The Last Wilder

by Janis Reams Hudson

  He looked down at the crutch in his hand and frowned. “Do what?”

  “The kissing.” She slid her hands up over his shoulders and around his neck, pulling him closer, until she could feel his warm breath puff against her face. “Look on the bright side. With any luck at all,” she said, leaning into him, her lips nearly touching his, “we’ll both hate it.”

  Her fingers threaded themselves through his thick black hair without direction from her brain. With barely the slightest pressure from her hands, he lowered his head and met her halfway.

  The first touch of lip upon lip was almost tentative, as they tested each other and themselves. Then Stacey pressed forward again, parting her lips slightly.

  His lips were soft and hot and firm. Familiar. They parted readily against hers.

  Somewhere behind her there came a clatter that she barely heard and belatedly recognized as the sound of her crutch hitting the floor. She knew he no longer held her crutch because she suddenly felt both his hands against her back, pulling her flush against his chest.

  Then he took over the kiss and deepened it, taking, literally, her breath away.

  Those tame men she’d been dating had not prepared her for kissing a man like Dane Powell. Neither did the hazy memory of their last kiss. It was much better when she was awake to enjoy it. Never had a man’s kiss turned her knees to water, her blood molten. She moved against him, trying to get closer, closer, wanting more of his dark, dangerous taste.

  For all its depth, for all the physical and emotional stirrings it brought her, the kiss ended much too soon. When Dane pulled his mouth from hers, a tiny sound of protest made its way from her throat.

  She was astounded to realize how hard she was breathing. More astounded that Dane seemed to be suffering the same problem.

  He rested his forehead against hers. “I think,” he told her, “our luck just ran out.”

  A slow, predatory smile curved Stacey’s mouth. “Liked it, did you?”

  He raised his head, his lips twitching. “What do you think?”

  “I think you’re pretty good at this.”

  Dane thought about letting his ego swell but fought the urge. “You’re not bad, yourself.” As he realized what he’d just done, he sobered. “But it still wasn’t smart.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said with a smile.

  Dane bent down, retrieved her crutch and gave it back to her. “It just proves my point that you’re not safe with me.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Look at us,” he said, his mood darkening by the minute. He wouldn’t let himself think about that damn kiss, the way she’d tasted, so sweet and tempting on his tongue, the way she made his blood heat. He shook his head. “Standing here kissing in the middle of my office with all the blinds open.”

  For a minute she looked hurt, and he felt as if he’d just kicked a puppy. Then that smart-aleck smirk he knew so well settled on that otherwise angelic face.

  “What’s the matter, copper, worried about your reputation?”

  “I’m worried more about your safety.” He stepped around her and closed the blinds on both windows. “I should have done this the minute we got here. It was already dark outside. With the lights on in here, anybody who wants to can watch every move we make.”

  “So what?”

  She wasn’t getting what he was trying to avoid saying aloud. He stood before her and gripped her shoulders. “Dammit, Stacey, if they can see in here, and you’re in here, they can take a shot at you.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath. Her eyes widened.

  “Now have I got your attention?”

  “I thought we were worried about cattle rustlers, not snipers.”

  He meant to squeeze her shoulders, but ended up caressing them. “Stacey, you have to let me take you to the Wilders’. I can’t catch Wilson and James and protect you from them at the same time.”

  She shook her head. “Put me someplace else. Anyplace else.”

  “Why?” he demanded. “Why won’t you agree to stay with the Wilders?”

  “I won’t feel safe with them.” The words came as if against her will.

  Dane frowned. “Because you don’t know them?” He studied her and shook his head. Something was going on behind those eyes of hers. “No, it’s more than that. What aren’t you telling me?”

  Stacey closed her eyes and forced a deep breath. Gran, I’m sorry, but I have to tell him. “I won’t feel safe on the Flying Ace because the possibility exists that someone on that ranch killed my grandfather.”

