by B. J Daniels
Had he found out about her broadcast news job in Fort Worth through his brother the sheriff? “This isn’t about me. But if you must know, I worked for a television station but I wanted a change of pace.”
“A change of pace?” He shook his head. “Come on, Tex, you’re into this up to your eyeballs. You’re the one who got the newspaper clipping and cassette tape. Not me. Don’t tell me you haven’t wondered: Why you? I sure have.”
She’d wondered all right. “I’m a reporter. Whoever sent me the information knew I would follow it up.”
“Lubbock Calhoun, straight from prison, would know that about you?” he asked.
“Or Houston. For all you know he married someone right here in Whitehorse just like his sister did. He could be your neighbor.”
Cade shook his head. “I know all my neighbors and have for many years. Any other theories?”
“I don’t know who is sending me the information. I’m sure they have their reasons. If it’s Lubbock, then he must have seen me on the news.”
“You made the news?”
“I was a TV broadcast newswoman.”
“Oh, you read the news,” he said.
“I did more than read the news. I—” She stopped abruptly as she saw the trap he’d laid for her.
“Yes?” he asked smiling over at her. “What? You want your life to remain private? You just tell the news. Forget that it’s my life and Grace’s memory that you’re trying to destroy.”
“There was no Grace,” she snapped.
“Like hell there wasn’t,” he shot back. “She was Grace when I fell in love with her, when I married her, when I buried her.”
Andi heard the horrible pain in his voice and was hit with a wave of guilt that angered her. She didn’t start this. The Calhouns did. She was just doing her job. She was sick of him trying to blame her because his wife was a liar and a criminal.
“You might never have known the truth if I had just ignored it,” she snarled.
“Yeah, and wouldn’t that have been terrible?” he said sarcastically as he glared over at her for a moment.
“You can’t just stick your head in the sand and pretend none of this happened. Whoever is sending me the information about Starr, you think that person is going to keep quiet?”
Cade realized where he was headed and swore under his breath. He hadn’t really planned to come out here. Hell, he hadn’t planned to go anywhere with this woman. There was no place he could find peace right now, but he especially didn’t want her near the home he’d shared with Grace.
So why had he come here?
He glanced over at her, wondering how she fit into all this. It was no act of fate that she’d ended up in Whitehorse—or that she was the one someone had chosen to tell their secrets to. No coincidence at all.
And Andi Blake had to know it.
Chapter Seven
“WHERE ARE WE?” Andi asked, squinting into the storm.
Cade had taken the back way into the cabin, circling around the north end of Nelson Reservoir, figuring he’d give her a taste of rural Montana in the winter. He took perverse satisfaction in the way she’d been forced to hang on.
As the cabin came into view and the frozen reservoir beyond it, he thought about the first time he’d laid eyes on Grace Browning.
He’d been driving northwest on Highway 2, headed toward Saco when he’d seen her crouched beside her car just off the highway with a flat tire on the left rear.
He’d stopped, seeing that she appeared to be a woman alone, and got out to walk back to her.
She hadn’t looked up, just flicked a glance at his boots before she said, “Thanks, but I’ve got it.”
He’d smiled to himself. She was a little thing but she was tackling that flat tire as if she was a truck driver. He’d thought about telling her not to be ridiculous, to move aside and let him change it.
But he’d stood back instead and watched her, seeing how not only capable she was, but also how determined. If he’d learned anything about women it was to give them their space when they had that particular look in their eyes.
But he wasn’t about to leave her alone on this empty stretch of highway. So he stood back and watched with a mixture of amusement and awe.
Now, though, he wondered if she hadn’t wanted him to help her because she had something to hide. Like a trunkful of stolen cash and a bounty on her head.
Clearly she’d been hiding everything, he thought bitterly.
But a part of him argued that if she had the robbery money, why had she married him? Why had she stayed in Whitehorse, Montana? Why had she gotten pregnant with his child?
The memory was like a stake to his heart. His foot came off the gas, the pickup’s front tires sliding off into the deep snow. He fought to wrestle the truck back into the tracks.
“Are you all right?” Andi asked beside him.
“Fine,” he snapped. He’d thought he’d been grieving the last six years. It was nothing compared to now. At least he’d had his memories of Grace. And now even those were tainted because didn’t common sense tell him that Grace had just been hiding out here, the marriage to him having just been a cover until she divvied up the money with her accomplice and split, just as Andi suspected?
But if Starr had had the money from the bank robberies in her trunk that day, what had she done with it? She’d have had to hide it somewhere, otherwise he would have known about it. Three million dollars wouldn’t have fit in her purse. Or one of her shoe boxes.
And why the hell hadn’t she just kept going?
She’d finished changing the tire, then looked up for the first time at him.
He’d been startled by the same thing that had given away her identification when Tex had seen her photograph in the newspaper clipping. Her eyes.
