Lucky Shot

by B. J Daniels

  “I said something that I would like better,” he said.

  Better than sleeping with her? “You really are a bastard.”

  He shook his head. “Untrue. Both my parents were married and to each other.”

  “You’re enjoying this.”

  His smile belied his words. “It’s purely business, I assure you. But I appreciate you considering sleeping with me.”

  She fought the urge to slap his handsome face. “I never—”

  “I’m sure you have never,” he said. “But we can deal with that later. Right now, I suggest we discuss this over breakfast. I’m starved.” He moved away, finally giving her breathing room. “You’re buying.”

  “I don’t think so.” She was trembling inside, her stomach doing slow somersaults. The man threw her off balance, and he knew it. That made it even worse. She took a couple of deep breaths, shocked that some reporter could get this kind of primitive response from her.

  Finally she turned to face him. He was going through her photos with an apparent critical eye. She wanted to grab them from him. The last thing she needed was a critique from him about her art.

  “Call the police.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “If you think you can blackmail me—”

  “These are good, really,” he said, turning to look at her as if surprised. “You have a good eye.”

  She hated how pleased she was but quickly mentally shook herself. What did he know about photography anyway? Just because he carried around a camera and took underhanded snapshots of people who didn’t want their photos taken...

  “I’d hoped we could discuss this over pancakes,” he said as he stepped away from her photos. “I know something about your mother that you’re going to want to hear before you see it in the media.”

  “There is nothing you can tell me that I would—”

  “Your mother isn’t just lying about the past twenty-two years. She’s been lying since the get-go, and I can prove it.” He smiled. “But first I want breakfast. I’m starved.”

  * * *

  LYNETTE “NETTIE” CURRY found her husband out by the barn, talking to his crows. The crows, a long line of them, teetered on the phone line, cawing down occasionally as if conversing.

  “Am I interrupting, Frank?” she asked.

  Her husband, the long-time sheriff in Sweet Grass County, Montana, laughed. He was a big man with graying blond hair, a drooping, old-timey gunfighter mustache and bright blue eyes. She’d been in love with him for more than fifty years and often still couldn’t believe that they’d finally found their way back to each other.

  The crows cawed down at her as if in greeting. Ask Frank and he’d report that’s exactly what they were saying. He’d always been fascinated with the birds and clearly loved them. But even as skeptical as she’d been when she’d first moved in, Nettie now believed that they were equally as fond of him.

  “I found something I thought might interest you,” she said, flapping the papers she’d printed off the computer. “It’s about that tattoo. The one on Sarah Hamilton’s behind. I might know what it means.”

  She saw that she had his attention. Frank had been trying to solve the mystery of not only Sarah’s miraculous and oddly timed return from the dead, but also her missing twenty-two years. The fifty-eight-year-old woman hadn’t just secretly parachuted back into the county, she’d come with no memory of where she’d been, what she’d been or why she was back now. At least that was her story.

  All of it, according to Frank, added up to trouble. And that was before he’d found out about the strange tattoo Sarah Hamilton had gotten on her butt cheek during those missing years.

  Frank walked her back to the porch and waited until they’d both sat down before he asked what she’d found.

  “We agreed that the tattoo appears to be a pendulum that left a circular pattern beneath its point,” she said and picked up papers she’d printed out from the computer. She began to read what she’d discovered. “‘There is nothing new about pendulums since they date back eight thousand years. While often associated with predicting the future, they were used by the Egyptians four thousand years ago for spiritual healing with the energy of that particular pendulum. Not all pendulums have the same energy.’”

  When she looked up from her papers, Frank looked about to roll his eyes.

  “Bear with me,” she said and hurried on. “‘Along with reportedly detecting imbalances in energy fields for healing, pendulums have been used to find missing objects, unmarked graves, buried treasure, even underground water sources.’”

  “So Sarah was using her ass to find water?” Frank laughed and got to his feet. “Lynette, it might be just a stupid tattoo that she really did get while drunk on tequila.”

  “Is that what she told you?” Nettie could tell he didn’t believe it any more than she did. “It means something, and I, for one, am going to find out what.”

  He shook his head but he was smiling. “I have to go to work.”

  “Still no word on that missing reporter?” she asked, putting her papers aside for the time being. Chuck Barrow had been covering the Sarah Hamilton story when he’d disappeared. His car was found at the bottom of a ravine along with his bloody coat. It was assumed that he’d crashed his car, and, hurt and disoriented, he’d wandered away into the woods and died.

  “No. I’d hoped either he or his body would have turned up by now.”

  “You don’t think he merely took the opportunity to walk away from his life, do you?” It wouldn’t be the first time a person had done that.

  Frank shook his head. “I think he’s dead.” He glanced over at her. “It’s just a feeling.” His gaze went to the information she’d printed out. “If you decide to take up pendulum divining, see if you can locate a spot for another well out here on the ranch.” He grinned before leaning down to kiss her.

  “Laugh, Frank Curry, but I just might do that.” As she watched him go, she realized that he’d given her an idea. All she needed to do was get back on the computer and find out where she could buy a pendulum.

