by Lisa Jackson
It didn’t feel right.
Something about the way the case was coming down felt disjointed, out of sync.
Two days had passed since Eric Brown had called and the police had taken Donahue into custody, and yet Striker had the niggling sensation that wouldn’t let go of him that something was off. That he was missing something vital.
He stood on the porch of the cabin and stared into old-growth timber that reached to the sky. The air was fresh from a shower earlier. Residual raindrops slid earthward from the fronds of thick ferns and long needles. Earlier, as he’d sat in the broken-down porch swing, he’d spotted a doe and her fawns, two jackrabbits and a raccoon scuttling into the thickets of fir and spruce. The sun had been out earlier, but now was sinking fast and the gloom of night was closing in. Striker was restless, felt that same itch that warned him trouble was brewing. Big trouble.
He hankered for a cigarette though he’d given up the habit ten years earlier. Only in times of stress or after two beers did he ever experience the yen for a swift hit of nicotine. Since he hadn’t had a drop of liquor in days, it had to be the stress of the situation. Maybe it was because both he and Randi were experiencing a bad case of cabin fever.
Even the baby was cranky. No doubt the little guy had picked up on the vibes within the cabin. During the days the tension between him and Randi had been so thick a machete would have had trouble hacking through it. And the nights had been worse. Excruciating. Sheer damn torture as he’d tried, and failed, to keep his hands off her. Though neither one of them admitted the wanting, it was there, between them, enticing and erotic, and each night they’d given in to the temptation, making love as intensely as if they both thought it would be the last time.
Which it should be, all things considered.
But the fire he felt for her, the blinding, searing passion, wasn’t an emotion easily dismissed; especially not in the cold mountain nights when she was so close to him, as willing, as eager as he to touch and reconnect.
Just thinking of the passion between them caused a stiffening between his legs, a swelling that was so uncomfortable, he had to adjust himself.
Hell.
Just like a horny teenager.
He ran frustrated fingers through his hair.
Soon this would be over.
Yeah, and then what?
Are you just going to walk away?
He clenched his jaw so hard it ached, and kicked a fir cone with enough force to send it shooting deep into the woods. Not that anything was going to end soon. Unbelievable as it might seem, it looked as if Randi might be right about her ex-lover. Donahue’s alibi for the day she’d been run off the road was airtight. Unbreakable. Donahue’s two best friends swore that all three of them had been together in a Spokane tavern at the time. Though the border town was close enough to the Idaho panhandle and not that far from Montana, the time it would have taken Donahue to make the round-trip made it near-impossible for the cowboy or either of his cohorts to have actually done the deed.
Coupled with his friends’ dubious testimony, a bartender at the tavern remembered the nefarious trio. Two other guys playing pool that day also acknowledged that the boisterous bunch had been downing beers like water that afternoon and into the evening.
Striker leaned against the weathered porch railing. There wasn’t much chance that Sam Donahue had forced Randi off the road that day.
Unless he’d paid someone to try to kill her.
Kurt couldn’t let it go.
Because you want it to be Donahue. Admit it. The fact that he’s a mean son of a bitch and the father of Randi’s baby bugs the hell out of you. You don’t like to think of Randi making love to Donahue or anyone else for that matter. Just the thought of it makes you want to punch Donahue’s lights out. Geez, Striker, you’d better get out now. While you still can. The longer you’re around her, the harder it’s going to be to give her up.
Angry at the turn of his thoughts, he spat into the forest and rammed his hands deep into the back pockets of his jeans.
You have no right getting involved with her. She’s your client and you don’t want a woman fouling up your life. Especially not a woman with a kid. He thought of his own daughter and realized the pain he usually felt when he remembered her was fading. Oh, there were still plenty of memories, but they were no longer clouded in guilt. That seemed wrong. He could never forget the guilt he carried. And it stung like the bite of a whip when he realized that some of his pain had been eased by being near Randi’s child. As if letting little Joshua into his heart allowed him to release the pain over Heather’s loss.
“Kurt?”
The door creaked open and Randi appeared. Stupidly, his heart leaped at the sight of her.
