Linda Lael Miller Montana Creeds Series Volume 1: Montana Creeds: LoganMontana Creeds: DylanMontana Creeds: Tyler

by Linda Lael Miller

  “What are you afraid of?” Dylan pressed.

  Kristy bit her lower lip, averted her eyes, but in the same inexplicable way Sundance grasped at the tattered edges of her soul, Dylan drew her gaze back to his face.

  “Caring,” she said, finally, in a very small voice.

  “I saw how you looked at that gelding,” Dylan replied, “how you touched him and came up with a name in two seconds flat. Don’t look now, but I think you’re past that point where caring what happens to Sundance is a choice.”

  Yes, Kristy thought miserably. Just as I’m past the point of no return with you, and with Bonnie. I’m in so far over my head, I can’t even see the surface.

  “He’ll have to go back to Logan’s,” she said, “until your barn is up. It’s not safe, otherwise, because of the bears.”

  A grin tilted one side of Dylan’s mouth upward. “They’re still hanging out in the orchard and the old cemetery, are they?”

  Kristy nodded. “Briana ran into one not long ago—it almost got her and her dog. If Logan hadn’t come racing into the orchard in his truck, honking the horn—” She closed her eyes. In the old days, when her dad was still running cattle, she’d seen what was left of spring calves, when the bears got them, and a shudder went through her at the recollection.

  “My brother didn’t tell me about that,” Dylan said. “No surprise there. There’s a shitload of stuff Logan hasn’t told me. And damn it, when is that yahoo going to quit honeymooning and come home?”

  “You could call him, you know,” Kristy said.

  Dylan’s sigh was heavy. He was not, and never had been, the patient sort. “I’ll wait,” he told her.

  Just then, Kristy’s cell phone rang. She picked up her purse, rummaged for the annoying thing and answered. “Hello?”

  “Kristy? This is Floyd Book.”

  Kristy’s heart caught, slid like slick-soled shoes on a floor waxed for dancing. “Floyd,” she said, to let Dylan know who was calling.

  He raised his eyebrows, leaned forward slightly in his chair.

  “Hold on a second,” Kristy told the sheriff. She scanned the unfamiliar buttons on her phone—she rarely used the thing—and found the one marked Speaker. Pressed it.

  “Dylan’s listening, just so you know,” she told Floyd.

  “Probably a good thing,” Floyd said, sounding weary. “I’m glad you’re not alone.”

  Kristy’s stomach jumped. “Bad news?”

  “Worse than I expected,” Floyd said. “You’re sitting down, I hope.”

  “Spit it out, Floyd,” Dylan put in.

  “We found two bodies in that grave,” Floyd told them grimly. “Besides the horse.”

  Kristy was struck speechless. She simply stared down at the phone, lying there all shiny and sinister on Dylan’s kitchen table.

  Dylan picked up the slack. “The drifter and—?” he prompted irritably.

  “We think one of them’s the drifter,” Floyd answered. “The second body has been tentatively identified, by what’s left of her clothes and the color of her hair, as Ellie Clarkston.”

  Kristy put a hand over her mouth, sure her supper was about to surge up into her throat. Ellie Clarkston, the cute redheaded teenager who had disappeared during a family camping trip a few years before, at nearby Flathead Lake. A frantic, lengthy and entirely fruitless search had been conducted, once she was reported missing, and the girl’s grieving parents had finally given up and returned to their home in another state.

  Kristy had run across one of the posters that had been taped and tacked up all over western Montana in a desk drawer at work, just the other day. Studied Ellie’s photograph for a long time before crumpling the paper into a tight ball and tossing it away.

  “Kristy?” Floyd asked. “Are you still there?”

  Dylan reached across the table, closed his hand over hers.

  “I’m here,” she managed. “What happens now?”

  “There’ll be an investigation. The bodies have already been transported to the M.E.’s office in Missoula.” Floyd paused, cleared his throat. “Dylan, I’ve already told Kristy I think she ought to leave town for a while, since the press is bound to be all over this thing. She won’t listen to me. Maybe you can convince her.”

  Dylan said nothing, but his hand tightened comfortingly around Kristy’s.

