by B. J Daniels
There was another reason she felt the need to get home quickly. She couldn’t wait to get her hands on her files. From the time she’d started with the Seattle P.D., she had copied all of her notes on the cases she’d worked on and photocopied everything in the files, including making duplicate photos. She didn’t care that it was against protocol. She liked to look at them, study them, see what she could have done differently. See what she might have missed.
If this cold case of Rourke’s really was one she’d worked on—even as a street cop taking photos of the looky-loos behind the crime-scene tape—well, then she would have all the information in her files at home.
The engine turned over. Shifting into Drive, she pulled out without looking. A car horn blared. She slammed on her brakes. The driver of the vehicle swerved around her, barely missing her. Anywhere else but Seattle and the driver would have given her the finger.
Shaken, she looked back to see a second car. This driver had managed to stop in time. The driver impatiently motioned for her to go. She smiled a thank-you back at him and, her heart hammering, pulled out into traffic.
Fortunately, her apartment wasn’t far from downtown Seattle. She navigated the half dozen blocks, concentrating on her driving, still upset from her near accident.
As she pulled into her parking garage and shut off the engine, she tried to calm down. But it was useless. Seeing Rourke again had stirred up a cauldron of emotions that now roiled inside her. Loving Rourke hurt and always had, but she’d thought she had learned to live with it.
Today she’d realized how wrong she was. She smacked the steering wheel with her palm, hating him and the spell some woman in a photo had cast on him. She couldn’t let him jeopardize his career, not for some old cold case. Maybe especially for one he said he was doing for her. But even at that thought, she knew she couldn’t stop him.
The parking garage seemed to close in around her. She had been getting better. Her psychiatrist had said during her last appointment that he was pleased with the progress she’d made.
“I still get scared sometimes,” she’d admitted. “But I’m not so afraid when I leave my apartment now. I still check the backseat of my car. Not as often as I used to, though.”
He’d nodded sagely. “It’s wise to be aware of your surroundings, living in a city. You’re getting out more, then?”
“I’m shopping for my own groceries again and going to lunch occasionally with friends.” The last part wasn’t exactly true. She’d never had a lot of friends. But, unlike some people, she didn’t mind eating alone.
The doctor had studied her openly. “You seem better. Do you feel better?”
She had.
Now, though, she couldn’t catch her breath. She listened for the sound of footfalls in the cool dimness of the garage, suddenly afraid she was no longer alone. Logically, she knew there probably wasn’t anyone crouched in a dark corner of the garage, waiting for her. Just as she had known there probably wasn’t a boogeyman hiding under her bed when she was a child.
But once a boogeyman crawled out from under your bed in the middle of the night... Well, from then on you knew that he could be waiting for you in any dark corner—or dark alley.
For a while, she’d thought her badge and gun were like a powerful shield that would protect her. She’d let herself believe that she’d conquered her fears, that nothing could ever hurt her again as long as Rourke was by her side. He’d made her feel powerful and immortal, when in truth, she was that little girl cowering in the corner of her bed as the boogeyman loomed over her.
Laura let out a sob as she searched the dark recesses of the garage, then hurriedly opened her door and fled to the elevator. She punched the up button, hammering at it, before she dared look behind her. There were street traffic sounds beyond the garage, but no closer, more ominous sounds of footfalls coming from the dark shadowed corners of the garage—at least none she could hear over the pounding of her heart.
She turned back to the elevator, leaning on the button again. She heard the elevator car groan from somewhere inside the building. Her every instinct told her to take the stairs. Now! But with her leg...
The elevator opened noisily, the yawning doors revealing no one inside. She practically threw herself in, hit the ninth-floor button and punched Close a half dozen times before the doors slowly closed.
The breath she’d been holding rushed from her. Tears burned her cheeks. She leaned against the elevator wall for support. She wasn’t better.
CHAPTER FOUR
WITH NO TIME to spare, Rourke had flown into the Gallatin Valley near Bozeman, Montana, the next morning, rented an SUV and driven to Big Timber, following a map he’d printed out on the internet. Beartooth proved to be another twenty miles on two-lane blacktop toward snowcapped peaks, which, according to a sign beside the road, were the Crazy Mountains.
The town, if you could call it that, came as a shock even though he’d done a little research on it while waiting for his flight. Beartooth was what was left of a once-thriving mining town back in the late 1890s. All that had survived, other than some old stone buildings, was a café, post office and bar. Apparently, there had been a general store across from the café, but it had burned down last spring.
Thanks to the internet, he’d found a cabin to rent on the mountainside across the road from the café. He could see the cabin through the trees as he pulled into a spot in front of the café. He’d thought about stopping by the cabin first, but he was too anxious to see Caligrace Westfield.
The Branding Iron Café was easy to find, given how few businesses were left in Beartooth. As he climbed out of the SUV, he tried not to get his hopes up. The P.I. had told him that Caligrace Westfield had changed jobs and residences often over the past ten years. For all Rourke knew, she might have already moved on.
