Betrayal in the Badlands

by Dana Mentink

He blinked. “How?”

  “You’re going to stew on your thoughts and let me know later, remember?”

  His head dropped. “Ah. Sorry. Civilian life is a killer.”

  She rounded on him. “There’s no civilian life or military life. There’s only one life and if you keep people out, you pay a terrible price.” She was maddened to feel tears start up and trickle down her face. “I wish I had learned it before I lost my sister. It took me too long and then time ran out.”

  Logan wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “What made you change your mind and contact Cassie after so many years?”

  “A kids’ book. Crazy as it seems, I found a torn-up copy of Mother Goose rhymes that my mother used to read to us. I don’t even remember taking it when I ran away, but there it was in the bottom of an old backpack. I used to love the pictures. I copied them over and over when I was a child.”

  Logan rubbed her shoulder and she felt the memory flow out of her, warming and soft like a beloved blanket. “Mom used to make bookmarks for us with Bible verses on them. I found one tucked inside. ‘Yea, a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.’ John 12:35. It hit me in that moment that I was hiding from the light and the love that God put here for me, wallowing in shame and old pride. I wrote Cassie a letter right then.”

  They gazed at the horses, silhouetted by a waning sun. He turned her to face him, voice thick with some feeling she couldn’t identify.

  “I’ve met a lot of brave people in my time. Men who went into places where they knew they would probably not survive.” His eyes searched her face. “But I think you are about the bravest person I’ve ever known.”

  “Hardly. I ran away and hid from my sins.”

  “But you had the courage to face them in the end. Plenty of people pass their whole lives without doing that.”

  “Are you one of those people?”

  His eyes searched hers. “The jury’s out on that.” His phone beeped and he let go of her. “Got an e-mail from Bill.” He read it, eyes widening.

  She waited. “Going to stew on it awhile?”

  He hesitated for only a moment. “No, ma’am. I think this time you’re going to hear all of it, I promise.”

  FIFTEEN

  He was about to fill her in when Bentley led Sheila out the front door.

  “I’m going to drop Mrs. Trigg at home. She refuses to go to the hospital.”

  Sheila waved him off. “I’m fine. Really. I’ll send John over for my horse tomorrow. Can you keep him here tonight?”

  Isabel hugged her. “Of course. I’m so sorry about what happened.”

  She smiled. “I’m over it now, but my legs are still a little shaky.” Bentley escorted her to his squad car. Logan could not ignore the tenderness in Bentley’s treatment. He saw the look on Isabel’s face that told him she knew the truth, too.

  Bentley returned. “You see any sign of Autie, Logan?”

  “No. He was gone by the time we got to her. Did you interview John again?”

  “My partner did. He gives the same story, and we’ve got no reason to doubt it unless the coroner can point us in another direction.” He shot a look at Isabel. “I’d tell you to be careful, Miss Ling, stay inside, but you don’t seem to have a scratch on you. Autie’s never laid a finger on you, has he? Only the people around you seem to get hurt.”

  “I didn’t hire him.”

  “The evidence will clear you then, but so far it just makes you look dirty. We’re checking your phone records and L.A.P.D. is doing a search of your apartment.”

  Isabel gave a bitter laugh. “Sheila believes me, and you obviously respect her opinion.”

  Bentley winced slightly. “Sheila’s got a heart as big as the Badlands, but she’s practical, too. She knows when to cut her losses. Sooner or later, she’ll see the truth and when that happens…” He smiled. “Well, I wouldn’t want to be on her bad side, especially if she thinks you had a hand in hurting her son.”

  He turned to Logan. “You carrying?”

  “Yeah. Pistol.”

  “Keep it handy. Your partner here is in league with a very bad boy and you might catch some collateral damage.”

  Bentley drove away down the graveled road.

  Logan followed Isabel to the house.

  “They’re involved,” she said, flopping onto the couch. “Bentley and Sheila.”