  “I’m staying,” Kristy said, still dazed, but sure of that much. “Ellie Clarkston disappeared after Dad died. That means—”

  “I know what it means, Kristy,” Floyd said patiently. “Whoever murdered this girl is still out there someplace. And it probably isn’t a coincidence that they buried her where Tim buried the drifter. The second killer must have known what Tim did.”

  The room spun around Kristy. Both her parents had worked hard all their lives, and they’d been prudent with their money. Were they being blackmailed, all those years? Had someone seen her dad burying the man he’d been forced to shoot, defending his wife and daughter and himself, and demanded money in return for silence?

  Was that the real reason why her parents had lost everything—the ranch, their savings, their health and their most cherished hopes?

  She could think of only one living person who had even suspected what happened that long-ago night, besides herself, and that was Sheriff Book.

  Oh my God, Kristy thought. Oh my God.

  “We’ll get to the bottom of this, Kristy,” the sheriff promised. Surely he knew what she was thinking. He wasn’t a stupid man.

  Kristy nodded. “Yes,” she said, her voice too bright, too shrill. “Yes. I know.”

  “I’m trying to keep this quiet,” Book went on, “but I’m afraid it’s been leaked, and now that the M.E. is involved, it’s out of my hands.”

  Dylan nodded thoughtfully at that, but didn’t say anything.

  Kristy and the sheriff—the man who might have killed poor Ellie Clarkston and blackmailed her father into his grave—said their farewells. Kristy closed her phone and stared at Dylan.

  “He knew,” she whispered. “Sheriff Book knew all along—or at least suspected—that my dad had shot that man and buried him in Sugarfoot’s grave. What if he was blackmailing my folks all that time? What if he killed that Clarkston girl?”

  “Whoa back,” Dylan said. “That’s some major conclusion-jumping.”

  “Floyd Book was the sheriff, Dylan. Why else would he have kept silent, never followed up on his suspicions, dug up that grave long before now?”

  “Your dad was his best friend, Kristy.”

  Kristy bit her lower lip. “So he claims,” she answered. “But most people wouldn’t turn a blind eye to something like that, no matter who was involved.” She swallowed. “Would you? If you wore a badge and you’d taken an oath, would you just look the other way?”

  Dylan was a long time answering.

  “No,” he finally said, his tone bleak. “No, I wouldn’t.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  FOR KRISTY, the very air buzzed with portent, but nothing happened for three full days after that fateful call from Sheriff Book, confirming that two bodies had been found sharing Sugarfoot’s tree-shaded grave. She was a woman going through the motions, braced to withstand a personal apocalypse, and yet she managed to function.

  She fed Winston, night and morning.

  She went to the library every day.

  She kept everything at a careful distance—her frightening attraction to Dylan Creed, her growing attachment to little Bonnie, the deep desire to work with Sundance until he was restored to wholeness. Until he had, in turn, restored her, by means of that magical alchemy peculiar to horses.

  It was only during the oppressively hot, quiet and long nights that she allowed the evening her life had changed forever to surface and play out on the screen of her mind, like scenes from some macabre theater production, full of shadows and slashes of crimson.

  But when Zachary Spencer came rushing into the library on the third morning, his handsome face full of avaricious int
erest, Kristy knew the shit, to put it crudely, had finally hit the fan.

  “We have to talk!” the actor said, leaning across the counter at the main desk, his elegant nose an inch from Kristy’s.

  Kristy gripped the edge of the counter, felt herself go pale. She’d met Spencer once or twice, he’d asked her out and she’d refused, not because she disliked him, but because there was no zip between them.

  Her friends thought she was crazy. Didn’t she know he was a star?

  “Mr. Spencer,” Kristy said, stiffly polite, “I’m busy.”

  “This is important,” Zachary insisted. “It’s a movie!”

  “A what?”

  He strode around back of the counter, took her by the arm and shuffled her toward the back office. He’d spotted it because her name was stenciled on the door in big letters.

  Library patrons, young and old, stared as they passed.

  “It’s got everything!” the actor emoted, as soon as they were alone. “Murder! Mystery! Human pathos!”

