Lassoed

by BJ Daniels

  Hoyt hadn’t been home last night when Tanner and Marshall returned from the rodeo with Billie Rae. Tanner’s father, according to Emma, had been at a ranchers’ association meeting about some rustlers operating across the border in Wyoming.

  It was odd, though, that Hoyt had already taken off so early this morning. Tanner hadn’t even seen him before he left. His father had been putting in long hours recently, almost as if avoiding home.

  He frowned at the thought and hoped everything was all right between his father and Emma. He and his brothers hadn’t been happy when their father had sprung a new wife on them. But once they’d been around Emma for five minutes, they too had fallen in love with her.

  Tanner was told she was nothing like Hoyt’s other wives. He’d been too young to remember Laura, his father’s first wife. She’d drowned in a boating accident. Tasha, his father’s second wife, Tanner had heard was killed by a runaway horse.

  A third wife, Krystal, had disappeared shortly after Hoyt had brought her to the ranch. Tanner vaguely remembered her. After all that tragedy, his father had gone years without a woman in his life.

  Then, out of the blue, he’d come home with Emma. She was older, closer to Hoyt’s age, more full-figured, redheaded and had a fiery temper that had earned her respect from all of the men in the family. She’d changed things around here, but in a good way. And Tanner had never seen his father happier. Until recently, when he seemed to be avoiding being home.

  “What would you like to do first this morning?” he asked Billie Rae after breakfast.

  “Is there a pawnshop or jewelry store in Whitehorse?”

  Tanner shook his head. “But there are several in Havre. I’d be happy to drive you.”

  “No, I couldn’t possibly ask you—”

  “You didn’t ask. I’m volunteering, unless you need to go back to the fairgrounds for your vehicle?”

  “The pickup I was driving isn’t mine.”

  “Then I guess we don’t need to worry about it.”

  She nodded but he saw the dark cloud move over her eyes. She had a lot to worry about. They both did. She was worried about Duane, and Tanner was worried that this woman who had come crashing into his life would leave it just as suddenly.

  “It’s a nice drive to Havre,” he said. “We’ll have lunch and shop for whatever you need. I could use the day off, but don’t tell my stepmother.”

  Emma swatted him as she passed.

  Billie Rae nodded, tears in her eyes. “You have all been so kind. I really wish—”

  “No regrets.” Emma stopped next to her chair to lay a hand on her shoulder. “No tears, either, not on such a beautiful morning,” she said. “You two best get goin’. Make sure Billie Rae gets whatever she needs in Havre.” Emma pressed a wad of cash into Tanner’s hand along with another silent warning look.

  He was to make sure nothing happened to Billie Rae and that he didn’t make things worse for her—as if he hadn’t already.

  “We’ll be fine,” he told his stepmother. He had a shotgun in his pickup, and this morning he’d put a pistol under the seat. He wasn’t taking any chances—he’d already done that last night.

  SHERIFF MCCALL CRAWFORD looked up to find a young woman standing in front of her desk.

  “There wasn’t anyone out front,” the teenager said, looking nervous. She was slightly built, though tall and regal in appearance. Her straight shoulder-length hair was white blond, her eyes a clear, disarming blue. She had a pretty face that belied how young she really was, since on closer inspection McCall realized she was no more than a girl, probably not even out of high school.

  “Can I help you?” McCall asked the girl.

  “You’re the sheriff?” She glanced at the open door and the name stenciled on it. “I thought the sheriff’s name was Winchester?”

  “I recently got married.” It had been more than a year and a half, but McCall was wondering why she’d bothered to change her name, since everyone in town still called her Sheriff Winchester. “Why don’t you have a seat and tell me what seems to be the problem.”

  “It’s my aunt, Aggie Wells,” the girl said as she pulled up one of the orange plastic chairs across from McCall’s desk and sat down. “She’s missing.”

  “How long has she been missing?”

  “Several weeks now.”

