by Marla Monroe
“Thing is, some of the little towns ’round here tend to close up early. It’s going on half past four now, so you better stop at the first one open just to be safe.” He nodded and walked off, the odd-looking mutt pulling at the leash in an attempt to get the man to step up the pace.
Worry burned in her gut now that she’d end up stuck somewhere without gas. She would start carrying a gas can with her from now on. That way she’d at least have a few gallons to make it to the next town.
As it was, she ended up driving over an hour to reach Waterville before she was able to find something open to get gas. The last twenty minutes she’d driven on frazzled nerves as her gas light came on alerting her she only had two gallons of gas left. Needless to say, she bought a five gallon plastic gas can and filled it up with four gallons to store in her trunk. She wasn’t happy about it, but she didn’t want to have that scare again.
She realized she was going to be heading through the Wenatchee National Forest over to the Henry M. Jackson Wilderness area, giving her at least a two and a half hour drive through before she made it to Everett. It was almost 6:00 p.m. and she had yet to eat anything for dinner. She sure didn’t want to drive through the wilderness area on an empty stomach at night. If she could find a motel, then she was going to spend the night there and get an early start in the morning. There was no use taking a chance in the middle of nowhere at night. Anything could happen, and in a reserve area, the native animals would be an added danger.
It took her twenty minutes of asking around, but she found a motel on the edge of town that was out of her way, but at least it had openings. This time her luck didn’t hold out since the room smelled of cigarette smoke and musty air. The bed appeared clean, but she would sleep on top of the covers anyway. The bathroom, however, left a lot to be desired. She was glad she’d remembered to bring her cleaning supplies. She was definitely going to need them.
After securing the door, Shelby cleaned the bathroom and took a quick shower. She didn’t trust it despite having scoured it herself. Besides, there was a spider in the far corner of the bathroom she didn’t trust wouldn’t join her while she cleaned up.
Shelby was relieved that she was nearly to her goal. She’d decided to try Bellingham, and if she didn’t like the way it looked, or couldn’t find a job, she’d drive on up to Blaine. It was on the Canadian border. Surely there would be a job somewhere for her. She had enough saved back to make it several weeks if she was frugal, but she didn’t want to push it.
As she settled down on top of the covers, she wondered what the guys were doing now that they knew she’d left. It hurt just thinking about them. She ached to touch them, missed how they smelled and felt when they were close to her. Her pussy clenched at the way they had made her feel. She prayed they didn’t hate her, but chances were they’d be pissed and bitter. Maybe that was better anyway. She didn’t want to think about them hurting like she was. Right then it felt as if her heart had been wrenched in two and her soul shredded.
Every time she closed her eyes, she pictured them on their horses grinning down at her. She missed them so much. Shelby had never felt so cared for or safe before. If she hadn’t worried that they would end up hurt if they had gotten caught up in the middle of her mess, she would have stayed there, maybe even become a part of their lives if they’d asked her to.
It was all water under the bridge now. She couldn’t change the past even if she’d wanted to. Her life was too screwed up to drag anyone else into it and she knew it. No more settling down anymore. All it did was tear her up when she had to leave, and she would have to leave every time.
Shelby drifted off in a fitful sleep, faceless men chasing her and Bo and Dalton calling for her to come back through it all. When she jerked awake several hours later, she assumed the dream had jarred her back to consciousness. Turning over, she settled back down and almost drifted off when a noise had her eyes snapping wide open in alarm. A soft tap, tap had her quietly rolling off the bed on the side of the bathroom. Since there wasn’t a window in it, she felt fairly safe keeping her back to it, but it also meant she was cornered, trapped and someone was trying to get into her room.
What had the tapping noise been? Just as that thought rolled through her mind, the window across from her popped out with barely a sound and the wind blew the curtains enough that she could see two men with some sort of suction cups setting the glass out of the way. She had no doubt they weren’t just replacing it at that time of night. They planned to climb through the opening they’d made to get to her. How had they found her?
Chapter Eleven
“Hey, boss. What’s up?” Dalton asked as he and Bo walked into Laredo’s office.
Bo knew immediately that something serious was wrong since both Laredo and Laramie stood next to the desk. He’d felt the first stirrings of unease when Reed Santana, the head wrangler and Dakota Woods showed up midmorning to replace them before they’d even stopped for a break. Neither man seemed to know anything, only that the bosses need them to hurry back.
All the way, he and Dalton had tried to figure out what could possibly be wrong but couldn’t come up with an answer between them. Dalton worried they’d screwed something up in the barn before they’d left. Bo worried that the ill feelings he’d had the night before had come to fruition. Just before he’d fallen asleep, an owl hooted outside his window. They were always the harbingers of bad news. Usually it involved a death. Since he had no close living relatives and neither did Dalton, he dismissed that thought.
“Bo, Dalton, have a seat. We’ve got a problem and I’m hoping I’m thinking right in involving the two of you with it,” Laredo said.
The man’s face carried a serious expression that was mirrored on his twin’s identical features. They exchanged looks before Laredo continued.