  Kristy gaped at him. He’d heard about the bodies found in Sugarfoot’s grave, obviously. The eye of the storm had passed, and now she would be swept up in the whirlwind.

  “It’s your story, Kristy!” Zachary ranted on, flinging his arms out from his sides, his enthusiasm bordering on the manic. “I can offer you major money for an exclusive—”

  “Wait,” Kristy breathed, shaken. Feeling her way around behind her desk and falling into her chair. “You’re talking about making a movie about what happened?”

  “Yes,” Spencer said, pacing now, shoving a hand through his artfully trimmed but undeniably thinning brown locks. She’d have bet he was already shopping for a hair transplant. “All you have to do is sign an agreement, giving me permission to write and direct the project, and cash the check!” He stopped pacing, braced himself against the edge of her desk, looming over her in a way that made her push back her chair a few inches, setting the small, swiveling wheels to creaking. “What do you say, Kristy? Do we have a deal?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Surely you can use the money! You’re a small-town librarian—”

  Kristy’s spine stiffened. “Yes. I’m a librarian. But so far I’ve managed to keep a roof over my head and I—”

  Zachary huffed out a sigh. “All right, I guess I came on a little strong—”

  “Ya think?”

  “The press is already zeroing in on Stillwater Springs,” Zachary reasoned. “This is a big story. Once it gets out, a lot more people will be after you to sign over the rights—books, movies, all of it. Kristy, I want this.”

  In Zachary Spencer’s world, Kristy supposed, wanting something was reason enough to get it. On Planet Kristy, there were variables.

  “How much money?” she asked. She was only human, after all, and while she certainly didn’t live from hand to mouth, she did worry, at odd times, that she’d end up sick and broke, the way her parents had. They hadn’t made it as far as old.

  The figure Zachary Spencer threw out then made Kristy blink.

  She could buy back the ranch, with a fortune of that magnitude, and have plenty left over. Make sure Sugarfoot’s final resting place was never bulldozed and replaced with a tennis court.

  “I’d have to think about this,” she said evenly. “Consult a few people.”

  “All right,” Spencer agreed, albeit with theatrical reluctance. It was no wonder he was famous, with a row of Oscars and other prestigious awards to his credit. His face, though aging, reflected his every emotion. He fumbled a little, pulled out a checkbook. “At least let me option the project.”

  “Option—?”

  “That means I pay you, and you agree not to sell the rights to anyone but me within a specified period of time.”

  “I know what it means,” Kristy said. She’d begun to feel dizzy by then, and a mild headache pounded behind her right temple, intensifying with every beat of her heart. “Suppose, at the end of this ‘specified period of time,’ I decide I don’t want any books written or movies made?”

  “Someone will do it anyway,” Spencer admitted, after a lengthy silence. “You can profit by this, have some admittedly limited influence over the projects, or you can stand by, penniless, and watch writers and directors and actors and producers make of it what they will.”

  Not, Kristy had to confess, at least to herself, a very appealing choice. “I could sue,” she said, grasping at the proverbial straws.

  Zachary laughed rawly at that, a hard sound, devoid of humor. “And they’d settle. But you couldn’t stop the books, Kristy, or the movies. Even now, there are films of the gravesite and your parents’ house up on the Internet—check for yourself if you don’t believe me.”

  “And selling the rights to you would prevent all the unauthorized stuff?” Kristy asked. She was actually just thinking aloud—she knew there would be no keeping a lid on such a juicy drama, and if she allowed speculation to run rampant—

  “It would forestall it. I could have the papers drawn up today. My legal people would make sure we had a claim by applying for copyrights and the like.”

  Kristy bit her lower lip, thinking hard. In essence, she was trapped—damned if she did make a deal with the devil, damned if she didn’t.

  “I’d want something else,” she ventured. “Besides the money.”

  Spencer waited, exuding intensity.

  “I know you’ve been talking to Freida Turlow about buying Madison Ranch. You’d have to promise to back out of the agreement, if you’ve made one. Let me buy it instead.”

  The still-perfect face fell slightly. “There’s a problem,” Zachary ground out, not quite meeting Kristy’s eyes.

  “What sort of problem?” she asked quietly.

