Rustled

by BJ Daniels

  Jinx had a pair of scissors and was sawing at the ropes that bound her wrists behind her back. She spun around as if sensing someone behind her.

  “Dawson?” She dropped the scissors and threw herself at him.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Chisholm,” Jinx said as Dawson put down the shotgun and, taking the scissors, cut the rope binding her.

  “You don’t know what I’m thinking.”

  “Sure I do,” she said as she tried to work some feeling back into her hands. “You’re thinking, ‘Jinx must have been out of her mind to come here by herself.’ It isn’t like I came here unarmed.”

  She’d noticed the relieved expression on his face when he’d seen her. He’d been unable to hold back the smile she’d caught in the bathroom mirror as he’d cut her wrists free. He hadn’t been surprised that she’d gotten away—at least partially. And he’d come all the way to Wyoming for her. That had to mean something, even if he did think she was a fool.

  He still didn’t say anything as he put the scissors aside and picked up his shotgun again.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asked.

  “Now that you mention it, I was going to say I think we should get out of here.”

  She shook her head. “Not yet. There’s something I need.”

  He gave her a look that said he didn’t believe this.

  “My jean jacket. It wasn’t with me in the broom closet where they left me. I need it.”

  “I’ll buy you another jean jacket. Hell, I’ll buy you two.”

  “Like I said, I know you think I was a fool for coming here like I did, but there’s a reason I need my jean jacket. The digital recorder I bought is in it. It will have Lyndel’s confession on it. He had my father killed.” Her voice broke. “He admitted it.”

  “I’m sorry, Jinx.”

  She nodded. “I wanted to shoot him. I really did.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t. As a matter of fact, I’d like to get out of here without anymore bloodshed.”

  “That might not be so easy.”

  “Lyndel said he had an appointment he was anxious to get to.”

  She smiled at that. “I should mention Lyndel Thompson isn’t just a killer. He’s a liar.”

  Dawson shook his head as if she amused him, the hint of a smile on his lips, and then he kissed her. She melted against him—until she heard a sound from the hallway.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I told you Aggie had been in our house,” Emma said to Sheriff McCall Crawford when she stopped by the ranch that evening. “Isn’t that right, Hoyt?”

  The three of them were sitting at the kitchen table over a cup of coffee and some warm banana bread.

  “Yes, you did,” McCall said. “I should have listened to you. I’m just glad you sent me that letter about the listening devices.”

  Hoyt smiled over at his wife. “Emma is something, isn’t she?”

  The sheriff smiled. “Yes, she is.”

  “That first time in the house, Aggie took Hoyt’s bolo tie clasp and put it in Krystal’s grave to frame him, just as she left her car nearby so you’d find Krystal’s remains and think Hoyt had done something to her, as well,” Emma said in one breath.

  “That is the theory,” McCall admitted.

  “Surely the county attorney hasn’t changed his mind about taking Hoyt to trial,” Emma said, suddenly worried.

  “No. The charges have been dropped.”

  “Unless new evidence turns up,” Hoyt said, sounding skeptical that this could be over.

  Emma shook her head. “Stop thinking like that, Hoyt Chisholm. It’s over.” She turned to the sheriff. “How is Aggie?”

  “I’m surprised you’d ask, given what she’s put you through,” McCall said.

  “I can’t help it—I liked her. She was misguided, I’ll admit.”

  “I’m afraid she might be more than that,” the sheriff said. “Based on some of the statements she’s made, the county attorney has decided that a psychiatric evaluation is needed. We are going to be sending her to the state mental hospital soon for testing.”

  Emma nodded. “I suppose she told you that she tried to become Laura Chisholm to get inside her head to find out what had happened to her, including acting like her, wearing the kind of clothes she wore and even wearing the same perfume.”

  McCall nodded. “She swears that she was only in your house twice. That the other time it was…” the sheriff glanced toward Hoyt before saying “…your first wife, Laura. She swears that Laura didn’t drown and that she is responsible for the deaths of your second wife and third wife and that she will be coming for Emma.”