They were pale blue and bottomless.
“You’re still here,” she’d said, sounding amused. “Haven’t you ever seen a woman change a tire before?”
“Not with that kind of determination,” he’d admitted.
She’d laughed.
He’d often wondered if he’d fallen in love with her the moment he’d looked into her eyes—or if it had been when she’d laughed. Either way, it had been like a jolt of electricity straight to his heart.
The day had been hot and he’d said the first thing he’d thought to say.
“Buy you a beer at the bar up the road.”
She’d smiled at him, those eyes twinkling. “A beer?” She’d nodded thoughtfully. “I could use a beer.”
“Cade Jackson,” he’d said and held out his hand.
“Grace Browning.” Was that the moment her alias and her cover had been born? There had been no hesitation when she’d said the name, no clue that this woman was anything but who she said she was.
Or had he been so enamored that he just hadn’t noticed?
A part of him hadn’t expected her to follow him to the bar, let alone come in and have a beer with him.
But she had.
“You’re from here,” she’d said.
It really hadn’t been a question, but he’d answered, anyway. “Born and raised south of here on a ranch.”
She’d eyed him for a moment. “So you really are a cowboy.”
He’d laughed. “If you mean do I ride a horse, yes. My father sold the ranch, but I bought a smaller one to the north. I raise horses more as a sideline. The rest of the time I run a bait shop here in town.”
He remembered her smile, the amusement that played in her eyes.
“Horses and a bait shop.” She shook her head. “Diversification, huh. Well, Cade Jackson, that’s quite a combination. You make any money at it?”
He remembered being a little defensive. “I have all I need.”
Her expression had changed, her features softening. “I envy you. Most people never have enough.”
“Most people want too much,” he’d said.
He smiled at that now as he realized that the woman he’d said that to had more than three million dollars.
So why hadn’t she kept on going down that highway? Why had she hung around to have another beer and dinner? Hung around long enough that he fell more deeply in love with her? Hung around long enough to get pregnant with his child?
“Starr could have kept on going,” he said as he parked in front of the cabin. “Why didn’t she?”
“You tell me,” Andi said as he saw her look down the plowed road that led to the cabin, her eyes narrowing. “Do you think you can scare me into not doing the story?” she demanded, clearly irate.
Was that what he thought? Or was he just angry at the messenger? He reminded himself that she hadn’t just brought him the bad news. She planned to publicize it. Once her story broke, the media would have a field day and he’d be right in the heart of the storm.
He knew then why he’d brought her here. He wanted her to know the woman he had. He wanted to convince Andi that Grace Browning had existed. And while a part of him knew he was wasting his time, he knew he had to try. Not so much for Andi as for himself.
“Grace could have chosen a life on the run with the money. She didn’t. How do you explain that, Tex?” he asked as he cut the engine and turned his attention on her.
“I can’t. So are you telling me that there weren’t things she said or did that made you wonder if there wasn’t more to her staying here? Things that made you worry she wasn’t telling the truth?”
“Stop looking at me like I’m an idiot. I knew my wife. I’m not a fool.”
And he’d known something was wrong. He’d seen her fighting a battle with herself. He just hadn’t known what it was. Or how to help her. He’d hoped whatever had been haunting her would blow over. When she’d called from Billings about the baby, she’d sounded completely happy.
And he’d known then that she’d won whatever battle had been going on inside her. A battle he’d just assumed had something to do with another man.
Maybe he was a fool after all.
“Isn’t it possible that Grace wanted to put her past behind her and start over?” he asked, hating the emotion he heard in his voice. “Isn’t it possible that she was tired of that life, that she wanted something more, that she’d found it with me? That maybe Grace was exactly who I believed her to be?”
He knew what he was saying. That he and his love had changed Starr Calhoun into Grace Browning Jackson, a woman he would have died for.
Something caught his eye in the rearview mirror. The wind whipped the snow past and for just a moment he saw the glare off the windshield of a car on the road by the reservoir.
Earlier he’d had the strangest feeling that they were being followed. Crazy. This was Whitehorse. All this talk of outlaws was making him paranoid.
He lost sight of the vehicle in the falling snow and felt a wave of relief. But as he looked at Andi, he saw both skepticism—and pity—and felt his temper boil. Not only had she turned his life upside down, but she was also making him doubt everything—including the safety of the community he’d lived in his entire life.
“Maybe you just saw the woman she wanted you to see,” Andi said.
“Were you this cynical before or does it come with being a reporter?” he demanded with no small amount of disdain.
“Now who’s being contemptuous? I’m proud of my profession.”
He lifted a brow.
“People have the right to know the truth.” She snapped. “If there weren’t individuals willing to go out on a limb to get the truth, what would that leave?”
“Peace?” he asked with a laugh.
She scoffed. “Some people just can’t take the truth obviously.”
