“It’s fine. Just be comfortable. There’s not going to be anyone up at the cabin who’s going to care if you’re wearing your uniform. At least not since...” She trailed off, as though she couldn’t bring herself to talk about Bianca.
He grabbed his shirt and slipped it over his tank top anyway. It felt strange to be standing in front of her even semi undressed. In all their time together, they hadn’t taken things to a deeply physical level.
He stared at her for a moment, wondering if she was still the same girl he had known before, or if she had given up on her quest to wait until marriage. He’d always appreciated, or at least respected, the effort it took to restrict oneself from pleasures of the flesh, but it wasn’t a dogma that he had been able to follow.
She looked disappointed when he put on the shirt—or was she relieved? It would have been so much easier if he could just read minds.
The drive to the cabin was short, but the entire time he had been glancing over at her, wondering what she was thinking and trying to hold back from asking her the million questions running through his mind. Most were stupid, insipid... Whether or not she liked her job at the ranch, what it was like to still be living with her mother or, for that matter, why she was still choosing to live with Carla. No matter if Gwen stayed or went, her mother would continue her self-destructive behavior. It was only a matter of time...
He pulled to a stop in front of the cabin that Gwen had directed them to. There was a small chicken coop outside it, and there was a bevy of hens clucking inside, waiting to be fed.
Gwen nearly jumped out of the patrol unit and ran to the chickens. She grabbed the bucket out of the galvanized can beside the coop and poured the cracked corn into the trough. The hens came running in a flurry of feathers and clucks.
He stood and watched her, taking in the sight of her body flexing as she moved around the coop. She seemed nervous, but he could have her all wrong. Most people he could read at a glance. The ability to tell whether someone was lying, hiding something or telling the truth came with the job. Yet he didn’t have the same innate gift when it came to Gwen. She was his enigma.
“I’m going to go inside. Feel free to take your time out here, okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. That’s fine. I’ll be out here if you need me.” She didn’t bother to look back at him, fully consumed with opening the henhouse to collect this morning’s eggs. This late in the year, without a light in the henhouse, they both knew that there wouldn’t be many, if any, eggs, but he didn’t say anything.
He walked to the front of the cabin. Its walls were made of the aged, gray logs like those from the pioneering days when the town had been founded. The wooden door sat crooked in the frame, listing like Bianca’s drunk mother. For a moment, he wondered if Bianca had left it like that on purpose as a reminder of what she had to move past in order to live her own life.
He pushed the door open. His breath caught in his throat. Papers were strewn around the room, every drawer was open and the couch cushions had been thrown from their places, one precariously close to the woodstove. Either Bianca was the kind who never cleaned, or someone had turned the place over.
In an effort to avoid causing Gwen any more emotional trauma, he walked inside and closed the door. He pulled out his camera and clicked a few pictures. It was odd how, in just a few short hours, his assignment had led him from thinking this was a natural death to a possible suicide to now something much more sinister.
He couldn’t say if Bianca’s death was a murder. Nothing about Bianca’s body or presentation at the scene had pointed toward a struggle or malevolent act, but his instincts told him to push the investigation deeper.
Unfortunately, he was leaving in a few days for a prisoner transfer in Alaska. If he followed his instincts, he could be wrapped up in this investigation for weeks—and he had been wrong before. Just a year ago, he’d wasted time investigating a case similar to this. Maybe it had been his bravado, or his need to follow every lead, but he’d spent two weeks tracking down every thread just to find out from the medical examiner that their victim had died of a methadone overdose. The guy had been seeking euphoria—and all he’d found was the grave.
Wyatt walked through the cabin, careful not to disturb things in case he needed to call in his team of investigators—and what a team it was, two of the least-trained CSI guys anyone had ever met. In fact, he wasn’t sure if Lyle and Steve had ever gone to college, or if their certification had come from some online university where they never had to actually set foot on a crime scene to graduate.
There was a squeak from behind him. Gwen stood there, her hands over her mouth as she stared at the mess of papers, clothes and overturned chairs.
“Do you know who would have done this?” he asked, staring at her.
Her eyes were wide and she dropped her balled fists to her sides. She glanced at him and shook her head.
He’d been wrong about Gwen. He’d thought he couldn’t read her. Yet when she looked at him, he could see she was lying.
Chapter Three
They’d gone through everything. Or at least it felt like it. Gwen closed her sister’s dresser drawer with a thump.
“Anything?” Wyatt asked, motioning toward the drawer that had been filled with her sister’s bras.
From an objective point of view, it struck her as a bit funny and maybe a touch endearing that Wyatt, the type-A man who seemed most at home in his squad car, was squeamish about riffling through her sister’s underwear drawer. In high school he had seen just about every pair of panties that Gwen had owned, though things had always stopped there.
She glanced over at him. He had been good-looking back in the day, but he was nothing then compared to the man he had become—the man she had just watched throwing bales of hay around like they were pillows rather than seventy-five pounds of dead weight. If things had been different, if she could have ignored the pull of reality, she could have stood there all day and watched him sweat.
