by Nora Roberts
When the road forked, Bodine turned right, slowing to a canter, then an easy trot. Reveling in the ride, the air, the morning, she tossed her long braid over her shoulder and decided she wanted more.
“We can take the trail up and around.” She gestured to the track through the trees marked by the Bodine shamrock brand. “It’s a pretty winter ride, and it’ll take us to another good stretch before we split off.”
“Lead the way. Chase and I rode these trails now and then as boys, when your father cut him loose for a couple hours. I remember when you added those cabins we just passed.”
“It’s quiet enough you can forget they’re there.”
They wound up where the snow was piled thick and clung like white fur to branches. Off the trail she spotted signs of deer and fox in prints and scat. “You can just smell the smoke,” she added, “from the cabins where guests are up and have a fire going. But mostly, it’s just air.”
“Why’d you take the office instead of the horses?”
“I’m good at it.” She turned in her saddle, looking back at him. “I’m good at horses, but there are plenty who are good with horses. I like managing all the moving parts, making sure they run smooth day after day. Or making it seem like they do even if we’re scrambling where the guests don’t see. Also, I guess I like never knowing exactly what I might be dealing with on any given day, but making an agenda, clicking off the boxes so I know most of what’s coming and can figure out the rest.”
She turned back again as the track began its descent. “I do miss the horses, that everyday and anytime connection. I’m going to start riding to work more than I have been.”
She gave Leo a pat on the neck. “Guests will get a kick out of seeing that—the general manager riding around. Sets a tone.”
“Always thinking.”
“Oh, I am.”
Laughing, she swiveled around again as the horses stepped back onto the road. “My mind’s a busy place, Skinner. I like riding and letting it empty out for a time. Are you up for another gallop?”
“Sugar, I’m always up for a gallop.”
“I just bet you are.” She shouted, “Cha!” and sent Leo racing. Once again, Callen had his horse matching her speed and rhythm.
She was glad she’d taken the long way, the roundabout way. It meant some doubling back, but she had the time.
On impulse, she took the turn away from Bodine Town.
Just a few minutes more before she aimed for the office, for the workday, for the agenda. Even as she told herself it was time to stop, time to turn back, she spotted a car stopped on the side of the road.
She thought little of it, nearly didn’t stop.
She dropped to a trot. “We need to … Wait a minute. That looks like Billy Jean’s car.”
She walked her horse up to it. “It is her car.”
“Who’s Billy Jean?”
“She works at the Saloon. Bartender, server.” Bodine dismounted. “She must’ve been working last night, I’d have to check. It looks like she had a breakdown.”
Frowning, Bodine looked through the window and felt a stab of real alarm. “Her purse is on the seat. She wouldn’t just leave her purse on the seat.”
“Hold on.” Callen dismounted, handed Bodine the reins of both horses, and walked around the car. Bodine yanked her phone out of her jacket, scrolled through for Billy Jean’s number.
“Bo.”
“Wait, wait, I’m calling her. Maybe she just…”
She trailed off as she heard the opening riff from Michael Jackson’s hit. Billy Jean’s signature song.
“That’s her ring. That’s her ring. What—”
“The phone’s on the ground over here. And it looks like somebody’s trampled through this snow, into the trees.”
“She wouldn’t do that.” Though Bodine could see as clearly as Callen the disturbed snow and brush. Then she saw more.
Her gaze landed on the shape, the dark blue jacket barely an instant before Callen’s did the same, but Bodine leaped and ran before he could grab her.
“Bo. Damn it. Wait.”
“She’s hurt. She’s hurt.”
He caught her, dragged her back. With snow up to their knees, they struggled until she got an arm loose enough to punch.
“Let go of me, you stupid son of a bitch. She’s hurt.”
With no choice, he clamped his arms around her. “She’s past hurt, Bo. Stop it. Stop it now. You can’t help her.”
Fury and fear spewed through her like a sickness. “Get your hands off me. I swear, I’ll kill you.”
He only tightened his hold. “You can’t touch her, do you hear me? It won’t do any good and might do some harm. She’s gone, Bo. She’s gone.”
Desperate, she fought him another few seconds, then stopped. Just stopped, with her breath tearing out, smoking away, her body quivering.
“I need to see. I won’t touch her if … I need to see. Let me go.”
He eased his hold, shifted so he was no longer blocking the body from her. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Bo.”
“She…” She’s gone. Callen’s words echoed in her head, and the awful truth of them struck her heart, her guts. “She hit her head on that rock. She hit her head. There’s a lot of blood. She … Let go. I’m all right. Let go.”
