Renegade's Pride

by B. J Daniels

  She swallowed the lump in her throat and fought tears of relief and fury. Trask was fine. He wasn’t lying inside the office shot to death. Her heart rate could drop back to normal anytime now. But she still wanted to punch him.

  “My truck’s right up here,” he said, pointing to a dark spot in the back behind the equipment.

  “You could have been killed. That man had a gun. I thought if I didn’t do something...” Her voice broke. A big, fat, hot, salty tear rolled down her cheek. She tasted it on her lips.

  “You did great, Lillie.” He touched her arm. She jerked it away. “I’m sorry I scared you. The last thing I expected was someone else to break in tonight. This will do right here.” He started to open his door to get out but then turned in his seat. “Just follow this road out. I’ll make sure you get back to your place without any trouble. If you want to talk then...” He motioned to what he was carrying. She hadn’t even noticed until then that he had file folders tucked under his arm.

  She was so angry with him. She wanted to tell him that she never wanted to lay eyes on him again. But she couldn’t get the lie past her lips. All she could do was grip the wheel and stare straight ahead as she waited for him to get out of her truck.

  “It’s going to be all right, Lillie. I swear to you.” She really had her doubts, but she said nothing as he climbed out. “Drive straight home. I’ll be right behind you.” And he was gone, disappearing into the darkness.

  She followed the road away from Pyramid Peak Construction Company’s yard. One of her headlights was out, but other than that, her pickup ran fine. Glancing in her rearview mirror, she spotted headlights behind her. Trask. She gripped the steering wheel. She’d lost him nine years ago, not knowing if he was alive or dead. Tonight she’d almost lost him for good.

  Another large hot tear broke free and rolled down her cheek, followed by another and another as the road ahead blurred.

  * * *

  HER BROTHER WAS waiting for her when Lillie came down from her apartment the next morning. “What happened to the front of your pickup?” he demanded. “Are you all right?”

  With everything that had gone on yesterday, her pickup had been the last thing on her mind. “I hit something,” she said.

  “I can tell that. What?”

  Lillie looked at her twin. If she told him about crashing through the gate at the construction office last night, she’d have to tell him about Trask. Neither would go over big with her brother and right now she didn’t have time for the lecture. Not to mention him demanding Trask turn himself in to Flint before they both got killed.

  She didn’t want to lie, but all of this had gotten even more complicated. It was bad enough she had to keep a wanted felon secret, she couldn’t put that on her brother. Last night, as terrifying as it had been, had proved they were onto something. They were close to finding the killer. She could feel it.

  If they stopped now... “You know how bad the deer have been on the road out here,” she said, evading an outright lie.

  Darby frowned. “So you hit a deer. But when I left you last night, I thought you were headed for bed. You went back out?”

  “I couldn’t sleep and went for a drive.” This too was true.

  He nodded. “It happens. Don’t worry, I can get my buddy down at the body shop to fix it for you.

  Lillie felt a stab of guilt. Darby was so sweet and trusting. “Thank you.” She felt close to tears. She felt as if she hadn’t gotten any sleep last night. Trask had followed her back to the stagecoach stop, but she’d refused to let him in.

  “I can’t do this right now,” she’d said. It had been so easy to tell herself she could keep her heart safe from Trask while helping clear his name. But last night had proved what a lie it was. She loved him. The thought of living without him...

  “Lillie—” Trask had tried to hold her. She’d stepped away, knowing that if he touched her she would be lost. Once in his arms, she didn’t think she would be strong enough to ever step away again. She couldn’t let herself go back to that place of despair where Trask had left her nine years ago.

  And she had to face it. Trask was teetering on a tight wire. Arrest and prison? Proving his innocence and staying here? Or leaving again? She didn’t like the odds for any outcome that involved the two of them finding their way back to each other.

  “I can’t do this.” She had motioned in the space between them.

  “You’re exhausted,” Trask had said. “Get some sleep. We can talk tomorrow.” He’d thrust something into her hand. “I got this for you.”

  She’d looked down at the cheap cell phone in her hand.

  “It has only one number on it. Mine,” Trask had been saying. “Call me and we can talk.”

  As he stepped away, she remembered the files and the man with the gun. But she’d been too exhausted and emotionally wrung out to ask about either.

  The realization of how much she loved him had left her too shaken. She’d never stopped needing him. Would always yearn for him. She’d stood cupping the cell phone in her hand as he’d disappeared into the trees behind her house. She’d heard him leave but hadn’t move.

  The nine years had seemed like an eternity impossible to cross. Then last night... It had shaken her to her core.

  This morning she hadn’t felt any better. When he’d first come back, she’d told herself that it was over, that she didn’t know this man, that she couldn’t trust him, that after all those years there was no going back. She’d been hurt too badly.

  After last night she could no longer lie to herself. She’d waited all these years, knowing in her heart that he would return. And now he had. She couldn’t go on pretending that he wasn’t the only man she’d ever loved—would ever love with this kind of intensity. It scared her so badly that her stomach roiled.

