by Anne Woodard
“Not yet. I haven’t had time to get a hotel room. But here’s my business card.”
“What about your cell phone?”
“I don’t have a cell phone.”
She stared at him as if he’d suddenly grown two heads.
It was a look Rick had seen before. His friends thought he was a Neanderthal, but he’d never understood the modern passion for instant communication. Besides, cell phones weren’t all that useful in Montana’s backcountry—too many places where you couldn’t get a signal. “Can I leave a message for you here?” was all he said. “To let you know where you can reach me if you remember anything?”
“Sure. There’s always someone here who can take a message if I’m not working. My name’s Karin. With an ‘i.’”
“Thanks, Karin.” He smiled. “I’ll remember the ‘i.’”
A couple of minutes later, Maggie slid into the chair Karin had vacated. She snatched up the soda and took a couple big gulps.
“Thanks! Trying to carry on a conversation in this place is hard work.”
Like Karin, she had to lean halfway across the table and shout to make herself heard over the noise. You could plot a bank robbery here and the folks at the next table wouldn’t hear a word you’d said.
“Find out anything?”
She shook her head. The movement made a stray curl on her forehead bounce. “How about you?”
Rick repressed an urge to brush the curl into place.
“Nothing. One person who knows Tina and remembers seeing her here, but that’s it.”
He had to fight not to shove his chair back and put as much distance between him and Maggie as he could.
He hadn’t thought twice about getting close enough to Karin so they could talk, but, then, she hadn’t made his pulse rate soar just by looking at her.
“It would be easier if I had a better description of the man she was talking to,” he said.
“Yeah. I tried that ‘Tom Cruise look-alike’ line on one of the bartenders.”
“And…?”
“He laughed at me.”
Rick stared at her, unsmiling. She stared right back, quietly assessing.
“I’m running out of options here,” he grimly admitted, more to himself than to her.
She considered that, then shook her head. “Not quite. Let’s go talk to Grace, again.”
Maggie stood abruptly, reaching for her jacket. “Come on. We might get lucky and catch her at home.”
“I didn’t get the impression Grace was all that serious about her studies.”
There wasn’t any humor in the look Maggie gave him.
“I didn’t say anything about interrupting her studying.”
Rick followed Maggie as she worked her way through the crowd. He was going on two days without sleep, and the noise of Good Times had given him a headache, but he didn’t even consider finding a hotel. Not yet. There wasn’t much hope they would get anything useful out of Grace—even if they found her home, which he doubted. She was probably so stoned by now that she didn’t even remember who Tina was—but he couldn’t think of anything else to do, and he had to do something.
They were almost to the door when Maggie stopped in her tracks.
Rick placed his hand at the small of her back in an instinctive, almost protective gesture. He could feel the tension in her body even through the thickness of her jacket.
Standing just inside the entrance, watching them, was Fenton chief of police, David Bursey.
Maggie moved forward, deliberately casual. “Chief Bursey.”
Bursey touched the brim of his Stetson politely. “Ms. Mann.”
“Your hat’s still on. Are you coming in or going out?”
“Guess that depends.”
Maggie ignored that barb. “I don’t recall seeing you here before.”
His gaze flicked from Maggie to Rick and back again. “Rumor has it you’re here quite a bit.”
Maggie’s chin came up. “That’s right. Even a coffeehouse waitress likes a little action now and then. Anything wrong with that?”
“Not usually, no.”
Bursey’s tone was casual, bland, even, yet Rick heard the warning beneath the surface. But what was Bursey warning them against?
He shifted to let a patron get past him. The rush of air from the open door was cold and clean, welcome after the stale air of the bar. He caught a glimpse of a man in the doorway, head lowered, his shoulder raised as he awkwardly shrugged into his coat. Then the man was gone and the outer door swung shut.
Beside him, Maggie settled her own jacket more comfortably on her shoulders. “See you around, Dave.”
It was a challenge, not a question.
The police chief nodded. “Sure, Maggie. You know what I think of you and the Cuppa Joe’s.”
“Yeah,” said Maggie coolly. “I know.”
“And you, Dr. Dornier,” the chief added, shifting his attention to Rick. Beneath the broad brim of the Stetson, the man’s eyes narrowed. “You hear anything about your sister, you let us know.”
Rick held that hard gaze for a minute, fighting down anger. What in hell was all this about? More important, what did it have to do with Tina?
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll do that.” He turned to Maggie. “Ready?”
She was out the door before he could open it for her, her car keys in her hand. Swearing, Rick pulled on his own coat and started after her.
From the far side of the lot came the sound of an engine starting. It wasn’t enough to drown the voice from the doorway behind him.
“Mr. Dornier? Rick? Rick! Wait up!”
It was the waitress, Karin. She hadn’t even bothered to grab a coat before rushing outside. From the corner of his eye, Rick saw Maggie stop, then walk back toward them, but he wasn’t concerned about her right now.
Karin came to a panting halt beside him. “That man you were looking for? The one Tina was talking to? I saw him!”
He stiffened, the cold and Bursey both forgotten. “What? Where? He’s inside?”