When he released her, she kept her gaze on Billy Jean’s face, took her phone out again. “Will you call nine-one-one, Callen?” Maybe her voice came out raw, but it came out steady. “You do that, and I’m going to get our security to—to—block off the road here. To block it off so nobody comes near.”
“Let’s go back to the road and do that.”
“I’m not leaving her.”
She had to think, to take steps, to do what came next. While it was too early—thank God—for guest check-ins or checkouts, many employees used this road to get to work if they lived off property.
She ordered security to block the road, both sides for half a mile, to everyone but law enforcement, called for a staff member to bring the keys to the closest unoccupied cabin.
“I don’t think I should tell them why.” Still knee-deep in the snow, Bodine stared at her phone. “I don’t think I should do that yet. I should call my parents. They need to know, but … Billy Jean’s parents, they live … near Helena. No, no.”
She had to press the heel of her hand to her forehead, somehow shove the information out of her brain. “Her mother lives near Helena. They’re divorced. Her father … I can’t remember. She has a brother somewhere. In the navy. No, no, he’s a marine.”
When Callen said nothing, she snapped at him, “It’s important.”
“I know it is. I didn’t know her, Bodine, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know it’s important. The sheriff’s on the way, and you can tell him how to contact her family.”
“I need to talk to them.” Everything inside her felt hot and dry, just scorched. “She worked for us. She was one of us. I need to talk to them, too. Somebody was chasing her. You can see where…” She looked back, saw the trenches in the snow. Where someone had chased Billy Jean.
And where Callen had come after her, to stop her.
“I messed that up,” she murmured. “I plowed right through, and I’d have grabbed on to her, moved her, if you hadn’t stopped me. It’s a crime scene, that’s what it is. I know enough to know you’re not supposed to go stomping around a crime scene.”
“You saw a woman lying in the snow. You saw blood. You were thinking of her, not a damn crime scene.”
Thinking of her—a friend, an employee, a woman with a rollicking laugh. And not thinking at all, Bodine admitted.
She couldn’t allow herself to do that again.
“I’d’ve made it worse. It can always be worse, and I’d’ve made it worse.” She had to take a long breath before she could look at him. When she did, she saw the bruise forming just under his right eye. “I’m sorry I hit you. I really am.”
“You’re not the first, I don’t expect you’ll
be the last.”
Still, she gave the bruise a light brush with her fingertip. “You can put some ice on it once we … The cabin. Need to get the keys once they bring them down to Mike—security. The police can use it if they need to. They’ll need to get our statements, maybe talk to whoever saw her last before she left the Saloon.”
Think, think, she ordered herself as her insides quivered. Make an agenda, tick off the boxes. “And … I don’t know what else. I can’t seem to get my brain in order.”
“It’s working well enough from where I’m standing.”
“Maybe you could walk on up, see if they got the keys to Mike yet.”
“You’re not leaving her. I’m not leaving you. Bodine. Walking back to the road, right there, isn’t leaving her.”
She glanced back. They’d left the horses, just left the horses standing in the road.
“You’re right. We need to secure the horses,” she said, starting back. “And we need to get them to the BAC. When they’re done with us, the police, you could ride Sundown and lead Leo.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
Even as he gathered the reins, Callen turned toward the sound of an approaching car. He steered the horses to the far side of the road, grateful the police had responded faster than he’d hoped.
He wanted, above all, to get Bodine away from there, away from standing in the snow, looking at the body of a dead friend.
The black truck with the county sheriff’s department emblem on the side stopped a few feet short of Billy Jean’s car.
Callen watched the man get out. The broad-shouldered, defensive lineman’s build, the cream-colored hat over short, straw-colored hair, reflective sunglasses over eyes Callen knew to be cold, hard blue. Square-jawed, thin-lipped, he turned his head enough to give Callen a ten-second stare before moving toward Bodine.
Callen thought, Fuck me, and secured the reins to a branch before crossing the road again.
“It’s Billy Jean Younger,” Bodine said. “She’s one of our bartenders.”
Garrett Clintok nodded. “Sheriff’s on the way. I’m going to need both of you to stay clear. Heard you’d come back, Skinner.”
Not sheriff, at least. “Hadn’t heard you were deputy. Bodine’s had them send down keys to that cabin right up there. I’m going to take her and the horses up there.”
“You’re going to wait until I say different.” He looked down at Callen’s jeans, boots. “You went right on out there, compromised the crime scene.”
