The renegade cowboy returns

It’s been nine years since Trask Beaumont left Gilt Edge, Montana, with an unsolved crime in his wake, and Lillian Cahill has convinced herself she’s finally over him. But when the rugged cowboy with the easy smile suddenly shows up at her bar, there’s a pang in her heart arguing the attraction never faded. And that’s dangerous, because Trask has returned on a mission to clear his name and win Lillie back.

Tired of running, Trask knows he must uncover the truth of the past before he can hope for a future with the woman he’s never forgotten. But if Lillie’s older brother, the sheriff, learns that Trask is back in town, he’ll arrest him for murder. Now Trask is looking for a showdown, and he won’t leave town again without one—or without Lillie.

Renegade’s Pride

B.J. Daniels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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This summer I rode behind the boat on a tube called Big Mable with one of my granddaughters who has no fear. As we were flying over the waves, mostly airborne, laughing, screaming and hanging on for our lives, I thought this is what keeps me writing. So this one is for Hayden, the teenager who I first rode with when she was five—and just as fast. Thanks for keeping me young and reminding me always that life is an adventure.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

A SLIVER OF moon hung high in Montana’s immense night sky as Ely Cahill made his way out of the mountains. In the distance, he could see the ranch with its huge barn and, past it, the sprawling house where he’d once lived with his wife, Mary, which meant he didn’t have that much farther to go.

He stopped at the edge of the dark pines to shift the heavy pack on his back. It had been easier making this trek when he was younger. Now at almost seventy his gold panning in the mountains took a lot more out of him. He couldn’t bear the thought of the day he might not be able to make this trip.

Moving again, he licked his lips, anxious for that first drink he’d have once he reached town. He’d been prospecting in the mountains for over a month now and had found enough gold that it was weighing down his pocket, begging to be traded for cash.

A cloud passed over the moon, pitching the Western landscape into shadow. As if a spider had raced along his bare skin, Ely shuddered and shifted the pack again. He stopped to sniff the wind, alert to danger. At first he thought it might be a bear ahead in the shadowed darkness. He’d cleared the pine trees that blanketed the mountain and now looked down on the pasture. Nothing moved that he could see.

The moonlight glinted off the chain-link fence enclosure in the middle of the pasture. He felt his pulse bump up as his stomach did a slow, sickening roll. He had lived with the horror of what was buried inside that fence for years.

Now he listened, his ears attuned to trouble. As if what was buried there wasn’t frightening enough, it was what the enclosure attracted that made his blood run cold. Goose bumps rippled over his skin, an eerie chill in the night air.

After all these years, Ely knew every sound the night made in this part of Montana, from an owl hoot to a hawk’s cry to the snap of a twig under the weight of a predator’s paw. It was one reason he’d survived in the wilds all these years alone, which was the way he liked it.

Over the next rise, the lights of town beckoned. He licked his lips again, needing that drink more than ever. Boots heavy, he pushed on through the tall grass as he searched the horizon for whatever had spooked him. It wasn’t the first time he’d felt his skin prickle at this particular spot. He suspected it wouldn’t be the last.

His hand went to the back of his neck. He rubbed his nape under his long, curly graying hair and considered taking a detour around this particular spot. But it would take him a lot longer, and he was anxious now for noise and lights and food he hadn’t had to cook himself. Also, he could almost taste that first shot of hooch.

He’d been in the mountains too long. His stomach rumbled at the thought of hot cooked food. Cloud cover blocked the silver moonlight, deepening the darkness over the pasture that stood between him and civilization. He took a step, then another, the tall grass whickering against his filth-crusted canvas pants as he moved. He said the words like a mantra: whiskey and a bath in a tub with hot water and real soap. It propelled him forward a few more steps before he stopped again.

Nothing moved. Even the wind had stopped as if holding its breath. He might have thought he’d gone deaf if not for the tremulous thump of his heart.

It was on a night like this in 1967 that he’d first seen them. The memory was too fresh. He cursed himself for letting his thoughts take that particular path.

“Don’t be a damned fool,” he said out loud, needing to hear something, even his own voice. “They aren’t out there.”

And yet every fiber of his being knew better. They were here again. It was his only thought as he turned and tried to run, knowing it was a fool thing to do in the dark in a pasture full of gopher holes.

He’d taken only a few strides when his foot dropped into a gap. He fell face-first, the weight of his heavy pack slamming him down hard into the earth. The fall knocked the wind out of him.

Sprawled in the dirt, he gasped for air as he heard them coming. It was the same swishing sound as before, but this time there were two of them. He sucked in a ragged breath and tried to hold it.

Telling himself that maybe they wouldn’t see him if he stayed down, he waited. The waiting was too painful. He lifted his head just enough to peer over the tall grass. They looked larger than he remembered, their bodies hidden beneath the huge blinding-white space suits they wore. He could hear their breathing systems swishing in and out as they labored through the tall spring grass.

Ely thought he might be able to outrun them. He tried to slip off his backpack. It caught on his coat sleeve. Maybe if he could get to his pistol, but there wasn’t time.

He put his face against the cold ground and prayed they wouldn’t take him this time.