  * * *

  FRANK CURRY PRIDED himself on never having an unsolved murder since taking over as sheriff of Sweet Grass County. Homicides were rare in Montana, and yet his county seemed to have had more than its share recently.

  And now he had this missing person’s case involving one of the reporters who’d been hanging around outside the Hamilton Ranch. Chuck Barrow had disappeared back in late June. His vehicle had been found later at the bottom of a ravine. A bloodstained coat was found inside, leading him and the other investigators to believe Barrow had been injured when he’d left on foot and apparently had gotten lost in the mountains.

  The search had been called off after several weeks, but the lack of a body still bothered Frank. Barrow wasn’t the first man to get lost in the Crazy Mountains. The body of a hunter lost last fall still hadn’t been found either.

  Much like the reappearance of Sarah Hamilton, the cases felt like loose ends that he needed to tie up. Only Sarah wasn’t an official case. He’d called in the FBI, and they hadn’t found any reason for continuing investigating her disappearance or reappearance. So Frank had taken it on outside of his official cases.

  What made Barrow’s disappearance interesting was, according to the television news department he worked for, he had been going to talk to Sarah Hamilton. Sarah had denied giving the man an interview, but Frank couldn’t shake the feeling that Barrow had found her and, not long after, had met his fate.

  When he returned to his office, he called his undersheriff in. “Are you saying you think she killed him?” Dillon Lawson asked after he’d shared his theory with him. “And then she pushed his vehicle into a ravine.”

  “After leaving his bloody coat in the rig, yes.” He could see how skeptical Dillon was of his theory. Sarah wa
s fifty-eight years old and, while in great shape for her age, wasn’t capable of dragging the dead weight of a man the size of Chuck Barrow anywhere. “She had help.”

  The undersheriff’s eyes widened. “Russell Murdock?”

  Frank shook his head. “Someone from her past.”

  “Wait a minute,” Dillon said, leaning back in his chair across the desk from Frank. “That would mean that she’s lying about not remembering her past.”

  “If she was in on it, yes.”

  Dillon frowned. “You think someone from her past is running interference for her without her being aware of it?”

  It had crossed his mind. “It’s possible. If, and it’s a huge if, she really doesn’t recall jumping or being pushed from a plane, parachuting into a tree, changing clothes and stumbling out to the road for Russell Murdock to find her...then she might not know she isn’t alone.”

  The undersheriff rubbed a hand over his jaw. “This is quite a theory. I suppose you also have a theory about their purpose in doing this.” Before Frank could answer, Dillon said, “The senator.”

  “Soon to be our next president if the polls are even partially correct.”

  Dillon let out a low whistle. “Say you’re right. If Sarah’s purpose in coming back here, along with her cohorts, is to keep him from being president, then why not stop him now? Or maybe they want him to be president and plan to use him. The bad publicity against Sarah has only strengthened his standing in the race.”

  Frank nodded.

  “Or maybe Chuck Barrow had a car accident and, injured, wandered off into the mountains to die.”

  “Do you know what bothers me the most? Whoever wanted Sarah Hamilton back here could have just dropped her off beside the road. But they dropped her from a plane. They had to know we’d discover that. They wanted us to know.”

  Dillon was frowning again. “Why?”

  “Because they think they’re smarter than we are.”

  “And Sarah? What’s her role in all this?”

  “She’s Buckmaster Hamilton’s Achilles’ heel.”

  The undersheriff shook his head. “The senator is on the campaign trail, his current wife at his side. I’d say Sarah has lost.”

  Frank laughed. “Don’t ever underestimate a woman with a mission, let alone this one. Sarah Hamilton is up to something, you can count on it.”

  * * *

  MAX DIDN’T THINK the senator’s daughter could surprise him. He told himself he knew her kind only too well. That’s why he didn’t expect to get too far with her. The truth was, he needed her help to prove what he suspected about her mother. He’d bluffed his way this far. He was thinking that if he could convince her he knew more than he did—

  “Here, take this,” she said as she came back from getting something out of her SUV. “It’s one of my old cameras I’ve kept as a backup.”

  Max stared at the camera bag, too surprised to reach for it.

  “I’m only lending it to you until you can afford to replace yours. Sorry, but I don’t have an extra laptop.”

  He took the camera bag and peeked inside before his gaze shot up to hers. It surprised him how touched he was by this kind gesture. “This is an awfully nice old backup.”

  She shrugged and looked embarrassed. He could see she felt guilty about her privileged life. She shouldn’t have, but he understood. He liked her better for it.

  “I still want mine back. It had sentimental value.”

  “I’m sure it did,” she said with a hint of sarcasm.

  It was hundreds of dollars cheaper than the “loaner” she had given him, and they both knew it. “It was my lucky camera.”

  “Like those are your lucky boots?”

  He looked down at his worn boots and laughed. “Actually, they are.”

  She shook her head. “Maybe you’ll get lucky with this camera,” she said, then instantly regretted it if the color that warmed her cheeks was any indication.