  “What?” Dane stared at her, stunned.

  “I think I want to sit down.” She hobbled to the leather sofa, sat down and propped her foot up.

  “That should have been my line.” Dane turned one of the wing chairs around to face her and took a seat. “Your grandfather. Is he by any chance the man in the grave?”

  Stacey still had her crutch in her hand and noticed she was gripping it so tightly that her knuckles were white. She forced herself to loosen her hold. “Yes.”

  “Why would you think someone on the Flying Ace killed him? You couldn’t have been more than a baby when he was found.”

  She shook her head. “I wasn’t born yet.”

  Dane leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees. “Tell me, Stacey. Talk to me. Why do you think he was killed?”

  “She’s going to kill me,” she muttered.

  “Who’s going to kill you?”

  Stacey swore. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but in the long run she supposed it didn’t matter. “My grandmother. She’s the one who sent me here. She’s the one who’s been coming all these years.”

  “Let me get this straight. Your grandmother knew her husband died and was buried on the Flying Ace and she never came forward to claim his body or let anyone know who he was?”

  “When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound very reasonable,” she admitted.

  “What other way should I put it?”

  Stacey shook her head. “I don’t know why she never came forward. There are a lot of things about this that I don’t know, that she won’t talk about. What I do know, what she has told me, is that according to her, my grandfather, as she put it, went off the deep end one day, started ranting and raving that the high-and-mighty Wilders had stolen the Flying Ace from one of his ancestors. His grandfather, maybe, or great-grandfather, I don’t know which.”

  Dane sat back, startled. “The card game.”

  “What?”

  “The card game,” Dane repeated. “I told you about it. About how the first Wilder came to Wyoming and won the ranch in a card game. Legend has it that he bluffed. All he supposedly had in his hand was a single ace.”

  “And the loser felt as if he’d been cheated.”

  “Quite possibly. Probably.”

  “Was he? Did the guy cheat?”

  Dane shrugged. “Who knows? But I doubt it, or that story about him having only one ace in his hand would never have gotten started. Evidently there were a number of witnesses to the game. Whatever, it sounds like your grandfather thought Wilder cheated.”

  “That’s right. Gran says he decided to come here and confront the Wilders about it. Had it in his head he was going to reclaim what was his. I told you he went off the deep end.”

  “Sounds like it,” Dane said. “So what happened?”

  Stacey shook her head. “When he told Gran he was coming here, he walked out the door and that was the last time she ever saw him. She’s afraid he came here and caused trouble and that maybe someone on the ranch—”

  “You mean King Wilder.”

  Stacey winced. Only a few hours ago she had learned that King Wilder was Dane’s father, and here she was, essentially accusing the man of killing her grandfather.

  “Your grandmother thinks they killed him to what, shut him up?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Dane gnawed on the inside of his mouth. “It’s possible that it happened that way. God
knows, if even half of what I’ve heard about King Wilder is true, he wouldn’t have stood by and let someone threaten what was his.”

  She looked at him carefully. “It doesn’t bother you? That your father might have—”

  “Let’s call him the sperm donor. He was never a father to me. In fact, let’s just call him King Wilder. That’s all he is to me, Stacey, a name. He never knew I existed. Say what’s on your mind.”

  She wondered if he really meant that, or if it was a line he’d been practicing over the years to convince himself that he didn’t care about the man. Whatever, all she could go by was what he told her. “That’s it. That’s all I know.”

  “Why didn’t your grandmother identify him? I’m told they sent his photo out all over the state looking for anyone who might have known him. For that matter, why didn’t somebody else identify him? Someone must have known him.”

  “I don’t know. Gran won’t talk about that part at all. Except, I think they’d just moved to Wyoming from South Dakota, so maybe no one here knew him. And maybe, if she really thought the Wilders killed him, she might have been afraid to come forward. I just don’t know.”