CHAPTER TWO

SHERIFF FLINT CAHILL didn’t even bother to look up as the door to his office banged open first thing the next morning.

“Seriously?” his sister, Lillie, demanded as she strode to his desk. “You arrested our father again?” Hands on her hips, she glared at him with narrowed gray eyes from a face that could only be described as adorable—even when furious.

He sighed. “What would you have me do? Ely was drunk and disorderly. Again. Anyone else who behaves the way he does gets thrown in the slammer.”

“He’s not just anyone else.”

“No, he’s not. Did I fail to mention he resisted arrest? Deputy Harper is sporting a shiner this morning.”

“I’ve wanted to slug Harp a few times myself,” Lillie said, looking toward the cell block as if the deputy was the last person she wanted to see this morning.

“I hope you brought Ely some clean clothes. He...soiled himself.”

“You’d piss yourself too if you saw what I did,” his father called from his cell down the hallway.

“Nothing’s wrong with his hearing, anyway,” Flint muttered under his breath as Lillie set a large brown paper bag with the clothing in it on his desk.

“Nothing’s wrong with his mind, either!” Ely called back.

Flint shook his head and lowered his voice. “You know, Lillie, you don’t have to be the one to bail him out all the time. You could send one of our brothers to do the dirty work.”

She said nothing as Deputy Harper Cole came in as if on cue. She gave him a disinterested nod. He eyed her with his one good eye, the one that wasn’t swollen shut. Lillie, clad in a pink T-shirt, worn jeans and sandals, had her long, curly dark hair pulled up in a ponytail. “Mornin’, Lillie. You’re looking fine.”

“Harp, please take these to Ely and make sure he changes,” Flint said, holding out the bag to his deputy before Lillie gave the man another black eye. Messing with this particular Cahill would be a huge mistake. Lillie had grown up with five older brothers. She could hold her own and Flint didn’t want to have to arrest her too.

He could tell his sister was fired up and wondered if it was only about Ely’s arrest or if there was more going on with her. He would have asked, but when she was in this mood, questioning her would be like poking a porcupine with a short stick.

He could hear Ely arguing with the deputy from his cell down the hallway. “I’m telling you something has to be done about him,” Flint said quietly to his sister. This was a matter they were going to have to deal with.

“He’s fine.”

“He’s not fine. We can’t keep putting our heads in the sand and pretending that he isn’t getting worse.”

She shook her head. “How about you stop arresting him?”

“You know I can’t do that. Fortunately, he spends most of his time up in the mountains. But every time he comes out...” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. The thick dark hair was something all of the Cahills shared, along with the gray eyes.

“You need to cut him some slack. What would be wrong with that? He’s an old man. He’s your old man.”

Flint shook his head as their father came out grumbling, but wearing clean clothes. He still looked wild from his full gray beard to those piercing light gray eyes so like his own. But he wasn’t the worse for wear given how much he had to drink last night.

“You’re going to regret not listenin’ to me,” Ely said to his son. “I’m stone-cold sober this morning. I told you what I seen last night. I ain’t crazy. It’s them from outer space agin. They’re back and they’re hangin’ around our missile silo. Any fool knows no good’ll come from that. I’m tellin’ you. Them devils is up to somethin’. Somethin’ bad.”

Flint shot his sister a see-what-I-mean look. Back in the late 1950s, their grandfather had signed over a two-acre plot of land in the middle of his ranch so the US government could bury missiles in perpetuity for national defense.

The US Air Force had buried a thousand Minuteman missiles three stories deep in ranch land just like theirs. A missile on constant alert and capable of delivering a 1.2 megaton nuclear warhead to a target in thirty minutes was still buried in their backyard. The program was called MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction.

Ely believed it was that missile that had brought a UFO to their land back in 1967. He swore it landed and aliens had taken him aboard their spaceship and did medical experiments on him. And that had made him known as the biggest crackpot in the county.

“Come on, Dad,” Lillie said, sending a scowl at Flint. “You must be hungry. Let’s get you to my place—”

“I want to go home,” Ely said as they headed for the door. “Home to my cabin.”

She glanced back at Flint, no doubt knowing what he thought about that idea.

“He shouldn’t be alone,” Flint said to their retreating backs.

“Don’t pay him no never mind, Lillie Girl. Flint always did have a stick stuck—”

“Dad, maybe we should stop at the grocery store first and get you some food,” she said, cutting him off.

“Got plenty of food at home,” their father argued. “Put up a nice buck into jerky last fall. But I could use a little whiskey, so maybe we should stop by your bar.”

* * *

LILLIE WAS STILL fuming as she drove her father out of town toward the bar she and her twin brother, Darby, owned, the Stagecoach Saloon. Darby was eight minutes older and never let her forget it.

They’d opened the place in an old two-story stone stage stop not far from the ranch. She’d wanted a way to preserve the building and Darby had suggested a bar and café.

“Don’t you be listening to Flint, my Lillie Girl,” her father said again as they were driving out of town. “You know how he is.”

She nodded and smiled over at him, even though her bad temper was still flaring inside her. She’d never understand her brother. Flint was the black sheep of the family. The one who had followed every rule from the time he was young, while the rest of them disliked rules and seldom followed them, especially when the Cahill clan banded together.