  Hoyt had gone white as a sheet.

  Emma felt her heart jump at his reaction. He seemed too frightened by the ramblings of a deranged woman. “You don’t really believe—”

  But it was the sheriff who answered. “No, I don’t, but Aggie seems to. She said that was what she was trying to prove when she put the listening devices in your house.”

  “How does she explain knowing where Krystal’s body was buried?” Emma asked.

  “According to Aggie, she got a message from you to meet at that spot on the river where her car was found. It was dark when she arrived. She said she was sitting in the rental car waiting when someone attacked her and tried to kill her. She didn’t see her attacker. At first she said she thought it was Hoyt. She managed to escape.”

  “Escape? But her car—”

  “She left it because she doubted she would be believed. She said she thought that once her car was found, I would start looking into the case again. Her injuries were minor, a nosebleed, which explains the blood on the car seat. She swears she didn’t know anything about Krystal’s body being buried beside the river near there and only realized who her attacker had been after you, Emma, had said something about smelling her perfume three times when Aggie swears she was only in your house twice.”

  “That all sounds…unbelievable,” Emma said. “First she blames Hoyt, then a woman who drowned more than thirty years ago?”

  McCall nodded.

  Hoyt still looked as if he’d seen a ghost. Emma felt her stomach knot.

  “That is apparently when she put in the listening devices, hoping to catch Laura in your house,” the sheriff finished. “She’d wanted ones that also supplied video, but couldn’t find any that small.”

  “Hoyt took them all down,” Emma said, getting to her feet. “We kept them as you requested in case you ever need them for evidence. But I can tell you now, I won’t press charges against Aggie.”

  That seemed to bring Hoyt out of his shocked state. “Emma—”

  “No, I liked her. Clearly she’s sick. But prison isn’t the place for her. She needs help.”

  McCall nodded and got to her feet. “Thank you for the coffee and banana bread, but I need to get going. By the way, did you get your cattle all rounded up?”

  “Most of them,” Hoyt said. “My sons brought the majority down earlier. They’re going back up tomorrow for the ones they missed. Here, let me carry that box for you. I’ll walk you out.”

  Emma knew her husband wanted to talk to the sheriff alone. That’s why she waited, then snuck around the house to a dark corner so she could listen.

  “Aggie’s story about Laura, it’s crazy,” Hoyt said.

  “Yes,” the sheriff agreed as she took the box of listening devices and set them in the back of the patrol SUV. “So why are you still worried about Emma?” she asked as she closed the car door.

  “You’re sure Aggie worked alone?”

  “From what we can tell. There isn’t any chance Laura is alive, is there?”

  Hoyt rubbed a large hand over his neck as he always did when he was worried. “I can’t imagine how, and yet…”

  “And yet?”

  “Her body was never found.”

  McCall nodded. “It’s not that unusual in a lake that size, plus during a storm and that time of year. Unless you know something I don
’t?”

  “No, it’s just that…” He rubbed his neck again. “I never told anyone, but Laura was insanely jealous.”

  “Insanely?” the sheriff asked.

  “It was what we were fighting about the day she drowned,” Hoyt said, his voice full of pain. “She attacked me. I was trying to hold her off….” He let out a sound like a sob.

  Emma closed her eyes and leaned into the side of the house. The wood felt cool to the touch. She wanted to run to her husband, throw her arms around him, comfort him. She knew what was coming, feared it bone deep.

  “I swear to you, McCall, I didn’t push her overboard,” Hoyt was saying. “She pulled away from me. I thought she’d lost her balance. But the truth is…I think she might have purposely fallen overboard.”

  DAWSON GRABBED Jinx’s hand and pulled her back into the bathroom as the bedroom door slammed open. As heavy footfalls thudded across the floor, he raised the shotgun, motioning for her to be quiet.

  As if that was necessary. From Jinx’s expression, he figured she was thinking the same thing he was. Lyndel had discovered that Jinx wasn’t in the broom closet and now they were turning the house upside down looking for her.