  “That would explain John’s animosity and Carl’s drinking.” He rubbed a hand over his face, wishing he could wash it all away.

  “This is a mess,” she groaned.

  “And getting messier all the time. Here’s the e-mail from Bill.” He pulled out his phone and began to read aloud.

  “Logan, Autie’s father is in prison with no chance of parole for the next decade. Rawley’s behind bars, too, no sign of his release and no record of any contact between Autie and Rawley. If I had to guess, I’d say Rawley isn’t behind it.

  Second point. Looking into the broader circle of participants, aside from Isabel’s obvious motive of inheritance…”

  He shot her a look. She grimaced, but gestured for him to continue.

  “The next best rationale is a lover’s spat. Digging into Nora Baker, John’s first love, I can find no sign of her. My contacts in Europe turned up empty, too. Man identified as her ex-boyfriend is in jail for car theft and has been for three years. Contacts looking into his part in her apparent disappearance, but nothing so far.”

  “So, Nora’s disappeared without a trace, and the most likely person to have done it is…”

  Logan finished the sentence. “John Trigg.”

  She closed her eyes. “Maybe he made my sister disappear, too.”

  “And hired Autie to get rid of you when you came around asking questions. When you got too close, they changed the plan and decided to frame you instead.”

  She shook her head. “Bentley won’t dig deep where John is concerned. First, he doesn’t want to hurt Sheila and, second, he’d have to cross Carl, after having an affair with his wife.”

  Logan paced the living room until he slammed his hands down on the kitchen table. “I can’t believe this.”

  Isabel jumped and moved to him. “I’m sorry. I forgot these are your friends. This must be awful for you.”

  “Carl and Sheila are good parents, at least they’ve tried to be. If John is a killer, it will destroy them both. How can I watch that happen?”

  Isabel traced her fingers up and down his arm, setting his nerves on fire. “I have to continue, but you don’t. You can walk away. Please, Logan. Think about it.”

  He wrapped her in a tight embrace. Walk while ye have the light…

  There was so much strength in this small woman, so much light. He wondered if she could be the one to share that light with him.

  Or leave him in darkness, the way his marriage had.

  He forced himself to pull her to arm’s length. “I’ll take care of myself, but for now I need to tell you something you don’t want to hear.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Fire away, Captain.”

  “The Moonlight Ride is Tuesday night.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not going.”

  She raised the other eyebrow. “I’m not going?”

  He started to pace again. “Too many chances for Autie to get to you.”

  “With all those people around?”

  “We’re talking a hundred people and horses. Organized chaos. Autie’s a local boy. He knows the setup.”

  “I’m going.”

  “No, you’re not. You’ll stay in town. This isn’t time for rash behavior.”

  She folded her arms and stared at him. “You’re not my commanding officer.”

  He grabbed her hand and pulled her to the window. The cliffs rose in magnificent desolation in the distance, cut through with ribbons of scars gouged into the rock. “Look. Those are the Badlands, Isabel. Two hundred thousand acres of nothing. Do you want to ride out there with a ma
n who probably knows every rock and crevice?”

  She turned to him, her face calm. “If I have to. We’ve got two people who might be interested in adopting the horses.”

  “I’ll go. It’s not worth the risk for you.”

  She didn’t look at him when she spoke. “When that phone call comes, Logan, the one you’ve been waiting for, you’re going to leave. You know it, I know it. The only way for you to do that with a clear conscience is to find homes for these horses, and the best way to do that is the Moonlight Ride.”

  “Isabel…”

  “Can you disagree with anything I just said?”

  He wanted to, but the naked truth of it was as plain as the massive cliffs of the Badlands. He would leave. The ranch, South Dakota, the horses…and her.

  He would leave it all behind when that phone call came.

  “No,” he said, the words already heavy with the grief he knew was coming.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “But that doesn’t mean you have to do the ride. I’ll do it. I can manage the horses.”