True, it had always been Flint who bailed them out of trouble before their parents got wind of what they’d been up to. But he’d also had to lecture them at length, which never went over well.

“Flint’s worried about you,” she said now to her father. “So am I.”

Ely shook his head. “No reason to worry.”

He sounded so unconvincing that she shot him a glance, surprised how old he looked. She often didn’t see him for weeks or sometimes months at a time. He would disappear into the mountains. Then she’d get a call that he’d been arrested and she always took it upon herself to get him out of jail.

“What happened last night?” she asked as she’d done so many times before.

He was quiet for long enough that she thought he either hadn’t heard her or wasn’t going to answer. “In the mountains I can hold the memories at bay. But once I come down...” He cleared his throat and looked over at her. “I swear on your mother’s grave that I saw ’em last night. They was in the same pasture as where I was took. I feared they’d come back for me. They was almost on me when I smelled whatever gas they use to knock people out. When I come to, I was lying in the pasture and they was gone.” He shuddered. “I don’t think they took me this time, though.”

Lillie didn’t know what to say. She’d first heard about her father’s abduction by aliens in the school yard from Ronnie Eckert. He’d taunted her until she’d slugged him and bloodied his nose. “Take it back!” she had yelled at him. “Take it back or I’ll hit you again.”

A teacher had broken them up. Lillie had run home fast as the wind to tell her mother what had happened before the school called home. One look at her mother’s face and she’d known it hadn’t just been Ronnie making up stories.

“Your father claims he was abducted by aliens near the missile silo on our ranch,” she’d said. “It’s old news.”

“But is it true?” she’d demanded.

“Your father believes it was.”

Of course, Lillie had questioned him, both fascinated and horrified by the idea that it might actually have happened. Often she had lain in the tall grass at night and stared up at the stars wondering if there were other beings out there.

His story about his abduction was a little disappointing, though. Men in white space suits, their faces obscured by their helmets, had grabbed him. He’d thought they communicated telepathically, but he also remembered them talking to each other. He’d seen their lips moving but hadn’t been able to hear them because of their huge helmets and the swishing sound of the breathing systems.

“What did they do to you?” she’d asked, holding her breath.

“They conked me out with some kinda gas. I woke up in the pasture starin’ up at the stars. But I remember being in a small cramped place before that. I still taste somethin’ metallic when I think about it.”

She’d known then why everyone in the county believed that Ely Cahill no longer had all his ducks, let alone had them in a row. He’d always been part mountain man, disappearing into the mountains in search of gold or wild animals he could kill for meat for his family, even though they raised beef.

His father had been a rancher, but Ely had never taken to it and was glad when two of his sons had taken the place over. “Rather have a nice whitetail buck any day over a slab of beef,” he often said. “Lost my taste for beef after them aliens took me.”

“He’s made our family a laughingstock,” her brother Tuck had said not long before he’d left for good. That had been right after high school. Tucker said Gilt Edge was just too small for him, gave him claustrophobia. But she’d always suspected something had happened to make him leave.

Lillie forced those thoughts back into a dark corner along with others she kept locked up there as she parked in front of the Stagecoach Saloon.

“Home sweet home,” she said as she admired the historic two-story rock building. She never tired of looking at it. It had been a stagecoach stop back in the 1800s when gold had been coming out of the mine at Gilt Edge. Each stone, like the old wooden floorboards inside, had a story, she thought with pride. If only this building could talk.

With her twin brother, they’d restored it. The lower floor had been turned into a bar and café, while the upstairs had been remodeled into a home for herself. She’d furnished it with restored pieces she’d picked up at garage sales and junk shops and loved every one of them.

She also had the best view in the county. From her living room window she could see three of the four mountain ranges surrounding the area. She loved this old building and the life she and Darby had built with it. But deep in her heart there was always that feeling of something missing. Someone. Even when she didn’t say his name or imagine his face, there was always that ache of something lost, something she feared she would never have again.

“Come on, let’s see what we can cook up for you,” she said to her father.

He smiled over at her. “Could use some breakfast now that you mention it.”

She laughed. His appetite was legend. “What do you say to chicken fried venison steak, eggs, hash browns and biscuits and milk gravy?”

“That’s my girl,” Ely said.

But as she started to open her door, she saw something...someone move along the side of the building. Her brother Darby wasn’t here yet or his pickup would have been parked in the spot next to the big old pine tree. She’d gotten only a glimpse of what she thought was a man hiding in the trees.

She handed the keys to the place to her father. “Here, you go on in and I’ll be right with you.” She waited for him to climb out before she reached under the pickup seat and pulled out the .45 pistol she kept wrapped in a piece of an old blanket.

Slipping from behind the wheel, she unwrapped the gun, tucked it into the waist of her jeans and covered the weapon with the hem of her T-shirt.

Her father had made it as far as the front door. He turned and looked back at her. “Everything all right, Lillie Girl?” he called.

“Fine, Dad. Just need to check something.”

