Hitched!

by B. J Daniels

  He hated the way he’d been treating her since seeing what some bastard had done to her. He couldn’t help his anger. He wanted to kill the son of a bitch.

  A part of him also wanted to grab Josey and shake some sense into her. How could she have let something like this happen? Clearly, she’d gotten hooked up with the wrong guy. Why had he thought her too smart to fall for a man like that? He was disappointed in her.

  But it only amplified the fact that he didn’t know this woman. Apparently not at all.

  “You’ve never ridden a horse before, have you?” he said now. “I saw your expression at breakfast.”

  “That had more to do with you than horses,” she said, as she stepped into the barn. “I woke up last night and you were gone.”

  He finished cinching down the saddle and turned to her. “I went downstairs for a drink.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Before or after you sneaked outside with a crowbar?” she asked. She started to turn away when he grabbed her arm and swung her back around to face him.

  “What are you doing here with me?” he demanded.

  She looked into his eyes, and he lost himself for a moment in that sea of green. “I didn’t have anything better to do.”

  He let go of her arm, shaking his head. “So we’re both lying to each other. Be honest with me and I’ll be honest with you,” he challenged. “What are you running from? Or should I say who are you running from?”

  She took a step back. “Whatever you’re doing here, it’s none of my business.”

  He laughed. “Just like whoever is after you is none of my business?”

  “It’s better if you don’t know.”

  He gave her an impatient look. “I’d like to know what has you so scared.”

  “No, you don’t.” With that she turned as if to leave, but collided with Alfred Hoagland, who was standing just outside.

  “I came to see if you needed help saddling the horses,” the old man said, his two large hands on each of her shoulders to steady her. “Change your mind about going for a ride?”

  “No,” she said, pulling free of him and stepping back into the barn.

  “I’ve got it covered, Alfred,” Jack said.

  The old man stood in the doorway for a moment. “Fine with me,” he said before turning away.

  Jack stepped past Josey to make sure Alfred wasn’t still standing outside listening.

  “Do you think he heard what we were saying?” she whispered behind him.

  “Don’t worry about it.” He turned his back to her.

  “Look, if you’ve changed your mind about this marriage—”

  “I haven’t,” he quickly interrupted. “I’m sorry about the way I’ve been acting. Coming back here…” He waved a hand through the air. “It’s hard to explain. I have a lot of conflicting emotions going on right now. But I’m glad you’re here with me. Come for a ride with me. It’s a beautiful day, and Enid packed us a lunch so we can be gone until suppertime. You have to admit, that has its appeal.”

  IT DID. Just like Jack did when he smiled the way he was smiling at her now. Earlier, she’d stood quietly studying him from the barn doorway as he saddled the horses. He’d been unaware she was there and she hadn’t said anything, enjoying watching him.

  He’d spoken softly to each horse, touching and stroking the horses in such a gentle way that she’d found herself enthralled by this side of the man.

  Now she eyed her horse, wondering what she’d gotten herself into. Her horse, like Jack’s, was huge. She told herself she could handle this. After everything she’d been through, this should be easy.

  But when she looked at Jack she didn’t feel strong or tough. She felt scared and hurt. It was crazy that what he thought of her could hurt so much, and it scared her that she cared. She barely knew this man she was pretending to be wed to, and his sneaking away from their room last night proved it.

  Worse, she couldn’t help thinking about what his reaction would be if he knew the truth. She cringed at the thought.

  “Ready?” Jack swung up into his saddle with a fluid, graceful motion that made her jealous. Everything seemed to come easy for him, making her wonder about the story he’d told at dinner last night.

  Apparently, he’d had a hard life, and yet it didn’t show on him. Unless his bruises were deeper than her own.

  She concentrated on attempting to copy Jack’s movements. She grabbed hold of the saddle horn and tried to pull herself up enough to get a foot in the stirrup.

  She heard Jack chuckle and climb down from his horse.