“I’ve noticed that two of you have been spending a good deal of time with Shelby,” he began.
“We haven’t bothered her during work hours,” Dalton was quick to state.
Laredo waved his hand and shook his head. “I’m not worried about that at all. You all do your jobs exceptionally. I have no complaints and Laramie assures me he doesn’t either. That’s not the issue.”
Bo’s blood began to cool in his veins, turning to a cold slush that had him almost choking. Something was wrong with Shelby. He jumped up from his chair in alarm.
“Where is Shelby? Is something wrong with her?”
Dalton’s mouth dropped open and he paled as much as they could. “Where is she?”
“Settle down. As far as I know, Shelby is fine, but she is gone. She left this morning after stopping by to apologize for leaving without notice. She gave me this envelope for the two of you. I’m hoping there’s something in it that will give us a clue as to why she ran, because that’s what she did. Was it because you were pressuring her?” Laredo stared hard at him and Dalton.
“No. We’ve be very careful not to do that,” Dalton told him.
Bo took the envelope and tore into it, anxious to see what she’d written.
I’m so sorry to leave like this. It has nothing to do with either of you or our night. It was amazing and I will never forget it, but I have to leave. You both mean so much to me. I’ve never cared for anyone like I do you, Bo and Dalton. You showed me what it was like to feel like a woman and to know true happiness for the first time in my life. If things had been different, I would have loved spending more time with both of you and seeing where it went. You’ve given me the greatest gift a woman could ever receive, your respect.
Please don’t hate me. I would never have left if there was any other way around it. I loved it there at the ranch and loved everyone I worked with. I’m going to miss them all, but I’ll miss the two of you more than anything. I’ll never forget either of you and I’ll carry a part of you both in my heart for the rest of my life. Shelby.
“I don’t understand. Why did she have to leave?” Dalton demanded.
“We don’t know either,” Laramie said
. “We’d hoped you would know more or that the note she left would give us some insight.”
“When I talked to Billy Jean about it, she said that Shelby had been acting odd for a few weeks now. At first she just thought it was nerves about dating the two of you, but she said Shelby almost seemed paranoid at times. She was always looking around her as if expecting someone to be watching her. She was fanatical about locking the doors. It all ties in with my suspicions when I hired her that she was in some kind of trouble.” Laredo sighed and sat on the edge of his desk.
“Trouble? What kind of trouble? Why would you think that?” Bo’s blood brother asked.
Bo had wondered that himself when he’d first met her. She’d been very nervous at first and tended to keep to herself.
“I don’t know. She didn’t want to give me references, saying that she knew they wouldn’t give her one because she’d left without giving much notice. If she hadn’t proved that she knew about keeping books, I might not have hired her, but we were in a bad way for an office manager. I started her out doing that and slowly moved the bookkeeping over to her. She was a wiz at it and kept everything running smoothly. But it was obvious she was running from something or someone,” Laredo told them.
“I did a discreet background check on her with some friends of ours and couldn’t find where she was wanted for anything, but I’m fairly certain she is using an alias,” Laramie said.
“Why didn’t she confide in us?” Dalton asked Bo.
“I don’t know. She might have not completely trusted us. We’d only been seeing her for a few weeks,” Bo said.
Dalton ran his hands over his face and cursed under his breath in Blackfoot. Bo didn’t blame him. He felt as if his entire world had just collapsed. Just when he’d thought everything would be all right, his world had walked out on them.
“The other possibility is that she was afraid that if she stayed, someone might get hurt if they tried to protect her. That’s the impression I got when she told me she was leaving this morning.” Laredo sighed. “I got the distinct impression she was afraid and was running for her life.”
“Son of…” Bo began.
Dalton’s string of Blackfoot with some Crow mixed in stopped him in mid curse. His friend was using every curse word he could think of and inventing some as he went. Bo rested his hand on his friend’s shoulder.
“Easy, nis-kun’. This is not helping us decide what to do.”
“We go after her that is what we do. I just don’t know where to start,” Dalton snapped.
“That’s where we may be able to help you,” Laramie said.
“What do you mean?” Dalton demanded.
“Billy Jean said when she went to talk to Shelby the other day about something to do with the new restaurant, she was looking at a Washington state map on the computer. She minimized it as soon as Billy Jean walked in the room. Billy didn’t really give it much thought, but she remembered while were trying to figure out why she’d left like she did, so we did some excavating on her computer and found some interesting things in the history,” Laredo said.
“History?” Bo asked. “I don’t get it. How would you be able to find something on her history if she used a different name?”
“I’m talking about the history of where she’s browsed and looked on the Internet,” Laredo explained. “If you don’t clear out your browser history or the cookies file, then someone can access your computer and see what you’ve been doing on it.”
“Never mind, just tell us what you found,” Dalton said. “I know a little about them, but Bo won’t know anything. He’s pretty much ignored the whole computer-age thing.”
Bo growled at him but couldn’t argue. He had no use for them and only kept a cell phone because it was convenient when he was away from the ranch.