He nodded, hesitating as if worried about her. Say what you will about Ely Cahill, he wasn’t as far gone as her brother wanted her to believe, she thought.

“I’m fine. You make yourself at home. I’ll join you in a minute.”

As he unlocked the front door of the bar and disappeared inside, she moved to the pine trees that flanked the stone building on three sides.

Stepping to the edge of the building, she began to work her way carefully along the side, keeping to the shadows. Even as she did, she told herself she had imagined the broad shoulders, the slim hips, the glimpse of dark wavy hair under the Western straw hat as she had so many times over the years.

She’d gone only a dozen yards when she saw him. She felt a tremor move through her. With shaking fingers, she reached under her T-shirt and pulled the gun to level it on the broad back of the man standing only feet away.

“Don’t move!” she ordered, surprised that her voice sounded so unruffled when her heart had taken off like a wild horse in the wind at the sight of him.

“You wouldn’t shoot a man in the back.”

The deep resonance of his voice sent her pulse thundering in her ears. She’d heard that voice only in her dreams for the past nine years. The ache she felt was laced with hurt and anger, not to mention the hit her pride had taken.

“In your case, I’ll make an exception,” she said, easing her finger onto the trigger. Her thoughts whirled like tumbleweeds in the wind. Trask Beaumont had the nerve to show his face around her after all this time? After all that he’d done?

He raised both hands in the air and turned slowly as if he hadn’t lost all of his good sense during those years away. He’d known her like no other man, like no other man ever would because she’d never let another get that close again.

Staring at him, she couldn’t believe it. How many times had she told herself that she would never see that face again, a face so handsome it had to be crafted by the Devil himself.

Her finger twitched on the trigger of the pistol as she reached into her jeans pocket for her cell phone.

“Easy, darlin’,” he said, taking a step toward her. “You don’t want to shoot me. You don’t want to call your sheriff brother on me, either.”

“You sure about that?” She thought of the night she’d waited for him until the sun rose and she’d realized he wasn’t coming back for her.

Trask Beaumont’s lips curved into the grin that had haunted her sleepless nights for years. That grin had not just let this man into her jeans but into her heart. “Damn, Lillie. I can’t tell you how I’ve missed you.”

“What are you doing here?” She hated the tremor she heard in her voice. She had her cell phone out. All she had to do was hit 9-1-1. Her brother would be there in a heartbeat. “I asked what you’re doing here.”

Before he could answer, a vehicle roared up on the other side of the building. She recognized the sound of the engine. Engine cut, the driver’s-side door opened and slammed. She listened as her brother Darby entered the bar, then yelled her name.

She glanced over her shoulder, afraid he’d come looking for her and catch the two of them out there. Knowing how her brothers’ felt about Trask, she hated to think what would happen. It was one thing to have him arrested. It was another to let one of her other brothers at him.

When she turned back, Trask was gone. Lillie blinked. It was as if he hadn’t been there at all. And yet her heart still thundered in her chest. If she dialed 9-1-1, Flint would come running.

She stood, the gun in her hand growing heavy, the phone just one keystroke away from the sheriff’s department dispatcher. Trask. He’d come back.

And now he was gone. Again. Had she not been sane, she might have believed that she’d conjured up his image from a desire she’d spent years trying hard to bury. But she hadn’t dreamed him. He’d left behind his boot prints in the dirt, and even if her eyes had deceived her, her heart had not.

Trask was back. Conflicting emotions warred inside her. Trask, after all these years. She pocketed her phone and slowly lowered the gun as she began to shake all over. Tears burned her eyes. Why would he come back now? How could he come back, knowing how dangerous it was for him?

“Lillie?”

Tucking the gun into the waistband of her jeans and covering it with her shirt again, she turned to find her brother standing a few yards away. Had he seen Trask?

“Have you lost your mind?” Darby demanded, making her fear she had. Before she could respond, he continued, “You leave Dad alone in the bar? Alone in a bar stocked with bright shiny bottles of booze? Didn’t you just get him out of jail?” He stopped his rant to frown. “What are you doing out here, anyway?”

She said the first thing that came to mind that might make sense. “Thought I saw a bear. Didn’t want it getting in the trash again.”

“We have worse problems in the bar. Come take care of your father,” he said only half-jokingly.

“He’s your father too,” she pretended to remind him as she followed him. Inside, she found Ely behind the bar with a bottle of whiskey clutched in his hand and a big grin on his face.

“I’ll be in the back,” Darby said with a disgusted shake of his head. “Apparently, you promised him a Johnson breakfast.” It had been their mother’s specialty named after her family.

The moment Darby disappeared in the back, her father asked, “Find what you was lookin’ for out there?” He was no longer grinning. Nor it seemed had he indulged in the whiskey. Darby’d had no reason to worry. Their father had only been pretending to start the day with whiskey.

Ely put the bottle down and poured them both a cup of coffee from the automatic coffeemaker that Darby had set last night.

“She thought she saw a bear,” Darby called from the back over the clatter of pots and pans.

“A bear?” her father repeated as he studied her over the rim of his coffee cup. He’d definitely seen Trask, she realized, but he was going to keep her secret, since he was the only one in the family who’d ever liked the man his daughter had fallen for at a tender age.