  “Here, let me help you.” He didn’t sound upset with her anymore. She wished that didn’t make her as happy as it did. “Put your foot in my hands.”

  She looked into his face, overcome by the gentleness she saw there, and felt tears well in her eyes. She hurriedly put her booted foot into his clasped hands and, balancing herself with one hand on his shoulder, was lifted up and into the saddle.

  The horse shuddered, and she grabbed the saddle horn with both hands, feeling way too high above the ground.

  “Thank you,” she said, furtively wiping at her tears.

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  He misread the reason for her tears. She nodded, not looking at him. What was wrong with her? She hadn’t shed a tear throughout her recent ordeal, and here she was fighting tears? She was letting Jack Winchester get to her. Big mistake.

  “I want to do this.” She could feel his gaze on her and was relieved when he walked around and climbed back on his horse.

  As her horse followed Jack’s out of the barn, she looked at the vast country and took a deep breath. Her father always told her she could do anything she set her mind to. But her father had been gone for years now, and her mother no longer knew her.

  They rode through tall green grass across rolling prairie, the air smelling sweet with clover. In the distance, Josey could see the dark outline of a mountain range. Jack told her they were the Little Rockies.

  They’d ridden from rocky dry land covered with nothing but cactus and sagebrush into this lush, pine-studded, beautiful country. It surprised her how quickly the landscape changed. Even the colors. They ran in shades of silken green to deep purple by the time they reached the horizon.

  They stopped on a high ridge deep in the Missouri Breaks. She felt as if she was on top of the world, the land running wide-open to the horizons as clouds bobbed in a sea of blue overhead. “It’s amazing up here,” she said, taking an awed breath.

  “It’s still lonely country,” he said. “There isn’t anything for miles.”

  “Your grandmother doesn’t run cattle or grow any crops?”

  “She used to, back when the family all lived on the ranch, but I’m sure she sold off the herd after we all left,” Jack said. “All she had was Enid and Alfred, and you can tell by the shape the place is in that they haven’t been able to keep up with maintaining the house and barns. I’m surprised she kept the horses, but I suspect Alfred must ride. I wouldn’t imagine my grandmother’s been on a horse in years.”

  “You used to ride as a boy?” she guessed.

  He nodded. “My mother and I rode down here. It was our favorite spot.”

  She heard a wistfulness in his voice that she hadn’t heard since they’d been here, a love for this country and a sorrow for the mother he’d loved.

  “You miss this,” she said.

  He chuckled.

  She could almost feel the battle going on inside him. He’d come here to even a score with his grandmother in some way. But a part of him wanted this, not the money, but the land, and not just to own it, but to ranch it.

  “What would you do if your grandmother asked you to stay?”

  “She won’t.”

  “How can you be so sure of that?”

  “Because I know her.”

  “Maybe she’s changed.”

  He chuckled again. “Right. Anyway, it’s too late.”

  Was it ever too late? She
thought of RJ. Maybe some people were too bitter, too sick, too hateful to ever change. Maybe Jack’s grandmother was one of them.

  She listened to the breeze blow through the boughs of the ponderosa pines and wished she and Jack never had to go back to civilization.

  “I’d run cattle on it the way this ranch was when I was a kid,” Jack said suddenly. “I’d get wheat growing up on those high benches and alfalfa and hay. I’d make it a working ranch again instead of…” His voice trailed off and he laughed, as if at his own foolishness. “Just talking,” he said. “I came up here to say goodbye.”

  They ate the lunch Enid had packed them with a view of the lake where the Missouri River widened into Fort Peck Reservoir. The water looked like a sparkling blue jewel hidden in this untamed, uninhabited country.

  “I’m sorry about the way I reacted last night,” Jack said after they’d finished a sandwich and soda on a large flat rock.

  She nodded, a lump in her throat. This was the last thing she wanted to talk about.

  “I was just so angry at the person who did that to you…” His voice trailed off. “And I took that anger out on you.”

