Hunting Down the Horseman

by B. J Daniels

  For years the sewing circle had handled adoptions undercover, so to speak. They would find good homes for the babies and make each a baby quilt. It wasn’t until recently that Eve had found out just how important that baby quilt was.

  “No, I didn’t take her to the hospital.” Mary Ellen said it with a finality, and for the first time, Eve saw how much these decisions had plagued her life ever since. “I let my sister suffer, watched her cry and scream as she brought not one but two babies into the world.”

  “You must have helped her,” Eve said.

  “There was a point where I regretted what I’d done, but by then it was too late. We couldn’t have reached the hospital in time. I was young. I knew nothing of babies and birth. I wrapped each baby in an old towel. I was scared. I didn’t know what to do.” She looked up at Eve. “You and your brother were so small, so fragile looking. As much as I hated my sister and Paul, I wanted you and your brother to live.”

  Eve listened as Mary Ellen told of her decision to take the babies to town. “Constance was too weak to travel. She insisted I just get the babies to the hospital. All she cared about was her babies. She loved you so much.” The older woman’s voice broke. “It was winter. I hadn’t realized it, but a storm had blown in. I didn’t get far before I got stuck in a drift. I saw a farmhouse and, taking the babies, I waded through the snow to it.”

  “I know we were flown to Whitehorse in a small plane two days later, so I assume we never made it to the hospital.”

  Mary Ellen shook her head. “I told the elderly woman that a runaway girl I’d come across had given birth to the babies and didn’t want them. The woman said not to worry, she knew what to do. The storm got worse, though. I ended up being trapped there for two days.”

  Eve held her breath, knowing the story was about to end—and end badly. “My mother?” she asked, for the first time saying the words.

  “When I found her, she had bled to death.”

  “SOMEONEHASTO BE MISSING,” Faith argued when Jud gave her the news.

  “I talked to Nancy. Everyone is accounted for. Look, I don’t like leaving you, but I have to get into town for the saloon shoot. Are you sure you’re going to be all right? Why don’t you come along?”

  She shook her head stubbornly. She knew what she’d seen. “Then something large must be missing. If it wasn’t a body, then it must have been equipment.”

  “Nothing appears to be missing,” he repeated.

  “How do you explain the pickup tracks in the dry creek bed then?”

  “Maybe there was a pickup there last night. There are always lookie-loos around a movie set. Please come with me. I don’t like leaving you here alone.”

  She met his gaze. His concern touched her even though she didn’t want it to. “You’d better get going. I’ll stop by after your shoot. Right now I just need some rest. Don’t worry, I’ll lock myself in.”

  His relief was almost palpable. “We’ll figure this out, okay? Fortunately, no matter what happened last night, you came out of it just a little worse for wear.”

  She touched the knot on her temple under her bandage.

  “So no real harm was done,” he said.

  Except for whoever that was who was dragged from the movie set, she thought, but she had the good sense to keep her mouth shut. No one was missing. She couldn’t have seen a body being dragged away. Too bad she didn’t believe that.

  Jud seemed to think that was end of it. He didn’t know her, she thought, as he waited until she’d locked the trailer door behind her before he headed for his pickup and Whitehorse.

  FINDING OUT how her mother had died, Eve began to cry even though she’d promised herself she wouldn’t. Hadn’t she known this was the case? Hadn’t she known the moment Mary Ellen, instead of her mother, had contacted her?

  “And Paul?” Eve asked after a moment.

  Mary Ellen went very still. While her gaze appeared to be on the far motel wall, Eve knew it was in the past, thirty-four years ago in some run-down old house north of Whitehorse in the middle of winter.

  “In my rush to get the babies to safety, I’d left my father’s gun behind. I discovered Paul beside Constance’s bed on the floor. Apparently he’d found her and seen the gun and…” She swallowed and looked away. “And thinking the babies lost as well, killed himself. Until that moment, I’d told myself that it was me he truly loved, not my sister.”