A bell tinkled over the door as he stepped into the café and was hit with the combined smells of cinnamon, bacon and coffee. He breathed in, his stomach growling, reminding him that he hadn’t had much to eat. He’d been too anxious. Just as he was now. Anxious and nervous at the thought of finally seeing the woman face-to-face.
He took in his surroundings quickly. A variety of brightly colored quilts hung on the café’s walls. He’d expected a more Western interior, given where the town was located—in the heart of ranching and farming communities.
There were only a half dozen tables arranged at the front of the café, with four booths along one side and a counter back by the kitchen with a half dozen stools. One large table at the front was full of ranchers he took for regulars.
“Sit wherever you like,” a young woman called over her shoulder without looking in his direction.
He chose a table at the front of the café that gave him a view of the whole place. He could even see into the kitchen via the pass-through on the other side of the counter. A thin, pale man—in his fifties, he guessed—was busy cooking to the distant drone of a song on the radio.
The waitress who’d told him to seat himself stood at the pass-through, her back to him. Her long, curly dark hair was pulled into a knot of sorts at the nape of her neck. Loose strands hung at her temples.
Rourke waited impatiently for the woman to turn around, thinking about the latest information from the P.I. he’d hired. Edwin Sharp, a seasoned private investigator who used to be a cop, was in his sixties. Rourke had liked him the first time he’d met him. He needed someone he trusted, and since he couldn’t do his own digging without making his situation with the marshals’ office worse, he’d hired the man.
“I found something,” Edwin had said cryptically when he’d called on Rourke’s journey to Beartooth. “Your...mystery woman didn’t exist until her seventeenth birthday, when she used a fake birth certificate to get her driver’s license and a social-security card.”
“How do you know the birth certificate is fake?”
“Is anything on the birth certificate real?”
“Doubtful.”
“What about the address?”
“Well, that’s where it gets interesting. The address is Westfield Manor.”
Rourke frowned. “An old folks’ home?”
The P.I. laughed. “I have no idea. But apparently, it is in Flat Rock, Montana, about four hours north of Beartooth, where she is now living.”
“How soon can you get to Flat Rock?”
“I would have to fly.” Edwin had told him he didn’t like flying and charged extra if he had to.
“Fly. Call me when you know something.”
Now Rourke waited, willing the woman in the café to turn so he could see her face. She looked about the right height. Maybe slimmer than he’d guessed Caligrace Westfield would be and in better shape. But then again, he was going by a police shot at a crime scene and that one face in the crowd.
She finally turned.
He caught his breath as he got his first good look at the woman who had haunted him for weeks.
* * *
FOR CALIGRACE—“CALLIE”—Westfield, it was just another day slinging hash at the Branding Iron Café in Beartooth. She moved through the restaurant with plates of food and pots of coffee. After a year here, she knew most everyone’s story.
This morning the information came as it always did: in short psychic bursts. The young ranch hand at the first table was hungover and worried he might lose his job. The young mother who’d asked for a high chair was concerned because her husband didn’t spend much time with her and the baby anymore. The old rancher was anxiously awaiting the results of his wife’s biopsy.
Callie had experienced this phenomenon on some level from as far back as she could remember. Since she didn’t want to know any of it, she thought of the constant influx of information as white noise. She’d learned the hard way that she couldn’t take on everyone’s troubles, so she tried to tune it out as best she could. That should have made it easier to live with, but it often didn’t.
The café wasn’t particularly busy this morning—just the usual crowd who couldn’t resist Kate French’s cinnamon rolls warm from the oven. The smell of cinnamon, frying bacon and fresh coffee filled the air. Callie had found all of it comforting over the past year.
She had just finished refilling cups with coffee at the large table at the front of the café where a group of older ranchers met each morning, when she got her first good look at the cowboy who’d come in. She’d felt him staring at her, but hadn’t thought anything of it. She was used to men noticing her. This cowboy was different, though.
His look, as she approached his table, was speculative. Not as if he was wondering whether or not she would sleep with him if he asked her out. No, this was more of a rapt interest that sent a chill up her spine and made her hand holding the pot of coffee unsteady.
He was dressed like the others who came into the Branding Iron. Jeans, boots, Western shirt, all worn enough that he almost blended in. His tan Stetson rested on his sheepskin coat on the chair next to him. There was nothing about the tall, dark cowboy that should have set off warning bells since he looked like the real thing. But her instincts told her he wasn’t just another cowhand.
“Coffee?” she asked as she reached his table.
“Thanks.” His voice was deep, a rumble to it that seemed to reverberate in her chest, making her heart kick up another beat or two.
Her gaze rose of its own accord. The moment she met his dark eyes, she regretted it. They were nearly black. But it was the look in them. She’d found few people looked beyond the surface. This man peered into her as if searching for her soul.
Then he smiled at her, exposing a whole lot of perfect, white teeth. The smile transported his dark chiseled face, making her suddenly aware of how magnificent he was. What surprised her more, though, was her reaction. Chemistry? It had been so long since she’d been attracted to a man, she couldn’t be sure if it was desire or danger. Or maybe a little of both.