  “Well there’s one thing I know,” Dane said. He stood and took her by the hand and pulled her to her feet. “We can dig out the file and see what it says about cause of death.”

  Startled, Stacey nearly stumbled. “The file? You have a file?”

  “I assume we do. It would have been handled by the county sheriff. And if you’ve ever looked in our file room next door, you know we never throw anything out.”

  The file room was next to Dane’s office, through another glass-fronted door opening off the main office. And file room was what it was. The room was about the same size as Dane’s office, but it was wall-to-wall file cabinets and nothing else. Not even so much as a chair.

  “I guess this means the files aren’t on computer,” Stacey said.

  “We’ve got them computerized for about the past fifteen years, but that’s it.”

  Stacey gave a delicate sniff of disapproval. “Your office manager should have seen to it these files were computerized.”

  “You want the job?”

  She gave him a look from the corner of her eye. “Pul-eeze.”

  Dane grinned. “I didn’t think it would hurt to ask.”

  “Sheriff,” she said in a haughty tone, “if I took the job, you wouldn’t know what hit you. Everything would be so organized, heaven would weep with joy.”

  “Big talk, considering you don’t want the job.”

  She moved farther into the room and tossed him a look over her shoulder. “Kiss me again and maybe I’ll change my mind.”

  “I kiss you again, I’ll change my mind. You’d be too much of a distraction in the office. Now, what year did your grandfather die?”

  Stacey sobered. “The year before I was born.”

  “So twenty-six years ago.”

  “Why, Sheriff, you’ve been paying attention.”

  “I should have brought you a chair,” he said, distracted. “This could take a while. They’re filed by case number, more or less chronologically, rather than by a name.”

  “You’d have to look under John Doe anyway. They never knew his name,” she said quietly, thinking how sad that was.

  Stacey lowered herself to the floor beside Dane. It wasn’t the most graceful move she’d ever made, but she’d been standing around on one leg so long she was starting to feel like a crane. Not to mention that she was simply, irresistibly drawn to him.

  It took Dane twenty minutes to find the file on the John Doe found dead on the Flying Ace in the middle of winter twenty-six years ago.

  His intent was to glance through the file first, before letting Stacey see the contents, but she leaned forward and looked over his shoulder. He slapped the folder shut, but not in time. She got a full view of a glossy eight-by-ten of her grandfather lying dead in the snow.

  She made a tiny sound of distress.

  “I’m sorry.” He turned to her. “I didn’t mean for you to see that.”

  She shook her head and visibly steadied herself. “No, it’s all right. It just took me by surprise, that’s all. May I?” She held out her hand for the file.

  “Let’s take it to my office and look through it together.” No way was he going to let her see the information alone. The man might have died before she’d been born, but he was still her grandfather, and sometimes police reports could be brutally blunt.

  They went back to Dane’s office and settled side by side on the sofa. The information in the file was straightforward, once they deciphered the handwriting on the old forms. Stoney Hamilton, who was the Flying Ace foreman at that time, had discovered the body. He’d gone back to the house and called the sheriff, who drove out to investigate.

  There hadn’t been much to investigate. The temperature had been well below freezing and so was the victim.

  The file included notes on all attempts at identification, as the body had no ID or any personal effects on it. Fingerprints turned up nothing. Broadcasting a drawing of him—they couldn’t have used a photo of a dead man—hadn’t helped, except to generate calls from the usual crazies. The notes were fairly comprehensive. It appeared as though the sheriff had done everything possible to identify the man. King Wilder had even offered a reward.

  A separate note stated that King Wilder had been out of town for several days and only returned home a few hours after the body had been found.

  “That pretty much douses your theory,” Dane said.

  “Hmm,” was Stacey’s only response. She was engrossed in the contents of the file. “Here it is.”

  “The coroner’s report.”

  “It says he died of exposure,” Stacey said. “That he’d probably died the afternoon before he was found.”

  “You okay?” Dane asked.

