by BJ Daniels
She realized she was losing a lot of blood because suddenly she felt light-headed. She clung to the climbing rope as the bridge above her blurred. Just a little farther. Tanner and Duane were still fighting for the gun. She felt as if she could pass out at any moment.
Pushing herself, she ratcheted herself up the last few inches. As she reached the edge of the footbridge, she pulled out the loaded taser and prayed for a clear shot.
AS THEY FOUGHT FOR THE GUN, Tanner knew he was fighting for his life. It was almost impossible to keep from losing his balance and falling from the bridge. Duane was strong and wild with an insane need to finish what he’d started. Tanner fought with a craziness of his own, believing that Duane had already killed Billie Rae.
He found himself thrown against the rope railing as they grappled for the gun, the bridge threatening to spill them both into the river far below. Duane kneed him in the groin and Tanner stumbled back, falling to the floor of the footbridge. He would have fallen through the opening had he not managed to grab hold of one of the vertical ropes and get one leg wrapped around the wooden slats on the opposite side.
He was breathing hard from the exertion and the near fall when he looked up to find Duane standing over him. Duane had the gun in one hand and was hanging onto the bridge rope rail with the other. He was breathing hard, sweating, but smiling as he pointed the weapon at Tanner’s chest.
Tanner saw the tire iron caught between two of the wooden slats of the footbridge floor. Duane saw it too and slammed down his foot on it before Tanner could grab it.
“You should never have come between me and my wife,” Duane said. “Let alone assault a police officer with a weapon,” he added as he kicked the tire iron off the bridge. He seemed to watch its descent out of the corner of his eye and Tanner knew exactly what the cop had in mind for him once he shot him.
Like the tire iron, he would be making that fifty-foot fall to the rocks and river below them.
That’s when behind Duane, Tanner caught a glimpse of Billie Rae dangling from the bridge. Tanner had never been so happy to see Billie Rae. She was bleeding but he couldn’t tell how badly she’d been hit.
With a start, he understood the climbing rope and why she’d attached the end of it to the steel cable. She had been expecting that very thing to happen.
The woman was crazy.
Of course she was. Her husband had driven her to this point where she felt she had nothing to lose.
Tanner thought of her in his arms, her face in the light from the fireworks, the look she’d given him yesterday just before she’d left. She’d known that she couldn’t run far enough from the man she’d married. She’d known that one day she would have to end it because if she didn’t Duane would kill her.
He couldn’t imagine having that kind of monkey on his back.
Duane thrust the gun out in front of him as he took a more careful aim for Tanner’s heart. “It was a shame that I had to kill you. But after what you did to Billie Rae. The jealous lover pushing Billie Rae off the bridge when she told you she would never leave her husband.”
“Do you really think that will fly?” Tanner said.
“You forget, I’m a cop.”
BILLIE RAE CLUNG TO the edge of the swaying bridge, the wind in her face, her vision blurring from the loss of blood. She felt light-headed and feared she might pass out at any moment.
The battle between the two men had driven them both away from her. Duane was a good fifteen feet away from her now—on the edge of the taser range.
But there was nothing she could do about that. She was feeling faint and her arms were trembling from the climb up the rope. She felt as if she was going into shock.
Billie Rae thought about calling down the bridge to Duane to get his attention, but she didn’t dare chance it.
She raised the taser and tried to steady it. The last cartridge was loaded. If she missed him—
Duane was clinging to the rope with one hand, the gun in the other aimed at Tanner’s chest. She could hear the hum of his voice but she couldn’t make out his words. There was no doubt in her mind he intended to kill Tanner, who was lying on his back unable to do more than cling to the moving floor of the footbridge.
Everything began to fade from her vision. She felt herself getting weaker, the taser slumping a little in her hands as the bridge rocked and her eyes dimmed.
She said a silent prayer and pulled the trigger.
TANNER HAD SEEN BILLIE RAE holding the taser. He could see that she was struggling to aim it.
“Any last words?” Duane asked.
“Burn in hell,” Tanner said. The darts caught Duane in the low back. He fell against the rope railing and for a moment Tanner thought his weight would snap it—or flip the bridge and both of them off it.
The floor twisted and Tanner was looking down at the water below him. The river was dark now that the sun was lower in the sky, but the rocks just beneath the surface still shone like sun-bleached bones as the water rushed over them.
Duane seemed to teeter on the rope, his body bent over it. Tanner grabbed the weapon Duane dropped and now held it on the man suspended on the rope.
He would later remember it all happening in an instant. Duane suspended there. And then in a blink, gone.
But right now it seemed to happen in slow motion. Duane’s heavy body looped over the rope, making the bridge twist to the side, before gravity finally claimed the weight of his limp body. Tanner impulsively grabbed for him as Duane fell over the side of the bridge. But there was no saving him from the river—or from himself.
Then there was only the sound of the wind but he knew that like him, Billie Rae was listening for the moment when Duane landed in the river below them. He saw her hanging like a limp doll from the climbing rope, her gaze blurred with tears.
Tanner listened, but there was nothing to hear over the wind.
