by B. J Daniels
* * *
JUST AS NIKKI had done for the past few days, she watched Ledger McGraw enter the Whitehorse Café. He had arrived at the same time each morning, pulled up out front in a Sundown Stallion Station pickup and adjusted his Stetson before climbing out.
Across the street in the park, Nikki observed him from behind the latest weekly newspaper as he hesitated just inside the café door. She saw him looking around, and after watching him for three mornings, she knew exactly what he was looking for. Who he was looking for.
He tipped his hat to the young redheaded waitress, just as he had the past three mornings, before he took a seat at a booth in her section. He had been three when the twins were kidnapped, which now made him about twenty-eight. There was an innocence about him and an old-fashioned chivalrous politeness. She’d seen it in the way he wiped his boots on the mat just outside the café door. In the way he always removed his hat the moment he stepped in. In the way he waited to be offered a seat as if he had all day.
She’d keyed in on Ledger when she’d realized that no one else in the McGraw family had such a predictable routine. That wasn’t the only reason she’d chosen him. In the days she’d been in town watching him each morning, she had seen his trusting nature and hoped he would be the son she might get to help her.
Nikki didn’t kid herself that this was going to be easy. She’d heard from other journalists that the family hated reporters and all of them except Travers had refused to talk about the kidnapping. She desperately needed someone on that ranch who would be agreeable to help her. Ledger might be the one.
Nikki wished she had more time before making her move. But the clock was ticking. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the kidnapping was approaching rapidly. It still gave her a chill when she looked at the photographs she’d taken of Marianne McGraw. It hadn’t been her imagination. The woman had risen up from her chair, eyes wild, hands clenched around the “babies” in her arms.
If Nikki had had any doubt that the woman was still in that shell of a body, she no longer did. Now she had to find out if the rumors were true about Marianne and Nate Corwin.
From across the street, she watched Ledger take a seat in his usual booth. A moment later, the redhead put a cup of coffee, a menu and the folded edition of what Nikki assumed was the Milk River Courier on his table.
The local weekly had just come out this morning. Ledger had been interviewed, which surprised her, since it was the first time she knew of that he’d spoken to the press, but it also made her even more convinced that Ledger was her way into the family.
Inside the café, she watched Ledger looking bashful as he picked up the menu, but he didn’t look at it. Instead, he secretly watched the redheaded waitress as she walked away.
Nikki saw something in his expression that touched her heart. A vulnerability that made her turn away for a moment. There was a yearning that was all too evident to anyone watching.
But no one else was watching. Clearly this young man was besotted with this redhead. Today, though, Nikki noticed something she’d missed the days before.
As she watched the waitress return to the table to take his order, she saw why she’d missed it. Along with the obvious sexual tension between them, there was the glint of a gold band on the young woman’s left-hand ring finger.
Her heart ached all the more for Ledger because this was clearly a case of unrequited love. Add to that an obvious shared history and Nikki knew she was witnessing heartbreak at its rawest. The redhead had moved on, but Ledger apparently hadn’t.
High school sweethearts? But if so, what had torn them apart? she wondered, then quickly brushed her curiosity aside. Her grandfather had often warned her about getting emotionally involved with the people she wrote about.
She knew in this case, she had to be especially careful.
“Care, and you lose your objectivity,” he’d said when, as a girl, she’d asked how he could write about the pain and suffering of people the way he did. “The best stories are about another person’s pain. It’s the nature of the business because people who’ve lost something make good human-interest stories. Everyone can relate because we have all lost something dear to us.”
“What have you lost?” she’d asked her grandfather, since she’d never seen vulnerability in him ever.
“Nothing.”
She’d always assumed that was true. Nothing stopped her grandfather from getting what he wanted. He’d go to any extreme to get a story and later to run the newspaper he bought, even if it meant risking his life or his business. But then again, that was one of the reasons Nikki suspected her grandmother had left him to marry another man. Not that her grandfather had seemed to notice. Or maybe he hid his pain well.
Ledger McGraw was in pain and it couldn’t help but touch her heart. Nikki knew her grandfather would encourage her to use this new information to her advantage.
“Keep your eye on the goal,” he’d always said. “The goal is getting the best story you possibly can. You aren’t there to try to make things better or bond with these people.”
That had sounded cold to her.
“It’s all about emotional distance. Pretend you’re a fly on the wall,” he’d said. “A fly that sometimes has to buzz around and get things going if you hope to get anything worth writing about.”
Nikki now felt anxious. She had to make her move today. Ledger would be finishing his breakfast soon. She couldn’t put this off any longer. Just as she decided it was time, she saw Ledger grab the redhead’s wrist as she started to step past his table.
Nikki saw those too shallowly buried emotions arc between them as the waitress reacted to whatever he was saying to her. The waitress jerked free of his hold and looked as if she might cry. But Nikki’s gaze was on Ledger’s face. His pain was so naked that she couldn’t help feeling it at heart level.
Ledger McGraw was incredibly young, his protectiveness for this woman touching. He’s still a boy, Nikki thought, and felt guilty for what she was about to do.