  Stacey took a final look at the photo of her dead grandfather, then closed the file. “I don’t know. I guess so.”

  She didn’t look all right to Dane. She looked as sad as if she’d just waved goodbye to her best friend. He slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to his side. “At least now you know what happened to him.”

  Stacey let him pull her close. She eased into his embrace and lay her head on his shoulder. “Yes. At least now I know.”

  They sat there for a long time, the only sounds those coming from the outer office as Bates answered the phone or responded to a radio call from one of the deputies out on patrol.

  Finally Dane asked, “What was his name?”

  “Conner,” she said. “Ralph Conner.”

  “That’s the name of the original owner of the ranch.”

  “I thought it might be.”

  “Is that what the C in Stacey C. Landers is for?”

  Stacey smiled and straightened away from him. “You ought to be a cop. You guessed it in one.”

  “Well,” he said, smiling, “it was either that or Carla.”

  She laughed. “My ex-husband’s name is Carl Smith.”

  “Ah. You still think about him so much that when I asked you your name, his came to mind?”

  “Ha. The only time I think about Carl Smith is when I have indigestion. Because it reminds me of exactly how I felt the entire year we were married.”

  Dane let out a low whistle. “An entire year, huh? And they say marriage doesn’t last.”

  “Wise guy. You ever been married?”

  A shadow seemed to cross Dane’s face. His eyes lost their focus. “No,” he said. “No, I’ve never been married.”

  “You want to talk about her?”

  His gaze sharpened. “Her who?”

  “The woman you didn’t marry. Would that be Susan?”

  He stiffened. “Where did— Oh. Aunt Karen mentioned her. You have good ears.”

  “I told you I didn’t eavesdrop on purpose. I couldn’t help but hear. Who was she?” she asked gently.

  Dane shook his head and pushed himself up from t
he couch. He stood with his back to her for so long she feared she had offended him or made him angry. Then he let out a long breath and hung his head, as though in defeat.

  And Dane did feel defeated. He didn’t talk about Susan, not ever. Not to anyone. But it was because of what had happened with Susan that his palms turned to ice when he thought of having to protect Stacey while Wilson and James were still on the loose.

  Maybe if the suspects were strangers and he didn’t know how vicious they could be, or maybe if he could keep his mind on something other than kissing Stacey again the first chance he got, he might be able to get through this. But maybes didn’t count in real life. So he would tell her. Tell her what a failure he was and what could happen to her in his care, and she would be only too glad to stay at the ranch for a few days.

  “She’s the reason,” he said quietly, “that I want you to stay at the Flying Ace until our friendly local cattle rustlers are under lock and key.”

  “What do you mean?” Something was going on here, Stacey realized. Something that tore at Dane.

  He turned to face her, and she almost wished he hadn’t. She had thought to see pain or anguish in his eyes. Instead she saw nothing but a deadness that chilled her. “Dane?”

  “I told you I worked homicide on the L.A.P.D.”

  “Yes.” She nodded, not at all sure she wanted to hear this.

  “Susan was a woman who witnessed a particularly brutal gang murder. Not your average drive-by shooting, but a kidnap and torture. She was our only witness, and I was assigned to protect her while they tracked down the killers she had IDed in a photo lineup.”

  “What—” Stacey had to stop and swallow. “What happened?”

  The self-deprecating half smile, coupled with the dead look in his eyes, tied a knot in her stomach.

  “She was…like no other woman I’d ever known.”

  “And you fell in love with her.”

  “Hard and fast,” he said, his gaze focusing now somewhere in the past. Then he shook himself. “The short version is, I was so distracted by what I was feeling for her that I didn’t pay close enough attention. I let down my guard. And I got her killed.”

  “Oh, Dane.”

  Now his gaze focused on her. “I’m afraid I’m pretty much distracted the same way by you, and I’ll be damned if I’ll take the chance of letting you down the way I did her. I want you to stay at the Flying Ace, Stacey. Please.”