the eye. “This has been coming on for a while, hasn’t it, old buddy?” he said to Cimarron, though afterward he couldn’t recall whether he just thought the words, or spoke them out loud. “I was the last man to lower himself onto your back in a chute. You threw me. I reckon now you’re curious to know why I left you here on this ranch all this time.”

  Behind him, Dylan heard a few raspy curses and the slamming of car doors. He didn’t look back.

  Maybe it was shock from the sniper incident earlier in the day, but he’d have sworn he and that animal were communicating with each other, on some intangible level. He knew what the bull was thinking and, furthermore, he was convinced the reverse was true, as well.

  Had he hit his head on a rock when Sundance sent him flying?

  Another sound stopped him, made him look back. The lever on a rifle.

  Dylan whirled, saw Sheriff Book standing about ten feet behind him, aiming a high-powered Winchester.

  A little thrill went t
hrough Dylan, an adrenaline rush, in the split second he spent analyzing the situation. Kristy’s suspicions about Floyd did a kaleidoscope turn in his brain; he even wondered if the sheriff had been the one to fire that shot a few hours before.

  He discarded the possibility almost as soon as it came to him—if Floyd Book had taken aim at him, even on a running horse, he, Dylan, would be cooling on a slab at the county morgue by now. Despite his age, the man was a marksman.

  “Don’t shoot him, Floyd,” he said quietly. “He’s got legitimate business with me.”

  “He charges,” Floyd argued flatly, and it was only then that Dylan realized Logan was standing right beside the sheriff, “I shoot.”

  “Dylan—” Logan ground out.

  Dylan silenced his older brother with a shake of his head, turned back to face Cimarron. In some ways, he was facing a lot of other things, too—his own past, mostly. His dad’s life—and death. His mother’s accident, and Tyler’s mom’s unconditional surrender, alone in a tacky motel room. Losing Kristy that last time. And all the time he’d missed with Bonnie.

  This wasn’t high noon with a retired rodeo bull.

  It was a showdown with himself.

  Stand, or run.

  He’d done enough running, and that left just one choice: claim his patch of ground and hold it.

  “Dylan, you damn fool!” Floyd shouted. “What the hell are you trying to do? Prove to everybody that Jake Creed wasn’t the only one in this family without the God-given good sense to be scared?”

  It was a mouthful, Dylan reflected, with a slight smile, more a crook at the corner of his mouth than anything. Most likely, Floyd would have had to lower the rifle to say all that.

  “You shoot this animal,” Dylan replied cordially, without turning away from Cimarron, “and I’ll have your badge.”

  “You want my f-ing badge,” Floyd retorted furiously—he was old-school and didn’t use the f-word lightly—“you can have the gawdamn thing!”

  “You’re scaring the sheriff,” Dylan told Cimarron calmly.

  Cimarron, for his part, snorted a couple of times and flung up some more dust with that right front hoof. His long tail switched at the flies trying to come in for a landing on his haunches. He seemed to be pondering everything Dylan thought or said, deciding whether to send him flying skyward or hear him out.

  “I’m gonna stay right here on this ranch,” Dylan went on, keeping his voice down low, so Logan and Floyd and the others wouldn’t hear. “Keep you in hay and heifers for the rest of your days. You and me, we’ve got a bond. Because you know, don’t you, that you didn’t throw me that night at the National Finals. I could have made the eight seconds, but you’d never been ridden, and when it came right down to it, I didn’t have the heart to spoil your record.”

  Cimarron cocked his head to the left, then the right. Snorted again.

  “It’s our secret,” Dylan finished. “I’ll never tell anybody that I jumped off you and made it look like a spill.”

  With that, he folded his arms and waited.

  Maybe Floyd was right, and he was crazier than Jake had ever been.

  Cimarron huffed and tossed his head and raised up some more dust.

  Then, as if the two of them had come to an agreement, the bull turned and ambled off toward the other side of the field, most of the heifers following.

  Dylan was still standing in the same place when the dust settled and Logan turned up at his elbow.

  “What the hell was that all about?” Logan asked, his voice gruff with irritation and, if Dylan’s guess was right, a certain wonder over the ways of proud bulls and former rodeo cowboys.

  “I promised I wouldn’t say,” Dylan answered, after a long time, turning a grin on Logan.

  “Floyd’s right,” Logan muttered. “You’re certifiable.”

  But when they started back toward Floyd and the cluster of cops, Logan slapped Dylan’s back, and Dylan managed not to wince.

  He looked at the shell casing the state police had found, and at the tracks in the soft floor of the orchard. Not much to go on, for all the public money they were burning through, poking around taking pictures and samples of tree bark and even making plaster casts.

  It was Law & Order gone country.

  And whatever the hell was going on, Dylan knew, it was a long way from over.

  “They think it was just some kid playing with a rifle,” Logan said, as the two of them stood watching the crew pack up to leave.

  “They always think it’s just some kid,” Dylan agreed. He hurt everywhere; almost wished he hadn’t pitched that prescription into the trash, back at the clinic.

