Wyoming Christmas Ransom

by Nicole Helm

  “Here.” Gracie grabbed some towels that had maybe once been stacked somewhere but were now scattered across the ground. Will helped her sit up a little and Gracie placed the towels under her head as a makeshift pillow.

  “What did they do to you?” he asked.

  The woman smiled ruefully then winced. “Tried to beat it out of me. That ain’t the way to go about it. You don’t lay a hand on me and get what you want. I’ll live. Just a little bruised.”

  She tried to sit up but Gracie wouldn’t allow it. “You just lie still till the paramedics get here. You could have a concussion, or something could be broken.”

  “Don’t think so. Well, maybe the concussion. I’m not sure how long they’ve been gone. Guess I passed out. I’m all right. Let me sit up.”

  Will helped her into a sitting position and even though she groaned again, she did seem in decent enough shape. It was a relief, and yet someone else had gotten hurt in this whole mess and that wasn’t a relief at all.

  “Don’t know why they left.” She furrowed her brow. “One of them got a call, I think. Or you would’ve been toast.” She smiled ruefully.

  “Will,” Gracie whispered. “Sirens.”

  He heard them, too. “Help is almost here. Stay put. Don’t move.”

  “You go on. I’ll be just fine. And I won’t tell ’em anything. Except about the bastards who tried to hurt me.”

  “Thank you. Really. Thank you.” Will pulled the cash out of his pocket and pulled open the drawer to her desk. “Thank you.”

  “But I didn’t tell you—”

  “You were hurt. That’s enough. We’ll come back if we can.” He stood and Gracie stood with him. “We have to get out of here,” he said, grabbing her arm and jerking her toward what he hoped to God was a back entrance to the parking lot where the truck was parked.

  “He drives a black Ford F250,” the woman yelled after them. “The man who was with your wife. Never saw what the watcher drove, but he knew the guy in the truck and your wife, pretty sure. It’s not much to go on, but it’s something.”

  “Thank you,” Will replied, already pulling Gracie toward the back.

  “Where are we going to go?” Gracie demanded, but she followed.

  “I don’t know.” They needed somewhere safe and off the beaten path. If only whoever was doing this hadn’t burned down his cabin. Wait. “You said they burned down my cabin, but what about the shop?” He found the exit to the back lot and pushed through it.

  Gracie already had the keys out and jogged toward the truck. “No, no, I think it was fine.”

  “We’ll go there,” he said firmly, running to the passenger side.

  They both got in and Gracie started the ignition.

  “I hope she’s okay,” she said, pulling forward in the lot.

  “She has help now. Real help. Now, we need to figure this out before anyone else gets hurt.”

  Gracie nodded and pulled out of the parking lot. Through the trees, he could see the flashing lights of a police car pulling off the highway.

  “Hurry,” he muttered, more to himself than to Gracie.

  But she hurried just the same.

  Chapter Nine

  It was hard to look at the wreckage of the burned-out cabin and not feel both sadness and fury.

  “I just don’t understand people. How can they hurt all these innocent lives? What do they think they’re going to accomplish?”

  “Well, getting away with murder would be my guess. Park the truck behind that cluster of trees. It might give us enough of a camouflage that if someone happens up here they won’t see it.”

  Gracie nodded, but she felt beat down. A black Ford F250 was nothing to go on in Wyoming, and what were they going to figure out hiding up here? She should call Laurel. They should let the police handle this. Everything was too dangerous.

  Still, she parked the truck in a little grove of trees and about a foot of snow and didn’t voice any of her concerns to Will. She was afraid of what his reaction might be.

  He was immediately out of the truck, striding through the snow toward his shed of a shop. He didn’t even look twice at the wreckage of his cabin, all burned-out boards and collapsed roof.

  Gracie couldn’t help but look at it. The black jagged remains seemed so grotesque against a fresh inch or so of snow that had fallen only at these higher elevations.

  She watched Will stop short at the door of the shed. He, too, was broken and bruised, no matter how fine he walked. That poor woman had been hurt for only the bad luck of working somewhere where people did bad things and would do even worse things to cover it up.

  Panic clawed at her chest, but she couldn’t give time to it. She followed Will over to the shed, where he stood frowning at the door.

  “Someone broke the lock,” he said, gesturing toward the hook on the door where a padlock usually kept the door closed if Will wasn’t working in it.

  “Maybe we should—”

  Before she could offer a caution warning, he lifted his leg and kicked the door open. The sight before them made Gracie gasp. His tools were strewn everywhere, many completely broken. Everything had been torn off the walls, ripped or bashed to bits. Even his worktable had been cracked in half.

  “Will, I...” But she didn’t have the words.

  He started forward, picking through the debris. “Well, it should be safe to spend the night here. I doubt anyone will be looking for us in the wreckage.” He kicked one of his metal pieces that Gracie couldn’t tell if it was a ruined finished piece or just a piece Will himself hadn’t finished.

  All of this was too much. Even knowing what his reaction would be, she couldn’t keep silent. “I should call Laurel.”

