by Alice Sharpe
“I know.”
“What really happened to your ID?”
Sarah rubbed her eyes. “Bellows snatched my purse. He didn’t want me going too far. That’s why I couldn’t rent a car and had to take Mom’s.”
“How long before this guy acts on his threats?”
“Tomorrow at three o’clock. Then he says he’ll cut his losses.”
“And you believe that means he’ll harm her?”
“He broke two of her fingers to convince her to call me for help. I don’t know if he’ll kill her outright, but I’d bet the ranch he’ll take out his frustration in a brutal way, and I don’t know how much more she can stand.”
“But why call you? They didn’t think you had that kind of money, did they?”
“Mom must have told him she had to travel to get the money and he didn’t trust her. So he roughed her up until she agreed to ask someone else to go on her behalf. That turned out to be me. This dude met me at the airport, showed me a picture of my mother all beaten and bloody, demanded my purse and gave me the keys to her car along with directions to be back tomorrow by three o’clock. For all intents and purposes, I’m now her hostage. If she bolts and goes to the cops, they come after me.”
Nate shook his head. As devious as Sarah had proved herself to be, he believed her. The past few hours had taken a lot out of both of them and he doubted she was up to inventing all of this. “If these people are expecting you to produce that much money, why would they try to kill you? Why not just wait until you brought it back?”
“I don’t know. The only thing I can figure is that he made Mom tell him where I was going to get the money. She must have said I was going to get it from her ex-husband. If he got wind that there was a lot more here than what Mom technically owes, he’ll want every penny of it.” She sat forward and added, “I have to either find the silver or figure out a way to extend the deadline. Otherwise, my mother is dead, I’m dead and now it looks like you’re dead, too. It’s as simple as that.”
Chapter Seven
Nate’s brow furrowed as he looked into Sarah’s eyes.
It didn’t make sense to him that men as ruthless as these guys had orchestrated the present situation. There was the fact that someone had come into Mike’s house and killed him in cold blood but never even looked in the barn to see if anyone else was here. Then, after killing Mike, why did he drive away and come back on a snowmobile? He would probably have had to rent it and that would be traceable when all was said and done. It just seemed sloppy.
But thugs weren’t always the most organized of people, and if the gunman was Bellows’s lackey, he might be making this up as he went along.
Sarah rubbed her eyes, suppressing a yawn in the process. Running a hand through her hair, she stood and took off her jacket, then offered to help him with his. Although he dreaded moving the arm again, he agreed. The coat came off with a few internalized gasps on Nate’s part and a glistening layer of sweat on his brow. Sarah studied his sleeve for a moment in the flickering lantern light and then met his gaze. “Your arm is bleeding again.”
“I figured.”
“Come on, I’ll fix you up.”
She grabbed one of the lanterns and he followed her down the dimly lit hall back to the bedroom. He sat down on the bed and began fumbling with his shirt buttons while she went into the bathroom to wash her hands. “Let me help you do that,” she said, deftly interceding once she returned. The process was much as before, except that this time they’d recently shared a few kisses and everything seemed charged with awareness. When she peeled the shirt away from his arm, she frowned. He glanced down and saw the bandage had turned red.
“You need to go to bed for a few days,” she said.
“That’s not going to happen,” he said as she unwound the bandage and dropped it in the trash can. She smeared antibiotic cream on a pad, which she placed directly over the wound, then she rebandaged his arm. A couple of seconds later, she’d produced another clean shirt from her father’s drawers and helped Nate slide his arm into the sleeve. Mike had been shorter and heavier than Nate, so the sleeves ended above his wrist bones.
“I’ll make you a sling out of a bedsheet,” she said as she buttoned his shirt. Technically, he could have done two-thirds of these things himself, but the truth was he enjoyed her fussing over him. She disappeared into the hall and reentered carrying a white sheet, which she tore into pieces to fashion a sling. When she tied it around his neck, he reached up to touch her face and she glanced down at him.
“Thanks,” he said.
Her smile was warm and quick. She sat down beside him and put her head against his good shoulder. “I’m the one who should be thanking you,” she murmured. She looked up into his eyes and added, “Don’t you wish we could just lie down on this bed and go to sleep for a few hours?”
“Yes to the lying down,” he said, kissing her softly on the lips. “No to the sleeping.”
“And with that arm, how would you go about making love to me? That is what you’re talking about, isn’t it?”
“Yes it is,” he said. “And the answer is I would go about it very carefully but with abandon.”
“I thought you were engaged to be married.”
“I was. Now I’m not.”
“What happened?”
“A few weeks ago I told her I was coming up here to see my friends and she just fell apart. She said I wasn’t the same as I’d been, that I was living in the past, that I’d come home from Shatterhorn a different man.”
“You, too? Like Dad?”
“Not exactly, but changed. I lost a little of my swagger, wasn’t so sure I was leading the life I wanted or that I had all the answers. I failed to save two kids, Sarah. I was there after a vacation, unarmed and vulnerable, and I let two kids die. If I’d been carrying, the whole thing would have ended a lot differently.”