She swallowed the lump in her throat, touched that her father would understand why she wasn’t going to call the law on the only man she’d ever truly loved.

“Ya got to watch them bears, Lillie Girl,” her father said, looking worried, “’specially the renegade ones. They’ll turn you every way but loose.”

CHAPTER THREE

“YOUR FATHER GETS crazier every year,” Deputy Harper Cole said from where he lounged against the wall at the entrance to the cell block.

“Nothing wrong with his right hook, though, huh, Harp.” Flint had inherited the deputy when he’d taken the sheriff job with the understanding that the mayor’s son would be kept on.

The deputy straightened, anger marring his handsome features. “He should have to do time for slugging an officer of the law.”

“If you’d cuffed the prisoner last night, you wouldn’t have that black eye,” Flint said. Earlier he’d noticed the deputy admiring his wound in the side mirror. Harp was good-looking and spent way too much time taking selfies. Flint would bet he’d put one up on Facebook last night.

“He nailed me before I could get the cuffs on him. If it had been any of the other deputies, you would have charged him with assault,” Harp whined.

“The other deputies wouldn’t have taunted him.”

“What?” he asked as if incredulous. “Is that what he told you?”

“He didn’t have to. I know you.”

“Well, it’s my word against his and he’s a liar.”

Flint looked over at the deputy. “Be careful, Harp. You’re hanging on by the skin of your teeth as it is because of complaints against you. I would tread lightly. Even your father, the mayor, won’t be able to save you next time.” He rose to his feet. “Let’s take a ride.”

As Flint drove out of town, his deputy said, “Heard the old Chandler ranch just sold to some corporation called L.T. Enterprises. Like we don’t know who’s buying up the whole damned valley. Wayne Duma.”

Flint said nothing, knowing that Harp was needling him. Wayne Duma was married to Flint’s ex-wife, Celeste, and his deputy knew it was a sore point with him.

“That’s a nice ranch. Maybe Duma plans to move up there and sell that big old house he has in town,” Harp said, shooting him a look no doubt to see if he was getting to him.

Ignoring him, Flint turned onto the road into the south forty acres of his family’s ranch.

Harp let out an oath. “Don’t tell me you’re going out to the missile silo.”

“Ely saw something out there last night,” the sheriff said.

Harp shook his head. “He’s a crazy old coot. No offense,” he added.

“Crazy or not, whatever he saw last night scared him, and I can tell you right now, there is little out there that scares my old man.”

“Except for flying saucers and little green men,” the deputy said under his breath.

Flint didn’t take the bait. Ely Cahill was one of a group of people around the world who swore they had been abducted by aliens. It had happened, according to Ely, back in 1967—the same time an unidentified flying object had been seen by the air force stationed in the area. The disk-shaped object had hovered in the air over more than a half dozen of the missile sites—disabling them. It caused a panic with the military.

According to the military’s records, at one missile sight, an officer on duty reported that lights streaked directly above them, stopped, changed directions at high speed and returned overhead again. He described it as glowing red and saucer-shaped, hovering silently.

That information had been classified for years – even though numerous civilians had also seen the flying object. Of course, no one but the US Air Force had known about this until years later when the information was declassified. By then everyone was convinced that Ely Cahill was a nut-job.

All that aside, they still lived knowing what they had out in their pasture—a bomb capable of destroying everything for miles should something go wrong. The night of the UFO sighting, things had definitely gone wrong.

Not that anyone believed it had been a spaceship filled with aliens—except for their father.

Flint drove out of Gilt Edge toward the missile silo, where his father had claimed he’d seen something last night. Most people drove past the silos without even knowing they were there. The only indication that one of them was there was an eight-foot-high chain-link fence around a small area of land in the middle of the pasture. At the center of it was a concrete pad, a few wires and antennae sticking up, but nothing that gave away the fact that a nuclear missile was resting below ground waiting for someone to push a button.

“Wait here. I’m going to take a look around,” Flint said and got out. He knew better than to get too close. Alarms would go off at the command center and within minutes a military vehicle would come flying up with armed officers inside.

Instead, he walked away from the missile silo, his gaze on the ground ahead of him. The air was crisp this morning. Only a few puffy clouds floated on the breeze. Snow still capped the mountaintops that surrounded the valley. Flint breathed in the rich spring scents and studied the Western landscape.

The grasses had started to green up in the pastures and alongside the highway. Summer was coming, a busy time because of the tourists who traveled through the state. Not that the locals weren’t a handful all year long, especially his father.

He thought of Ely with affection and aggravation. No man was more stubborn or independent. He hoped Lillie was right and that the old man wasn’t losing his mind. He couldn’t imagine him locked up in some nursing home, let alone any of them trying to corral him if he moved in with them.

He hadn’t gone far when he picked up the huge footprints. Flint stopped to glance back at his patrol SUV. Harp was watching him. Anything he did would get back to the mayor and his friends. He took another step, then another as he dropped over a rise, careful not to disturb the tracks he’d found.

Once out of sight, he pulled out his cell phone and took several photographs of the oversize footprints—and the man-size boot prints where there’d clearly been a scuffle.

