Wyoming Christmas Ransom

by Nicole Helm

  The first page was even a list of groceries. He’d bypassed it he didn’t know how many times over the years because it was clearly a grocery list even after a few scrolls. Then he’d decided to not just skim through every file, but to read through every word in case some clue was hidden in the midst of some article about tax law or a random to-do list.

  He hadn’t found it in any of her files from her job as a CPA, but he had found something in this grocery list. He’d noticed just last week that the list repeated itself after ten vegetables. Which was weird. Why would a grocery list need to repeat itself?

  So he’d scrolled. For ten pages. Just the same ten vegetables repeated, and then there was what he’d been looking for.

  They appeared to be emails with the to/from stripped out of them, but Paula had kept the dates and the subject lines. Love letters. Well, more like sex letters if Will was honest with himself.

  It had been hard to read them, knowing his wife had received them while they were still trying to work things out. Sickening really, but he’d needed a clue.

  He still needed a clue. So he read them again, sick to his stomach and angry all over again. But he did it. Focusing on every detail, every word choice, every mention of meeting.

  He jotted down the referenced meetings this time, then cross-referenced with the computer calendar based on the dates of the email.

  And that was when he found his pattern.

  Chapter Two

  Gracie plastered a smile on her face as the party around her was hitting full swing.

  Usually a Delaney wouldn’t be caught dead in Rightful Claim, a Carson bar, but the whole town had made an exception to the normal way of town feud bitterness with the engagement party of Gracie’s cousin Laurel to the bar’s proprietor, Grady Carson.

  Gracie was happy for Laurel, probably happier than most of the other Delaneys, who thought the Carsons were a vortex of evil, but the happy couldn’t smother her self-absorbed worry over Will.

  She hated that she was worried about him when he clearly saw her as nothing, but she didn’t think he’d come off his little mountain, and he had to be running low on food.

  It’s none of your business if he starves to death. That’s his own problem.

  She wanted to believe that, but whether he cared back or not, Gracie did care about Will. Even if it was one-sided. Even if it was stupid or pathetic, she cared about him.

  Gracie made a beeline for the bar. She usually didn’t drink, didn’t like the way it made her feel a little dizzy, a little out of control, but maybe it would shush some of this endless circling her brain was doing.

  It’s not your brain. It’s your heart.

  Yeah, she really needed to shut that voice up, but before she made it to the crowded bar, she glanced at the door as it opened.

  Will stepped in. Underneath a cheerful swath of Christmas lights that looked out of place in this rough-and-tumble, Wild West–themed bar, but also somehow perfect.

  For a second she figured she was seeing things she wanted to see, and berated herself for being an idiot. But Will was striding through the room, ignoring any looks or comments, and heading straight for her.

  She could only stare for a moment. Will rarely came into town, and when he did it was only to the general store, the gas station or the post office. And he never went anywhere when there might be a crowd.

  “Will, what are you—”

  “I found something out,” he said resolutely. “I need your help.”

  Gracie glanced around the bar. More than a few pairs of eyes were on them. She knew what they all thought, too. Will Cooper was crazy, and silly Gracie Delaney placated him because she didn’t know any better.

  Well, she’d figured out how to know better, but she didn’t need to prove it to the group.

  “Let’s talk outside,” she whispered, not wanting to draw more attention. She hesitated a second, then brazened through. She linked her arm with his as if they were friends, or more, and headed for the door.

  Will came easily, and if she wasn’t totally imagining things, a tremor went through his arm, maybe his whole body.

  She didn’t want to feel sorry for him, or be drawn into whatever help he needed, but surely it was important if Will was facing Bent and Rightful Claim and a party.

  He pulled his arm from hers after they pushed through the swinging front doors of Rightful Claim. He took a few steps down the boardwalk, raking his hands through his hair, which needed a trim. Even in the warm glow of the town’s twinkle-light-wrapped streetlights, he somehow looked a little wilder, a little more desperate than the last time she’d seen him.

  Or that’s what you want, idiot.

  “I didn’t know Rightful Claim got so busy,” he offered, and though the sounds of the party drifted out into the cold night, it was mostly quiet out here.

  “It’s a party. Laurel and Grady’s engagement party.”

  “Oh. Guess that explains your truck being here.” He blew out a breath, looking away from the bar and out at the night sky, which was a sparkling, vast thing. “It’s December,” he said, as if he hadn’t known.

  “Yes. Hence the Christmas decorations.”

  He looked around. Tinsel-lined candy canes Gracie suspected had been around since before she was born hung off the streetlight poles just as they had when she’d been a kid.

  “I’m sorry I’m interrupting. It’s just I found something.”

  “Will—” She couldn’t do this. For herself as much as for him.

  “I found a pattern, to how they met. Wednesdays. Always at six. I don’t know where, but there has to be something there. Wednesdays.” His gaze fixed on hers in the cheerful Christmas lights.

  She’d told him she was done, but here he was, stepping outside his comfort zone and marching into the bar. She was torn between pleasant surprise that he’d braved some of the things he’d been avoiding more and more and being annoyed he thought he could just waltz into her life and demand help.

