BIG SKY SECRETS 03: End Game

by Roxanne Rustand

The dope disappeared, but the unexpected night deposit of ten grand into his checking account that followed, and the “stray” bullet that hit him a month later during the pursuit of a homicide suspect, had sure changed his life in a hurry.

  He was on medical leave now, and had no intention of going back. He shook his head and returned to the present.

  “The news isn’t so good,” Bob muttered.

  Scott clenched his jaw. “It doesn’t matter anymore, as far as I’m concerned. The Internal Affairs investigation cleared me and the last I heard, they’d hit a brick wall trying to determine who was responsible.”

  “A drug dealer was brought in last week.” Bob made a sound of disgust. “Real upstanding citizen once he got arrested, if you know what I mean. He wanted to deal. Said you kept that stolen dope on ice, then offered it to him for half the street value.”

  Scott’s heart took an extra hard thud. “Not possible. I’m here, remember? In Montana.”

  “People travel. You got witnesses, who can prove you’ve been out there nonstop?”

  No one, other than Attila and Jasper, and neither of them could talk. “Has this guy been interrogated?”

  A long silence stretched over the miles. “It won’t be happening.”

  “But if the guy is accusing me of a felony—”

  “He made bail. Less than twenty-four hours later, he turned up dead.”

  “What?”

  “Looked like a professional job.” Bob cleared his throat. “I know he was lying about you, trying to save his own skin. The chief thinks so, too. Just thought I’d mention that you might get a call about what you’ve been up to lately. There’s been some talk about how convenient it was that this guy was iced right after offering testimony.”

  Scott mentally sorted through his past cases. Any one of the perps he’d put behind bars could’ve ordered a pal to exact revenge. Someone fresh out could’ve dwelled on it every hour he was behind bars. Executed a plan for retribution. “He have a name?”

  “Mendez. Rico Mendez.”

  Scott flashed back to the murders of several gang members. Homicide—with Scott leading the case—had traced the crime to two men working under Mendez in south Chicago…and ultimately, that had led to one of the biggest drug busts on record for the department.

  Those two were in the midst of appeals, but would undoubtedly end up on death row. Mendez, insulated by several levels of minions, hadn’t been touched. Only now he was dead.

  “The chief is still behind you, buddy…even with all the evidence against you. Just thought you should know.”

  “There was no real evidence.” Reining in his rising frustration, Scott lifted his gaze to the towering mountains, now washed in soft amber early morning light. He considered his words carefully. “I know this case has been fuel for a lot of locker room gossip. But I kept a carbon copy of my log-in documentation in the evidence room. Joe was at the window and testified about seeing me.”

  “Though he didn’t actually examine the contents of the packages.”

  “True. That was my one mistake. I should’ve stayed to make sure he did, but I was called out on a case and had to leave in a hurry.” Joe, a forty-year veteran in the department with an exemplary record, had passed an intensive interrogation and lie detector test about that night. And though Scott had done so as well, the suspicion had still shifted back to him.

  “It was just a bad deal, all around,” Bob muttered. “Makes you wonder about who you can trust.”

  “And those surveillance tapes of someone making an ATM deposit into my account weren’t of me.” Scott heard the edge in his own voice and took a steadying breath. “Even in the poor lighting, it was clear the guy was at least three inches shorter and fifty pounds heavier. Like I said, Internal Affairs closed the investigation. End of story.”

  “I know, buddy. I know.” Bob heaved a sigh. “I just wanted to give you a heads-up, so you’d know that things back here aren’t exactly over.”

  Great.

  Long after the call ended, Scott paced the aisle of the barn, cleaning stalls, lost in thought, feeling an overpowering urge to drive back to Chicago and face those rumors head-on. He’d been cleared once before, and still someone felt the need to stir things up. Why?

  His nerves on edge, he glanced at his watch, then whistled to Jasper.