  The past was still a painful reminder of how badly Trask had hurt her, how badly he could hurt her again. Last night as she stood outside in the cold after Trask had left, she’d kept reliving the day Flint had come to her with the news. She’d been shocked. Trask had told her he’d gotten into a fight with his boss. Flint had said that Trask had killed Gordon.

  “I need to talk to Trask,” Flint had said. “Where is he?”

  She hadn’t known, since he hadn’t shown up last night. Her suitcase still sat by the door, where she’d left it when she’d realized Trask wasn’t coming for her.

  Flint had followed her gaze to it and let out a curse. “Tell me you weren’t going with him.”

  She hadn’t been able to do that. That was what hurt the most. She would have gone with him. She would have left her family, left everything she loved, to be with him all those years ago. And last night she’d realized those feelings hadn’t changed—and weren’t going to.

  “Where are you off to?” Darby asked now, still studying her.

  “I have an errand. I’ll be back before my shift. Don’t worry.” But as she climbed behind the wheel, she could tell that her brother was more than worried. He was suspicious.

  As she shifted her pickup into gear, she knew it was time to take control of her life again. There was only one way to do that.

  A quarter mile down the road, she pulled out the cell phone Trask had given her and called his number. “Where do you want to meet?”

  * * *

  “HOW WAS YOUR DATE?” Maggie’s coworker Daisy asked the next morning as she came into the beauty shop and put down her things.

  Maggie thought of her dinner with Flint. Everything had been so perfect. They’d talked. Flint had seemed relaxed. He’d seemed happy. She’d thought for sure that they would finally make love.

  “The date was nice—while it lasted,” she said, hating how awful she felt this morning. Maybe she should have waited for him at his house while he went over to Celeste’s last night. Or gone with him. But the tr
uth was, Celeste calling had destroyed any chance of them making love last night. She feared Celeste would keep them from having a relationship at all.

  Daisy groaned. “What happened?”

  “Celeste. She called. Thought there was someone hiding in her backyard.”

  “Seriously? Why didn’t she call 9-1-1?”

  “Flint asked her the same thing, but in the end, he went over there. He’s still involved with her,” Maggie said. “That’s the problem.”

  “The problem is that she doesn’t want to let him go,” the hairdresser said. “But when you say he’s still involved with her, you don’t mean...”

  “No, it’s not physical, but it is definitely emotional. She’s got some hold on him that I don’t understand. She left him for Wayne Duma! Why would Flint still have feelings for this woman?”

  Daisy shook her head. “Men, I’ve never been able to understand them.”

  Maggie laughed, since her coworker was only twenty-two. “I want to blame her, but it’s not all her fault. If he runs over there every time she bends her little finger... I saw his expression when he checked his phone and saw that she was calling.”

  Daisy looked pained. “He’s a fool if he loses you.”

  She smiled a thanks at her friend. When she’d opened the shop, she’d been so happy to have Daisy join her. Daisy was young and fresh and full of ideas. Maggie felt old around Daisy sometimes even though there was only a ten-year age difference.

  “What makes me mad at myself,” Maggie continued, “is that I knew he was still hung up on his ex. That’s why I didn’t go out with him the first couple of times he asked. I wanted to wait, give him time to get over Celeste. But it’s been four years! I thought that by now...” She shook her head, hating how much it hurt. She’d had a crush on Flint for years, but there had always been Celeste—even after Celeste had married Wayne Duma, there was still Celeste.

  Her early-morning color client came in the door. Maggie smiled and tried to forget her disappointment of last night. If only Celeste was a client. She fantasized about what she would do to her if she ever had Flint’s ex in her chair.

  * * *

  FLINT HAD SLEPT little last night after everything that had happened. He’d thought about calling Maggie and apologizing again, but he’d showered and gone to work instead, telling himself he would make it up to her tonight.

  He’d gotten busy with sheriff’s department business, which included another visit out to the Holloway farm. Anvil had called to say he’d done what the sheriff had asked and gone through Jenna’s things to see what was missing.

  “Can you tell me what clothes she took?” Flint said as he walked down the hall to the bedroom Anvil had shared with her.

  The closet door was open. From what Flint could see, not much was taken.

  “There was a yellow dress that I always complimented her on when she wore it. It’s gone. Some high heels that her sister gave her. I never saw her wear them. She liked low-heeled shoes. She’s tall, you know.”

  He did know. “What else?”

  Anvil looked at the floor. “Some...underwear that was a joke gift from some girls she went to high school with.”

  “Sexy lingerie?”

  He nodded without meeting the sheriff’s eyes. “I told her to throw them away.”

  “How do you know she didn’t?”

  “I saw it still in the drawer recently.”

  Flint caught the slip. “Why were you looking in her underwear drawer even before she left?”

  Anvil didn’t answer for a few moments. “The makeup. I thought if she was wearing the makeup that maybe she was also wearing those awful under-things. They were in the drawer with even more that I’d never seen before.” He sounded embarrassed.

  “Maybe she just wanted to look more attractive to you.”

