by Joanna Wayne
“It’s a mystery, all right.”
Heather sighed audibly. “Why do I always feel that having a conversation with you is like getting a confession of guilt from my six-year-old nephew? There isn’t any limit on the number of words you can use in a lifetime, you know. You could just spout out a complete thought without waiting for me to coax every detail from you.”
“The way you do.”
“Damned straight. Now tell me your theory as to what’s going on. No word limit.”
Matt shook his head in mock disapproval, but laughter rolled inside him and escaped to split his lips in a grin. “Now that you’ve asked me so politely, I think there could be more than one person who wants you out of town. Someone may be more desperate than the other, or others.”
“You didn’t mention that to the sheriff. Why not?”
“Right now it’s just theory.”
“I still don’t think you’re telling me the whole truth.”
“Really. What makes me think you’re about to tell me what I left out?”
She twisted in her seat and faced in his direction. “You’re curious as to why the sheriff didn’t think about the same possibility you did. It’s his job to notice things like that. He could be in on all of this. He might already know why people want me out of town, and he might be cooperating with them. He might even be masterminding this whole thing himself.”
“Whoaaa. Old Gabby is not a suspect in this. He’s just a good-ole-boy sheriff who’s not used to dealing with much more than a family argument, a loud Saturday night drunk or a few schoolboys cutting fences. You’ve been reading too many detective novels.”
“I don’t read detective novels. I read news magazines. And romance novels. So if I came to the conclusion that this is not a one-man show, the idea should have occurred to Gabby as well.”
“Point taken, but not necessarily valid.” Matt slowed and pulled to the side of the road. “We’ll have to climb between the barbed wire,” he said, opening the door of his truck.
“Why? The man who was driving my car last night went through a gate.”
“Yeah, that’s John Billinger’s gate. It’s a few yards ahead, but Gabby had him lock it today. He doesn’t want the crime scene tampered with until he’s sure he’s through with it. He’s keeping out everything except cows and jackrabbits.”
“And us.” Heather jumped to the ground and bounded around the car and toward the fence, a step behind the sure-footed Ranger. Matt put a foot on one wire and raised the top one with his hands, making a gap big enough for her to crawl through without serious risk to body parts.
Wary, but determined, she wiggled between the rows of wire. Her short skirt slithered up to her panty line. Planting both feet on the ground, she tugged it back into position.
“From now on, I wear jeans,” she said, heat suffusing her cheeks.
“I’m not complaining.” He took her arm and led her around a patch of cactus. “I’d recommend boots, though. Open-toed shoes in cow pastures can be dirty business.” He pointed to a pile of cow chips to emphasize his point.
Heather stepped gingerly around it, and then Matt took her by the elbow and guided her past a thick clump of sage. For a second she was only aware of his hand on her arm, a gentle pressure that created a surge of unfamiliar feelings. Then she marched ahead of him into the open pasture.
There was no sign her car had been here last night, no sign that she’d been trapped in it with two men. Yet, standing here, in the exact spot... Goose bumps prickled her flesh. She shuddered and tilted her head upward.
Matt stared down at her, his eyes hot and liquid. Heather gazed back at him, an alarm sounding in her heart. Matt McQuaid wore the trappings of a cowboy and spoke the words of a lawman, but there was more to him than that. Close to him like this, their eyes locked, she felt it as strongly as she did her own heart beating inside her. Perhaps he had his own ghosts to deal with, just as she had hers.
“I know this is tough,” he said. He slipped a reassuring arm around her shoulder, and for a second his fingers tangled in her hair. Unexpected warmth drove away the chill that had settled in her heart the minute she’d arrived on the scene. She was in over her head, but she wasn’t alone.
Matt let his hand slide down her arm. “Heather.” His voice was strained. “I don’t know what’s going on, but as long as you’re with me, you’ll be safe.”
Impulsively, she rose to her tiptoes and planted a whisper of a kiss on the drawn lines of his mouth. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll hold you to that promise.”
She turned and walked back to the truck, head down, watching carefully where she planted her feet. And wondering what in the world had possessed her to make a move on the Ranger.
“WE’LL STOP at the motel first and pick up your things,” Matt said, finally breaking the silence that had ridden between them ever since the impromptu kiss...
Heather continued to stare at the passing blur of fence posts. “While we’re there, I’d like to change clothes.”
“Fine. I’d like to talk to Rube a minute anyway. He’s been around town all his life, ran that motel for most of it, and he’s usually up on the latest gossip. He’s likely to know if there have been any strangers hanging around town.”
“I know you said you wanted to go see Cass Purdy. What other stops will we be making today?”
“The Galloping R.”
“The dude ranch John Billinger mentioned this morning?”
“That’s it.”
“Do you think there’s something to the accusations he made, that the wranglers who work at the ranch might be involved?”
“Could be.”
Her muscles tightened, tugging painfully at the swollen face. “Okay, cowboy. Let’s go for a sentence with more than two words this time. Who owns the Galloping R and what’s the likelihood they’ll be threatened by my asking questions about Kathy Warren?”