  Dawson listened to someone rummaging around in the bedroom. Lyndel? Slim? Or had someone else arrived? And what were they searching for in the master bedroom?

  He heard a drawer close, then the familiar snick of a bullet being jacked into the chamber of a gun before the person left, slamming the door behind them. Whoever had come into the room was now armed as well as dangerous.

  Dawson let out the breath he’d been holding. Getting out of there without any bloodshed was seeming less and less likely. They would be looking for Jinx inside the house and out. For all he knew, Lyndel had called in more ranch hands to help. Or possibly even the rest of the rustlers back from Montana.

  He eased the bathroom door open and peered out. Jinx did the same next to him. The bedroom was empty.

  The way he saw it, they had two options. Trying to escape through the back way without the digital recorder. Or going out the front door with it.

  Dawson walked over to the phone beside the bed and picked up the receiver, remembering belatedly that Lyndel had had it disconnected. He wasn’t in the habit of carrying a cell phone. They were pretty worthless unless you lived in Whitehorse. A few miles out, you couldn’t get any service, so what was the point when you lived on a ranch miles from town?

  But he wished to hell he had one right now. He looked over at Jinx.

  She shook her head. “Mine’s in the other pocket of my jean jacket.”

  Great. “Come on,” Dawson said. “We’re getting out of here. We’ll call the sheriff as soon as we reach town and have him get your jacket and the digital recorder with the evidence on it.” He’d expected her to put up an argument and was surprised when she didn’t.

  For once Jinx wasn’t taking chances? It gave him hope.

  He moved to the door, grabbed the knob and slowly turned it. As he pulled the door open a crack, he peered out. The hallway was empty. “Stay behind me.”

  Jinx nodded and they slipped out of the master suite into the hallway.

  Dawson could hear raised voices coming from the front part of the house and knew any moment they would be searching the house. He hoped they’d already done a preliminary search of all of the rooms except the master suite. It was far enough off the grid that they might not have bothered with it the first time around.

  He headed for the first exit they came to, stopping at the door to look back at Jinx. He figured if there was a security system installed, it would be on now.

  “The moment I open this door we hightail it for that grove of trees east of the house. You lead. I’ll be right behind you with the shotgun.”

  She nodded, looking as anxious as he was.

  He shoved open the door and they sprinted across the moonlit ranch yard toward the dark grove of trees in the distance. Dawson could hear voices in the distance, the yelp of a dog. Glancing back, he saw no movement from the house.

  Ahead he saw several of the horses he had released standing broadside against the dark horizon. He heard a vehicle engine rev in front of the house and more shouting.

  Jinx had reached the trees. Her dark shadow blended with the deep shadows of the trees and for a moment he lost sight of her. Then something glinted in a slice of moonlight that cut down through the tree limbs and leaves.

  And he saw Jinx. Lyndel had one arm locked around her throat. In the other he held a gun, the barrel catching the moonlight as he pointed it at her temple.

  “Drop the shotgun, Dawson, or I’ll kill her right now.”

  “WHAT IS THIS ABOUT Dawson getting caught in the middle of a rustling ring?” Hoyt asked his wife later as they lay in their large bed. A light breeze played at the curtains at the window. Moonlight spilled in along with summer-scented air.

  Emma filled him in on what she knew, which wasn’t much. “Apparently he met a woman up on the mountain. McCall thinks she was riding with the rustlers.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that Dawson has fallen in love with a rustler?” her husband demanded.

  She hated to tell him that might be the least of it. “McCall has had to put an APB out on her for questioning. One of the rustlers’ bodies was found in an old abandoned ranch house up on the mountain.”

  “So we don’t know who killed him,” Hoyt said. “Could have been one of the other rustlers. Or this woman. Or Dawson.” He raked a hand through his thick blond hair. It was beginning to gray and had seemed to gray even more since Emma had come into his life, she thought with regret.