  “You’re not as comfortable on horseback as I am. You can’t manage your horse, plus their two. If one of them acts up, you’re going to need backup.”

  He had to smile. “You sound like you’re planning a sortie.”

  She laughed. “My only plan is to get these horses adopted so we can both leave here with a clean conscience.”

  “I don’t want you to ride.”

  “You afraid I’ll get in your way if Autie does show up?”

  “No.” He took a long, slow breath. “I don’t want to see you hurt.”

  “You’ll protect me, won’t you? Isn’t that your job?” she teased.

  “I’d die trying.”

  She cocked her head, a curtain of dark framing her face. “Why would you say that, Logan?”

  “Because it’s true.”

  “I forgot your pararescue slogan. ‘So that others may live,’ isn’t it?”

  “That’s right, and you can’t teach an old soldier new tricks.” Though he forced a light tone, his heart was heavy. For her, he would risk it all. Why? he wondered. Why risk his safety and his career for a girl who’d only just arrived? He saw her again as she was years ago, lovely, her face lit with emotion. That same girl stood before him now and he knew, right or wrong, he would keep her as close as he could until it was time to go.

  The Monday morning sun poked its way through an ominous layer of clouds. Another summer storm on the way, Isabel thought as she got dressed and headed to the kitchen for dry cereal and coffee. The rumble of the backhoe engine told her Logan was already hard at work. She tried to imagine what the ranch would be like when the job was done.

  The ravine would be cleared and a ribbon of fresh mountain water would burble through it. Hopefully someone would be in the market for a quiet country ranch.

  The horses would be adopted to good homes.

  And Logan would be gone.

  Pain rippled through her.

  That’s the plan, Isabel. The only plan that will work.

  She finished quickly and saw to the horses, though Logan had already given them their feed and water and released them in the back pasture to graze with Sheila’s horse. She wondered when John would come to retrieve the animal.

  She pictured his weathered face, angry and accusatory, like his father’s, but he had another side, too. She’d also seen him treat the horses with such tenderness and care.

  Could John be a murderer? Could a man who professed to love Cassie really have killed her? The questions continued to multiply, but where were the answers? Anger and grief spurted through her and she wished for something, anything, to take her mind off the situation. With Logan fully focused on moving the pile of rock and the horses cropping the grass contentedly, she returned to the cabin.

  The police had done a search after the evidence in the shed had come to light, but now it was her turn. There had to be something they had missed that would bring some clarity. Isabel determined to take the place apart bit by bit and hopefully turn up any clue that Cassie had been worried or fearful of John Trigg. It wouldn’t be enough to convince Bentley, but at least it was a place to start and a way to keep her mind busy.

  She began in the spare room that had served as Cassie’s study. There was no computer, which made her smile. Cassie was stuck in the age when people made things, did things like write letters instead of trading information across cyberspace. She was a scribbler, and there were dozens of cryptic notes piled on her desk with messages like “seven bags, check for w. nest in barn.” Her sister had been an avid journaler as a girl and Isabel emptied the drawers, hoping to find one, but she turned up nothing but paid bills, veterinary reports and a half-eaten Hershey bar.

  Paperback romances spilled out of the bookcases, along with a tattered book about the birds of South Dakota and more volumes on the care and tending of horses than anyone could possibly need. She replaced the books and wandered down the hall to the bedroom. She went through the rickety drawers that didn’t quite shut properly, finding Cassie’s hairbrush, hand lotion, more scribbled notes and a flashlight. In the bottom drawer, her breath caught.

  She lifted out a clipped set of papers, brittle with age and blackened on the edges. The top one was a sketch of Buckwheat, her mother’s horse. They were the pictures she herself had drawn, the ones her father had piled up and burned. Cassie must have snatched some from the flames and saved them.