  Eve took a breath and let it out slowly. She knew she should hate this woman. How different hers and Bridger’s lives would have been had Mary Ellen Small never lived. This hateful woman had destroyed two lives and changed Eve’s and her brother’s forever. They would never know their mother or father because of a sister’s jealousy and revenge.

  “Constance loved you and your brother more than her own life,” Mary Ellen said, her hands now folded in her lap. “I have no doubt your father loved you equally as much or he wouldn’t have done what he did.”

  “Where are they buried?” Eve asked.

  “In the Whitehorse Cemetery in unmarked graves.”

  Eve nodded and rose slowly from the table. As a child she’d asked about the two white stones with no names on them.

  “No one knows who they were,” her mother had told her.

  “But there are angels on the stones,” Eve had said.

  “Yes. I think they are both angels now.”

  Eve felt the full weight of the lies and truths she’d been told her whole life. Her mother had known who was buried in those graves. No doubt the Whitehorse Sewing Circle had purchased the headstones. They’d had to cover up the truth to protect Eve and Bridger.

  How Eve wanted to expose them all. But exposing the Whitehorse Sewing Circle would mean exposing her own family. Her mother, her grandmother and grandfather had been some of the ringleaders of the illegal adoption faction. People Eve had known her whole life, good people, now elderly, had been involved. Even today, those people believed they were doing what was right for the babies by finding them homes all those years ago.

  Their legacy was now in Eve’s hands. She and her brother alone had been told by the sewing circle of the secrets that had been stitched into each quilt. Her own sisters were adopted. Who knew what their circumstances had been at birth? It was no wonder they said they had no desire to track down their birth parents.

  But she feared there would be others who would show up one day in Whitehorse searching for the mother who gave them away, and Eve would have to decide whether or not to help them.

  Eve looked at Mary Ellen. She didn’t know what to say to this woman. Her aunt. Mary Ellen had saved hers and Bridger’s lives. If she hadn’t taken them to a neighbors…

  And if she hadn’t come to Whitehorse again and shared this painful story, Eve would have gone on looking into strangers’ faces hoping to see her own.

  “You understand now why I didn’t want to tell you,” Mary Ellen said without raising her head to look at Eve. “The shame and guilt is something I have carried alone all these years. Not even my own mother knows the truth. My father died believing that Constance simply ran away. I could never bear to tell them the truth, that they had lost one daughter because of the other.”

  What a terrible burden the woman had carried for thirty-four long years, Eve thought. “I’m glad you told me. I can see how hard it was for you. But if your sister told your mother everything when she called her—”

  Mary Ellen shook her head. “All she told my mother was that she was in Whitehorse, Montana, and in terrible trouble and wanted to come home. I offered to go after her. I told my parents that when I got there, Constance was gone. I even offered to hire a private investigator to find her.” She nodded. “I had become very good at lying.”

  Eve could see how those lies had crippled this woman. “You were so young when this happened—”

  Mary Ellen swatted the words away. “There is no excuse for what I did. None.”

  “I’m sorry,” Eve said. “I hope that by telling me you might be
able to find some peace.”

  “I am in no place to ask you a favor,” Mary Ellen said, her voice thick with emotion. “But I must. My mother, your grandmother, I want to tell her about you and your brother. She is innocent in all this. She is a wonderful woman who deserves to know she has two grandchildren.”

  “And a great-grandchild. Bridger’s wife just had a baby boy. They named him Jack.”

  Mary Ellen’s eyes flooded with tears. “It would mean everything to my mother, since I have never married.”

  A grandmother. A great-grandmother for Bridger’s baby. Isn’t this what Eve had always hoped for? Family? “I will have to talk to my brother first.”

  Mary Ellen nodded. “I understand. Please, let him know that my mother is nothing like me.”

  On impulse, Eve took the woman’s hand. A woman who’d done despicable things and paid a high price all these years for them. “I will tell my brother that our mother died in childbirth and her babies were taken away to be given to good homes. That our father loved her so much and, thinking his children were also lost, took his own life. That is all he needs to know. It is time we all let go of the past.”