  It was a four-hour drive to Billings. Home Depot should be open late on a Saturday night, and he could easily make it there in time to pick up a generator for all the times when the howling wind and fierce Montana storms knocked out his electrical service. Going somewhere—anywhere—was better than staying out here, alone with his thoughts. He could get back by midnight, if everything went well.

  The old dog bounded toward him from a distant point in the meadow beyond the barn. “Come on, Jasper, let’s hit the road.”

  Megan reached up to shift her wig of brunette hair and ran a fingertip over her crimson lipstick, then took a deep breath and rapped on the door to Hal Porter’s office. This was a good idea. She knew it was—but convincing the brass was a whole different thing.

  When he barked, “Come in,” she strolled into his office and planted a hand on her hip, waiting for him to look up from his laptop.

  He glanced up, still tapping on the keys. His hands stilled as his brows drew together, his smile of welcome fading. He quickly masked the flicker of distaste in his eyes. “You’ll have to stop at the secretary’s desk, ma’am.” Yes! She tipped her chin up and gave her hair a sultry toss, not taking her eyes from his until she saw recognition dawn in his expression.

  He tipped back in his chair, his hands braced on the armrests. “I thought we already talked about this, Megan.”

  “You said you didn’t want me to go out on my own.”

  He leveled a long, steely look at her. “I just don’t like it. This isn’t some big city department with a team of undercover agents. We’re short three full-time officers right now, and we don’t have the manpower for backup. And if our suspect is a local, he’ll recognize you.”

  She compressed her lips, holding back a snort of disbelief. “I don’t cover the part of the county where the last victim lived, so few of those residents would recognize me. And even you didn’t recognize me at first, right?”

  “It took a minute, because you were silhouetted in the doorway,” he growled.

  “So in some dark, smoky bar, what are the chances?”

  “Even if the killer doesn’t recognize you, someone else might—and could inadvertently blow your cover right there. Worse, your credibility would be shot.”

  “Better that than another innocent woman, in the most literal sense,” she retorted. “Think about it, boss.”

  “I have. The answer is still no.”

  “There’s nothing I want more than to take this guy down. Give me one night…just one. Tonight. Ewan Baker says he’ll be my backup.”

  Hal sighed. “Ewan.”

  Ewan wasn’t her first choice, either, but she could handle herself and didn’t expect trouble at any rate. “That’s his part of the county. I’ll troll out at the Halfway House—the place Dee Kirby visited last. She went there a number of times before she was killed, and always on Saturday nights. Give me midnight to two, then I’ll be out of there, I promise.” She saw the flicker of hesitation in Hal’s eyes and took a deep breath before driving her point home. “Even if someone makes my identity, it’s still all for the good. Word will spread that we’re upping our efforts. It might make the killer think twice before trying anything more in Marshall County.”

  “Well…”

  “I figure this guy scouts his victims in advance. Targets his quarry—maybe even follows them home. He wants to make sure he’s ready when the next full moon rises. And I figure that gives us until June fifth. Twenty days.”

  “Maybe that timing has been a coincidence. If he’s local, maybe he’s already aware of the investigation, got cold feet and moved on.”

  “Or not. But I’m not willing to sit bac
k and take that risk. Are you?”

  Hal’s face, folded into heavy wrinkles on the best of days, seemed to age before her eyes. “You won’t take any chances?”

  Curbing her rising impatience, she shook her head. He had always been a good boss. Honest, fair. Hardworking to a fault. But she’d been the first female deputy in the county, and he’d adopted a thinly veiled protective, grandfatherly air toward her from the first day she’d come on the job—one that had brought no end of subtle ribbing from her fellow deputies.

  Still, though the line had never been crossed between appropriate, professional distance and true friendship, a small part of her heart—one that never experienced a father’s attention—still took pleasure in his older-generation courtliness.

  Before he could change his mind, she headed out the door. “Thanks.”

  He wasn’t going to be sorry.

  She was a lot better at her job than he gave her credit for, but this wasn’t about proving her worth.