She shook her head, then wrapped her arms around her body, shivering. “I’m not real sure, you know? But I’m pretty sure it’s him. I noticed him because he’s really good-looking? And then I noticed that he was watching you and Maggie and I thought, Wow! That’s him!”
Rick gritted his teeth against the urge to shake her. “Where is he now?”
Karin was almost dancing from cold and excitement. “He left. Right before you did. He walked right by you. I thought sure you’d see him!”
At the far side of the lot, a black Ford pickup pulled out of its space. The driver, invisible at this distance, pulled into the street without stopping and sped away.
Maggie was already running. Rick caught the beep of the electric door locks on her car.
“Come on!” she shouted. “My car’s closest!”
He barely managed to squeeze into the passenger seat and slam the door shut before she roared out of the parking lot after the pickup.
Chapter 3
T he pickup was three blocks away and moving fast.
The speed limit was thirty-five. Maggie was doing fifty by the time she’d reduced the gap to a block and a half. Ahead, the traffic light changed from green to amber.
Her grip on the wheel tightened as she scanned the intersection. She slowed just enough to confirm there were no cars coming, then roared on through as the light changed from amber to red.
Thank God it was the middle of the week and most people were home rather than out partying.
Maggie glanced in her rearview mirror—no cops in sight—then stepped on the gas. When there were only two cars remaining between them and the pickup, she slowed, then dodged behind a minivan.
Beside her, Rick Dornier strained forward, heedless of the seat belt cutting him in half. “You can catch him if you step on it.”
The whiplash urgency of his words told her all she needed to know about his fears for his sister’s safety. Fears he probably hadn’t adm
itted, even to himself.
“We want to follow him, not scare him off,” she said. But the next chance she got, she zoomed past the minivan, hoping their quarry wouldn’t notice.
Now there was only one car between them.
She easily made it through two more stoplights, but had to push it to slip through the third. And then there weren’t any lights at all for a while. Traffic was steady, but too light. The longer they were behind the pickup, the greater the chances its driver would spot them.
Worried, Maggie dropped back and let another car slide in front of her.
“That guy’s gotta know he’s being followed.” Rick words came out calm, controlled, but Maggie could hear the tension underlying them.
“Doesn’t matter,” Maggie lied. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him glance at her, his gaze sharp, assessing. If her wild driving bothered him, he hadn’t given any sign of it.
“What matters is we don’t lose him,” she amended, braking slightly to let another car slide in between her and the pickup, now three cars up.
“What matters is that I want to talk to him.” Rick’s gaze was still fixed on her, a fact that Maggie, who prided herself on her imperviousness, was finding oddly unsettling.
His eyes seemed to glow gold in the darkness of the car’s interior. Like a wolf’s, she thought, then forced her attention back to the road.
She knew the instant he looked away—it was as if he’d suddenly let go of the invisible cord on which he’d held her.
Ahead, the driver of the pickup slowed and abruptly turned left, without signaling. There wasn’t room to pass the car ahead before the turn, but the instant Maggie got the Subaru’s nose into the turn, the pickup was already at the next intersection and accelerating fast.
“You might want to step on it,” Rick suggested in a voice whose calmness couldn’t quite mask the dangerous tension beneath the surface. “If he didn’t know he was being followed before, he does now.”
Maggie shot him an annoyed glance and stepped on it.
“He’s turning! There! Down that alley.” Rick smacked the dashboard in frustration. “He’s spotted us, dammit!”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to ditch us.”
Maggie whipped the Subaru into the alley. The sturdy little car bucked as it hit a pothole, then another. The headlights carved a mad slash against the unlit blackness, highlighting a battered Dumpster, some abandoned crates and the faceless brick walls of the buildings on either side.
At the other end of the alley, the driver of the pickup shot across the next street and back into the unlit alley beyond. The driver of the car he’d almost rammed laid on the horn in protest. The angry wail grew louder as Maggie shot across the street, then faded again as she drove into the alley after the truck.
Beside her, Rick cursed as she hit another pothole and his head hit the roof.
They burst out of the alley and into a tire-squealing turn as the pickup turned left and roared the wrong way up the one-way street.
He didn’t try that stunt again, but Maggie almost lost him more than once as he wove his way through the traffic and the warren of alleys and one-way streets that marked this part of town.
Eventually, he gave up trying to shake them and turned onto an old two-lane highway leading out of town.
“Where does this road go?” Rick was leaning forward, hands braced against the dashboard, his attention fixed on the truck ahead of them like a hungry wolf hot on the scent of his prey.
In the cramped confines of the car, he seemed a lot bigger than he had in the coffee shop, leaner and more dangerous.
“North,” she said. “Into the mountains.”
“Where all he needs to do to ditch you is find a really bad four-wheel-drive road.”
Maggie couldn’t stop the growl of disgust that rose in her throat. “Yeah. And around here, we’ve got plenty of those.”
Ahead, the truck speeded up to pass a car, then another truck. He slid back into his lane just before an oncoming car prevented Maggie from following him. Then taillights flared as the pickup’s driver braked suddenly, then turned off the highway and headed toward the mountains.