  Anvil looked panicked. “Why, after all these years, why would she want to do that? I mean, she was still attractive to me. I didn’t need...any of that other stuff.”

  But maybe she had.

  “Anvil, there’s going to be some forensics people coming out here. They need to do some tests.”

  “Tests?” he asked as they returned to the kitchen.

  “They need to be sure that nothing happened to Jenna out here.”

  Realization made the man slump into a chair. “You still think I harmed her.”

  “I don’t know what to think, but I have to do everything to make sure you didn’t.”

  Anvil looked at the floor. “There’s something else. She had more money than I thought,” he said as if his life couldn’t get any worse. “I found out that she’d set up a charge account at the grocery store and has been paying a little out of her grocery budget and hiding the bill from me for months.”

  “How much money do you think she had?”

  “A couple hundred dollars socked away, from what I can tell,” he said.

  “Any idea what she might have been planning to do with the money?” Flint asked, pretty sure he knew if Anvil didn’t. Jenna had been planning her escape. Alone, though, or with another man?

  “I know you think I’m naive, but I think she just wanted to get away for a while to think. Or she could have been saving up for something. Maybe something she wanted that she didn’t want to ask me for the money.”

  The man was clutching at straws. It was a hard thing to watch. It also made it hard to believe that Anvil had killed his wife, hidden her body somewhere and dumped her car in a gully.

  But it wasn’t unheard of. Often after a traumatic event such as cold-blooded murder, a person could step outside reality, come up with a wishful story that became more real the more they told it.

  “Our anniversary is coming up,” Anvil was saying. “We never gave each other presents on birthdays or anniversaries. Jenna always said it was a waste of money, since we had everything we needed. But I suppose it could have been something like that.”

  Apparently, Jenna hadn’t had everything she needed if there was another man. Anvil seemed to realize the irony of what he’d said and fell silent as he looked at the floor and fought tears.

  It wasn’t until later after he’d left the Holloway farm that Flint’s stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten. He swung into the Country Cabin Café in the heart of town. It was late morning before the lunch rush. He took a booth and the waitress, an elderly woman named Ethel, came over to take his order.

  Ethel was his favorite at the café. She always had a smile, usually a joke to tell him and a sympathetic ear for those late nights when he would stop in starving and exhausted from a long day. Those were the nights soon after his divorce when he hadn’t been able to face an empty apartment.

  Ethel was like a mother to him. Nothing like the mother he’d had. Mary had been quiet, shy, easygoing, a patient women who’d put up with Ely all those years.

  Ethel was loud and fun and often inappropriate. She was just what he needed.

  “The special sucks. If I were you, I’d go for the pulled pork. Cook made it for tomorrow, but I can sneak you some on a nice grilled bun with a side of fries. How’s that sound?”

  “Like heaven.”

  “I’ll be right back.” True to her word she returned a few minutes later after having an argument in the back with the cook. Clearly, she’d won because she came out giving him a thumbs-up.

  “So what’s new?” she demanded as she slid into the booth opposite him.

  He figured she already knew, since no one had her ear to the ground like Ethel.

  “Jenna Holloway is missing.”

  She raised one finely arched brow. “You don’t say.” Clearly, she’d already known.

  He knew at once that he should have come there first instead of all the investigating he’d been doing around town. “What?”


  “Just that it explains a lot. I saw her last week coming out of the post office. She had a bundle of letters. When she saw me, it startled her and she lost her grip on them. Several caught the wind. I chased them down for her, since she had her hands full.”

  He laughed, knowing full well why Ethel had chased after them. “And you just happened to notice who they were from.”

  Ethel chuckled and nodded. “Shocked even me. Who thought Jenna Holloway of all people?” She shook her head, enjoying making him wait. “I handed them back and pretended I hadn’t seen a thing. Strange, to say the least, but I’m not one to judge.”

  “Spill it,” he said.

  The bell dinged in the back, signaling that his meal was ready.

  “Be right back.”

  He shook his head in irritation and amusement as she sashayed off, returning with his food.

  She took her seat again. “Eat,” she ordered. “I’ll talk. You don’t have to put me under a naked lightbulb. But if you ever just want to get naked...”

  He took a bite. He really was starved and he knew she wouldn’t talk until he did.

  “Prison pen pals.”

  He almost choked on his sandwich. “What?”

  “Swear it’s true. Had their numbers on the envelopes. I had a no-good husband who did time. I recognized that envelope right away. Definitely from two different prisoners.”

  “What prison?”

  “Deer Lodge, at least the two I saw were from the state prison, but there were others I didn’t get a gander at.”

  Flint couldn’t believe this. He’d spent the past few days looking at every man on the street wondering if he was the one Jenna had fallen for. Now this.

  “I suppose it’s possible she went up to the prison to visit one or all of them,” Flint said and took a bite of his pulled pork sandwich, swallowing before he asked, “How many letters were there?”

  “A good half dozen.”

  Unbelievable. Was one of them the man she’d fallen for? The one she feared Anvil would kill if he knew the man’s name?