Fugitive (A Rocky Mountain Thriller Book 2)

by Ann Voss Peterson

Footsteps scuffled outside the room. Jerry stood in the doorway looking like he was about to climb out of his skin. “They’re here.”

  Burne raised black brows. “Who?”

  “Sheriff’s deputies. Flashing lights. They’re pulling into the parking lot right now.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  IN A FLASH OF MOVEMENT, Burne grabbed Sarah by the braid and pulled her head back, cradling her against his chest like a lover.

  Eric surged forward.

  An arm came from behind him, a knife blade flashing inches from his throat. The bartender’s beer-tainted breath fanned his face. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  Eric’s mind stuttered. He hadn’t seen the guy move out from behind the bar. He’d been caught flat-footed, unprepared.

  Burne pressed his cheek against Sarah’s. “Have my money by noon tomorrow, all twenty grand, or the sheriff will be the least of your problems. Understand?”

  She glared at him.

  “Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll get a call telling you where to meet. You better answer.” He shoved something into her hand, released her hair and pushed her away.

  Sarah stumbled against a bar stool, clutching a cell phone in her fist. She scrambled to regain her balance. Eric tried to move toward her, but the bartender’s hand clamped down hard on his shoulder. The blade pressed cold just below his ear.

  “Get out of here,” Burne said. “Through the back. The last thing I need is for you to be arrested before I get paid. Go.”

  The knife pulled back. The arm released Eric.

  He focused on Burne, that smug face, those brutal eyes. When he’d grabbed Sarah he’d awakened something primal in Eric. The urge to rip a man’s tattooed throat with his bare hands. But as much as he wanted to stuff those threats back from where they’d come, he needed to get Sarah out of there more. He needed to protect her from Burne, all right, but he couldn’t forget the sheriff.

  He grabbed Sarah’s hand. They dodged the pool table and raced for the back door. The men in cowboy hats he’d noticed standing in the back of the bar were gone. Cleared out. Before Jerry had yelled his warning or after, Eric didn’t know.

  They reached the door and Eric pulled it open. As soon as they pushed out into the clear basin wind, Eric could hear the bark of male voices coming from the front of the building. A white SUV sat in the gravel drive, blocking all vehicles from leaving. Sheriff’s deputies stood among the vehicles in the lot.

  So much for dumping their stolen SUV. And inside the SUV was the backpack with the belt buckle tucked inside. Damn.

  “We have to go on foot.” Before the words were out of his mouth, they were racing across the gravel and into land dotted with sagebrush and dry tufts of grass. A quarry gaped behind the bar like a wound, the land gashed and marred by heavy machinery. Reaching the pounded dirt road, they followed it, running for all they were worth.

  With every stride, Eric prayed Burne was serious about wanting his money, serious enough to stall the sheriff until they got away. Relying on the man who’d just threatened Sarah to save them tasted as acidic as bile in the back of Eric’s throat. But at this point, he’d take any help they could get.

  Sarah pointed to a flat-topped hill on the other side of the gaping quarry pit. “Everything beyond that bench is BLM land. It backs up to the ranch.” She panted each word, the rhythm of her strides slowing.

  The ranch. Reaching the far side of the mine, Eric pulled Sarah behind a pile of gravel. There, sheltered from the view of the men back at the tavern, he slowed to a walk, giving Sarah a chance to catch her breath. They needed a plan. “How far?”

  “Probably less than two miles.”

  “You have other vehicles there, right? Another ATV?”

  She nodded. Leaning forward, she braced her hands on her knees. “You think they won’t be watching it?”

  “Not if they’re tied up at the bar.” He knew it was risky, but he’d managed to sneak into the ranch undetected once before. And Sarah knew the land better than anyone. “Where are your hands? Layton?”

  “Should be out on the BLM, checking the cattle. They would have taken the horses, though, not the ATV. Layton’s preference.”

  “Good.”

  “Say we manage to get the ATV and get out without being seen, where do we go from there?”