  It was about the ghosts of her childhood that still haunted her thoughts. Ghosts that she still needed to put to rest. Maybe the vicious killer who’d murdered her cousin Laura fifteen years ago was long dead, but her overwhelming feelings of anger and helplessness remained—still roiling at the edges of her thoughts during every murder investigation.

  Only now, it was far more personal.

  An animal was preying on women. Picking them off, one by one. But this time, she was an experienced deputy, not a child. A crack shot. A woman ready to focus her fury and need for justice on the man who dared spread that same kind of terror through the county.

  And if it was the last thing she ever did, she was going to take him down.

  FIVE

  After checking in with Ewan by cell phone, Megan tipped down the visor to study the stranger facing her in the dimly lit mirror, then applied another coat of lipstick and fluffed the thick bangs of her dark wig.

  Even in the chilly night air, the wig was hot, and her false eyelashes—applied after studying a YouTube instructional video—felt like twin spiders perched on her eyelids.

  With all the big hair, makeup, flashy red sweater and crimson fingertips, she was probably more ready for a costume party than a night on the town, even if Ewan had whistled in appreciation.

  She tottered a few steps after leaving the truck, unaccustomed to high heels of any sort, then forced herself to walk slowly, smoothly to the door of the Halfway House Tavern. Loud music and raucous voices burst into the still night air as two cowboys staggered outside, one guy’s arm looped around his buddy’s shoulders. Both looked too drunk to walk.

  She drew back in the shadows, watching to see if either of them got behind the wheel of one of the dozens of pickups nosed up to the outside of the building, ready to alert Ewan if either started to drive away. But they stumbled out into the darkness and sat on the open tailgate of one of the pickups, lighting up cigarettes and passing a crumpled brown paper bag between them.

  Another battered pickup roared into the parking lot, kicking up a rooster tail of gravel that pinged against the vehicles closest to the highway as the driver turned hard, spun out, then lurched into an empty spot.

  Two lanky young cowboys—barely legal and half-drunk, unless she missed her guess—loped to the entrance of the ramshackle tavern and disappeared inside.

  Now, through the swinging door, she could see the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd milling about near the bar and caught glimpses of couples doing the Texas two-step or swing. Music blared from a makeshift bandstand in the back, where a trio of balding guys was manhandling a couple of guitars and a drum set with a lot of energy, but not a lot of talent.

  Please, God…help me get through this all right. It’s the last place I want to be.

  Sure, she’d been in plenty of dives like this one with her badge and uniform on, breaking up fights, arresting drunks or collaring some guy with a warrant in hand, but if she wasn’t careful, her discomfort as a “civilian” would be obvious to every last cowpoke in the place, even if they were drunk.

  She hesitated at the door and took a deep breath. And realized that potential underage drinkers weren’t the only reason to send Ewan back here. Along with the smell of old grease, probably from a limited bar menu, a haze of cigarette smoke—illegal in public places, per Montana law—drifted out into the night.

  Smothering a cough, she stepped into the entryway.

  A sun-browned cowboy loomed close, a wide grin revealing tobacco-stained teeth. “Hey, purty lady—where’d you come from?”

  Another raised a glass in her direction, his eyes glazed. “Buy ya a drink, ma’am?”

  Both of them were wiry and weathered to the hue of old leather. Maybe they were stronger than they looked, but neither had the calculating look in his eye that she’d hoped to find, or had the kind of build that could easily drag a body up a half mile of rugged trail.

  She leaned close and lowered her voice. “Thanks. But I’m looking for a friend. A real big guy named—” she thought fast “—Bull Carraway. Real jealous guy, if you know what I mean.”

  The two aging cowhands melted back into the crowd.

  She pressed on, slipping through a trio of grizzled men in well-worn shirts and dusty boots. Past a couple of fresh-faced young cowboys, their faces sunburned, foreheads white as fresh cream, who blushed deeper red and ducked their heads, tongue-tied and shy, as she passed.

  A sense that she was being watched crawled up her back.