“But that wasn’t your fault....”
“Maybe not technically, but saving innocent people is what I’m supposed to be able to do, and I failed. I guess I was so disappointed in myself that it affected other parts of my life and I kind of closed down.”
“But it’s only been a few months, Nate. You have to give yourself a chance. Anyone who goes through a mess like that is going to suffer some changes, don’t you think? Your girl should have stood by you and helped you.”
He shrugged. “She’s a little on the impatient side. She wanted me to be who I was before, and I couldn’t do it. Enough about me. What happened to the cop you married?”
“We got hitched when I was seventeen. That’s right after Mom’s gambling worsened. Dad told her to leave. I had just graduated from high school and I didn’t know what to do.”
“So you got married?”
“It was more complicated than that,” she said softly.
“In what way?”
“We saw each other through some hard times,” she said.
“You didn’t take his name?”
“No. I had all these dreams of being a veterinarian and I wanted my own name—at least that’s what I told myself—but I think I really kept it in an attempt to make my dad proud of me. I always disappointed him.”
“That seems so unlikely,” Nate said.
She smiled. “Well, that’s how it seemed to me at the ripe old age of seventeen. You didn’t really know Dad well, did you?”
“No, not at all.”
“He could be hard. I mean, as strange as he got, the truth is he was always a little on the odd side and his temper— Well, he had a temper.”
“Was your husband like your dad?”
“No, no way. Johnny was kind. He had a good heart.”
“What happened between you guys?”
“He left me,” Sarah said. “Not by choice, though. He was shot in the line
of duty and died before I could get to him.”
“I’m so sorry,” Nate said softly. He stared at her for several seconds. The light bathed her face with a glow that made her seem otherworldly, too beautiful to be human, too human to be anything else. There was sadness in her tilted blue eyes that he yearned to kiss away. She was so alive her body seemed to hum.
And she was in deep trouble....
“Where did your father used to keep the coins?” he asked.
“The only time I ever saw them, they were in a secret cabinet built into the wall beside the fireplace.”
“I assume that’s the first place you looked?”
“Absolutely. There’s nothing in there now but a photo of Skipjack.”
“From the looks of things, you’ve searched just about everywhere else.”
“I tried, but you arrived before I could tackle the floors and walls.”
“That’s why you were looking in the safe?”
She paused a second.
“I know you took something out of the safe,” he told her. “I saw you put it in your pocket.”
“Oh, that,” she said. “It’s nothing. Nothing to do with the coins or my mother, anyway. It’s just a key and it’s personal.”
He nodded. “Okay. Nothing else in the safe, though, right?”
“No. I was hoping the coins themselves would be in there or maybe a clue as to where he might have moved them. Even proof he sold them would be better than nothing. And I wanted to find his will, too, but it wasn’t in there, either.”
“I guess we better continue the search, then.”
“We?” she asked.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “In fact, if you want to lie down and close your eyes for a few minutes, I’ll take all the pictures off the walls and look for any sign things were disturbed, like new plaster or patches. It’ll be daylight in a few hours, and one way or another, we have to get out of here or reinforce our position, so we need to work fast.”
“Then I’ll help,” she said and got to her feet. She offered him a hand and pulled him up beside her. They stared at each other a moment, Nate a little dizzy. She caught his good shoulder with her hand. “You okay?”
“Dandy,” he said and, leaning forward, gently kissed her forehead.
For the next thirty minutes, they stripped everything off the walls. Studying every surface with flashlights, they found absolutely nothing alarming or suggestive except faded spots on the paint, which clearly indicated each wall hanging had been in place for umpteen years.
“Any of the rugs new?” Nate asked as he sank down on the edge of the sofa. Sarah had done all the heavy work, but he was still hurting.
“You mean since I was a kid? A few. The area rug in the living room, the one in my old bedroom and the wall to wall in the master bedroom.”
“Let’s get to it,” Nate said. “We’re going to need a crowbar.”
“There’s one in the barn.”
“I saw it on the workbench. I’ll go get it.”
She shook her head as she looked at him. “Not this time. You rest your arm. I’ll go get it.”
“And will you come back?” he asked, challenging her gaze.
She smiled. “Maybe, maybe not.” A second later, she was gone.
* * *
SARAH, HURRYING AS FAST as the weather and growing fatigue allowed, paused as she entered the barn.
Her mother’s old green sedan squatted there like a bloated toad. A couple of hours before, she would have tried to drive it out of here and probably gotten stuck in the snow. It wasn’t that she was an idiot; it was inaction that was slowly killing her. That and wondering what was happening back in Reno. And truth be known, even now she was tempted to hop in the car and give it a try.
But she couldn’t leave Nate here. Her gut told her this wasn’t over. They had to find the coins and get them out of here before someone returned.