  “We’ll figure it out. But in the meantime, I know a place. A friend’s cabin. No one will be there until next week.” It had been the place he’d thought about at the beginning. A place where they could hole up. See no one. A place where he could keep Sarah safe until they sorted out this mess and decided what to do next.

  The hike to the ranch didn’t take long by Wyoming standards. They ran most of the way, a steady jog. The sun was just settling low in the sky when they crossed the fence line and started through the east pasture. By the time the house and outbuildings came into view, twilight still glowed over the mountains to the west.

  “God, it seems so long ago… I used to feel so safe here. I wonder if I ever will again.”

  The ache in Sarah’s voice settled into Eric’s bones. She had told him about her feelings for the ranch before. Said it was her rock. The only thing she could rely on between her parents’ turmoil and the problems Randy stirred up everywhere he went.

  Now she’d lost her ranch, too.

  He wanted nothing more than to get it back for her. Maybe it was possible. He had to believe it was. But possible or not, clearing their names was still a long way off and would require more than a few miracles. The best he could do right now was to get his hands on that ATV and use it to get her someplace safe for the night. “Come on.”

  The place felt as vacant as it had when he’d rescued her from the sheriff. Not a body around. No movement but the horses in the corral. And this time—thankfully—no sign of the sheriff’s SUV.

  With any luck, he’d be tied up with Burne and his criminal drinking buddies for a good long while.

  Sarah led the way to a freestanding garage on the other side of the house. She twisted the manual garage door’s handle and Eric helped her slide the door up on its overhead tracks.

  They stared at the back bumper of a blue pickup.

  Eric didn’t recognize the truck. He glanced at Sarah. “Yours?”

  “No. I think—”

  “You move, you’re dead.”

  Eric turned. The barrel of a rifle was leveled straight at Sarah’s forehead.

  ______

  “Glenn.” Sarah’s first urge was to hug her ranch hand. Her second was to remember that although Glenn wasn’t the sheriff, that didn’t mean they were home free. “What are you doing here?”

  “God, Sarah. I almost shot you.” He tilted his hat back from his forehead and lowered his gun from his shoulder, but he didn’t avert the barrel, as if he wasn’t quite sure what he should do.

  “Glenn, listen. This whole thing you’ve heard about Randy’s death...”

  “I know you didn’t have nothing to do with killing Randy.”

  “You know?”

  Glenn glanced at Eric. “Layton thinks it was all him.”

  “Eric didn’t do it, either.”

  Glenn pressed his lips together, making his cheeks bulge on either side of his mouth. Everything about Glenn was square, from his boxy legs to his shoulders to the shape of his head. And nothing was more square than his attitude toward the law.

  “You got to believe me, Glenn. Layton is wrong. It was the sheriff and two of his men who killed Randy. They were trying to cover up another murder, and Randy got too close.”

  Glenn pointed the barrel at the ground and rubbed his sweaty forehead. “I wondered what the hell was going on.”

  “What happened?” Eric stepped forward.

  Glenn looked from Eric back to Sarah. His shoulders slumped a little. “I heard Sheriff Gillette talking to Keith. Said something about getting justice.”

  Sarah considered this. Glenn was the law-and-order guy. The man who l
oved cop shows and novels. The man she could easily imagine working with the sheriff.

  Sarah had always thought Keith was the perfect recruit for a homegrown militia group, maybe, but a man who chafed at government and had no patience for law. “How did Keith react?”

  “It’s all Keith can talk about. People getting what they deserve and what all.”

  She pictured the cowboy hat at the back of the smokey bar. The shaggy blond hair and rangy face underneath. She glanced at Eric. “I thought I saw him at the Full Throttle.”

  “Don’t surprise me. He left the ranch around lunchtime and didn’t come back. He ain’t been anywhere he’s supposed to lately.”

  Sarah straightened. Things were starting to add up, and she didn’t like where they were going. “There were other times he left work? When?”

  Glenn adjusted his hat with one hand. “Man, I don’t know.”

  She did. “The day Randy was killed?”