Matt shoved his hat back a little farther and gave a two-fingered wave to a passing motorist in a dark green pickup truck. “Ben Wright owns the place,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck with his right hand. “It’s only been operating as a dude ranch for a couple of years, but Ben’s been in town for about ten. He retired from the rodeo circuit and bought up a stretch of land. Tried his hand at raising Brahmans for use in rodeos, but decided that was too much like work.”
“He’s been here ten years? The way John Billinger talked, I thought he was a newcomer.”
“That’s the way the long-timers see it around here. If you haven’t been around a generation or two, you’re a newcomer.”
“They seem to accept you as one of their own.”
“I was born in Dry Creek.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah. We lived here until 1 was almost eight. My dad had a small ranch on the outskirts of town. He raised a few head of cattle along with being the sheriff.”
“Where are your parents now?”
“My dad’s in Colorado.”
“And your mom?” She was beginning to sound like Matt, speaking in fragments that left more unsaid than spoken.
Matt turned down the side street that led to the motel. “Rube will ask you a lot of questions when you check out Don’t volunteer any information about what happened last night. ”
“Why not? Is he a suspect?”
“I just don’t believe in spreading the facts of a case around like fertilizer.”
“Such picturesque speech.” She settled into her own thoughts. Matt had avoided her question about his mother, either intentionally or because he’d grown tired of friendly conversation and wanted to get back to business. Either way, the message was clear. Their relationship was purely business, and his private life wasn’t open for discussion.
Minutes later, he pulled into a parking space in front of the motel. He followed her up the walk and waited while she unlocked the door and pushed it open. The now-familiar musty odor greeted her—that, and a trail of mud.
�
��Looks like they forgot to vacuum,” Matt said, scraping his own boots on the hewn-fiber mat.
“I don’t know where they found mud,” she said, eyeing the black gunk suspiciously.
“From in front of your window. Someone left the hose on that plant with the pink flowers.”
Heather shook her head. She hadn’t noticed. Grabbing a pair of jeans and a yellow cotton shirt from the hangers, she headed toward the bathroom. She’d change first and then pack. The whole process shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes.
Matt leaned on the door frame. “Anything I can do to help?”
She considered asking him to empty the contents of the dresser drawers into her bag but changed her mind. The thought of his rough hands on her intimate apparel, his fingers cradling her panties and bras, made her insides feel weak.
And weakness was not a good idea when dealing with the take-charge Ranger. She was in Dry Creek for only one reason, and it didn’t include becoming romantically involved with Matt McQuaid. She needed to keep things strictly business, make sure he didn’t read anything more than gratitude into her impulsive kiss this morning. “It’ll only take me a minute to change,” she said, “but you can ask Rube for a copy of my bill since you’re going to see him anyway. That would speed things up a little.”
He nodded in agreement and ducked out the door. Taking a second to check the progress of the bruising on her cheeks, she squinted into the mirror. Bad as she looked, it could have been worse. She could be dead.
She sighed and opened the door to the minuscule hole that masqueraded as a bathroom. The blood caught her eye first, a thick crimson stain splattered over the shower curtain and the wash basin.
Blood that soaked the tailored white blouse of the woman who lay at her feet and made sickening patterns on the blue linen suit. The dead woman’s legs sprawled like those of a discarded mannequin, her eyes open and bulging.
Heather heard someone scream. Maybe herself. Shaking and weak, she stepped back and against the hard barrier of a man’s body.
Chapter Five
“Rube? What are you doing here? What have you done?” She tried to run, but he grabbed her arm.
“Are you all right?”
The answer stuck in Heather’s throat. She pointed shakily to the bathroom and the body.
Rube let out a string of curses that dissolved into a hoarse cry. “Oh, no! It’s Ariana!”
She watched as the man who owned the motel fell to his knees beside the blood-soaked body of the young woman on the floor. Hands shaking, he felt for a nonexistent pulse and then closed the woman’s bulging eyes with a stroke of his fingers.
Heather backed away, grabbing the corner of the dresser for support. Her limbs grew rubbery as the room spun dizzily about her, the walls getting closer and closer until she thought they would swallow her up. Finally, a door slammed behind her, and she forced her mind to function.
Matt crossed the floor in two strides. She longed to run into his arms. Instead she forced her legs to hold her upright and her voice to speak with a minimum of shaking. “There’s a body in my bathroom.”
“What the...”
“It’s Ariana,” Rube said, backing from the bathroom to join them. “The lady who helps out with the cleaning when my wife don’t feel so good. Someone’s shot her. She’s dead.” His words were uttered in a lifeless monotone, his mind obviously still tackling the reality of the scene.
Matt stuck his head in the bathroom and followed with his own string of curses. He stepped toward Heather and reached out a hand. She slid hers into his and trembled, her stomach still warring with her equilibrium.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his eyes dark and angry but coated in concern.
“No, but I’ll survive,” she said as reassuringly as she could.
“Then I need you to go into the main office and call the sheriff,” he said.
She picked up the phone. “I can call him from right here.”
“No.” He took the phone from her hand, slamming it back into the cradle. Rube groaned, and Matt turned back to the bathroom where the man was leaning against the door, his face the color of putty. “Don’t touch anything,” Matt ordered. “I need a clean crime scene.”