She had to suppress a shudder and quickly dropped her gaze, fighting to keep the trembling out of her hand as she poured the coffee. Suddenly she realized that she wasn’t getting a flash of information. Nothing. It was as if the room had fallen silent or she had gone deaf.
That shocked her so much that she wasn’t even aware she was still pouring coffee into his cup until it splashed over onto the table.
“I’m so sorry,” she cried, jerking back.
“No big deal,” he said with a chuckle as he grabbed some napkins and began to mop up the worst of the spill. “Blame it on me. I distracted you.” He gave her a reassuring smile that unnerved her even more.
The cowboy had the kind of good looks that broke hearts. A lock of his thick dark hair had fallen down on his forehead. He hadn’t shaved for a day or two, making her even more aware of his rugged strong jaw. Everything about him said strong, capable and all man. Maybe the cowboy was just what he appeared to be. Maybe.
She didn’t realize she’d been standing there staring at him until her boss, Kate, came over with a cloth to clean up the table. “I’ll give you a few moments to look at the menu,” Callie said and hurried off.
“Are you all right, Callie?” Kate asked when she caught up to her at the back of the café.
“I...I...” No one knew about her “gift.” So there was no way to explain why this stranger had thrown her the way he had. The fact that she’d gotten absolutely nothing scared her. It had happened only a rare few times in her life. Reminded of those times, she shuddered at the memory.
“I guess I’m just clumsy this morning.”
Kate laughed. “Uh-huh. Has nothing at all to do with how handsome that cowboy is,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper.
Callie gave her a sheepish grin as if that was all it was. “Would you mind taking his order?”
Kate gave her a sympathetic look as if she’d been there herself. “Sure,” she said before turning to head for the man’s table. Callie could feel the cowboy’s gaze burning into her flesh, even before she looked in his direction. He smiled, then looked down at his menu as Kate approached.
The whole encounter had taken only a few minutes, and yet the memory of his searching gaze lingered, leaving her off balance. She just prayed her worst nightmare wasn’t happening all over again.
Just then, all heads in the café turned as a large construction truck rolled into town and stopped across the street in front of the burned-out site of the former Beartooth General Store. Callie watched as another truck pulled in right behind it. More trucks, loaded with lumber and building materials, followed.
One of the regulars at the large table at the front said, “Hell’s bells, it almost looks as if Beartooth has been invaded by an army.”
“They must be lost,” one of the ranchers joked. “Either that or Nettie Benton is going to rebuild the store.”
“Not likely,” Kate said as she stared across the street at the activity. “She sold that property to marry the sheriff.”
“Well, something’s coming up over there,” a rancher noted. “But who in his right mind would invest in Beartooth? One good wind and the whole town could disappear overnight.”
As Callie looked around the café, she saw that everyone was watching the men unloading building materials across the street.
Everyone but the cowboy at the table in the corner. He was looking at her.
* * *
ROURKE COULDN’T TAKE his eyes off Caligrace “Callie” Westfield. The blurry police photos hadn’t captured her beauty. She looked angelic, from the wide brown eyes to the freckles that bridged her nose and highlighted the tops of her cheeks.
Not only did she look like an an
gel, she also had an innocence about her that was almost palpable. She wore jeans, an apron over a turquoise T-shirt and a pair of sneakers. As he noticed earlier, she was slimmer than she’d appeared in the photographs, more athletic and in better shape. Rourke estimated that she stood about five and a half feet tall.
He knew looks could be deceiving. Ted Bundy proved that. But he was still having a hard time believing this woman was a serial killer—or even intimately involved with one.
As the owner, a pretty brunette he’d heard called Kate, took his breakfast order, Rourke told himself that he’d been right to question his judgment about coming here. This case had gotten to him. Or maybe Laura was right and Caligrace Westfield had gotten to him from a few grainy snapshots. But right now, he was more than intrigued by the woman.
He hadn’t anticipated his reaction to her—or hers to him, now that he thought about it. For a moment when their eyes had met, he’d thought she recognized him. It was more than possible since he’d been the lead detective on several homicide cases that had gotten him on the nightly news before he’d left the Seattle P.D.
Seeing her in the flesh made him even more curious about her. According to her history, the longest she’d ever worked in one place was here in Beartooth. His P.I. said she lived upstairs in an apartment over the café. Like the other buildings in town, it had been constructed of stone, stood two stories and appeared to be one of the original businesses in town.
The fact that Callie had moved so many times in the past seemed to indicate that she was running from something. He’d thought he had a pretty good idea from what when he’d left Seattle.
Now he wasn’t so sure. But he’d gotten this far. He wasn’t ready to give up yet. He could feel the clock ticking, though. He was already a couple of days into his two weeks. He needed something concrete—and quickly.
* * *
IT TOOK LAURA FULLER all night before she found the homicide case. While she’d kept copies of all of hers, she hadn’t filed them in any order once she’d moved on to others. So she’d had dozens of boxes to go through. Now spread out on the floor, the papers made her apartment look as if a bomb had gone off. Good thing she didn’t have friends who stopped by unannounced.