He didn’t look down either as he made his way toward Billie Rae. She seemed to watch him through her tears. And then he was pulling her up and into his arms and holding her and telling her not to worry.
“Everything is going to be all right.”
In the distance he could hear the sound of sirens headed this way as Billie Rae slumped in his arms.
Chapter Fourteen
“I can’t believe Emma would do this,” Tanner said as he looked around the kitchen table at his brothers. The six of them had gathered at the main house after Marshall had discovered Emma missing.
Dawson shoved the note across the table. “Believe it. It’s right there in black and white.”
“She took all her things,” Marshall said. “Her closet is cleaned out. Everything is gone.”
Tanner shook his head. “This is going to break Dad’s heart.”
“How is Billie Rae?” Dawson asked, changing the subject.
“The bullet wound missed any vital organs,” Tanner said. “The doctor is releasing her today.”
“The police cleared the two of you?” Dawson asked.
He remembered the hours of questioning, the days of worrying about Billie Rae, the awful time spent next to her hospital bed fearing she might not survive. “McCall said it shouldn’t be too long before the investigation is concluded and Billie Rae and I are exonerated.”
“What is Billie Rae going to do now?” Zane asked.
“Go back to North Dakota for the time being.” Tanner had wanted to go with her but she’d insisted she needed to do this alone.
“I can’t believe the judge denied bail and Dad has to stay in jail until his trial,” Logan said.
“The judge thought he was a flight risk.” Colton had been quiet until then. The fact that he was engaged to a sheriff’s deputy didn’t make him all that popular right now.
“As if Dad would ever leave the ranch,” Logan said and looked to the others as if needing to be reassured.
“Dad didn’t kill anyone,” Dawson snapped, getting to his feet. “Enough sitting around here moping. Emma is gone. We have to fin
ish the fence. I’ll go into town for the load of barbed wire. The rest of you get ready to string fence for the next few days. This ranch isn’t going to run itself and we have no idea of how long before Dad is cleared and back home.”
“Any word on those rustlers that were hitting ranches down by the Wyoming border?” Zane asked.
Dawson shook his head. “I’ll ask around while I’m in town. But I can tell you right now, they won’t be getting any of our cattle.”
“I’m going by the hospital to see Billie Rae and then I’ll catch up with you out in the north forty,” Tanner said and watched his brothers file out of the house.
He stood for a moment, listening to the silence. It hadn’t been this quiet since Emma had come into their lives. He missed her, missed the rich aroma of whatever she had baking in the big kitchen. She’d made the house warmer, made their lives warmer as well.
Tanner still couldn’t believe she would turn tail and run at the first sign of trouble. It just didn’t seem like her, he thought as he picked up the note off the kitchen table and reread it.
I’m sorry but I can’t do this,
Emma
No matter what the others said, Tanner knew his father was going to be heartbroken. Emma had been the love of his life.
CINDY ROSS FIDGETED in the seat across from the sheriff. “I got your message?” She made it sound like a question. She smelled of soap and her hair was still wet from her early morning shower.
McCall could see the fear in the girl’s eyes and wished she had better news. “We haven’t found your aunt. As you know we found her rental car.” She didn’t mention the blood they found on the seat. McCall was still waiting for forensics to tell her whether or not it was Agatha Wells’s blood. The lab was testing the blood stain against hair follicles found in a hairbrush in the suitcase.
Cindy’s eyes widened in alarm. “You aren’t going to stop looking for her, are you?”
The team dragging the river had discontinued their search for Aggie Wells. “Law enforcement will continue to keep an eye out for your aunt.”
“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to do?” the girl asked, sounding close to tears.
“Until we get another lead—”
“What about that body you found out there?” Cindy asked.
McCall wasn’t surprised the girl had heard about the remains found near her aunt’s abandoned car. “That is tied in with another case.”
“I know you arrested Hoyt Chisholm for the murder of the woman’s remains you found. It was one of his wives that he murdered. He’s going to prison, isn’t he?”
“The remains were identified as one of his wives, but until his case goes to trial—”
“You know he killed my aunt.”
She didn’t know that. But like everyone else in town, she suspected he might have. “Have you been in contact with your father?” McCall asked the girl, seeing how upset she was.
“He hasn’t heard from her.” From the way she ducked her head, McCall guessed the father wasn’t happy about his daughter’s coming to Whitehorse in search of her aunt, let alone her staying so long.
“You might consider going home,” the sheriff said. She knew Cindy had been staying at a local motel, waiting for news of her aunt. “When we have any news of your aunt…” If they ever did, but she didn’t say that.
Cindy had slumped in her chair, all the fight gone out of her.
“Do you have money to get home?” McCall asked.
“I have enough to catch the bus back,” she said. “I just feel like I should stay here, though, in case—”
“Your aunt will expect you to be in Arizona, right? That will be the obvious place she would try to contact you.”
The girl lifted her head, hope shining in her eyes. “You still think she might be alive?”
“We have no evidence otherwise at this point.” McCall didn’t want the girl to be so far away from her father when there was news about her aunt. After this much time and what they’d discovered on the seat of Aggie Wells’s abandoned rental car, McCall wasn’t expecting the news to be good.