Tousled red-brown locks, big eyes and a dusting of freckles assaulted him and he felt his gut tighten. She’d spent the morning on his computer working on a couple of new columns that she planned to e-mail when they reached a cybercafé, and now, smiling enough to show off impossibly white teeth, she looked incredible. As sexy and earthy as the surrounding forest.
“How’s the baby?” he asked, his voice a tad hoarser than usual.
“Sleeping. Finally.” Arms huddled around her as if to ward off the cold, she walked outside and he noticed how her jeans fit so snugly over her rounded hips. The weight she’d gained while pregnant had disappeared quickly because she’d been in the hospital, on IVs while in a coma; hence her inability to breast-feed, though she’d tried diligently once she’d awoken. So now she was slim and, if the little lines puckering her eyebrows could be believed, worried.
He felt the urge to wrap an arm over her shoulders, but didn’t give in to the intimacy.
“Can we get out of here?” she asked.
“What? And leave all this luxury?” He forced a smile he didn’t feel and noticed that her lips twitched despite the creases in her forehead.
“It’ll be hard, I know. A sacrifice. But I think it’s time.”
“And go where?”
“Home.”
“I’m not sure your condo is safe.”
“I’m not talking about Seattle,” she admitted, her brown eyes dark with thought. “I think I need to go home. Back to Montana. Until this is all sorted out. I’ll call my editor and explain what’s going on. He’ll have to let me work from the ranch. Well, he won’t have to, but I think he will.”
“Wait a minute. I thought you were hell-bent to start over. To prove yourself. Take command of your life again.”
“Oh, I am. Believe me.” She nodded as if to convince herself. “But I’m going to do it closer to my family.” Staring at him, she inched her chin up in a gesture he’d come to recognize as pure unabashed McCafferty, a simple display of unbridled spirit, the kind of fortitude that made it impossible for her to walk away from a challenge. “Come on, Striker, let’s get a move on.”
He glanced around the cabin and decided she was right. It was time to return to Montana. This case had started there…and now it was time to end it. Whoever had first attacked Randi had done it when she’d attempted to go back to her roots at the Flying M. Somehow that had to be the key. Someone had felt threatened that she was returning. Someone didn’t want her back at the ranch… Someone hated her enough to try to kill her and her unborn child….
His mind clicked.
New images appeared.
The baby. Once again, Striker thought Joshua was the center of this maelstrom. Didn’t children bring out the deepest of emotions? Hadn’t he felt them himself?
It was possible that whoever had started the attacks on Randi had done so with a single, deadly purpose in mind that Kurt hadn’t quite understood. Perhaps Striker, Randi, the McCaffertys and even Sam Donahue had been manipulated. If so…there was only one person who would take Randi’s fame and pregnancy as a personal slap in the face. And Kurt felt certain he knew who the culprit was.
“What do you know about Patsy Donahue?” he asked suddenly.
Randi started. “Sam’s wif
e, or ex-wife, or whatever she is?”
“Yeah.”
“Not a lot.” Lifting a shoulder, Randi said, “Patsy was a year ahead of me in high school, the family didn’t have much money and she got married right after she graduated, to her first boyfriend, Ned Lefever.”
“You weren’t friends with Patsy?”
“Hardly.” Randi shook her head. “She never liked me much. Her dad had worked for mine, then her folks split up and I think she even had a crush on Slade, before Ned…well, it’s complicated.”
“Explain. We’ve got time.”
“I won some riding competition once and edged her out and…oh, this is really so high school, but Ned asked me to the prom. He and Patsy were broken up at the time.”
“Did you go?”
“To the prom, yes. But not with Ned. I already had a date. And I wasn’t interested in Ned Lefever. I thought he was a blowhard and a braggart.” Randi rested a hand against the battle-scarred railing as she rolled back the years. “It was weird, though. All night long, during the dance, I was on the receiving end of looks that could kill. From Patsy. As if I was to blame for Ned’s—” She froze. “Oh, God, you think Patsy’s behind the attacks, don’t you?”
Kurt’s eyes held hers. “I’d bet my life on it.”