  “Then what?” she asked softly. Because this was what had brought her to that moment last week when she’d cut him off. When she’d cut herself off. She could keep giving him pictures and files and peeks at evidence and what have you, but then what? It was an endless circle, and she couldn’t be a part of it anymore.

  She wanted him to break free of it, too, but she had no say over him. She only had say over herself. But maybe... Maybe if he actually stopped to think about the question like she’d had to...

  “What happens if we follow the pattern?” she prodded.

  “We follow the clues and—”

  “Then what after that? You find the guy your wife was cheating with? You question him and maybe he even had something to do with it despite all evidence to the contrary. The searching is over, you have your answers, your justice. What then?” Because she’d been foolishly hoping to help him to that what then, but she had a terrible feeling she’d spent the past two years only aiding him in becoming more screwed up, more of a hermit and less of the easy-going Will Cooper she’d known peripherally before Paula’s death.

  And because she cared about him, but had zero actual responsibility or hold on him, she had to walk away.

  “We’ll have the truth,” Will said, as if she was the one living in a fantasy world. “I’ve been searching for the truth for two years. I don’t know why you’re giving up, but I can’t. I can’t ignore two years’ worth of something telling me this is all wrong.”

  “What will you do with whatever truth you’re after?”

  He looked at her a bit like she’d struck him. “Hopefully put a murderer in jail.” He shook his head. “Why? Why are you doing this? After all this time, you’re just abandoning me. I don’t get it.”

  He actually sounded and looked hurt, instead of just irritated he didn’t have help anymore, so she gave him the truth. “I care about you
, Will, and I can’t keep watching you get worse.”

  * * *

  WILL COULDN’T PROCESS those words, or the soft look in Gracie’s brown eyes. Care. Such a weird word. Such a dangerous thing, to care about someone. You couldn’t control what they’d do with that. Couldn’t predict it. You could feel safe and happy one minute, eviscerated and broken the next.

  Care. No. It gave him a full-body chill. “Get worse at what?” he asked, working to pretend the first part of that sentence didn’t exist.

  She blew out a breath, lights from the tacky Christmas decorations all around creating a sort of warm yellow glow around her. Occasionally, the few nights he managed to sleep well enough to dream, he’d dream of her, much like this. Something like an angel, down to the glowing.

  He wasn’t fanciful enough to believe in things like angels, but he wasn’t so cynical he couldn’t believe that Gracie was part of his life for a reason.

  So why was she leaving it?

  She blew out a breath. “You said you don’t need a friend, but I’m always here if you decide you do. But I’m done playing detective. It was an accident, Will. An accident.”

  “She was not cheating on me accidentally.”

  “No.”

  “What changed? Something did, because a person doesn’t just walk away after...” It all lodged a little too hard, the words he was saying, a very painful realization he’d come here for the very, very stupid reason of feeling abandoned, and that overly sympathetic look on her face.

  He tried to say he had to leave, but he wasn’t sure any words actually came out of his mouth. He was moving too fast away from her and this town and...

  This was why he stayed up there. When he came down to town, when people were around, talking about things not related to Paula’s death, all these messy, confusing, complicated and mixed-up emotions boiled up and over. Who wanted to live in the center of all those things? He didn’t understand these people walking through life like it wasn’t a relentless parade of suck.

  He didn’t need Gracie to be his friend. He didn’t need anyone to be his friend. He most certainly didn’t need fake Christmas crap surrounding him to the point of suffocation.

  Who cared if Gracie had a reason for backing out? It wasn’t the same as learning your wife was cheating on you, or that she was dead. None of this was the same.

  But somewhere in the past few years he’d lost how to parse it all. Which meant he’d let this all go—Gracie, her help, anything to do with Bent. He’d figure this all out on his own where he was safe from the way people were complicated, from the way people could betray you.

  “Will. Wait.”

  But he couldn’t wait. He had to get back to his house, his mountain. Far away from all this.

  He turned away from her, hunching against the cold. There were cars everywhere, filling the lot, clogging both sides of the street. He’d had to park two blocks down.

  Before turning the corner to where his Jeep was parked, he gave a final glimpse at Gracie standing there in the twinkling lights, hugging herself and looking worried and like a Christmas gift.

  He damn well didn’t need her worry. Or care.

  He climbed into his Jeep and started the engine. He drove out of Bent, so distracted with the roiling set of emotions inside him it took miles to realize something wasn’t right.

  The engine was making a horrible noise, and the steering wheel wasn’t responding the way it normally did. Will frowned. It was pitch-black on this mountain road and not a good place to stop. Even though traffic wasn’t a big concern, 18-wheelers sometimes rumbled by toward Fairmont.

  If he stopped—

  The thought, the hope he could fix this situation, died in an instant. When his foot tapped the brake, nothing happened. He swallowed at the trickle of fear, pressing his foot down harder. A grinding noise sounded—a terrible one—and the brake barely responded, slowing his progress only a little bit.

  Will swore as he continued to stomp his foot on the brake. Horrible noise, a slight decrease in speed, but not enough. Keeping his eyes on the road and one hand gripped to the steering wheel for dear life, he fished his phone out from the messy console.