  He turned to face her, that all about the case expression on his face. The past two years were coming to a culmination and honestly Gracie didn’t know how to deal with that any more than she knew how to deal with the fact these horrible people were out there wanting to hurt them and anyone else who might come into their path.

  “If you want to go, Gracie, then I want you to go.”

  Shocked, she stepped forward. “I’m not going. We—”

  He shook his head, went back to kicking debris out of the way as if all of this was nothing to him. Just unimportant casualties. “I can’t sit back and trust the police. Maybe if anyone had believed me for one second in the past two years I could. I know their weaknesses and I can’t wait around hoping that changes.”

  “I believed you,” she said, unaccountably hurt. How many hours had she poured into him? When would she get it through her head? When would she accept this? The only reason he was tolerating her was that she was a means to an end. No matter how many times in the past few days he’d looked at her like she was Gracie not the Angel of Death. It was an illusion.

  “Did you believe me? Or did you just support me?”

  “So all that support, all that help, all that being there,” she said, fisting her hand against her heart so it wouldn’t hurt so dang much. “All that only mattered if I believed your story one hundred percent all the time?”

  “I was right, wasn’t I?”

  In all the frustrating times she hadn’t been able to get through to him for two long years, she’d never wanted to punch him so much as she did right now. But he was standing there with a broken arm, that horrible blank expression behind his eyes, and even now when he was being such a jerk she wanted to soothe him.

  “Like I said, Gracie, if you don’t want to be here, then that’s what I want for you.”

  She looked around at the trashed workroom, the broken man in the center of it all. Nothing she felt made any sense. He had been right all these years, and didn’t he have a right to be a little bent out of shape that no one had believed him?

  Except she was helping him and she still felt alone. Separate from whatever was goin
g on in his head. An accessory at best. When she’d risked so much for him, and he couldn’t even acknowledge it.

  She didn’t feel sad anymore. She felt angry. Livid. That she was risking life and limb for him, for the truth, and he couldn’t even see it.

  “I helped you when no one else would. I broke you out of the hospital and stole my cousin’s truck and gave you a grand to pay off that poor woman. I have cared for you and helped you and all you’ve done is act like I’m the enemy or a burden or should just leave.” Her voice cracked but she couldn’t let that stop her. “All you’ve done is act like this one thing—solving this case—is the only thing in the world that matters.” She flung her arms out wide. “It matters, but a million things exist around it. Don’t you even care they burned down your cabin? They trashed your shed? You don’t even look surprised or hurt or anything. You just want me to leave?”

  “I didn’t say I wanted you to leave,” he replied in that flat, emotionless voice she hated. “I said if you wanted to go, if you want to trust the police, then you should.”

  “How is that different?” she demanded, something like panic and hysteria winning over every rational voice in her head that told her to calm down and deal with this some other time.

  “There is someone after me—”

  “Us!” she screeched, and this time she moved toward him, stalked toward him really. He stood his ground, but he looked at her warily and it was something. Wary instead of blank. “Someone is after us. I am a part of this. That woman back at the motel is a part of this. We’re not ghosts you can walk through. We’re real-life people putting stuff on the line for the truth. For you.”

  “Can’t we have this conversation once we figure out who the hell killed Paula and why? Why would we think about anything else in this moment?” He made a gesture around the shed with his good arm. “It’s just stuff. But finding out who did this—”

  “Won’t change the fact that your cabin is gone and your things are broken. It won’t change the fact Paula cheated on you, and it doesn’t ever change the fact that she’s dead. Yeah, you were right, Will. We should absolutely find out who did this. Congratulations. When that’s all over, you will have nothing left.” She poked him in the chest. “Nothing.”

  They stood there, facing off, Gracie’s breathing too fast and heavy, while he stood there rubbing his chest where she’d poked him.

  “What do you want me to do, Gracie?”

  “Acknowledge anything that is happening. The wreckage, that poor woman, anything.”

  “By doing what? Stopping trying to find the guy? Cry about my lost stuff or someone getting hurt? Plan my new, empty life when someone’s still after me? What am I supposed to do? Do some yoga and breathe? While a killer is out there?”

  “You’re supposed to look around! Acknowledge that I have sacrificed for you. That the motel woman, who doesn’t know you from Adam, protected you. Open your eyes, Will. Just because we’re focused on finding out who did this doesn’t mean you can’t acknowledge that life exists around you. That I exist around you.”

  But he didn’t. He stood there with the hint of a frown turning down his lips. Her words clearly hadn’t penetrated at all, and why was she here? She could be wrapped up in the Delaney Ranch, safe and sound with people who loved her taking care of her.

  Her best bet was to leave. To work with Laurel and Cam and try to find the man from the outside.

  Because the inside with Will wasn’t ever going to solve anything. It would just be half steps of trying to stay safe, of Will keeping everything to himself.

  If she truly cared about Will, she had to do the thing that would give him the best chance for being safe, and she didn’t think her being with him was it anymore.

  She stepped away from him, backing away. “If I’m not your partner in this, if you can’t even react when something like this happens—” she pointed to the debris “—then there’s no reason for me to be here.”