  Eve hugged her aunt for a long moment, then left, driving first to see her husband at the sheriff’s office, desperately needing to be in his strong arms. Then to see her brother, Bridger.

  JUD HAD TROUBLE concentrating. He hadn’t been able to stop worrying about Faith. Fortunately he’d been in more than his fair share of fight scenes and could do them in his sleep. He was just glad when he was gone because he was anxious to find Faith. She’d said she would stop by, but she hadn’t.

  “Where the hell is Chantal?” Zander demanded when all of the stunts were completed and the saloon cleaned up for the interior shots.

  Zander had rented the local bar for the day. According to the call sheet, Chantal and Nevada had three scenes to shoot before the day was over.

  “I’ll try to reach her,” Nancy said, snapping open her cell phone. She listened for a few minutes, then left an urgent message. Cell phone coverage was sketchy in this part of the country, but more than likely Chantal just wasn’t answering for whatever reason.

  “She’s probably on her way,” Nancy said and gave Nevada a questioning glance.

  “Don’t look at me,” he snapped. “I haven’t seen her since…wait a minute.” His face flushed. “I just remembered. Right before we all left, she said she had to run back to her trailer for something.”

  Zander swore profusely. “Nancy—”

  “I’ll go get her,” Jud said. He wanted to check on Faith.

  He told himself as he drove back out to the camp that she was fine. Probably she’d overslept. Or she could still be mad at him for not believing her about what she thought she’d seen last night and decided she didn’t want to stop by.

  As he topped the hill and saw the camp below, he felt a fresh wave of anxiety. He’d gotten Faith into this and now he feared that he’d put her in danger. Nearing the parking area, he saw that Faith’s pickup was gone.

  He felt a stab of disappointment. He’d hoped she was still sleeping. He wanted to see her, even if for only a few minutes.

  Climbing out of his truck, he headed for Chantal’s trailer, telling himself that Faith had probably gone to town just as she said she would. There was no cause for concern.

  For whatever reason she hadn’t stopped by to see him. No big deal. If it had been any other woman, he would have just shrugged it off.

  “Grow up,” he told himself as he tapped on Chantal’s door. He could hear music coming from inside and wasn’t surprised when she opened the door smelling of perfume and Scotch.

  “I wondered how long it would take someone to realize I wasn’t there,” she said with a tight smile.

  “Nevada just remembered that you’d gone back to your trailer for something.”

  Her face twisted in anger. “The bastard. I should have known. I told him to tell Nancy. That’s the second damned time I’ve been stood up in two days.” Her anger had quickly turned to self-pity. “Tell me, what am I doing wrong?” she asked with a come-hither look.

  “I’m sure you’re exaggerating,” he said, waiting patiently for her, knowing Zander would be losing his mind waiting for her.

  She pretended to pout. “I can understand Nevada forgetting me. The man’s gorgeous and an idiot. But Keyes Hasting? I mean, the man is old. Not to mention ugly as a toad. And to make matters worse, it was his idea I meet him last night.”

  Jud hadn’t been listening until then. “You were supposed to meet Keyes Hasting last night and he didn’t show up? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes, haven’t you been listening to me?”

  “Have you seen him since then?” he demanded.

  “Are you serious? After he stood me up?”

  Keyes Hasting. Had anyone seen him this morning? When Jud had asked Nancy if everyone was accounted for, she wouldn’t have included Hasting.

  Jud looked toward the parking area where Hasting’s rental SUV had been parked yesterday. It was gone. Maybe he’d changed his mind about meeting with Chantal and had left. Or maybe he hadn’t.

  Either way, Jud now had to check Faith’s trailer. It would probably be locked, and with her pickup gone, he knew rationally that she wouldn’t be there. He knew he was probably wasting his time, but he had to try.

  She’d been so convinced that she’d seen someone dragging a body away from camp. Why hadn’t he listened to her?

  He sprinted to the trailer anyway, knocked and tried the door, surprised and suddenly apprehensive to find it wasn’t locked.