  Her eyes blurred with tears. They’d battled as children, watched their mother die and their father disintegrate and, even though Isabel had run away, her sister hadn’t stopped loving her. The grief and joy mingled together in the sobs that shook her. She cradled the papers to her breast and whispered to Cassie all the mistakes she’d made, the terrible decisions that had kept her away until it was too late.

  When the storm of tears subsided, she looked one more time through the collection of sketches. As she replaced them in the drawer, she saw a rolled paper tucked alongside. She extracted it and spread it out on the floor.

  It, too, was a sketch, but in Cassie’s shaky hand. A picture of the cabin with a river running behind it. There was a place for people to hook up their campers and several trails drawn in dark ink. The entire rear of the property was an area for the horses to range when they were not in the barn, also inked on the page.

  It was Cassie’s dream, in black-and-white smudges on the slightly rumpled paper.

  “Oh, Cassie. I’m so sorry you didn’t get to make it happen.”

  She would have, Isabel had no doubt, if her life hadn’t been brutally snuffed out in the dark shed.

  Restless now, she went outside into a wind that whipped the hair around her face. The clouds were thicker, darker. Logan seemed not to notice as he eased an enormous rock into the shovel of the backhoe and pulled it back to join the others away from the ravine.

  Tank danced along after the machine, barking and snapping occasionally at the tires, but always quick enough to escape. When the machine dumped its load, Tank investigated the new arrival with a thorough sniff before he trotted back to the edge to continue his supervision duties.

  While Logan concentrated on another area, Tank poked his head over the ravine, tail rigid, ears unfurled. With a bark that was drowned out by the engine noise, he disappeared over the mouth of the ravine, down into the uneven rock below.

  “Tank! Come back.” Isabel’s shout did not carry over the noise.

  She hurried carefully along the uneven ground. Logan was turned in the other direction, focused on his work. She jogged to the edge and yelled again for the dog, who was pawing at a pile of rubble.

  “You’re going to hurt yourself. Whatever critter is in there, it’s not worth the trouble.” She called him again, but he ignored her so she climbed down a few feet. The dog circled out of her reach, continuing to dig with fury.

  “What has gotten you so excited?” She eased down another few inches, loose dirt sliding under her feet
and raining down on the dog, who continued his frantic digging.

  She held on to a tree root with one hand and stretched out the other to take his collar.

  “Come on, Tank. I’m going to bury us both in a rock slide if you don’t cooperate.”

  The dog shoved his snout into the pile and emerged triumphant, tail wagging, something clenched between his teeth.

  Sick shock shuddered through her.

  Tank showed off his prize.

  The pale bone could have belonged to a deer or cow.

  If it hadn’t been adorned with a wristwatch.

  SIXTEEN

  “You’re going to be hard-pressed to blame this body on Isabel,” Logan told Bentley with satisfaction. “It’s been here awhile from the looks of it, and she was in L.A. with plenty of people who can give her an alibi.” Logan tried to quiet Tank, who was now locked in the cabin, with a look. It didn’t work. The dog continued to bark through the window, outraged that his hard-won prize was now laid carefully on a plastic sheet where it was being photographed.

  Two more officers were going down on ropes to document and excavate the rest of the skeleton.

  Bentley didn’t answer. He kept his eyes on the bone Tank had found. “A female.”

  “Most likely. It’s a woman’s watch.”

  “Been there about three years, you figure?”

  “At least.”

  Bentley shot a look at Isabel, who was answering questions for a sweaty cop. “Same time her sister bought the place.”

  Logan nodded. “Let’s get down to it, Bentley. This is most likely the body of Nora Baker, John’s girlfriend.”

  “Maybe.”

  “It’s more than a maybe. I don’t want John to be guilty either. It’s going to ruin his family and they are like my own kin. But the fact is, he’s the likeliest suspect here.”

  “And what? He hired Autie to keep the body from being discovered? Had Cassie killed? The woman he loved?”

  “All the trouble started when I began to excavate the ravine. It seems like the most logical explanation.”