  “We need to talk about the past sometime,” she said. “I need to tell you about my former husband.”

  He took her hand and met her gaze. “I never doubted that you had a past, Emma. If you want to tell me about it, fine. But I’m not asking. I don’t need to know. I know you.”

  She smiled. “Yours might not be the only past that comes back to haunt us, but it can wait for now.”

  He nodded. “Tell me what you know about this woman rustler, then.”

  “Apparently she had gone undercover to bring down the rustling ring.”

  Hoyt raised a brow. “And almost got my son killed.”

  Emma couldn’t argue that. “I’ve always known it would take a special woman for each of your ‘boys,’” she said, smiling over at her husband. Like her husband, though, she feared that this woman Dawson had gone after might get them both killed before this was over. “You know your son.”

  He swore under his breath. “Yes,” he said and started to get out of bed.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded.

  “I have cattle to help round up, a son to find—”

  She caught his hand. “Hoyt, they aren’t boys anymore. They’ve been running this ranch just fine without you. They can run it a few more hours without your help. Anyway, it’s too late to do anything tonight and you know it.”

  He smiled down at her, then came back to bed, taking her in his arms. She thought about what she’d overheard him telling the sheriff and pushed the thought away. No one other than Aggie was involved in what had happened.

  Laura might have been insanely jealous, but Aggie was apparently just plain insane. At least she was locked up where she couldn’t hurt anyone else, Emma thought as she snuggled into her husband’s strong, warm body.

  “PUT DOWN THE SHOTGUN, Dawson,” Lyndel said again.

  “Don’t listen to him,” Jinx said. “He can’t kill me and get away with it.”

  Lyndel laughed. “That’s only if her body is ever found.”

  Jinx saw movement at the edge of the trees. “Dawson, look out!”

  But the warning didn’t come quickly enough. Two men sprang from the trees behind him, wrenched the shotgun away and threw him to the ground.

  “Don’t hurt him,” she cried. “He doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

  “Bring him along,” Lynd
el ordered. “He sealed his fate when he threw in with you.” He grabbed her arm roughly and shoved her back toward the house. “I knew he wouldn’t just go away and leave well enough alone. Apparently he got himself jinxed by the likes of you and now it is going to cost him his life.”

  To her surprise, Lyndel didn’t take them to the house but to his Cadillac running out front. He shoved her into the front seat at gunpoint and climbed in after her. Dawson was thrown into the backseat with one of Lyndel’s men, also at gunpoint, as Slim slipped behind the wheel.

  Out of habit, Jinx reached for her seat belt.

  “You won’t be needing that,” Lyndel said with a chuckle.

  She snapped it on anyway, making him shake his head.

  “Take us to the quarry,” he ordered.

  Jinx swallowed as she realized what he had planned. He wasn’t joking about their bodies never being found. The rock quarry on the ranch had filled in with water years ago. As a girl she’d been warned not to go there because the water was so cold and deep. She knew Lyndel hadn’t heeded warnings about it and had almost drowned there one summer. The girl who’d been with him had drowned and Hank Thompson had fenced the quarry, adding several strings of barbed wire along the top and locking the gate in.

  The headlights cut a swath of golden light on the narrow ranch road. There was no other ranch within miles, no one around out here in the middle of nowhere. Jinx thought of Dawson in the backseat. He’d come after her and now it was going to cost him his life. She couldn’t let that happen. No matter what she had to do.

  Slim slowed and turned down an even narrower dirt road. In the moonlight she could see the tall cottonwoods around the quarry. The light glinted off the steel fence Lyndel’s father had built around the deep, water-filled hole.

  Large rocks rose up from the edges of the quarry. Slim pulled up to the gate and got out to unlock it.

  Jinx’s mind raced. She had to do something desperate. This time her situation actually demanded it. Lyndel was going to kill them either way, so she didn’t see that she had anything to lose. She glanced in the rearview mirror, saw Dawson. Their gazes met and she tried to send a silent message.