Before he could pocket his cell phone, it rang. A glance at caller ID showed the call was from his office. “Cahill,” he said into the phone, turning back toward his patrol SUV and the waiting Harp. In the distance, he could see dust as a military vehicle roared toward them.

“Sheriff, I have Anvil Holloway on the line. He says his wife is missing.”

* * *

BACK AT THE Stagecoach Saloon, Darby made enough breakfast for the three of them, but Lillie had lost her appetite. She kept thinking of Trask in the days before he’d left nine years ago. Something had been bothering him for several weeks. A darkness had taken hold of him. Her usually cheerful, laid-back lover was moody and irritable. She’d often found him scowling and he’d definitely been distracted.

“Is it your job?” she had asked.

“What?”

“This mood you’re in.”

“Sorry, I’ve just had things on my mind.”

“Things you want to talk about?”

He’d pulled her to him, kissed her and said, “It’s nothing to do with you. I’ll handle it, okay? Just give me a little time.”

She’d had no idea what that meant. He’d even been at odds with his best friend, Johnny Burrows. She’d seen the two of them having a heated argument one day when she’d went by the Lazy G Bar Q Ranch, where Trask worked. When Trask had seen her, he’d quickly stepped away and pretended it was nothing.

“I’m not a fool. What’s going on between you and Johnny?”

“Just a difference of opinion. It’s nothing.”

She suspected that all of it had been leading up to the fight with his boss, Gordon Quinn, and him getting fired. But did she really believe that Trask had come back that night and killed Gordon?

Now she half listened distractedly as her father and Darby talked about the weather, the price of gold and the decline of elk in Yellowstone Park and the rest of Montana because of the reintroduction of wolves. She’d been pushing her food around on her plate until her brother finally took her plate along with his own and her father’s, and headed for the kitchen. She followed him, wanting to talk to him alone.

“Flint thinks we need to do something about Dad,” she told him, making sure their father was out of earshot.

“What do you think?” Darby asked as he began stacking the rinsed dishes in the commercial dishwasher, then looked at her.

“I don’t know. One minute he seems so like his old self, and then he starts talking about aliens and abductions. He swears they came after him again last night. Apparently, that’s why he got so drunk and so...‘disorderly,’ as Flint put it.” She smiled, feeling almost ashamed as she did. “He punched Harp in the eye.” She winced. “His eye was swollen shut when I saw him at the jail this morning.”

Darby chuckled. “You can bet that Harp asked for it. As for Dad, it doesn’t sound like anything new to me. But you shouldn’t always be the one to take care of him. Call Cyrus or Hawk next time. They aren’t that busy on the ranch that they can’t get Dad out of jail once in a while. And you know you can always call me.”

“I know, but I didn’t mind going,” she said with a shrug. Her brother’s smile was thanks enough. “I’d better get him home. He’s determined to stay there alone. At least until he can’t take it anymore and heads for the hills.”

“You want me to come with you? Billie Dee should be here soon.” Billie Dee was their cook, a large, older Texas woman with a belly laugh and twinkle in her eye. “She can hold down the fort until we get back.”

“No, I could use the drive. Wouldn’t mind a little time to myself on the way back.”

Darby caught her hand before she could turn away. “Everything all right, sis?” That was the problem with being twins. They sensed when something was wrong with their former womb-mate.

She gave him her best everything-is-all-right smile. He didn’t look as if it fooled him, but then their cook came in the back door singing at the top of her lungs, and Lillie hurried to see what trouble her father had gotten into in the bar.

* * *

FLINT DROPPED HARP off at the sheriff’s department. But as the deputy got out of the patrol SUV, the sheriff told him, “If you happen by the mayor’s office today and your father calls me later to ask me how you got a black eye, I’m going to tell him the truth.”

“It’s my word against your crazy old man’s,” Harp said, scowling.

“Which do you think your father is going to believe? That not-quite-seventy-year-old Ely Cahill, drunk on his ass, got you, a trained deputy, before you could cuff him? Or that you were giving him a hard time, enjoying making fun of him, and he dropped you with one punch? Either way, I got the whole story from some of the patrons who were watching from the bar window. If you don’t believe it, they took videos with their phones.”

Harp clamped his mouth shut. “Is that all?”

“For now,” Flint said and drove north out of town on a dirt road toward Anvil Holloway’s farm. It was a good twenty miles of rolling hills. Turning onto an even narrower dirt road, he saw the farm ahead.

In the field next to the house, decades of old cars, pickups and farm equipment rusted in the morning sun. A few clouds scudded across a robin’s-egg-blue sky. The mountains around the wide valley were still snowcapped and the air had a crispness to it that warned summer was still months off.

Flint parked, shut off his engine and started to climb out when Anvil rushed from the house to stop on the dilapidated porch. The house needed paint and didn’t look much better than the porch.

“Have you heard from her?” Flint asked as he walked toward the house and the man anxiously waiting for him.