She found the crowbar and hurried back across the yard. The snow was coming in flurries now, cold but dry. In the pasture to her left, she heard Skipjack’s heavy breathing as he galloped across the pasture toward her, probably hoping for a handout.
She reentered the house, locking the door behind her. Nate looked up from where he knelt beside the fireplace cabinet.
“You came back,” he said, and it was impossible not to note the pleasure in his voice.
“Yeah, well, it amazes me, too.” She crossed the room and squatted beside him. “What are you doing?”
“I was just looking at this cabinet. It all but disappears when it’s closed. I didn’t know Mike was such a craftsman.”
“He wasn’t. My grandfather built this house.”
Nate got to his feet and offered Sarah a hand. “Let’s start pushing aside rugs and pulling up floors.”
Because of his injury, Sarah did most of the physical labor. It actually felt good to put energy into something besides worrying, and she tackled the wood floor in the living room with abandon. They were old tongue-and-groove fir boards, soft but thick, and pretty soon it became very clear it would take days to tear up all the floor.
Eventually, they changed their tactics and began moving aside rugs and looking for any changes in the flooring, like a patch or different wood. They ended up back in the living room where they’d started.
“I wish he’d left those cans in that cabinet,” Sarah said bitterly.
“I wonder why he moved them.”
“Probably because Mom knew where they were and he didn’t trust her not to rob him. Isn’t that a laugh? Here I am, robbing him on her behalf.”
“Unless there’s someone I don’t know about, I would assume they’d be yours now anyway.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he intended to give them to a good cause or his friends. Who knows?”
“When your mother took your college money, why didn’t Mike help you? I mean, if he had all this money, I’d think he’d want to support your dreams.”
“I couldn’t tell him what Mom did.”
“Why?”
“Because I had to protect her.”
He stared down at her. “Isn’t that supposed to work both ways? Isn’t she supposed to look out for you, too?”
Sarah shrugged and looked away. “It doesn’t exactly work that way in my family.”
Nate let it drop as he knelt again, and this time when he stood, he held the snapshot of Skipjack in his hand. “Why was this one lone photograph in that cabinet?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Is it an important picture?”
Sarah took the photograph and studied it. “Well, as you can see, it’s Skipjack. See that upside-down horseshoe above his stall door? Dad said the string holding it up there rotted away about two years ago and it never got remounted, so the picture is at least that old. So, no, I can’t say if there’s anything special about the photo.”
“Sarah,” Nate said, his voice soft and slow. “What if your dad hid the coins in the horse’s stall?”
She looked up at him, her grip on the crowbar tight. “That could be it,” she said, hope ringing in her head. She lifted one of the lanterns in her free hand. “Come on.”
Once again, they put their coats on and trudged across the yard and into the barn, hurrying now, Sarah afraid to think it through because she couldn’t bear to face potential holes in this last-ditch theory. She closed the bottom half of the outside door to the horse’s stall to keep him from coming back inside and getting in their way. Nate found a pitchfork.
“Let me do that,” she said, taking the tool from him. “This is two-handed work.”
“Okay, you clear the floor, and I’ll check the walls. Okay if I take down that hay rack?”
“Sure.”
They each set to work as the b
lack-and-white horse hung his head over the open panel and watched. Within a few minutes Nate had used the crowbar one-handed to take the hay rack off the wall and Sarah had shifted all the straw out of the stall.
“Nothing,” Nate said, his voice weary.
Sarah didn’t trust herself to speak. The dirt floor looked the same as in the rest of the barn. Nate shined his flashlight along the walls, and it glittered on something metallic, which caught their attention. Moving closer, Sarah identified the old horseshoe. It was hanging on the wall above where the hay rack had once been and the ground beneath it looked freshly disturbed.
“I’m getting the shovel out of my trunk,” she said.
“Wait a second,” Nate said, digging in his pocket. “You’ll need your keys.”
She shook her head as she took them from him. He’d known she wasn’t leaving or even going to try to when she looked for the crowbar, because he’d had the keys all along.
She returned with work gloves and tools. “I have a feeling about the floor right here,” Sarah said, and hefting the shovel, she slammed it down into the dirt. It penetrated the earth. She immediately put some muscle behind the spade and began digging.
She was about ready to admit defeat when the blade hit something that made a thumping, hollow sound. Working faster now, she quickly shoveled the dirt away to reveal a painted wooden trapdoor, which she hastily cleared of dirt before falling to her knees. Nate brought the lantern closer.
There was a handle set into the wood with a small chain attached to it. Nate leaned down and grabbed the chain, raising the lid. The link on the end of the chain was just long enough to slip over one end of the horseshoe to keep it open.
Sarah peered into a hole that appeared to be about two feet deep and three feet across, hollowed out of the earth and reinforced with bricks. Best of all, the shine of metal cans dazzled in her eyes.
“There have to be ten or eleven of them down here,” she said, her voice hushed, her heart racing. She swallowed a sob of relief.
“Do you need help lifting them out?” Nate asked, peering over her shoulder.