  “Maybe I will,” he said with a wink.

  She groaned. “Let’s get this over with, though I don’t know why I would care what you have on my mother. But I am hungry and it is time for breakfast.”

  “Hey.” She stopped to glance back at him as if to say, now what? “Thanks,” he said, slipping the camera bag strap over his shoulder. “I appreciate it.”

  “Take better care of it than you did yours.”

  Max smiled at her retreating back. It was a nice rear view. What surprised him was that he was actually beginning to believe that Kat Hamilton hadn’t been behind stealing the photos. Which brought him back to who, then, if not Kat?

  He was considering that question as they left by the front of the gallery and started across the street toward the small café next to the hotel. He hardly heard the roar of the big engine; he’d been concentrating so hard on how to get this woman to help him with his story. He was surprised she’d even agreed to have breakfast with him. Maybe he would let her pay.

  Or maybe he’d try a different approach. Maybe he’d tell her the truth, which would mean paying for breakfast himself.

  The engine roar filled his ears, jerking him out of his thoughts. He looked up as a large SUV came around the corner and headed right for them.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MAX DIDN’T HAVE time to think. He acted instinctively, surprising himself as much as Kat. He grabbed her and threw them both back out of the way as the giant SUV roared past. The vehicle had missed them by mere inches. As the dust settled, he listened to it thunder away, the shock of the near miss hitting home. Had whoever was behind the wheel purposely tried to run them down?

  “Excuse me?”

  He felt Kat’s body under him, surprised that there were more curves than he’d expected in a woman as fit as she was. She dressed in a way that hid her attributes well. Why was that, he wondered again idly as he realized that one of his hands was resting on her full, nicely rounded left breast.

  “Get off me,” Kat said, shoving his hand away.

  “That was purely accidental,” he said as he rose and offered her a hand up.

  She ignored it as she got to her feet. “Sure it was.” She brushed at her jeans and sweater. “What was that about anyway?”

  “Uh, I just saved your life.”

  She shot him a disbelieving look.

  “Did you not see that SUV that was speeding directly at us only moments ago?” He looked around for someone on the street to verify his story, but it was early on a Sunday morning, so there were no other people out yet.

  “Us?” She looked away from him in the direction the vehicle had gone. “If the driver of that SUV really was trying to kill one of us, I’m betting he was aiming for you.”

  He appraised her. “Why would someone want me dead?”

  “Are. You. Serious?”

  “Not everyone hates reporters.”

  She scoffed at that before starting across the street. He suspected she was more shaken by the near hit-and-run than she was letting on. But then again she hadn’t gotten such an up-close-and-personal look at the chrome grille on the monster SUV as he had.

  Still it appeared Kat Hamilton didn’t scare easily. He filed that information away for the future and followed her. Unlike her, he glanced around in case the SUV came back to try again. He was still surprised she’d agreed to breakfast. He chalked it up to curiosity. She had to be as interested in her mother’s past as he was. Maybe more.

  Then again, she could just be hungry like she said.

  As he held the café door open for her to enter, he looked back out into the empty street. Had that just been some irresponsible kid driving that SUV who hadn’t even seen them?

  * * *

  KAT STUDIED THE man across the table from her as she questioned her sanity. She’d had a delayed reac
tion from their near accident in the street and now felt herself shaking inside. Not that she believed someone had been trying to kill her. Maybe Max, though, she thought as she considered the handsome, arrogant reporter sitting across from her. I bet it was a woman behind the wheel.

  “I’m not sure this was a good idea,” he said as he rearranged the napkins and salt and pepper shakers.

  She sighed. “I’m buying, so order whatever you want.” Had her legs not felt so weak right now, she would have walked out. She just needed to sit for a few minutes.

  He quit fooling with the items on the table to meet her gaze. Max didn’t seem like the nervous type, but when she met his eyes, she saw that he appeared to be anxious. Or at least he wanted her to think that.

  “This could be more dangerous than I originally thought,” he said.

  Kat gave him an impatient stare. Why had she agreed to this? She certainly couldn’t trust anything that came out of his mouth. Look how he’d taken advantage of a close call on the street just now. Or had he set the whole thing up? Either way, she could still feel the heat of his hand from where he’d held her breast.

  And now he appeared to be trying to scare her.

  “You really don’t have anything on my mother, do you? This was just a ruse to get me to what? Buy breakfast? Or just scare me into telling you something about her?”

  He gave her an innocent, hurt look. “You think I had something to do with what just happened?”

  “I suspect you’d stoop to just about anything to get what you want.”

  “I’m shocked you would think that of me. Seriously, I thought you and I were becoming friends.”

  She laughed. “Does that work on other women?”

  A waitress in her late teens appeared with two menus, two cups and a coffeepot.

  “Good morning,” Max said, turning on his charm and immediately rattling the poor girl.

  “Good morning,” the girl stammered and sloshed coffee onto the table. She hurried away to get a dishrag to clean up the mess.