* * *
LEDGER IMMEDIATELY REGRETTED grabbing Abby’s wrist. Without looking at her, he said, “He’s hurt you again.”
“Don’t, Ledger.”
As she jerked free of his hold, he raised his gaze to meet hers again. “Abby.” The word came out a plea. “Any man who would hurt you—”
“Stay out of it, please,” she whispered, tears in her eyes. “Please.” Her lowered voice cracked with emotion. “You don’t understand.”
He shook his head. He understood only too well. “A man who hurts you doesn’t love you.”
Her throat worked as she hastily brushed at her tears. “You don’t know anything about it,” she snapped before rushing toward the kitchen and away from him. “He just grabbed my wrist too hard. It’s nothing.”
He swore under his breath, realizing he didn’t know anything about it. He’d never understood what she saw in Wade Pierce. He especially didn’t understand why Abby stayed with the man.
Ledger finished what he could eat of his breakfast. Digging out the cost of his meal and tip from his jeans’ pocket, he dropped the money on the table, grabbed his hat and left.
Once outside, he stopped in the bright sunlight as he tried to control the emotions roiling inside him. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen the bruises, even though Abby had done her best to hide them. The bastard was mistreating her—he was sure of it.
He wanted to kill Wade with his bare hands. It was all he could do not to drive over to the feedlot and call the man out. But he knew that the only thing that would accomplish was more pain for Abby.
When was she going to see Wade for what he really was—a bully and a blowhard and... With a curse, he realized that Abby might never come to her senses. She was convinced he couldn’t live without her.
“Ledger?”
He turned
at the sound of a woman’s voice.
Marta, the other waitress and a friend of Abby’s, held out the newspaper to him. “You forgot this,” she said, sympathy in her expression.
That was the trouble with a small town. Everyone knew your business, including watching your heart break. He hadn’t looked at the newspaper, wasn’t sure he wanted to. He hadn’t been thinking when the publisher had cornered him.
He took the paper from Marta and mumbled, “Thanks,” before the door closed. Gripping the newsprint, he turned toward his ranch pickup. He felt light-headed with fury and frustration and that constant ache in his heart. Not to mention he was worried about what would happen when the rest of the family saw the story in the paper.
And yet, all he could think about was driving over to the feedlot and dragging Wade out and kicking his butt all the way from Whitehorse to the North Dakota border.
But even as he thought it, he knew he was to blame for this. He’d let Abby get away. He’d practically propelled her into Wade’s arms. He hadn’t been ready for marriage. As much as he loved her, he’d wanted to wait until he had the money for a place of his own. He couldn’t bring Abby into the house at Sundown Stallion Station. He could barely stand living on the ranch himself. He’d told himself he couldn’t do that to her. Then Wade had come along, seeming to offer everything Ledger couldn’t.
Head down, he was almost to his pickup when he heard someone call his name.
* * *
THE COWBOY WHO got out of the second Sundown Stallion Station pickup made Nikki catch her breath. She’d seen photos of Cull McGraw, usually candid paparazzi shots over the years, but none of them captured the raw power of the man in person.
From his broad shoulders to the long denim-clad legs now striding toward his brother, he looked like a man to be reckoned with. The one thing he had in common with all the photos she’d ever seen of him was the scowl.
“Ledger!” Cull looked like he wanted to tear up the pavement as he closed in on his brother. “Have you seen this?” he demanded, waving what appeared to be a newspaper clutched in his big fist.
Ledger stared at him as if confused, as if he was still thinking of the waitress back in the café. Clearly, he hadn’t bothered to look at the newspaper he was now gripping in his own hand.
“Why in the hell did you talk to the press? Not to mention, why you didn’t tell me that Dad had raised the reward. Again!” Cull slapped the paper against his muscular thigh. “Patricia is going to lose her mind over this. All hell is going to break loose.”
“We probably shouldn’t talk about this out here,” she heard Ledger say. “Enough of our lives is open to public consumption, don’t you think?”
Cull swore and looked toward the café. Two waitresses stood looking out the large plate-glass window along with several patrons.
“Fine. We’ll take this up at home,” Cull said through gritted teeth as he turned on his boot heel and headed back toward his pickup.
With an expression of resignation, Ledger turned toward the café window. The redheaded waitress was no longer at the window. He stood for a moment, looking as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders before he headed for his truck and climbed behind the wheel. The engine revved and he roared past, sending up dust from Whitehorse’s main street.
Nikki shifted her gaze to Cull, realizing her plan had just taken a turn she hadn’t expected. She hesitated, no longer sure.
Cull had reached his truck, but hadn’t gotten in. He was watching Ledger leave, still looking angry.
If Cull was this upset about the article in the newspaper and new reward, wait until he found out that she would be doing a book about the family and the kidnapping case.
She almost changed her mind about the truly dangerous part of her plan. Almost.