  Several weeks? “Why have you waited this long to report her missing, Miss…? I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Cindy Ross. My aunt is gone a lot with her job. But this time she didn’t call or come home.”

  “Where is home?”

  “Phoenix, Arizona. That’s where I live with my father.”

  “And your aunt?”

  “She stays with us when she’s in town. Like I said, she travels a lot but she calls me every few days from wherever she is and always calls on Sunday.”

  “So you haven’t heard from her since…”

  “The second week of May, that Sunday. She called to say she would be flying home that afternoon.”

  “Called from…?”

  “Here. Whitehorse. She said she was driving to Billings, leaving her rental car and would be coming in on the last flight. I was to pick her up but she wasn’t on the plane.”

  “And there has been no word?”

  “No. My dad said something must have come up with her job.” The girl looked down in her lap. “But when I called her office, they said she’d been fired a long time ago.” She looked up, tears in her eyes. “I’m afraid something has happened to her.”

  “What does your father think?” The girl met her gaze, but didn’t respond. “He doesn’t know you’re here, does he?”

  “He says Aggie can take care of herself and that she’ll turn up. But I have a bad feeling…”

  McCall didn’t like the sound of any of this. She picked up her pen. “Your aunt’s name is Aggie Wells?”

  “Agatha, but she’s always gone by Aggie. She’s an insurance investigator. That is, she was.”

  “What was she doing in Whitehorse?”

  “She said she was trying to prove that some man murdered all three of his wives.”

  McCall’s head shot up from taking notes.

  The girl nodded knowingly. “I thought you might know about the cases. The man’s name is Hoyt Chisholm. Aggie told me that he killed his first three wives and now he has married again. Her last appointment was with him and his new wife. She said they’d invited her out to their house for supper.”

  McCall was unable to hide her surprise. Everyone in town knew about the deaths of Hoyt’s first two wives, and the disappearance of the third one.

  The recent scuttlebutt throughout the county was about his new wife. McCall had heard that some residents were taking odds over at Whitehorse Café, betting how long this wife would be alive.

  “My aunt told me that if anything happened to her, I was to make sure that Hoyt Chisholm didn’t get away with another murder.” The girl burst into tears. “I know he killed her.”

  BILLIE RAE FOUND HERSELF enjoying more than the ride to Havre. Tanner pointed out landmarks and told her stories. She knew he was trying to keep her entertained, to distract her from thinking about her life and Duane.

  But the one thing she couldn’t stop thinking about, sitting this close to Tanner, was last night. He had been so tender, so heartbreakingly sweet. She had cried after they’d made love.

  “What is it?” Tanner had asked, sounding stricken.

  How could she tell him that she felt she’d ruined her life by marrying Duane? That she’d lost her chance to be with someone like Tanner. Duane was going to kill her. Or at the very least, have her living in fear and on the run the rest of her life.

  She could never be with Tanner again. As it was, she feared she had already put him and his family in danger.

  “I forgot what happiness feels like,” she had finally choked out. He’d held her and she’d spooned against him, relishing the warmth of his body and the way this ma
n made her feel, dreading when the sun would come up and she would have to leave him.

  “That’s the town of Wagner down there,” Tanner said now, pointing at the few buildings left. It appeared most of the towns along the Hi-Line were shrinking, some little more than a sign and a couple of old buildings.

  “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid held up a train not far from here,” he said. “It was allegedly their last robbery before they headed to South America.”

  The day had dawned clear blue, sunny and warm. The land was a brilliant spring-green and, with the windows down, the air blowing in smelled of summer. It was the kind of day she remembered from when she was a girl and still had her illusions about life.

  Billie Rae breathed in the sweet scents, catching a hint of Tanner’s masculine one. When she was with him, she felt her strength coming back. Duane had done his best to beat it out of her. She was almost surprised that she could feel like her old self. But Tanner reminded her of who she’d been. Who she could be again—except for Duane who was determined to kill every ounce of independence in her.