Twelve
“How could she let herself get tangled up with the likes of Donahue?” Matt grumbled to his brother as he uncinched Diablo Rojo’s saddle. For his efforts, the Appaloosa swung his head around in hopes of taking a nip out of Matt’s leg. Deftly Matt sidestepped the nip. “You never learn, do you?” he muttered to the fiery colt.
Rojo snorted, stamping a foot in the barn and tossing his devilish head. Matt, Slade and Larry Todd, the recently rehired foreman, had been riding nearly all day, searching for strays, calves who might have been separated from the herd in the cold Montana winter. Spring was still a few months off and the weather had been fierce since Christmas, snow drifting to the eaves of some of the outbuildings.
Larry had already taken off, but Slade and Matt were cooling down their horses now that three bawling, near-frozen calves had been reunited with their mothers. The barn was warm and smelled of dust, dry straw and horseflesh. The same smells Matt had grown up with. Harold, their father’s crippled old spaniel, was lying near the tack-room door, his tail thumping whenever Matt glanced in his direction.
Slade unhooked The General’s bridle and the big gelding pushed against Slade’s chest with his great head. He rubbed the horse’s crooked white blaze and said, “I don’t think Randi planned on getting involved with Donahue.” The brothers had been discussing their sister’s situation most of the day, hoping to find some answers to all of their questions.
“Hell, the man was married. I bet Patsy put up one helluva ruckus when she found out.”
Slade nodded.
“She always was a hothead. She never liked Randi, either, not since Randi beat her out of some competition when they were in high school.”
“What competition?” Slade scooped oats from a barrel with an old coffee can. The General, always eager for food, nickered softly. As Slade poured the grain into the manger, the old chestnut was already chomping.
“I can’t remember. I wasn’t around, but Dad mentioned it once. Something about horse racing, yeah, barrel racing, when they were kids. Randi beat Patsy, and Patsy did something to her at school the next week.”
Slade began rubbing The General down. “Wasn’t that Patsy Ellis? Jesus, I think she had a thing for me once.”
“You always think women are interested in you.”
“Don’t tell Jamie.”
“Right.” Matt was feeding Rojo. Thankfully the colt was finally more interested in food than in taking a nip out of Matt’s hide. “That was her maiden name. Right after high school she married Ned Lefever. A few years later they were divorced and a while after that she took up with Donahue, married him. It must really have teed her off that he ended up cheating on her with an old rival.”
“A woman scorned,” Slade muttered as the barn door opened and Kelly, her eyes bright, her cheeks nearly as red as the strands of hair escaping from her stocking cap, burst inside. Harold gave off a gruff bark.
“Shh,” Kelly reprimanded, though she bent over to pat the old dog’s head. Snow had collected on her eyelashes and was melting on her skin. To Matt, as always, she looked sweet and sexy and was the most incredible woman to walk this earth. “I just got a call from Striker,” she announced breathlessly as she straightened. “He and Randi are on their way back here, and guess what? They think Patsy Donahue is behind all this.”
Matt and Slade exchanged glances.
“I’ve already checked with Espinoza, and the police are looking for her, just to ask her some questions. I put a call in to Charlie Caldwell’s ex-girlfriend and guess who handed her over the keys to the maroon Ford van that edged Randi’s Jeep off the road? Good old Patsy.”
Slade’s grin moved from one side of his face to the other. “Your husband and I had just come up with the same idea,” he said.
“No way.”
“Honest to God.” Matt held up a gloved hand as if he was being sworn in at a trial.
“Great. Now you can both be honorary detectives and form your own posse or something.”
Matt tossed aside the brush and walked out of Diablo Rojo’s stall. “Don’t I at least get a kiss for being so smart?” he teased.
“If you were so smart why didn’t you come up with this idea months ago and save us all a lot of grief. Forget the kiss, McCafferty.” She winked at him and his heart galumphed. He’d never figured out why she got to him so, how when she walked into the room, everything else melted into the background. “Besides,” she said coyly, “I expected smart when I married you.”