“I did that,” Bodine said quickly. “I saw her and I didn’t think, I just tried to get to her. Callen stopped me. I’m sorry, Garrett, I just reacted.”
“Understandable enough. Did you touch her?”
“Callen stopped me before I got to her. I could see— Anybody could see she was gone, but I just reacted.”
“Her phone’s on the ground, the other side of her car,” Callen added. “We didn’t touch that, either. Deputy.”
“I really would like to get inside, just sit down. Maybe have some water.” Bodine shifted, just a little, just enough to put herself between the men and the ugly vibrations in the air. “I’m feeling a little shaky. Do you think Callen could go down to where I have Mike blocking the road, get the keys? We’d be right there. Big Sky Cabin. We didn’t want to leave her alone, but now that you’re here…”
“You go ahead. I don’t want you talking to anybody about this yet, not until we get a handle on things.”
“Thanks. Thank you, Garrett.”
They crossed the road together, got the horses, began to lead them up the road.
“You played him like a fiddle.”
Bodine sighed. “I don’t care for playing the weak-kneed female, but I’d forgotten how the two of you butt heads.”
“I butted back, that’s different.”
The cold edge in his voice made her want to sigh. “Maybe so, but I didn’t see the sense in having a pissing match with Billy Jean lying there twenty feet away. Since I’m supposed to be weak-kneed, go on and take the horses up to Mike. Ask him to have somebody come and take them in. I’ll wait on the porch in a damn rocking chair.”
Inside a half hour she’d made coffee; they had a fire going. And she’d paced about two miles circling the living area of the cabin.
It didn’t do her nerves much good when instead of the sheriff, Clintok walked in.
“I know this is a hard time for you, Bo. Why don’t you sit down for a bit? I’m going to take your statement in just a little while. Skinner and I are going to talk out on the porch first.”
“The sheriff’s here. I saw the trucks out the window.”
“That’s right. They’re doing what needs to be done, just like I am. Skinner?”
He jabbed a thumb at the door, stepped out again.
“Don’t provoke him,” Bodine warned.
“My breathing provokes him.”
Callen walked out. Clintok leaned back against a porch post, nodded. “Let’s hear your side of it.”
“That’s an interesting way to put it. We were riding to work,” he began.
“You and Bodine? You do that a lot?”
“First time, but then I haven’t been back long, and only started working at the resort officially as of last night.”
Tipping down his sunglasses, Clintok aimed those hard eyes over them. “I heard you were working at the Bodine Ranch.”
“Things changed.”
“They fire you?”
Don’t provoke him, Bodine had asked, but doing so held too tempting. Knowing how to get under Clintok’s skin, Callen smiled a little. “Logic says if they had, I wouldn’t be working at their resort. We were riding to work,” he said again.
“Whose idea was that?”
“I’d say mutual. I was planning on it. She was planning on it. We ended up planning on it at the same time.”
“Looks like you took a big detour. Quicker ways to get from the ranch to the resort on horseback.”
“We wanted a ride.”
“Who picked the route?”
“Bodine.”
Clintok’s mouth twisted into a nonverbal Liar. “Uh-huh. How well did you know Billy Jean Younger?”
“I didn’t know her. I never met her.”
“Is that so?” Now Clintok hooked a hand in his gun belt. “You’re working at the resort, but you never once met her.”
“That’s right, seeing as I just started there.”
“Where were you last night, Skinner?”
“I’m living on the Bodine place, and that’s where I was.”
“In the bunkhouse?”
“No, I’m in the shack.”
On a long, slow nod, Clintok stepped closer, crowding Callen’s space. “Alone then.”
“Most of the time. Bodine and I had a conversation and a beer last night, pertaining to me taking over for Abe Kotter while he’s gone.”
Rather than move back, Callen simply edged forward. “Are you seriously trying to wind what happened to that girl around to me? Does it stick that deep for you, Clintok?”
“I know what you are, what you’ve always been. Did Billy Jean get a piece of you there when you went at her? She give you that eye?”
“I never met Billy Jean. Bo gave me a shot.”
“Now, I wonder why she’d do that.”
“Ask her.”
“Be sure I will.” With his mouth twisted in a sneer, Clintok tapped a finger on Callen’s chest. “You’re back here a handful of days, and we’ve got a dead woman. You’re back here a handful of days, and you want me to believe you never once stepped foot into the Saloon at the resort and made yourself known to the good-looking woman working the bar? I know bullshit when I smell it, Skinner.”
“Seems to me you’re shoveling that shit so deep you’d be hard put not to catch a whiff. There’s a boot scraper by the door, if