BILLIE RAE WAS DRESSED and standing at the window when she heard Tanner come into the hospital room. She knew the sound of his boots on the hospital’s tiled floor after all his visits over the days she’d been healing.
She had a lot more healing to do—and not just from the gunshot wound.
As she stared out at the beautiful Montana summer day, she heard him come up behind her. She ached to feel his arms around her, the touch of his lips against her skin, the whisper of his voice next to her ear.
She turned before he reached her, knowing how easily he could destroy her resolve. “I was just thinking about you,” she said honestly.
“That’s a good start,” he said, his Stetson in his sun-tanned callused hands. He’d been working at the ranch when he wasn’t coming to the hospital to see her. He looked stronger, his shoulders seeming broader. There had always been strength and integrity in this man. She’d seen it that first night at the rodeo.
But now there was something different about him. A calm assuredness—and she knew it had something to do with how he felt about her.
He could survive without her, though. She wasn’t so sure she could without him.
“I’ll come back,” she said, her voice breaking as she looked into his handsome face and fought the urge to reach out and feel the smooth line of his freshly shaven jaw beneath her fingers.
“I’m planning on that,” he said.
She met his warm brown gaze, saw how hard it was for him to let her go. But he’d helped free her of a man who had tried to hold on to her at all costs. Tanner would let her go—even if it broke his heart—and that was what she loved so much about him.
All the hours he’d spent visiting her while she was in the hospital, he’d talked about everything but the two of them and the future. He’d known she wasn’t ready for that.
“I should get going. I’m taking the train back to Williston.”
“Do you need a ride to the station?” He sounded so hopeful, she almost weakened. But she couldn’t bear another goodbye, especially one in a train station. This was hard enough as it was.
“I have a ride, but thank you.”
At a sound behind him, Tanner turned to see his brother Marshall standing in the doorway. When he turned back to Billie Rae, he was smiling. “You couldn’t have picked a better person to take you to the train.” Then he stepped to her and gently brushed aside a lock of her hair to press a kiss to her forehead before stepping back. “You’d better get going. See you soon. Drive careful, Marshall.”
Epilogue
When Tanner saw Billie Rae coming across the field, he thought he must be seeing things.
He’d imagined her coming back to the Chisholm Ranch so many times, this time didn’t seem real.
He stood watching her, the sun beating down on him. He’d warned himself that it might be months before she’d come back. There was also the possibility that she wouldn’t. She might want to forget everything about what had happened on the bridge that day—and him with it.
Sheriff McCall Crawford had stopped by to tell him that the investigation of Duane Rasmussen’s death had been completed. Both he and Billie Rae had been cleared of any wrongdoing. Duane’s body had been released, his remains cremated and sent to Billie Rae in Williston.
So many times Tanner had wanted to turn his pickup down Highway 2 toward North Dakota. He’d wake up in the middle of the night knowing that Billie Rae had cried herself to sleep. He couldn’t bear thinking of her alone back in Williston and being forced to come to terms with Duane’s death and the ashes of her marriage.
But he’d done what she’d asked and he’d waited, counting the days, then the weeks, watching and waiting for her, planning what he would say when he saw her again. He’d hoped she would call, but she hadn’t.
In all that time, there had been no word from Emma, either. Tanner still thought it odd. They a
ll missed her and had moved back into the main house to hold down the fort until the day their father was set free.
It had been a waiting game. The only thing that had saved him was work. They had put in miles of new fence posts and were still stringing barbed wire along with all the other chores of running such a large ranch.
Now as Billie Rae walked the rest of the way across the pasture to where he was leading an appaloosa mare back toward the corral, words failed him.
Billie Rae looked so beautiful. Her face seemed to glow in the morning sunlight. Her brown eyes shone with tears as she stopped a few feet from him, looking almost shy. Then she smiled and he realized he didn’t need any words.
Tanner let out a whoop, dropped the horse’s reins and ran to her. He picked her up by her waist and swung her around in a circle before slowly lowering her down to the ground.
He looked into the depths of her gold-flecked brown eyes and saw love shining out. “Welcome home, Billie Rae.”
She smiled through her tears and it could have been the Fourth of July all over again. Tanner swore he felt fireworks exploding around them as he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.
BILLIE RAE KNEW the moment she saw his face that this was where she belonged—in Tanner Chisholm’s arms. And then he kissed her and she couldn’t believe how far she’d come from that night in July when she’d been running for her life and Tanner had caught her.
Fate? Maybe. Love at first sight? Definitely. She remembered looking up into the cowboy’s face and feeling safe for the first time in months.
In the weeks since what had happened on the bridge, she’d struggled with her heart. If it had had its way, she would never have left Whitehorse or Tanner. But her head said she needed time. She had to go back to Williston and take care of the mess she’d made of her life by marrying Duane.
Billie Rae had also wanted time to be sure that what she felt was real. Now as she drew back from the kiss to cradle his face in her hands and look into his eyes, she couldn’t imagine anything more real.