Anvil shook his head as if unable to draw the words. He looked older than fifty-seven. His brown hair needed cutting. It framed a once handsome face now weathered from years of working outdoors. He still looked strong from his days playing football at the University of Montana in Missoula, his only claim to fame. His large body was clad in faded overalls over a clean white T-shirt. He’d obviously dressed up for Flint’s visit, since he’d recently shaved. He still had a dollop of shaving cream congealing on one ear.

“Why don’t we go inside and sit down. You can tell me what happened,” Flint said.

Anvil nodded nervously, practically wringing his hands before he wiped both down the sides of his overalls. “It’s just not like her to take off and not call and let me know she’s all right.”

Flint followed the farmer into the kitchen of the ranch house. The room was neat and clean, dishes done, floor recently mopped, he noticed with concern. In this part of the country, men worked in the fields, barns and pastures. Women worked in the house. That Anvil had mopped the floor sent up a red flag that Flint hadn’t been expecting.

If Jenna had been gone since yesterday evening, she hadn’t been the one to mop the floor. It seemed a strange thing for Anvil to do unless he had something he needed to clean up.

They took a seat at the 1950s metal-and-Formica blue table. Anvil had inherited the farm along with the house and furnishings from his father after he graduated from college. His parents had moved down to Arkansas to be near his sister and her family.

Flint noticed that, like the floor, the table too had been wiped down recently.

“So tell me what happened,” he said as he took out his notebook and pen.

“We had an argument,” Anvil admitted as he wiped a hand over his face. His voice broke as he said, “She left.”

Flint saw with growing concern that the knuckles of Anvil’s right hand were scraped and bruised. “She leave in her own car?” Anvil nodded. “She take anything with her?”

“A suitcase and her purse.”

“She packed after the argument?” Flint asked.

Anvil shook his head. “She’d already packed. Said she needed some time to think.”

“Think about what?”

Anvil looked at the floor.

“She leave because you hit her?”

The farmer’s head bobbed up, shock and guilt on his face. “It wasn’t like that.”

“It wasn’t the first time you’d hit her?”

“I’d never laid a hand on her before. I swear to God.” The words came out in a strangled cry. Tears had filled the man’s eyes. Remorse making him appear even older. “It was the first time I raised a hand to her. I swear on my grandmother’s grave. I...I slapped her.”

Flint reached across the table to lift Anvil’s ham-sized right hand. “Looks like you did more than slap her.”

* * *

ELY CAHILL PERKED up a lot after his Johnson breakfast. Lillie had studied him as he’d eaten every bite on his plate. He was still a strong man in so many ways. Stubborn as a stump that refused to be pulled from the ground. Weathered by life and the outdoors. Tough as the proverbial nail. She envied him that he knew what he wanted and didn’t wait around for life to give it to him.

The drive up the canyon to his cabin was a beautiful one. Spring in Montana couldn’t be any more delightful. The sky was a clear blinding blue dotted with puffy white clouds over a sea of new bright green grasses and dark pines. She took it in as she drove, thinking how nine years ago she would have given all of this up for Trask.

Ely Cahill lived within sight of an old ghost town. Only a few shells of buildings still stood in the middle of the tall spring grass. His cabin fit right in.

He’d built it years ago out of hewn logs with his sons helping him. It was small and apparently all he needed.

The logs had weathered from the sun and snow and thunderstorms that passed over. Vegetation had grown up around it in his absence. From a distance, a person would think it was abandoned.

Ely spent little time here and even less in the ranch house down the road, where he’d lived with their mother and helped raise the six of them. I’m done ranching, he’d announced after their mother had died. You all can have the ranch. I want that hill overlooking this valley. That’s where I plan to die.

That had been almost twenty years ago. Lillie’s older brothers Cyrus and Hawk had taken over the ranch. She and her twin, Darby, had wanted nothing to do with it. Tuck, the oldest of her brothers, had struck out on his own at eighteen, not to be heard from again.

Tuck was the smart one to get out of here, Darby had said recently after mentioning that he should probably sell his share of the Stagecoach Saloon and take off to find his fortune.

Lillie hoped he was just talking. She couldn’t run the bar and café alone and she didn’t want to sell out or take on another partner. It wasn’t just a business. It was her home. She loved the old stagecoach stop, could feel its history in the stone walls and marred wooden floorboards, and she was determined to preserve it. Making money was the least of the reasons she had bought the building. The bar and café had been a way of hanging on to it—and put a roof over her head.

“Thank you, Lillie Girl,” her father said as she pulled up in front of his cabin. “No need to see me in. The pack rats probably carried off most everythin’ and left a mess ta boot.”

She shuddered to think what the inside of the cabin looked like as she watched him lift his pack and the bag of groceries she’d insisted on. “How long will you be staying out of the mountains?”

He looked up toward the Judiths, still snowcapped. “As long as I can stand it.” Lewis and Clark had discovered the mountains on their expedition to find the Northwest Passage. Clark named them after his soon-to-be wife, Judith.

“You’ll let me know before you leave.” What if Flint was right about their father? What might happen to him up there alone, let alone in the mountains?