  She tried not to think about where he was or what he was doing. She knew he would be furious wherever he was. Just as she knew he would be frantically looking for her and wouldn’t stop until he found her.

  She shuddered at the thought.

  “Warm enough?” Tanner asked, noticing.

  “Someone just walked over my grave.” She regretted the quick retort immediately. “You know what I mean.”

  “I do,” he said and quickly pointed out an old Spanish mission on the road ahead. She was glad he didn’t mention Duane, but neither of them had forgotten about him, she knew. She’d caught Tanner checking the rearview mirror occasionally—just as she had been doing in the side mirror.

  Duane would not give up. She just had to make sure he never found her—or learned that Tanner Chisholm had been the one who’d saved her last night.

  Hopefully Duane would also never learn about this trip to Havre. She hated involving Tanner Chisholm in the mess she’d made of her life any more than she already had. But she needed to sell the rings. Hopefully she could get enough to buy an old car and enough gas to put a whole lot more distance between herself and Duane before she found a job.

  “You’re going to have to deal with him, you know,” Tanner said as if realizing she hadn’t been listening about the old mission they’d just passed.

  Billie Rae nodded. “I’m sorry. I just can’t help thinking about him.”

  “How long have you been married?”

  “Six months. We met in Oklahoma, where I was teaching kindergarten. Right after we eloped, Duane sprung it on me that he’d gotten a job in Williston, North Dakota, and we had to move at once. I didn’t even get to finish the school year.”

  “You had friends in Oklahoma?”

  She nodded. “I lost track of them once we got to North Dakota. Duane made sure of that. It’s hard to accept that I’m the classic case. The abused wife. But Duane wasn’t like this when we were dating. He was…” She let her voice trail off. “That’s not true. The signs were there. He was controlling but I wanted to believe it was because he cared and just wanted what was best for me, like he said.” She laughed at that. “I was such a fool.”

  “We’ve all been fools,” Tanner said. “Myself included. But you realized your mistake and got away from him.”

  If only it were that simple.

  “You don’t know my husb…Duane,” she said. She couldn’t bear to call him her husband anymore. She hadn’t only left him, hadn’t merely taken off her wedding rings. In her heart she was no longer Duane Rasmussen’s wife, and last night with Tanner she’d felt like a free woman, even though she’d only been kidding herself.

  Under the law, she was still Duane Rasmussen’s wife. Only technically, she thought, because there was no love in her heart for him. When had she stopped loving him? She didn’t know. Just as she didn’t know when she’d begun to hate him.

  “He’s…dangerous,” she said, thinking that was putting it mildly.

  Tanner let out a dismissive sound. “Only to a woman who can’t fight back.”

  She shook her head. “He carries a gun, he kills people.” And when he caught her, she wouldn’t be the first person he killed in a rage. “Duane’s a cop.”

  Chapter Four

  It hadn’t taken long for Sheriff McCall Crawford to verify what Cindy Ross had told her. Agatha “Aggie” Wells hadn’t used her plane ticket—nor had she returned her rental car—a white SUV. Aggie had also been fired from the insurance company seven years ago.

  “Can I be honest with you, Sheriff?” Wells’s supervisor asked.

  “Please.”

  “Aggie was one of our best. She was relentless. But something happened with this Chisholm case. Once she found out another of his other wives had died and a third had disappeared, she became obsessed. I’m afraid that for her the case became almost…well, personal.”

  “Personal in what way?”

  The supervisor cleared his throat. “I know this is going to sound crazy, but at one point I thought she had fallen in love with Hoyt Chisholm. See what I mean? Crazy, huh? It made no sense. If she really believed he’d killed his first two wives for the insurance money, and possibly the third wife who disappeared, then she wouldn’t fall for the guy, right?”

  McCall knew that crazier things had happened.