  She eased farther into the crowd, angled toward a corner and glanced back, but saw no one staring at her—just a milling crowd that had closed in behind her, voices raised to be heard over the driving beat of some honky-tonk song she didn’t recognize.

  Someone bumped into her and she wobbled on her high heels, tipping precariously before she could grab for a post near the end of the bar.

  “Having fun?” A low voice growled against her ear, the man’s big hand settling possessively at the small of her back to steady her. “Fancy lady like you doesn’t belong in a place like this.”

  She froze. Then forced herself to relax and smile, remembering her ruse. “I just thought I’d like to get out for a while. I like the band, don’t you?”

  She turned partway and found herself looking into the hard eyes of a man dressed better than most of the others. Western-cut blazer. Pressed slacks. Custom boots. A slick, confident smile on his full lips, though his belly bulged over his belt and strained the buttons of his shirt, and his heavy jowls swelled over his collar. His smile stretched faint scar lines over his nose and left cheek.

  She pursed her mouth into a pout. “My fiancé is such a drag, sometimes. He’d rather stay home and watch the sports channel than have some fun.”

  The man bared his teeth in a wolfish smile. “Sounds boring to me.”

  She frowned and rested a hand on her hip. “Are you from around here? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”

  He pulled a business card from his pocket, his smile morphing into one of self-satisfaction, as if he was already sure she was his for the night. “Milt Powers. Insurance executive, actually. I come through this area several times a year. Want a drink?”

  She quelled the urge to roll her eyes. Executive—my foot. He’d looked like a possibility at first, but his travels didn’t parallel what she was looking for, and the gold-embossed card was one for a company that did advertise in Montana. The logo matched the TV ads and even bore his smiling face, name and address. Hardly what he’d share if he were trying for anonymity.

  She offered an apologetic smile. “I don’t think so. My…um…fiancé said he’d stop by later. Promised me one dance before I have to go home.”

  The interest in his eyes evaporated. With a shrug, he turned back to a blowsy redhead at the bar, and Megan moved on, slowly winding her way through the deepening haze of smoke, hiding her careful survey of the patrons with what she hoped was an air of a woman on the prowl.

  Again, she felt someone staring at her, the sensation
boring through her spine, and she turned slowly. Caught the eye of a few cowboys who grinned drunkenly back and raised their beer bottles at her. But…it wasn’t them.

  A beefy rancher-type, mid-forties with a bottle in his hand, gave her a once-over and edged through the crowd in her direction, the set of his jaw giving him the air of a pit bull establishing his territory. A path opened up for him, no one quite meeting his eyes.

  Was it his gaze she’d felt? He was the best prospect so far, though she still couldn’t shake her awareness of someone else—someone watching her with an intensity that made her shiver.

  “Hey there,” she purred. “Nice shirt.”

  He didn’t spare a glance downward at what he wore. “You meeting someone?”

  “Well…”

  “You came in alone. Want a drink?”

  “I came for the music, really. Maybe later.”

  He grabbed her arm and steered her toward an empty booth in an even darker corner of the tavern, jerking his jaw at the man behind the bar and lifting his nearly empty beer bottle as they passed. “So what’s a girl like you doing here alone?”

  She’d already heard the same line from Mr. Insurance, but from this man it was laden with far more intent. “I just wanted to get out. I don’t come to places like this much at all, and it’s kind of fun. Not something my fiancé likes, though so I have to go alone.”

  The barkeeper arrived with a new bottle of Coors and scurried away.

  “Not much of a fiancé if he doesn’t mind. Then again, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, eh?” He’d released her arm when they settled opposite each other in the booth. But now, he snagged her left hand again, turned it over and ran his thumb up and down her ring finger. “Too cheap for a diamond, I take it.”

  Realizing her mistake, she tried to pull her hand away, but he held fast, his grip tightening.

  “I…we both wanted matching gold bands. Nothing fancy.” She laughed lightly. “That costs too much, anyway, until he finds a better job. By the way—what’s your name?”