Obviously. “Truth is relative. Your truth apparently isn’t mine because you’re wrong about my wife.” He could feel her gaze on him like a weight. “Maybe she was Starr Calhoun.”
“Maybe?”
“You want to know about Grace Browning? Take this down, girl reporter. Grace was as different from Starr Calhoun as night and day.” With that he opened his pickup door and climbed out.
* * *
ANDI HEARD HOW desperately he wanted to believe that Starr had changed before she died. That she’d become Grace Browning, the woman he’d fallen in love with. That Starr had wanted to put that other life behind her.
Who knew what Starr had been thinking when she hit Whitehorse? But Andi could see that Cade needed to believe that the woman had stayed because she’d fallen in love with him instead of merely using him and this place as a hideout like the outlaw she was.
As she watched Cade stride away from the pickup through the snow, she wondered. Had he grieved six years because he’d loved his wife that much? Or had his pain been one of disillusionment and denial?
“You knew her best,” Andi said diplomatically as she caught up with him.
“I did know her,” he said, stopping to turn to face her.
That was why she needed his part of the story. Not that she believed for a minute that Starr Calhoun had changed. How could someone go from being the coldhearted, calculating criminal on the audio tape to becoming an upstanding citizen and a wife to this man in a matter of months?
But if true, it would make a great story.
Not that anyone would believe the transformation except Cade. Look at the woman’s genes. Had anyone in the family stayed out of prison? Maybe Worth. Unfortunately that was hard to verify since he could be breaking the law at this moment just under another name.
Starr and a change of heart? No way. Not even for this good-looking cowboy, Andi thought.
As she followed him toward the small cabin, she wondered how Starr could have stayed as long as she did here. A woman used to big cities and everything stolen money could buy would have gone crazy here, wouldn’t she have?
All Andi could figure is that Starr had been waiting for something. The money? Or for her brother Houston to meet up with her? Then where did Lubbock come in?
She doubted Starr would trust Houston to bring the money. Rightly so apparently since Houston hadn’t shown up. Or had he?
Andi’s suspicious nature couldn’t help but come back to Starr’s death. Just as she worried about the person who had wanted her to know that Grace Jackson was really Starr Calhoun.
She was still going with the theory that Starr had staged her death and taken off with the money and that someone possibly in Starr’s own family might be looking for her and using Andi to do it.
Cade had stopped at the edge of the porch and was looking back at her. He didn’t seem like anybody’s fool, she thought. So how had Starr tricked him into not only buying her act, but also falling madly in love with her and now defending her even when he knew who she really had been?
Andi saw him frown as he looked past her back up the road from the way they’d come.
“Is something wrong?” she asked, turning to follow his gaze. Through the falling snow she caught the glint of the dull gray light off a vehicle just before it disappeared over a hill.
“I think we might have been followed,” he said distractedly but she could tell he was worried. She recalled how he’d been watching his rearview mirror earlier. Or maybe he was just trying to scare her.
“I didn’t see anyone.” She was still irritated that he’d taken some back road through the deep snow no doubt just to frighten her. But she felt a stab of apprehension as she realized they could have been followed.
The cabin couldn’t have been in a more deserted place. She shivered as she stared through the falling snow at the reservoir and saw an ice-fishing shack not far off shore. She realized it must be C
ade’s since there was no sign of anyone else around.
What an isolated place, she thought as she clutched her shoulder bag to her side, slipping her hand in to make sure she had her new can of pepper spray.
* * *
CADE WAITED TO SEE if the vehicle he’d spotted earlier drove by again. Could just be someone lost since no one used this road this time of year. From this side of the reservoir, there was no way to drive out onto the ice.
Other than ice fishing, there wasn’t any other reason to come down this road since it ended at the bottom of a rocky outcropping.
If not someone lost, then they had been followed. Which would mean Andi Blake might actually know what she was talking about. In which case, there just might be cause for concern.
“You realize you’re being used,” he said. She didn’t answer. “Aren’t you worried as hell what this person wants and what he’ll do when he doesn’t get it?”
“What do you suggest I do?”
He ignored the sarcasm in her tone. “Go back to Texas. Forget you ever saw that clipping or heard that tape.”
She raised a brow. “And what will you do? Can you just forget it? I didn’t think so.”
“I’ll turn it over to my brother because frankly, I don’t give a damn what happened to the money.” His gaze fell on her. “But you’re in it for the story to the bitter end, aren’t you? Whoever is feeding you the information knows that. They know you won’t back down.”
“And they’re right.”
He shook his head.
“Do you really think they are just going to let me stop now?” she asked.
“You’re in danger.”
“Not as long as I keep digging until I find what that person wants.”
“You think you’re going to find the money.” He let out a laugh. “That’s the topping on your story, isn’t it?”
What had he been thinking bringing her to the cabin he and Grace had shared. It felt like a betrayal. The thought made him want to laugh. Grace had betrayed him.