  He narrowed his eyes and stared at the garage wall, as if counting back in his mind. “Was that the day we took the herd out to the BLM?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “Yeah, he disappeared that day.”

  “When?”

  “After we loaded up. Didn’t even say where he was going. Layton went out to look for him, but never found him. I had to unload the cattle alone.”

  “Has Keith said anything else to you?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, anything about Randy or a place called Saddle Horn Ridge?”

  “He talked about Randy. How he saw him at the Full Throttle talking to some drug dealer.”

  Sarah nodded. “He told me that, too.”

  “How about a man named Larry Hodgeson?” Eric asked. “Has Keith mentioned him?”

  Glenn started to shake his head, then paused.

  “Think of something?” Sarah fought the urge to lean toward him and grab his shoulders, shake him into remembering whatever it was that made him pause.

  “Yeah. Hodgeson. He was in the news a while back, wasn’t he?”

  “Did Keith mention him?”

  “Yeah. Last summer he was all mad. Said this Hodgeson took a payoff to let some drug dealer go, and now he was going to make things even worse. Keith said people like this Hodgeson were what was wrong with law enforcement. Is Hodgeson a cop or something?” Glenn’s eyebrows pinched together, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer.

  “No.”

  Glenn let out a shaky breath.

  Sarah’s mind whirled with Glenn’s words. Make things even worse? Hodgeson no longer worked for the crime lab. He hadn’t for years. How could Hodgeson make things worse?

  “We’d better get out of here, Sarah.” Eric’s voice cut through her thoughts. “Where’s the ATV?”

  She pointed to the other side of the garage.

  “Tell you what,” Glenn said. “Why don’t you take my truck?”

  She scanned his face. He seemed sincere. Like he wanted to help. But if she couldn’t trust one of her hands, could she really afford to trust the other?

  “Things are strange around here,” Glenn said. “Real strange. I don’t know what to think, but I don’t think you’d kill your brother. And I don’t want to see you pay for something you’d never do.”

  She nodded. She hadn’t thought anything bad about Glenn Freemont in the time he’d worked for her. Not until this mess. But he really was a good guy. And he really did seem to care about her. It felt good to know she’d been right about someone. That everyone she knew wasn’t harboring some secret that would come back to hurt her. “Thanks, Glenn.” She gave him a hug, and he slipped the truck’s keys into her hand.

  Eric wheeled the ATV to the mouth of the garage. “Let’s take this, too. It’ll give us some flexibility.”

  After Glenn helped Eric heave the vehicle into the pickup bed, she passed the keys to Eric and climbed into the passenger seat. A second later, they were speeding out of the gravel driveway and down the road. For a moment, she just stared out the window at the landscape rolling by, trying to absorb how little she knew about some people in her life. Randy. Now Keith. “Do you think Keith is in on this thing with the sheriff, whatever it is?”

  “Could be. Or Glenn is.”

  “Glenn?” She shook her head. She must not have heard him right. “Why Glenn?”

  “Think about it. The only thing we know about Keith Sherwood is what Glenn told us.”

  “And that he was at the Full Throttle.”

  “Which means nothing. From the sound of it, he hangs out there all the time.”

  “True.”

  “And being out at the Full Throttle ties Keith to Burne more than to the sheriff. Either that or he just has a simple drinking problem.”

  “Good point. But none of that suggests Glenn has anything to hide. He helped us. Gave us his truck.”

  Eric nodded. “His truck, which is equipped with a GPS.”

  Sarah gasped and held her hands against her chest. Again she’d been so trusting. So blind. That Glenn might be offering his truck for a reason had never occurred to her. “You think the sheriff is using it to track us?”

  “Not anymore. I turned the damn thing off.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Eric didn’t want to take a chance.

  They took Glenn’s truck as far as the campground outside Norris. There, they left it among a dozen vehicles belonging to early summer tourists and hiked the rest of the way to his guide friend’s cabin on foot.

  The cabin wasn’t exactly rustic, more like a tiny house on the outside of town than a real cabin. But the neighbors were few and far between, no one in the area nosed into others’ business, and most important of all, Eric knew where to find the key.