  “You got any ideas?” Logan asked, as they started toward the Blazer.

  She’d be spitting nails when they got back to the ranch house, Kristy would. There’d be a backlash that would bend the trees parallel with the ground and strip off every leaf.

  Dylan smiled at the prospect as he eased himself behind the wheel, while Logan took the shotgun side.

  “Yeah,” Dylan said, at his leisure. “I’ve got some ideas—about a shot or two of whiskey, a hot bath and a certain woman anxious to soothe my troubled brow.”

  Logan laughed. “That isn’t what I meant and you know it,” he replied. “I don’t know about the whiskey, but the hot bath and a sympathetic woman sound real good. If I limp when we get back to the house, will you tell Briana I got trampled by that old bull of yours?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  DYLAN SANK into Kristy’s big claw-foot bathtub to his chin, while she sat on the edge, trying not to look at his equipment—about the only part of him that wasn’t bruised or scratched from the pitch off Sundance’s back.

  If this were the old West, he fancied, soothed by the hot water and the beer Kristy had brought him, the brew would be rotgut whiskey, he’d have a skinny cigar clamped between his teeth and she’d be dressed up—or down—like a dance-hall girl.

  The fantasy took him to full mast.

  Kristy happened to be sneaking a peek right about then, and bright pink suffused her cheekbones. She looked away hastily, but not quite hastily enough.

  Dylan chuckled. “Come on in,” he drawled lazily. “The water’s fine.”

  Kristy gave a little huff, stood up, sat down on the side of the tub again. “Bonnie—”

  “Is asleep,” Dylan said, when her voice fell away. “And haven’t we already had this discussion once?”

  “I’m not getting into that tub, Dylan. You’re hurt, remember?”

  He sighed, and hoped it sounded noble and long-suffering. “It rings a bell,” he admitted. “Which is why I could use some…feminine consolation right about now.”

  Kristy folded her arms, teetered a little but, regrettably, caught her balance before toppling in on top of him. “I made your dinner. I ran this bath for you. I brought the beer upstairs. That is ‘feminine consolation,’ Dylan Creed, and don’t you dare get the idea that I’m going to wait on you just because you’re living here.”

  “No sex?” he asked, making sure he looked hound-dog dejected.

  She blushed again. “I didn’t say that—exactly.”

  He laughed.

  And his cell phone rang from his shirt pocket, said shirt being across the bathroom, on top of the hamper, and therefore out of reach.

  Kristy arched an eyebrow.

  “Don’t answer,” Dylan said.

  “It might be important,” Kristy objected, heading for the hamper, extracting the phone and snapping it open. “Hello?”

  Dylan waited. There were calls, and there were calls, and somehow, he knew this wasn’t one he particularly wanted to take.

  “Never mind who I am,” Kristy said into the phone, straightening her spine and lowering her eyebrows until they almost met. “Who are you?”

  Shit, Dylan thought. Sharlene.

  Kristy crossed the bathroom, shoved the phone at him, frowning. At least she wasn’t glaring.

  Yet.

  “I should have k
nown you’d be with a woman,” Sharlene shrilled into his ear, before he got a word out.

  “That’s been my pattern so far,” Dylan said mildly. “How’s the boyfriend?”

  Sharlene wasn’t exactly a quick study, and the gibe went over her head. “He took that money you wired and left, that’s how he is, the chickenshit—”

  “Is there a point to this call, Sharlene?”

  Sure there was. She wanted more money. And she’d have to say so.

  “I’m in big trouble, Dylan,” Sharlene said, crying now. She could turn on the waterworks faster than any woman he’d ever known, and turn them off again just as quickly, once her purpose was served. Since she couldn’t have gotten word of his custody petition so soon after Logan filed it, she was going to hit him up for another infusion to her bank account. “I can’t pay for the motel room we’ve been staying in.”

  “How do I know this isn’t a con, Sharlene?” Dylan asked reasonably. “The boyfriend could be right there, putting you up to this.”

  “He’s gone!” Sharlene wailed. “I swear it, Dylan.”

  Kristy started for the door, sort of slinking along, but Dylan gestured for her to stay, and there was an unspoken “please” in the motion of his hand. She walked slowly back and sat on the lid of the john.

  “Any—anyway,” Sharlene fumbled on, when he didn’t speak right away, “I’ve got a proposition for you. Just listen, okay?”

  Here it comes, Dylan thought, half jubilant, half resigned. She was about to offer him full custody of Bonnie—for a price. And while he wanted to raise his daughter to adulthood, it still disgusted him that Bonnie’s own mother would even dream of making such a bargain.

  “I’m listening,” he ground out, no longer reclining in the tub, but sitting bolt upright.

  Sure as hell, she surprised him.

  “Well—” Sharlene’s voice took on a sunny, little-girl quality that chafed Dylan’s last nerve, “I was thinking we could go ahead and get married, you and me, and bring Bonnie up together. Be a real family.”