He brushed past her, leaving the room, and he still carried the sweet scent of hay, horses and leather. The heady aroma made her lift her head as she drew in a long whiff of the man she had once loved.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t been in relationships, it had only been a few months—wait, a year—since her last thing. It hadn’t quite been a Facebook-official relationship. No, it had been more of a burger-and-a-beer/Netflix-and-chill kind of thing. No real feelings beyond lust and the occasional need for a back rub. It had been great until he had suddenly disappeared, and two months later she had seen the guy’s engagement to another woman splashed across their tiny paper, the Mystery Daily.
The news hadn’t hurt so much as caused her the emotional whiplash that came with being so quickly replaced. A month after the engagement announcement, she still hadn’t gotten an invite to the wedding that nearly the entire population of the small town had received. She had always resigned herself to the belief that everyone knew everyone’s business in Mystery—yet a few had still asked her why she hadn’t gone and she had been forced to tactfully remove herself from the conversation.
“You okay?” Wyatt surprised her as he touched her shoulder ever so lightly.
How long had he been standing there?
She nodded, thankful he’d pulled her from her thoughts. “What do you think they were looking for in here?” She motioned around her sister’s cabin.
“First, we don’t know if this was a they kind of situation. Maybe your sister did this. There’s no proof that her death was anything unnatural, or more than a—”
Suicide.
He didn’t need to finish the sentence to inflict the pain that came with the word.
“My sister wouldn’t kill herself. You knew her. You saw her almost every week. Do you really think that she could do something like that—or like this?” She waved at the strewn couch cushions.
“No one turns over their own place.”
He looked away, but she could see in the way his eyes darkened that he was already thinking the same thing.
The desk where her sister’s laptop normally sat was conspicuously empty. But the printer was still there, and there was a wastebasket on the ground, its contents strewn across the floor like everything else in the cabin. She pulled away from Wyatt’s touch and picked up one of the balled-up pieces of paper. Uncurling the wad, she found an email. It was dated November 27—one week earlier. She didn’t recognize the email address or the long bits of code that her sister included in the printout. It looked like it had been pulled from the printer before it was done, and long dabs of ink were smudged down the paper’s length.
“What’s that?” Wyatt asked, sidestepping her as though he was trying his best not to touch her again.
“I dunno... It looks odd, though,” she said, flipping the page so he could see.
It was probably nothing. She crumpled the paper in her hands and, picking up the garbage can, dropped it in. Maybe she was looking too hard and trying to see things that were not really there—she glanced at Wyatt—especially when it came to him.
He bent down and picked up another of the papers. He sucked in a breath as he looked over the page.
“What is it?”
He held the paper and didn’t move, almost as though if he stood still she wouldn’t have asked the question.
She stepped closer and looked over his shoulder.
The email was almost identical to the one she had picked up, but instead of black smudges of ink, the message was there in its entirety:
RUN AND LIVE.
STAY AND DIE.
CHOICE IS YOURS.
Why hadn’t Bianca told anyone about the threat? And why, oh, why, had she chosen to stay?
* * *
HE SENT A picture of the email to the head of the IT department, Max, along with a promise that if Max got back to Wyatt within a day, Wyatt would personally take him on a ride-along. He hated ride-alongs, especially when it entailed taking a person who would ask more questions than a kid on Mountain Dew. Yet without a doubt, it would expedite the process—and he needed answers as soon as possible.
He was having one heck of a time focusing on anything other than the way he wanted to take Gwen into his arms and hold her. She looked so broken. Every time she stopped moving, she zoned out, almost as though she couldn’t find the strength to start moving again.
He knew the feeling all too well. It was why he never stopped—the moment you started bringing up the pain was the moment the world collapsed around you. In his line of work, it was best to just bury the past...along with anything else that kept him up at night. Bianca’s death was definitely going to fall in that category.
Bianca had looked nearly pristine when he’d arrived on scene. Her hair was pulled back into her signature ponytail and her scrubs were still clean, like she’d just pulled them out of the dryer before she had come out to the ranch.
His heart sank at the thought of the ranch. No wonder Gwen was so lost. She had so many reasons to be angry. So many people she could point a finger at, and no one more than him. Even in the event of Bianca’s death he could be held responsible—at least tangentially. He had likely been home, resting comfortably after a long day on shift. If he’d been more involved in the comings and goings of Dunrovin, if he had agreed to feed the horses, or been around at all, maybe she would still be alive. Not that Gwen knew that—but her being unaware didn’t relieve any of his guilt.
Gwen was doing it again, staring at the floor like it was the exact spot where Bianca had been found. His hands twitched with the need to feel her in them.
“Let’s go. I’ll run you back home.”
She jerked as though she had forgotten where they were.
He took care to lock the door to the cabin to stop anyone from coming back in, and then he held her hand on the way back to the car. Her fingers were limp in his. She was a ghost of what she used to be—strong and hot, as wild and free as the Montana mountains and wilderness that surrounded them. He wished he could pull her from her stupor, pull her back to the land of the living instead of falling deeper into the pit of the despondent.