“Nothing clean about it,” Rube muttered. “It’ll take weeks to clean this place.”
“That’s not the kind of clean I mean. Just don’t touch anything.” He placed a hand in the small of Heather’s back and guided her to the door. “Now go and call Gabby, Heather, and stay out of here until I send for you. This will be ugly.”
“She’s wearing my clothes.”
The comment stopped Matt cold. “What are you talking about?”
“Ariana, the girl who was killed.” Lips quivering, Heather continued. “She’s wearing my clothes. The blouse, the suit, even the shoes. They’re mine.”
Matt said nothing but his big hands drew into tight, threatening fists.
“What do you think it means?” she whispered through a throat that was dry and clogged.
Matt gave no answer. Instead, he all but pushed her out the door. “Go into Rube’s office and stay there,” he ordered.
His strength was contagious. It stiffened Heather’s spine as she raced toward the motel office. Punching in the sheriff’s number, she was certain of only one thing. She couldn’t be in better hands than those of Ranger Matt McQuaid.
MATT SOAPED His HANDS for the second time, in a fruitless effort to wash away the memories of the last two hours. No matter how many times he faced it or how many ways he replayed a murder scene, he could never fully wipe the sights and smells from his mind. And he wasn’t through with this one. He’d have to go to the morgue later for the autopsy.
The other Rangers teased him about his meticulous approach, calling him a control freak. Maybe he was, but he liked to make sure nothing was overlooked in dealing with clues that might lead to an arrest and conviction.
The autopsy would have to wait until a fully qualified medical examiner arrived, and the nearest one was sixty miles away. Waiting for him would give Matt enough time for a needed break from crime-scene madness—and Gabby’s endless chatter.
He needed to have a talk with Rube and his wife Edna, but first he wanted to check on Heather. She’d been through plenty in the last twenty-four hours, enough to send even a headstrong woman running in the opposite direction.
He almost hoped she was ready to run. She’d opened a passel of trouble with her questions about Kathy Warren. Matt was sure there was more to come. In his experience, once a stampede started it didn’t stop till it wanted to unless it came to a cliff first. For her sake. Heather needed to get out of town, go back to Atlanta and leave the investigation to the authorities. For his sake...
The image of Heather across the breakfast table sidled through his mind, his T-shirt sliding to the edge of one shoulder, her hair loose and wild. His chest constricted. For his sake, he should be on his knees praying she left town today, before she took it into her head once again to scoot up so close to him that her lips brushed his. He was not the kind of man for long-term commitment.
But he was a man. He’d been achingly aware of that fact ever since Heather Lombardi had come into his life. In his house, in his bed, in his arms.
“Matt.”
Heather’s voice startled him. He turned to find her standing in the doorway, staring at him.
“I saw the others leaving. Are you finished in here?”
“For now.”
“Is it okay if I get my things?”
“Sure, but try not to disturb anything else.”
She walked to the closet and reached for the piece of luggage that rested on the top shelf.
He stepped behind her. “Let me help.” Her back pressed against his chest, and he fought the ridiculous urge to forget the suitcase, to forget where they were and why and to take her in his arms and taste her lips. Not the tickling tease she’d offered this morning, but a kiss she’d remember all the way home.
&nb
sp; As usual, his conservative side won out. This was the wrong place, the wrong time, and he was the wrong man. He tossed the case to the bed and opened it. “Tell me where to start, and I’ll help you pack. The sooner you get out of this room the better.”
“I have some toiletries in the bathroom cabinet. If you could get those...” She nodded her head toward the murder scene but averted her gaze. “I know the body’s been removed, but still...”
Her voice gave the only indication of dread, though Matt was certain her insides still quaked at what she’d witnessed earlier. He’d seen big burly lawmen in training faint or become violently ill when they made their first call to a homicide scene.
“I don’t blame you a bit,” he said. “Fortunately there’s no reason for you to go back in there. I moved all of your things from the bathroom into the bottom drawer of the dresser to keep them clean. Fingerprint dust was flying hot and heavy in there.”
“Thanks.” Her voice dropped to a near whisper. “For everything. I have a lot of questions, but they can wait.” Her gaze traveled the room. “I’d really just like to get out of here as soon as possible.”
“I’m sure.” He took her hand and pulled her closer. “The danger just doubled, Heather. Now I’m even more convinced you should go home and leave the investigation to us. No one would blame you, not even your mother if she were still here to talk sense into you.”
As he’d half expected, she lifted a bruised but determined chin. “I can’t go, Matt. Not now. I can’t explain it, but I have to find out what happened to my birth mother. I owe her that.”
She shuddered, and Matt pulled her into the circle of his arms. Touch seemed to be the only comfort he could offer. All the words he could think of were too harsh, the hard truths he’d learned through years of living.
Giving birth did not make a woman a mother any more than providing sperm made a man a father. Some women stayed even if the children they held in their arms and cooked and cared for were not their own. He knew one who had, even though the man who shared her bed denied her his name and treated her like a hired hand.