  “Faith?” No answer. He stepped in. “Faith?”

  Everything looked fine. No sign of a struggle. He glanced down the hall, feeling like a fool. It wasn’t like him to panic like this. Or to feel this way about a woman he wasn’t even dating—let alone sleeping with.

  He was already turning toward the door to leave, when he saw the doll. It was propped up on the bed. He stepped toward it, noticing something strange.

  When he was within a few feet of the bed, he saw that the doll had something on it just below the stitched eye. He picked up the doll. Was that dried blood on it?

  Faith hadn’t left this here. Someone must have put it there after she’d left. At least he hoped that was the case.

  To scare her. Or warn her?

  A sliver of worry burrowed under his skin at the thought that Brooke might resent Faith. Jealousy was an insidious thing. He’d seen it destroy people in this business.

  “I thought we were in a big hurry to get me to the shoot?” Chantal called impatiently from the outside the trailer. “Looks like there’s another thunderstorm headed this way. Good thing we have a covered shoot this afternoon.”

  Jud grabbed the doll and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. The last thing he wanted was for Faith to see it. “Let’s go,” he said, closing the trailer door behind him. Zander would be having a fit.

  But that was the least of Jud’s worries as he headed for his pickup, dark clouds rolling in.

  FAITH HAD LEFT the trailer, the doll on the bed, and driven to the rest home to see her grandmother, Nina Mae. No reason to throw the doll away again so it could show up in the same place again.

  She and her sisters stopped by the rest home every day or so to see their grandmother, even though Nina Mae never recognized them anymore. Her grandmother on her mother’s side had Alzheimer’s. But Nina Mae was always glad to see Faith, even if she didn’t have any idea who she was.

  After that, Faith had driven out to the ranch, only to find Eve gone. At loose ends, Faith had started back to town just as it had begun to rain.

  The rain and dark clouds did nothing to improve her mood. She was still upset with Jud for not believing her about last night. He didn’t want to believe her, she thought, as her cell phone rang.

  “Hello?” She was hoping it would be him. Now that he’d had time to think about it, he was calling to say he’d changed his mind. He
believed her.

  It wasn’t Jud.

  It was Sheriff Carter Jackson, her brother-in-law.

  “I got that information you asked for on Erik Zander,” Carter said.

  She’d completely forgotten she’d asked him for it.

  “That car accident twenty-three years ago?” Carter said. “Zander got a DUI and a ticket for leaving the scene of the accident, but he managed to skate on a manslaughter charge. The young woman with him was killed. He swore she was dead when he left the scene to get help, but he didn’t call in the accident until two hours later, after he’d sobered up a little.”

  Faith felt sick. What if the woman had been alive those two hours? She knew people panicked and he’d been young twenty-three years ago, an up-and-coming director who’d already made a name for himself.

  But two deaths both involving young women?

  “I did discover something I thought you might find interesting,” Carter was saying. “The dead woman went by Star Bishop, but her legal name was Angie Harris. She’d just gotten a divorce and moved to California. Her maiden name was Keifer, same as Brooke’s before she changed it to Keith. According to birth records, Angie Kiefer gave birth to a daughter twenty-seven years ago. Samantha Brooke.”

  Brooke Keith was the daughter of the dead woman?

  Chapter Twelve

  Faith jumped at a tap on her pickup’s side window. Her heart lodged in her throat as she looked over to find Brooke Keith staring in at her from the rain.

  “I have to go,” Faith said into the phone and snapped it shut as she whirred down the window. A gust of cold, wet air rushed in. Just the sight of Brooke standing there had already made her shiver. Now she felt chilled to the bone.

  “Brooke.” Frantically, Faith tried to remember what she’d been saying on the phone. Had Brooke overheard the conversation from outside the truck?

  “I saw you sitting there,” Brooke said, her demeanor odd, but probably no odder than usual. “I realized I came on a little too strong earlier. Sorry. It’s wet out here. Could we talk in your pickup?”