“I think you mentioned something about four-wheel-drive roads?” The Subaru bucked and bounced as Maggie followed the truck off the paved road and onto a rough, rocky dirt road.
The car’s shocks would never be the same. She figured they covered a couple miles of bone-jarring rough road before the pickup turned again and disappeared in the tangle of trees and shrubs that lined the road. Gravel spattered from under her tires as she stomped on the brakes, bringing the car to a juddering stop.
In the headlights’ glare, the rocky trail the pickup had taken looked like an impassable river of jagged rock that slashed through the trees to disappear in the dark beyond. Nothing short of a four-wheel-drive vehicle would make it up that road, and Maggie wasn’t sure she would attempt it even then.
Rick drew in a deep, slow breath, then let it out, obviously fighting for control. His eyes were like black holes in his rough-hewn face, unreadable and dangerous. For a college professor, he was a lot tougher than she’d expected.
A professor who studied grizzlies, she reminded herself, and wondered again at the difference between brother and sister.
“It’ll be easy enough to find him tomorrow,” he said. “There can’t be much up there. A cabin, maybe.”
“Or nothing at all,” Maggie said bleakly. “He may have headed up there knowing we couldn’t follow him…and that there was nothing to find up there to find when we did.”
She studied the trail the pickup had taken, her thoughts racing.
Why had Tina disappeared? No mere art student, certainly not one as devoted to her studies as Tina, just up and left in the middle of the semester. And who was the man who’d just vanished up this rocky trail where they couldn’t follow him? And why had he done it? He had to be involved in all this. She didn’t know how, but she was absolutely sure he was. Innocent bystanders didn’t lead others on wild car chases or duck onto a mountain trail like this in the middle of the night.
It took a moment for her to realize that Dornier was staring at her, his gaze boring into her with disconcerting force.
Maggie put the Subaru back into gear, suddenly uncomfortable under his assessing stare. “Might as well head back. I don’t intend to sit around here, waiting for him to come back down.”
“Give me a minute.” He was out of the car before she could respond.
Frowning, she set the brake, turned off the engine, then got out of the car, too. By the time she reached his side, he’d already piled four or five good-sized stones in a little cairn at the edge of the track.
“You’re coming back.”
He set another rock on the pile, then nodded. “First thing in the morning.”
“I’m coming with you.” This was the first break they’d had in weeks. She had to know who’d been driving that pickup, and why, and where he’d been going, and Rick Dornier was going to help her find the answers whether he liked it or not.
Rick straightened, hesitated, then said, “All right.”
“You’ll have to drive, though.”
He didn’t say anything, just stood there staring at her, his expression unreadable in the dark.
Maggie deliberately stared right back. “What?”
“Most coffee shop managers I know don’t drive like they were trying for the Indy 500.”
So much for being helpful. Or hoping he wouldn’t think to wonder.
“My mama always did say I got into the wrong business,” she said lightly. “I never quite got over the fact they wouldn’t buy me a dirt bike when I was eight, like I wanted.”
“I could see where that might irritate you.” He didn’t sound convinced.
Maggie bent and grabbed a rock at random, then dumped it on the small pile he’d built. “That should be good enough.”
She deliberately didn’t look at him as she dusted off her h
ands, then walked back to the driver’s side door.
“You coming?” she demanded, yanking open the door. “Or do you want to camp out here in the wilderness, waiting for whoever it is to come back down?” She slid behind the wheel, then stuck her head back out. “Might be a long, cold wait.”
She was almost sorry when he slid in beside her. He really did fill up the car more than she was used to.
“Home, James,” she said lightly. She didn’t even wait for him to buckle his seat belt before she swung the car around, then set off, more sedately this time, on the road back to town.
Anger bubbled in Rick, and fear, though he wasn’t yet willing to admit to the fear. An innocent man didn’t run from following cars. Not the way this fellow had.
Whatever Tina had gotten herself into, it wasn’t just a wild fling with a good-looking guy.
Because he couldn’t bear to follow that thought, he focused on the landmarks that reared up in the headlights alongside the road, then disappeared in the dark behind. A crooked mailbox here, a gated driveway there. It would all look different in the daylight, but he would recognize them, anyway, and know just how far he would have to go to find that little rock cairn he’d built. First thing tomorrow, he promised himself grimly. He prayed that there was something up there that would lead him to Tina and not be just a dead end where that pickup’s driver had gone to ground, waiting in safety until he could come back down and disappear, taking with him their only good link to finding Tina.
Only once they were back on the paved road did he stop watching for markers and focus on the silent woman beside him.
She was relaxed now, loose, only one hand on the wheel, but she was still pushing the speed limit, alert and confident. He had the feeling that she saw everything and everyone they passed, catalogued it, filed it away for future reference. Just as he did when he was in the backcountry, hunting for any sign of bear and what they’d been up to. She was city, he was country, but under the skin, they were a lot alike.
He wasn’t sure he much liked the thought.
He wasn’t sure he trusted her, either. Maggie Mann was not just a friendly, helpful coffee shop manager. Underneath that helpful persona she wore with such grace, there was an edge to her, an alertness, that reminded him of a couple of top-flight cops he knew.