  She understood more than he knew.

  “Josey, I want to help.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t know any more about me than I do you. I think it is best if we leave it that way.”

  “That’s not true. You’ve met my family. You know where I was born. Hell, you practically know my whole life history.”

  “Just up to the age of six. I don’t even know where you live now.”

  “Wyoming. Ten Sleep, Wyoming. How about you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Look, I know you’re in trouble and it’s because of a dangerous man.” He raised his hand to keep her from interrupting him. Not that she was going to. So far he’d been dead-on. “All I’m saying is that maybe I can help.”

  Josey smiled, her eyes burning with tears again. She was touched and hated that she was. “Don’t be so nice to me, okay?”

  “I can’t help myself.” His gaze locked with hers.

  She felt the heat in those eyes, the blue like a hot flame. Their thighs brushed as he moved, the touch sending a flurry of emotions racing through her.

  Jack drew her into his arms before she could protest. His mouth dropped to hers as his strong arms encircled her.

  His kiss was filled with passion and heat and, strangely enough, a gentleness like he’d shown with the horses, as if he knew to go easy with her because she would spook easily.

  She did more than let him kiss her. She kissed him back, matching his passion and his heat, if not his gentleness, until she came to her senses and drew back.

  He was looking at her, his eyes filled with a soft tenderness.

  It was as if a dam burst. All the tears she’d repressed for so long broke free. He pulled her back into his arms, holding her as she sobbed, his large hand rubbing her back as he whispered soothing words she could neither hear nor understand.

  MCCALL STOOD OUTSIDE the cold, sterile autopsy room waiting for George to come out and give her the results. The crime lab had flown in personnel to do the autopsy. George was assisting.

  She’d had only a few hours’ sleep before she’d called down to the Missouri River this morning to check with Luke. They were dragging the river and had been since daylight. So far, nothing.

  George didn’t look so hot as he came out of the autopsy room. “I figured you’d be waiting.” He made her sound ghoulish. “The report should be typed up within an hour.”

  She shook her head. She didn’t want to wait that long. “Just give me the highlights.”

  He sighed, looking exhausted and a little green around the gills. She figured he regretted taking this job and wondered how long he’d last.

  “Could we at least sit down for minute?” he asked, and headed for the conference room.

  She grabbed them both a cup of coffee from the machine and joined him.

  “As you know, she had numerous signs of abuse,” he said, as she handed him a cup of coffee and sat down. “Scars, cuts and bruises, cigarette burns. She had either been with a long-time abuser or…”

  “She got off on it,” McCall guessed.

  He grimaced.

  “So maybe the hanging was a sexual thing.”

  George looked even more uncomfortable. “With two women? There were two places where ropes had been tied to the limb.”

  McCall thought about it for a few moments as she sipped her coffee. “Maybe we were wrong about there being another victim. Maybe he’d hung her up there before and the limb had held the first time. This time, it didn’t.”

  “I guess. But how do you explain the car in the river?”

  She shook her head. “I guess it would depend on whether or not they were alone at that camp. We’ve just assumed Vanderliner was with the other two because she was seen with her stepbrother leaving the scene of the murder and we found her purse.”

  McCall rubbed her temples. “Also there were at least three different sets of footprints found at the scene, two women’s-size types of sneakers and tracks that matched the loafer we found stuck under the brake pedal of the car.”

  “You’re thinking the victim on the slab could have had more than one pair of sneakers,” George offered.

  “Or the other prints could be those of the missing Josephine Vanderliner. It would explain the other noose, and we have three different hair samples from the car, which was only a couple of days old. We know Vanderliner was in the car at some point because of the eyewitness but we don’t know for how long. He could have dumped her and kept her purse.”

  “So we don’t know if Vanderliner made it as far as Montana.”