“And good-looking and sexy?” he asked, and heard his brother guffaw from The General’s stall.
“Minimum requirements,” she teased. Matt dropped a kiss on her forehead and molded his glove over the slight curvature of her belly where his unborn child was growing. “Come on, you good-looking, sexy son of a gun,” she began, pulling on the tabs of his jeans.
“On my way,” Slade intercepted.
“I think she was talking to me.” Matt shot his brother a look that could cut through steel.
“Both of you!” Kelly insisted, backing toward the door. “Let’s go have a little heart-to-heart with Patsy Donahue.”
“I think you’d better leave that to the police,” Matt said.
“I was the police, remember?”
“Yeah, but now you’re my wife, the mother of my not-yet-born child and Patsy could be dangerous.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Spoken like a true McCafferty,” Slade said as he slipped from The General’s stall and tested the latch to make certain it was secure. “But maybe you should leave this to the Brothers McCafferty.”
“We’re like the Three Musketeers,” Matt said.
“I won’t say the obvious about a certain trio of stooges,” she baited, and for her insolence, Matt whipped her off her feet and hugged her.
“Sometimes, woman, you try my patience.”
She laughed and winked up at him with sassy insolence as he set her on her feet.
“Leave this to the men,” Matt insisted as he held the barn door open and a blast of icy Montana wind swept inside.
“In your dreams, boys.” Kelly adjusted the scarf around her neck as she trudged through the snow toward the ranch house. Not far from the barn stood the remains of the stables, blackened and charred, in stark contrast to the pristine mantle of white and a glaring reminder of the trouble that had beset the family ever since Randi’s fateful drive east. “Look,” Kelly said, sending her husband a determined glare. “I’ve been involved with this case since the beginning. Patsy Donahue is mine.”
“Guess what?” Kurt asked as he clicked off the cell phone. They were driving east through Idaho, closing in on the western Montana border. Night was coming a
nd fast, no moon or stars visible through the thick clouds blanketing the mountains. “That was Kelly. She and Espinoza and your brothers went over to Patsy Donahue’s place.”
“Let me guess.” Randi adjusted the zipper of her jacket. “Patsy is missing.”
“Hasn’t been at her house for days, if the stacked-up mail is to be believed.”
“Great.” Randi was disheartened. Would this nightmare never end? It was unbelievable to think that one woman could wreak such havoc, be so dangerous or so desperate. Could Patsy hate her that much as to try to kill her? Kill her baby? Harm her brothers?
“I just don’t get it,” Randi said as she turned toward the back seat to check on Joshua. The baby, lulled by the hum of the truck’s engine and the gentle motion of the spinning wheels, was sleeping soundly, nestled in his car seat. “Why take it out on the ranch…I mean, if she had a thing against me, why harm my brothers?”
“The way I figure it, Thorne’s plane crash was an accident. Patsy wasn’t involved in that. But the attacks on you were personal and the fire in the stable was to keep you frightened, maintain a level of terror.”
“Well, it worked. Slade nearly lost his life and the livestock… Dear God, why put the animals in jeopardy?” She bit her lip and stared at the few flakes of snow slowly falling from a darkening sky. Sagebrush and scrub pine poked through the white, snow-covered landscape, but the road was clear, the headlights of Striker’s truck illuminating the ribbon of frigid pavement stretching before them.
“She’s angry. Not just at you but at your family. Probably because she doesn’t have much of one. Besides, you own the lion’s share of the ranch. She must’ve figured that hurting the ranch and hurting your brothers was hurting you.” He flicked a look through the rearview mirror. “I just feel like a fool for not seeing it sooner.”
“No one did,” she admitted, though that thought was dismal. Maybe when they arrived at the ranch, Patsy would be in custody. Silently Randi crossed her fingers. “So what’s going to happen to Sam?”
“He’s being questioned. Just because he wasn’t responsible for harming you doesn’t mean he’s not a criminal. If you testify about his animal abuse, illegal betting and his throwing of the rodeo competitions, we’ll have a good start in bringing him to justice. There’s no telling what the authorities will dig up now that they’ve been pointed in the right direction.”