* * *
JERKING THE DOOR of his pickup open, Cull climbed in, angry with himself for coming here this morning to confront his brother. He should have waited, but he’d been so angry with his brother... He knew Ledger hadn’t meant any harm.
Tossing the newspaper on the pickup seat, he reached for the key in the ignition. Like most people in Whitehorse, he’d left his keys in his rig while he’d confronted his brother. Had it been winter instead of a warm spring day, he would have left the truck running so it would be warm when he came back.
The newspaper fell open to the front-page story. A bold two-deck headline ran across the top of the page. Twenty-Five Years After Kidnapping: Where Are the McGraw Twins?
The damned anniversary of the kidnapping was something he dreaded, he thought with a shake of his head. Like clockwork, the paper did a story, longer ones on some years like this one. He hadn’t seen anything but the first few quotes, one from his brother Ledger and the other from their father, when he’d grabbed up the paper and headed for his truck.
It was just like the publisher to talk to Ledger. His brother was too nice, too polite. If the publisher had approached him, the man would have gotten one hell of a quote. Instead, Ledger had said that the loss of the twins was “killing” his father after twenty-five years of torture.
How could their father still be convinced that Oakley and Jesse Rose were alive? Travers McGraw had this crazy fantasy that the twins had been sold to a couple who, not realizing the babies were stolen, had raised them as their own.
Cull and his brothers had tried to reason with him. “How could this couple not have heard about the kidnapping? It was in all the newspapers across the country—not to mention on the television news nationally.”
His father had no answer, just that he knew the twins were alive and that they would be coming home one day soon.
He knew his father had to believe that. The alternative—that his wife and her alleged lover had kidnapped and killed the twins for money—was too horrible to contemplate.
Under the newspaper fold were the photographs of the babies that his father had provided. Both had the McGraw dark hair, the big blue eyes like their other siblings. Both looked angelic with their bow-shaped mouths and chubby cheeks. They looked like the kind of babies that a person would kill for.
When he’d seen that this year his father was doubling the reward for information, Cull had lost it.
With a curse, he could well imagine what his stepmother was going to say about this. Worse, a reward that size would bring every crank and con man out of the woodwork—just as it had over the years. What had his father been thinking? He was desperate, Cull realized, and the thought scared him.
His father had been sick and didn’t seem to be getting any better. Was this a last-ditch effort to find the twins because he was dying? Cull felt rattled as the idea sunk in. Was their father keeping the truth from them?
Accompanying the story were also photos of Oakley and Jesse Rose digitally age-progressed to show what the twins could look like now. Cull shuddered. How could his father bear to look at these? It was heartbreaking to see what they would have looked like had they lived.
The rest of the story was just a rehash of the kidnapping that summer night twenty-five years ago. What wasn’t in the story was that Travers McGraw had sold his most prized quarter horse to raise the ransom demand, and that even after horse trainer Nate Corwin’s arrest, the $250,000 ransom had never been recovered.
Nor was there anything about what Travers and Marianne had lost. Not to mention the children left behind. Their mother was in a mental institution and their father had fallen into a debilitating grief and held on to a crazy hope that might be killing him.
Cull wadded up the newspaper and threw it onto the passenger-side floorboard. Had he really thought he could keep this from his family? It was only a matter of time before everyone back at the ranch saw this. His stepmother, Patricia, had long ago tired of this yearly search for the twins. This latest story would set her off royally.
The
local weekly paper was only the beginning, he thought with a curse. With the twenty-fifth anniversary of the kidnapping mere days away, other papers would pick up the story and run it, including television news shows.
A part of him wanted to leave town until things died back down again. But as upset as he was with his father, he knew he couldn’t run away. His father needed his sons, maybe now more than ever before. Because he might be sicker than they thought. Because once the story was out about the huge reward...
He backed out of his space, wanting to get home and put out as many fires as he could. He’d just thrown the pickup into first gear and gone only a few feet when a young woman stepped off the curb right in front of his truck.
Cull stomped on the brakes, but too late. He heard the truck make contact and saw her fall, disappearing from view before he could leap out, his heart in his throat, to find her sprawled on the pavement.
Chapter Four
CULL KNELT BESIDE the dark-haired woman on the pavement, terrified that he might have killed her. He heard people come running out of the café. Someone was calling 9-1-1 as he touched the young woman’s shoulder. She didn’t stir.
“Is she alive?” someone cried from in front of the café. “The 9-1-1 operator needs to know if she’s breathing and how badly she’s injured.”
Cull took the young woman’s slim wrist and felt for a pulse. But his own heart was pounding so hard, he couldn’t tell if she had one. He leaned closer to put his cheek against her full lips and prayed.
With a relief that left him weak, he felt her warm breath against his skin. As he drew back, her eyes opened. They were big and a startling blue as bright as the Montana day. A collective sigh of relief moved through the crowd as the woman tried to sit up.
“Don’t move,” Cull ordered. “An ambulance is on the way.”
She shook her head. “An ambulance?” She seemed to see the people around her. “What happened?”
“You stepped out into the street,” he said. “I didn’t see you until it was too late.”