  McCall nodded thoughtfully. “I just have a bad feeling she’s here. Either in that river or on the loose. I stopped by the newspaper office early this morning. They’re running photographs of both RJ Evans and Josephine Vanderliner. If either of them got out of that river, then someone has to have seen them. They were going to need a ride since the only tracks we found were for the car in the river.”

  “Great,” George said. “One of them abuses women for the fun of it and the other is wanted for murder.” He shook his head. “I hope you put something in the paper to warn residents in case they come across them.”

  “Armed and dangerous and possibly traveling together.”

  Chapter Seven

  RJ felt like hell. His shoulder had quit bleeding. Fortunately the bullet had only furrowed through his flesh and missed the bone, but it hurt like a son of a bitch. He knew he had to get some antibiotics. If it wasn’t already infected.

  But right now he was more concerned about the blow to his head. The double vision was driving him crazy. That and the killer headache. Bitches.

  Celeste had almost drowned him. Josey had shot him. He’d been damned lucky to get out of that car. He wondered where Celeste was. The last he’d seen her she had been sucked out of the car by the current.

  He’d gotten his foot caught under the brake pedal. When he’d finally freed himself, he’d come up downriver in time to see Josey getting away. He’d been bleeding like a stuck pig and was half-blind from the blow on his head, but even crazed as he was, he knew he had to catch her or everything he’d worked for would turn to a pile of crap.

  How had things gone so wrong? Maybe Celeste was right. Maybe it had been when he’d lost his temper and strung her up from that tree limb. He hadn’t meant to kill her, just shut her the hell up.

  No, where things had really gone haywire was when he decided to string up Josey next to her. Should have known that limb couldn’t hold both of them. Shouldn’t have left the pistol lying on that log by the fire pit, either.

  But who knew either of those women could move that fast? He hadn’t been that surprised when Josey had shot him. He’d expected something like that from her, but he’d never seen it coming with Celeste. She’d been like a wild animal when she’d attacked him.

  He�
�d tied the ropes to the bumper of the car and strung up both women. When the damned limb broke, he’d thrown the car in Reverse, thinking he could run them down. But then Josey had shot at him and Celeste had come flying in the driver-side window at him, the rope still around her neck and dragging in the dirt. She’d knocked the breath out of him.

  And with her pummeling him he hadn’t realized he was still in Reverse, the car still going backward toward the river. The next thing he knew the car was in the river and he was underwater and Celeste, that stupid whore, was still fighting him.

  Shuddering now at the memory of how close he’d come to drowning, he stumbled and almost fell. He’d climbed out of the river and gone after Josey. He knew she’d make a run for it. No surprise, she’d taken the backpack with the money and his gun in it.

  He’d climbed the hill back to the single-track dirt road. That was when he’d spotted her. She had shoes, so she had made better time than him. He’d lost both of his in the river, and he was shot and hurt, and with nothing but socks on his bare feet the ground felt rough.

  He’d seen her on the highway halfway up the mountainside. Too far away to shoot her even if he’d had the pistol. Maybe with a rifle…

  But then a pale yellow Cadillac convertible had roared across the bridge and up the other side, stopping three-quarters of the way up the mountain when the driver saw Josey standing beside the road.

  RJ had picked up a rock and thrown it as hard as he could. It hit on the mountain below him and rolled down, starting a small avalanche. But of course it hadn’t stopped Josey from disappearing in the Cadillac.

  He didn’t know how far he walked last night. He just knew he had to put some distance between him and the river. He’d finally laid down under a big pine tree and slept until daylight. The soles of his feet were bleeding through his socks.

  He’d awakened this morning and realized he could see the highway from where he was on the side of the mountain and the cop cars. All that commotion. They must have found Celeste.

  That was when he knew he was in trouble. He had to find Josey before the cops did. But he couldn’t track her down in the shape he was in. He needed shoes, clothes, a vehicle, medicine and some drugs. He’d lost his stash in the car when it went into the water. He felt jittery and irritable. Soon his skin would be crawling as if there were bugs just under the surface.