It wasn’t long before they were bumping down the Widow Maker Ranch’s long, snowy driveway, laden with potholes and ruts left over from hard use in summer and fall. As Wyatt twisted and turned, trying to avoid the worst of the bumps and the largest snowdrifts, he was reminded of how life was just like a road—full of obstacles and dangers.
Something hit the car and he tapped on the brakes as he tried to identify the source of the sound. There was another thump and he pulled to a stop.
“What was that?” Gwen asked, looking around.
Pastures lined both sides of the drive, grasses so tall that even in the snow it looked like they were in a sea of brown reeds—making it nearly impossible to see who or what could have been responsible for the sound.
“Stay inside,” he said as he stepped out of the car.
He walked to the front of the patrol unit. On its fender were the scattered, oozing remnants of two eggs. He turned just in time to see Carla holding a carton and pulling her arm back to take aim.
“Stop, Carla!” he ordered, his voice hard-edged and full of authority.
The egg flew through the air, missing him by just a few inches and smacking against the car’s windshield.
Gwen stepped out of the car and slammed the door. “Mother, what in the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Her mother smeared her forearm under her nose and dropped the carton of eggs, its contents rolling on the ground at her feet. “He’s a bastard...” She motioned to Wyatt as though he couldn’t hear her. “It’s his damned fault.” She reached behind her back.
His fine-tuned senses kicked into full gear. “Hands where I can see them!” he yelled.
Carla laughed, her sound high and malicious. “You don’t get to order me around. I’ve known you since you were born. You loved my daughter. You knew Jimmy. Yet you did nothing...nothing to protect my Bianca. You let your family’s demons take her.”
There were any number of demons she could have been talking about when it came to his family, but in this moment it didn’t matter—all that mattered was what she was holding behind her back and what she planned on doing with it.
“Put your hands where I can see them.” He slowly reached down for the Taser on his utility belt.
The last thing he wanted to do was to tase Gwen’s mother. Things were already tense enough, but no matter what his feelings toward Gwen and her family were, his job and their safety came first.
“I don’t want to hurt you... I don’t...” Carla said as she moved toward him, her motions jerky as though her body and her mind were in disagreement. “But you and your family... You all keep ruining my life. You want to take everything from me.”
“We didn’t take anything from you.” He knew he shouldn’t argue with the grief-crazed woman, but he couldn’t hear her drag his family through the mud anymore. She needed to be pulled back to reality.
She dropped her hand to her side. In her grip was a snub-nosed revolver.
Either she was going to shoot him or herself—either way, he couldn’t allow her to keep that gun in her possession.
“Drop the gun, Carla,” he said.
She looked at him, and a tear slipped down her cheek. As the wind kicked up, he could smell the strong scent of whiskey wafting from her—even stronger than before.
She shook her head, the action slow and deliberate.
“Mother. No. Don’t do this,” Gwen said. “You can’t play at this. Not again. Wyatt is a deputy. He has every right to shoot you if you lift that gun. Drop. It. Now.”
Not again? Was Carla’s threat something she did on
a regular basis?
He thought his family had the corner on putting the fun in dysfunctional.
Gwen stepped around the car and moved toward her mother.
“No,” he ordered, putting his arm out and trying to stop her without actually losing sight of the gun. “Stay back, Gwen.” He tried to hedge his tone between the hard edge of work and the softness of the feelings he still carried for her, but it came out much sharper than he intended.
Gwen looked at him like he had struck her.
He chastised himself, he’d screwed that all up, but now wasn’t the time to fully explain himself. “I don’t want her to hurt you.”
“She’s my mother,” she spat out. “She’s not dangerous. Really. You need to trust me.”
He felt the slice of her words as she cut away at his flaw—trust had never been his strong suit and she knew it. Why did she have to call him out at a time like this?
If something happened, if Carla pulled that trigger, he would have to answer to those above him. They would never understand if he went against procedure—even for a woman he used to know and her daughter, whom he wanted to get to know again.
“Your mother or not, Gwen, she can’t do this.” He raised his Taser. “This is the last time I ask, Carla,” he said, moving into range. “If you don’t put the gun down, I will be forced to tase you. Your choice.”
Carla lifted the gun.
“Wyatt, no!” Gwen yelled.
He pulled the trigger.
Carla hit the ground, convulsing as the electricity pulsed through her.
He ran to her side and kicked the gun from her hand before picking it up and opening the cylinder to look for rounds. The gun was empty.
Chapter Four
The next morning, Wyatt puttered around his trailer on the edge of the Dunrovin Ranch. Sleep had been elusive, and as he waited for the coffee to fill his cup, his mind wandered to Gwen and Carla. He shouldn’t have taken Carla down. Then again, what choice had she given him? He’d warned her—repeatedly. Did she think he was bluffing? That he wouldn’t pull the trigger?
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