  With that, she forced herself to turn, to walk toward the door, to not look back. True care wasn’t giving someone what they wanted all the time. Sometimes it was doing what needed to be done to protect them.

  She was no good to him here, next to him, because all she could focus on was the ways he didn’t see her, the ways he didn’t see anything and that wouldn’t solve the case.

  Will had finally gotten his way. The case was all that could matter.

  * * *

  WILL STOOD FROZEN, watching Gracie step out of the shed. He couldn’t catch a breath somehow, but this was right. She’d be safer far away from him, and he’d be free to focus on the important things.

  The important things were not the wreckage of the cabin that had become his haven. It was not years of work having been destroyed, the debris of it all around him. And it wasn’t Gracie’s brown eyes wanting something from him.

  What could she want from him?

  This was the right move. Letting her go. He’d be safe here and he could work through the things he knew. Connect the dots. That motel. A black Ford F250. Paula’s past.

  Without Gracie.

  He was moving forward before he fully realized it. She couldn’t go. It wasn’t safe for her to go. It was safer if they were together, fighting it their own way without the police. It had to be safer.

  He pushed out the door. “Gracie, wait,” he called before he realized she hadn’t gone very far.

  She was standing in the middle of the snowy yard, just staring at the horrible blackened skeleton of his cabin.

  He stared at the snow. She wanted him to feel the horrible loss of that, but then how would he ever move again? If he looked around and accepted what he saw, how did any of it matter? How did he not give up?

  He forced himself to look up—not at the cabin, but at Gracie. She’d turned to face him and she had tears on her cheeks.

  It just about killed him, and again he was moving forward without thinking it through.

  “Don’t do that. Please don’t do that.”

  She used a hand to wipe one cheek, but before she lifted it to the other, he beat her to the punch, using his fingertips to brush the tears off her cheeks.

  Her breath audibly caught, and he didn’t know what he was doing, what he was trying to make happen. He didn’t understand any of the things happening inside his chest, the jittery feeling of coming to life all over again. The sun was bright and the snow was cold and his cabin and workshop were in ruins and...

  And Gracie was here. She’d been through all of it. Holding him up. But it was his turn. His turn.

  Awkwardly using his good arm, he managed to pull her to him. Not a hug so much as a lean into each other, because he only had the one movable arm and she didn’t reciprocate. He should probably move or something, but she sniffled against his chest and it felt as if the world shifted. Back to being right after being crooked for so long.

  Maybe he was delirious.

  “I don’t want you to go,” he murmured against her ear. His nose was somehow buried in her hair and she smelled like flowers and smoke and he was suddenly hit by the fact she’d run into those charred matchsticks of ruin and tried to save his stuff.

  “I appreciate that, Will,” she said softly, one of her arms tentatively coming around him.

  Will couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t wanted to be anywhere but where he was, thinking what he was thinking, but everything about Gracie’s arm around him was where he wanted to be.

  “But maybe it’s for the best if I help the police. You don’t need me here and—”

  He pulled away, trying not to wince as he moved his broken arm all wrong. But he grabbed her upper arm with his good hand and looked her right in the eye. “I do need you here. I absolutely need you.”

  Her eyes widened, but she didn’t say anything to that. She merely stared at him. Eventually she shook her head, that sad determinat
ion creeping back into her expression.

  He couldn’t let her voice those doubts, voice that look in her eye. He couldn’t let her keep thinking everything that was all wrong.

  “If I open my eyes, if I look around like you want me to, then I have to accept all this is real.” The tide of emotions he’d been warding off for two long years threatened to spill right out of him, but Gracie’s eyes were his focal point. His reality. He could beat anything off if he could stare at her.

  “I would have been lost without you these past two years,” he said, something he’d known all this time but had refused to admit to himself let alone out loud. But once he started admitting things, once in this moment of things hurtling out of his control as he almost watched her walk away, it all came spilling out. “Utterly, horribly lost, but if I stared that in its face, then I’d have to accept what a mess I was. That I’d never really dealt with any of the fallout of being cheated on, because instead of divorce or closure, she died. She was killed. It’s so much easier to want to find the answer to that than deal with the complicated emotions of losing someone you’d loved but didn’t anymore. Someone you were so angry with, but didn’t deserve to die.”

  She reached out, her cold fingers brushing against his cheek. In this moment he could admit what he hadn’t allowed himself to admit for a very long time. He wanted Gracie to touch him, see him. He wanted her, but it was too complicated, too hard and it would mean moving on.

  He hadn’t been ready to move on. He’d shied away from anything that meant accepting the things he’d felt, dealing with them, and then even scarier, facing new feelings.

  “Will, if you accept all these bad things, then you can move forward. Ignoring them means never building a new life.” She rested her palm against his jaw and he wanted, more than anything, to stay here. Right here. Answers and murderers be damned.

  “Gracie.” A new life. For two years that had seemed like the worst possible thing to want or go after. Paula’s life was over, and whether he’d loved her still or not, everything about that night felt like it was somehow his fault. His inability to prove someone else had ended her life was his failure.