  Throughout the entire trek, all Eric could think about was their close call at the Full Throttle. How little control of the situation he’d had. How he’d almost lost Sarah for good. Add that to what had happened with Glenn Freemont, and he was reeling.

  He needed to put an end to this. And he would do whatever it took.

  He found the cabin’s key hidden in its usual place under a flap of loose siding, opened the door and ushered Sarah inside.

  The cabin was tiny, only one real room. One end of it formed a small kitchen, the other a living area with a full sized bed in one corner and a television in the other. Definitely a bachelor pad. A bathroom the size of a closet was tucked against the wall.

  The place smelled dusty, the air dead. At least out here the weather was so dry they didn’t have to worry about mustiness and mildew. But it wasn’t exactly homey. “Dev probably hasn’t been here for a while. We’ll have to keep our eyes out for scorpions and black widows.”

  Sarah nodded, unfazed. “It’s nice.”

  “I don’t know about that, but it’s safe. At least for a while.”

  “These days ‘safe’ is the same as nice to me.”

  He knew the feeling.

  Sarah strolled deeper into the cabin. He followed her in time to see her lower herself to the bed and let out an exhausted sigh. For a second, he had the urge to sit beside her, to take her in his arms, to lay her down and show her how much he wanted to take care of her. How much he had changed.

  “There’s only one bed,” she said.

  Warmth fanned out over his skin. He would like to believe she had the same thoughts of sharing the bed. But he knew he was fooling himself. Last night in the restaurant, she’d said she couldn’t take a chance on him. He doubted anything had changed. At least not with her.

  He was a different story.

  With every minute Eric was with Sarah, he grew more and more sure she was what he wanted. Sarah and the baby. Maybe the turmoil he felt just wasn’t that big of a deal in light of the crazy turn their lives had taken. A simple matter of perspective. Maybe moments where he could glimpse what it would be like to lose her had made him want to hold her that much more. Or maybe Sarah was right and the thought of the baby was responsible for his change of heart, but
he didn’t think so.

  He felt as if he was climbing without the safety of a belay. And like climbing, dangerous or not, he wanted more.

  God help him, he wanted everything.

  “What about this money Burne says I need to pay?” Sarah held the cell phone Burne had given her, turning it over and over in her fingers. “How am I ever going to come up with it with the sheriff watching? I can’t exactly walk into a bank.”

  “Burne is the least of our troubles.”

  “Do you think Randy was selling meth? Cooking it?”

  Eric lowered himself to the mattress next to her. “I don’t know.”

  “Or maybe that’s what this whole thing is about. Burne, Randy, Larry Hodgeson, the sheriff—maybe they were all involved in drugs or profiting from drug money.”

  “Didn’t seem like Burne was very eager to see the sheriff this afternoon.”

  Sarah looked down at the phone clasped in her hands. “Burne wants his money before the sheriff gets us. That could change things.”

  “Money can change a lot of things. Like Hodgeson.”

  “His testimony in Burne’s case?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then how does the sheriff fit in?”

  “He doesn’t want Burne to get away with it?”

  “Enough to kill Hodgeson? And Randy?”

  “Maybe Burne killed Hodgeson.”

  Sarah shook her head. “Doesn’t make sense. Even if Hodgeson was going to come clean, Burne was acquitted. He can’t be tried again.”

  “Not on the drug charge. Maybe bribery, if there’s proof after all these years.”

  “And that’s enough to make him kill a man?”

  “Burne might just kill for fun.”

  Again, Sarah wasn’t buying it. “Seems extreme. Even for him. Especially considering where Hodgeson’s body is. I can’t see Burne hauling him all the way out to Saddle Horn Ridge.”

  “You’ve get a point.”

  “So what do we do now?” She sounded as bereft as when he sat down.

  Eric thought of the articles he’d read about Hodgeson. He glanced at the phone in her hand. “We call the reporter who wrote about those cases. Dennis Prohaska.”