  “It seems there’s another buyer, somebody who’s willing to top every bid I make on the place.”

  “Who?” Kristy’s voice, barely more than a whisper, shook. Why hadn’t Freida mentioned that? The woman delighted in getting under Kristy’s skin, and the sale of Madison Ranch to a stranger was a good way to achieve that end.

  Zachary’s broad shoulders rose and fell in a combination shrug and sigh, slightly too artless to be artless. “I don’t know. Some cattle company—that’s all Ms. Turlow would tell me.”

  Kristy tilted her head back, shut her eyes.

  No one, but no one, in or around Stillwater Springs had the kind of money Zachary Spencer could offer. So this mystery buyer had to be an outsider, another movie star, perhaps. Or a CEO soaring back to earth with a golden parachute strapped to his back.

  If she couldn’t buy back the ranch, what was the point in splashing her dead parents’ secrets across the silver screen, or in some tell-all “true crime” book?

  Hopelessness washed over her.

  “I’ll think about it,” she said, finally opening her eyes.

  When she did, she saw a freshly written check lying on the desk in front of her. The amount would have paid off her mortgage, even after taxes.

  She gasped.

  “And that’s just the option,” Zachary said, pressing his advantage. “Yours to keep, just for agreeing not to sell the story to anyone else during the next ninety days.”

  Kristy stared at the check for a long, long time. Then, with a sigh, she asked, “Where do I sign?”

  *

  LOGAN WAS BACK, at long last, and he had a shiner the size of a manhole cover on his right eye. But he looked stupidly happy, standing there on the back porch at Dylan’s place, dressed like any Montana rancher in scuffed boots, jeans, a T-shirt and an old flannel shirt, worn thin by hard use.

  “Must have been one hell of a honeymoon,” Dylan drawled, unwilling to let his brother see how relieved he was by his return. He’d taken his sweet, shit-ass time coming home, Logan had.

  Logan laughed. “Tyler gave me the black eye,” he said cheerfully. “Said he came to town and waited around till I got back just for the pleasure of punching me in the face.”

  “Sounds like
Tyler,” Dylan agreed, stepping back so Logan could cross the threshold.

  “Nice horse,” Logan commented, indicating Sundance with a nod of his head. “Looks pretty beat-up, though.”

  Bonnie, who had been playing quietly—for once—looked up from where she sat on the hooked rug in front of the refrigerator, Sam stationed patiently at her side.

  Logan’s dark eyes widened slightly as they fell, for the first time, on his niece.

  “Well,” he said huskily, going to Bonnie and crouching to stroke Sam’s head. “Hello, there.”

  “Poop,” Bonnie said.

  Dylan laughed, though his throat felt sick and his eyes burned slightly.

  “I’m your uncle,” Logan told her. There was a note of shy wonder in his voice—he was actually choked up, Dylan concluded, surprised. The Logan he knew was a lot of things—shrewd, tenacious, the strong, silent type. But sentimental? No. Not Logan.

  “Poop,” Bonnie repeated.

  A distinctive smell filled the air.

  “I don’t think she was commenting on my character,” Logan observed, grinning.

  Dylan sighed, scooped his daughter up and carried her to the bathroom. The cleanup job, closely supervised by a concerned and ever-vigilant Sam, took fifteen minutes, and when he got back to the kitchen, Bonnie riding his right hip, he found that Doc Ryder had arrived.

  He sat at the table with Logan, the pair of them drinking coffee.

  “You actually changed a diaper,” Logan remarked, his eyes dancing as he watched Dylan. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

  “Your time’s coming,” Doc told Logan, with a chuckle. “At least, from what I’ve heard, anyhow.”

  Logan knew as well as Dylan did that Doc had heard plenty, and passed most of it on, bucket-brigade style, to seven hundred and twenty-eight of his closest friends.

  “I hope so,” Logan said quietly, watching Bonnie again. “I really hope so. And so does Briana.”

  Doc finished his coffee, slapped his thighs with his gnarled hands and stood. “I’ll have a look at Sam here and be on my way. Checked out the gelding on my way in. Seems sound to me, if a little skittish, but I wormed him and gave him his shots. If Gunnar had seen to that, I’d know about it.”