  He waited for a straightaway on the road, searched for anything that might slow his car down without killing him. All there was in the dark night, he knew, were rocks and trees and death. He couldn’t even see the moon, like some kind of terrible omen.

  He dialed Gracie’s number, impatiently swearing as it rang over and over again. He remembered the emergency brake, stomped on the lever, but nothing happened.

  She didn’t answer.

  Stupid to call her instead of 911, and still he gripped his phone with one hand, while desperately trying to take the curves of the dark road ahead of him. Screeching tires, increasing speed as the road dipped, entire car shuddering.

  “Gracie,” he shouted into his phone when her voice mail beep sounded. “I need your help.”

  But he couldn’t explain beyond that because he had to drop the phone to grip the steering wheel with both hands. Except that didn’t seem to help. His steering had gone the way of the brakes and now he was careening toward another curve, this time with no hope of doing anything but catapulting over the edge and into a grove of trees.

  Paula’s trees.

  Chapter Three

  Gracie chewed her lip as she stared at her phone. Maybe Will had been calling to apologize. Maybe she should have answered.

  He was dealing with such complicated emotions and—

  Well, no, the problem was he had complex emotions, grief and betrayal, and for two years he’d run away and hermited away from them rather than face them, deal with them, accept them.

  And she’d placated and enabled him at every turn. She chewed harder on her lip, staring at the voice mail icon.

  “Here. Turn that frown upside down.”

  Gracie looked up at Laurel, who had slid a bottle of beer in front of her at her little corner table where she was sitting. By herself.

  “Sorry I’m not reveling.”

  “Don’t worry. The Carsons are doing enough reveling for all of us,” Laurel said, smiling fondly at the motley crew around them. Delaneys lined the outskirts of the crowd. Most looking a little sour faced, though a few had imbibed enough to mingle with Carsons.

  Gracie looked back down at her phone. She should put it away and celebrate her cousin’s engagement. Celebrate the fact the town wasn’t imploding over a Carson and a Delaney getting married.

  Yet.

  “What’s up, Gracie? It isn’t like you to mope.”

  Gracie shook her head, gesturing at the crowd. “It’s so not important. I’ll tell you about it later. Enjoy your night.”

  Laurel took a sip from her bottle of beer then glanced around the room, her smile going soft when it landed on her fiancé, Grady Carson. He was laughing with his cousins Noah and Ty behind the bar. They made a handsome, dangerous trio.

  Gracie glanced down at her phone again, that obnoxious voice mail icon staring at her.

  “So, who’s the guy?”

  Gracie’s head jerked to Laurel. “What?”

  “I know everyone you know, Gracie,” Laurel said with a smile. “They’re all here. So the only reason you’re staring at your phone and not talking to anyone is...well, a guy.”

  Gracie tried to laugh casually, but it came out sounding forced even to her own ears. “There’s no guy.”

  “Then what’s with the phone staring?”

  “I’m in a deadly battle of Candy Crush.”

  Laurel laughed. “Liar.”

  “It’s not a guy...per se. I just finally told Will I’d stop...” Gracie shook her head. “This is not engagement party talk.”

  Laurel reached across the table and patted Gracie’s arm. Laurel had never been shy about her disapproval of Gracie’s odd r
elationship with Will. As a sheriff’s deputy, Laurel didn’t take kindly to accusations that the department wasn’t doing its best because the victim had been a Carson, or any of Will’s other accusations over the case.

  So, it made Gracie feel silly and small bringing it up, especially at Laurel’s party.

  “He’s not my favorite person, but I know you felt a kind of obligation to him, and cutting that off couldn’t have been easy.”

  Gracie forced herself to smile. “And something we can discuss tomorrow.”

  Laurel nodded. “Fair enough. Just one little piece of advice. Either cut all of it off for good, or accept you’re going to be a part of it. Don’t sit here in a back-and-forth. Make a choice and stick with it. You’ll feel a lot better.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell me which choice?”

  “You two look far too serious for a party,” Grady said, coming up to them and taking Laurel’s hand in his. “On your feet. You’re going to dance with me.”

  “I’m a terrible dancer,” Laurel returned with a laugh, but she let Grady pull her to her feet. She left her beer bottle, grinning as Grady gave her a little spin toward the small throng of people dancing to “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.”

  But Laurel smiled over her shoulder at Gracie. “You pick the one you can live with,” she called over the crowd and the music.

  One she could live with. Gracie frowned. That was the worst advice she’d ever been given. She couldn’t live with either possibility. She had told him she couldn’t help him anymore because she was afraid she was making him worse. She meant that choice, but it didn’t make it easy.

  She cared about Will. Had even said it to his face and watched him blanch outside this very bar. As if care was some kind of horrible disease she’d foisted upon him.

  You decided to cut him off, so cut him off.

  She nodded, willing herself to hit the voice mail button, which she did. Then willing herself to hit Delete without listening to a second. For that act, she paused.

  She’d cut him off. He didn’t want a friend. He was allergic to emotion and she was no therapist, so she couldn’t possibly fix him. She couldn’t go after him and make things right because he was too closed off, too obsessed, too...