“She researched towns in the North West section of Washington and had actually printed out a map from here to a place called Bellingham, Washington and another to Lynden. She also had a list of other cities in that area including Waterville and Blaine. Blaine is right on the Canadian border,” Laramie said. “I think she’s headed in that direction.”
“We need a map,” Dalton said as he turned to leave.
“Hold up,” Laredo called out. “We’ve put together what we think you’re going to need.”
Bo looked at the two men, wondering why they were so interested in helping them find her when it meant they were leaving the ranch.
“Why are you wanting to find her? Did she embezzle from you?” Bo asked, unable to believe they just wanted to help. People didn’t do that for no reason.
“No. She didn’t.” Laredo frowned at him. “I thought you cared about her and would want to find her before something happened to her.”
Bo cursed. “I do care about her. Hell, Dalton and I both love her, but I don’t understand why you’re helping us look for her. She’s just an office manager to you.”
Laramie scowled at him. “She’s not just an office manager. She’s a lone woman on the run for some reason with no one looking out for her. She’s a friend. If nothing else, she means something to you and we want to help you find her.”
Bo sighed and ran a hand over his face. “I’m sorry. I’m just worried and don’t understand why she wouldn’t have trusted us to protect her.”
“She’s a woman, Bo. She thinks it’s her job to protect everyone around her, which happens to be the two of you and probably us as well,” Laredo said.
“If she felt like we would be in danger, she’d run to draw it away from us,” Laramie added.
“Show us what you have,” Bo said.
* * * *
When Shelby opened her eyes it was to find that it was pitch black or she was blind. Either way, she didn’t have a clue where she was or if she was alone. Her arms ached from being tied behind her back with her lying on them. She attempted to shift her weight off of them and groaned at the pain in her ribs where one of the men had kicked her when she’d tried to get away.
I can’t believe they found me so easily. I’ve been so careful.
She slowly took stock of what she knew. She was lying on something like a cot or twin bed with a lumpy, disgusting-smelling mattress under her. Her hands were tied with rope, tight enough she couldn’t feel her fingers much anymore, but then lying on them for God knew how long hadn’t helped matters either. She moved her feet around and verified she was on a cot or twin bed since she didn’t have far to move on either side of the bed before her feet found the edge.
The gag they’d immediately stuffed in her mouth was taped around her head with either masking tape or duct tape. Moving her head much pulled her hair. God, getting it off was going to really hurt. It would probably leave bald spots as well. She nearly giggled at the thought since she didn’t expect to live long, so it really didn’t matter.
Focus, Shelby. You need to figure out where you are and if anyone is nearby.
Slowing her breathing as much as she could with the gag in her mouth, Shelby listened intently in the hope of hearing something that would give her a clue. All she could hear was her own heart beating and the nasal sounds of her breathing through her nose.
Frustration burned in her stomach. She couldn’t just lie there waiting for someone to rescue her. It wasn’t going to happen. She had to rescue herself or die trying. Either way, she was dead. She was just surprised they hadn’t already killed her. Either they were waiting for whoever the boss was or they wanted something from her they’d yet to ask for. She couldn’t imagine what it would be. She didn’t have anything.
It had all started when she’d worked for a legal firm back in Virginia as their bookkeeper. They specialized in land and real estate ventures and deeds. She’d worked for them a little over a year when she started finding errors in records when she tried to reconcile the books. Normally she wouldn’t have noticed it except that someone had whited out an entry and she wanted to make sure they’d corrected it with the right number. That meant digging through files an
d records to find the original bills.
By the time she’d finished, Shelby had uncovered the realization that a second set of books existed somewhere and quite a bit more money was passing through the business than they actually earned. On top of that, there was a list of property where there were no viable succession of eligible people to inherit the property. It would end up in probate and eventually be sold off to the highest bidder. At first she didn’t understand what significance the list would be until she found a file of wills that matched the list of properties where someone she knew in most cases stood to inherit the land.
It had been a tidy business they’d had going on. One of their acquaintances would befriend an elderly land owner with no known kinfolks and establish themselves as a known friend, then when that person died, the will would be produced with that friend listed as the sole beneficiary. They would liquidate the assets, including the land for a small profit with the land actually ending up belonging to a holding company that she was sure could be traced back to the legal company she worked for.
Not only did they obtain the land, but they laundered the funds from the sale of the land through a second set of books. Shelby did a little more research into the deaths of some of the land owners and some of them were due to unusual accidents. Others were just stated as natural causes. She didn’t believe it.
When she’d gone to the police about what she’d found, they’d set her up with the FBI who convinced her to continue working as if nothing was wrong and help them gather evidence. She did that for over three months before the partners in the law firm got suspicious of her and started watching her closer. She stopped doing anything they might consider suspicious and begged the FBI to get her out it before she got hurt.
By the time they got around to arresting the two senior partners they felt were the ringleaders, she’d been outed by someone in the legal system as the snitch and her life was at stake.