  “Aggie just got so worked up when she talked about him, and even when she was pulled off the case, she continued to work on it in her spare time. Now, that’s…scary.”

  Yes, McCall thought. And possibly dangerous.

  “I take it she was never able to find any evidence that Mr. Chisholm had anything to do with the deaths or disappearance of his wives?” she asked.

  “No evidence at all. Maybe that’s what drove her so crazy. I finally had to let her go. May I ask why you’re inquiring about her?”

  “Apparently she hasn’t given up on proving that Mr. Chisholm’s guilty,” McCall said. “She was in Whitehorse a couple of weeks ago and she met with the Chisholms.”

  “Chisholms?”

  “Mr. Chisholm has remarried.” McCall heard the heavy silence on the other end of the line and felt her concern growing.

  “I have to tell you, I am very disturbed she is still apparently looking into this, and now with a new wife…”

  “If you know something—”

  “I probably shouldn’t have said as much as I have,” the supervisor said, clearly backpedaling. “Like I said, it was just a feeling. Aggie took her job very seriously. Quite frankly, I think she might…no, never mind.”

  “If there is something else you need to tell me, please do. It’s important that I know everything. The reason I called you is because Aggie Wells has disappeared. She had called her niece to pick her up at the airport the day after she had dinner with the Chisholms, but never arrived. Nor has she used her plane ticket or returned her rental car.”

  “Let me guess. Aggie told her niece that if anything happened to her to contact law enforcement because Hoyt Chisholm would have killed her, right?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

  “She insisted the same memo be put in her employee file here,” the supervisor said. “We all thought she was just being paranoid, but what if Aggie was right? What if Hoyt Chisholm killed his three other wives and now plans to kill the fourth one as well?”

  THE RINGS BROUGHT LESS MONEY than Billie Rae had hoped.

  “The diamond is flawed,” one jeweler told her.

  She had argued that Duane had told her how much he paid.

  “I’m sorry but there isn’t any way your husband paid that kind of money for this,” the last pawn broker said handing back the ring.

  Tanner had driven her to all of the jewelry stores and pawnshops in town. He had waited in his pickup while she’d gone inside, as she’d asked him to. For that she was thankful because the experience had been humiliating. They’d all told her the same t
hing.

  Duane had lied about what he’d spent on the rings. She realized he’d probably picked them up from a pawnshop to begin with or gotten them from one of the criminal types he loved to intimidate. Duane enjoyed the benefits that came with being a cop—those being throwing his weight around and flashing his badge to get what he wanted.

  “What will you give me for the rings?” she asked the owner of the last place in town. When he told her, she had nodded, fighting tears of both discouragement and anger. Duane had lied to her from day one.

  She knew that shouldn’t have come as a surprise, the way their married life had turned out. But by the time she pocketed the small amount of cash she could get for the rings, she no longer had any illusions about the man she’d married.

  “You all right?” Tanner asked as she slid into the truck seat next to him.

  She gave him the best smile she could muster.

  He laughed. “Stupid question. Let’s get some lunch. There’s a great Chinese food place here in the mall. You like Chinese?”

  She knew she shouldn’t spend any more time with him. While she couldn’t imagine how Duane could have somehow followed them to Havre, she knew the longer she was around Tanner, the more she was putting him in danger.

  “You have to eat,” he said as if seeing her hesitation.

  She nodded, hating the thought of the time that would come when she would have to tell him goodbye. “And then can we see if we can find me a used vehicle?” she asked as he started the truck and pulled out into the traffic.

  He glanced over at her, but said nothing.

  They ate at the Chinese buffet, finishing up with the fried donuts. Tanner was amusing during their lunch, telling stories about growing up on the ranch with five brothers.

  Billie Rae looked around the restaurant. It had been so long since she’d felt normal. Sitting across from Tanner, she was able to eat without her stomach knotting up in fear that she would say the wrong thing and ruin it. With Duane she was seldom able to finish a meal without him getting upset and upsetting her in return.