Ely met her gaze. “Don’t worry about me,” he said as if reading her mind. “Your brother doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

She didn’t need to ask which brother. Flint was the second oldest and the one who went into law enforcement after generations of Cahills who had teetered on the edge of the law. He was also the one who seemed to think it was his job to run the family with Tuck gone. She hated how reasonable he always was when just once she’d love to see him lose his cool like the rest of them. The only stupid thing her brother had ever done was marry Celeste York.

“You sure Flint wasn’t adopted?” she joked. “Or maybe you found him on your doorstep, where someone dumped him when he was a baby?”

“He’s well-meaning,” Ely said, surprising her.

“He arrested you.”

“He did that.” Her father laughed good-heartedly. “But I wasn’t myself last night. I understand why he had to.”

Lillie shook her head. “Always by the letter of the law.”

“Yep, that’s our Flint. He’d arrest his own grandmother if she was alive.” Ely laughed at the family joke. “But that’s only if the fool woman broke the law. It’s his job. Don’t forget that, Lillie.” He turned those gray eyes on her. “He takes bein’ sheriff seriously, no matter the cost to hisself.”

Her father was trying to warn her, as if he needed to remind her, what would happen if Flint found out Trask was back in town. She tried to swallow the lump in her throat, touched by her father’s attempt to protect her. It filled her with fear of what the future held.

Trask was back, and when Flint found out, he’d have every resource available out looking for him. This time, Trask wouldn’t get away.

Hopefully, the cowboy had come to his senses and left town again. She preferred that over seeing him behind bars. But the thought that she wouldn’t see him again for another nine years or possibly ever was like a clenched fist around her heart.

“Take care, Lillie Girl,” her father said as he slung his pack over his shoulder and started to close the pickup door.

She nodded, her thoughts on Trask, a dangerous place for even her thoughts to be.

CHAPTER FOUR

TRASK BEAUMONT WAS no fool. Not anymore at least. He knew how dangerous coming back there was—let alone going near Lillie. If one of her brothers had seen him—

As it was, her father had. Ely Cahill wouldn’t tell, though. Trask had always liked the old man and thought Ely liked him, as well. It was Lillie’s brothers he had to worry about—especially Flint, the sheriff.

He knew he was taking one devil of a chance by being back in the state, not to mention what he planned to do now that he was.

As he drove the back roads he knew so well—even after nine long years of being away—he felt happy just to be home again. He’d missed all of this, but nothing like he’d missed Lillie. She was more beautiful than she’d been nine years ago, as if that was possible. She’d grown into the amazing woman he’d always known she would become. He couldn’t have been more proud of her for what she’d accomplished with the old stagecoach stop.

Leaving Lillie had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. Now he feared he’d come back too late. If he’d lost Lillie, then all his plans would have been for nothing.

He reached the turnoff that would take him up in the mountains and drove through thick pines as the narrow dirt road snaked upward. The day was incredible from the blue of Montana’s big sky to the white puffy clouds riding on the breeze to the jewel green of the pines against the snowcapped mountaintops. He’d forgotten how breathtaking it could be.

Or how much he would miss it. But he’d had no choice but to leave all those years ago. He was facing a murder rap for a crime he hadn’t committed. The law was looking for him, and Lillie... Just the thought of her made his heart ache. He should have stayed and tried to find out the truth. But he’d been young. And scared.

He’d left here a young arrogant rodeo cowboy with a chip on his shoulder and a temper. Now he’d come back a changed man determined to set things right—not just with the law, but with Lillie.

Trask worried that the latter would be the hardest one to right.

The road turned into a Jeep trail. He shifted into four-wheel drive and drove a little farther up the mountainside before pulling over in the pines and walking the rest of the way.

This spot on the mountain had been a favorite of his when he was a boy. He used to come here when life got too tough even for him. The view alone buoyed his spirit. As a boy, he’d pretended that all of this would be his one day, as far as the eye could see.

He’d definitely been a fool in so many ways, he thought now as he reached his campsite. Back in his youth, he hadn’t known what the real cost would be and not just in money.

Now, though, he knew. He’d come home determined to fix the mess he’d made—or die trying.

* * *

ANVIL HOLLOWAY LOOKED shocked that the sheriff would suggest he had beaten his wife, let alone killed her. He looked guiltily at his bruised and bloodied knuckles. “That’s not from hitting my wife. I...I... After she left...” He pointed to the hallway.

Flint got up to inspect a spot where the Sheetrock had been smashed repeatedly. There was still bloodstains where it had soaked into the ruined Sheetrock, although it was clear Anvil had also tried to clean it up as well as the rest of the kitchen.

When he turned back to the man, it was with growing dread. “That wall shows a lot of anger, Anvil.”

The farmer nodded and hung his head.

“It must have been some argument.”

Anvil said nothing.

“You need to tell me. If there is any hope of my finding Jenna...”

Slowly, the farmer lifted his head. “She told me she...had met someone else.”

Flint had expected the complaints most wives of farmers and ranchers who lived out of town often aired. Too much work, no comforts, too far from town and other people, a hard existence with little thanks, let alone money.

But Jenna had never seemed like the complaining type. A plain, big-boned, solemn, conservative woman, she’d appeared to be the perfect wife for Anvil despite their decade difference in age. Jenna was only forty-seven.

“She met someone?” Flint repeated. “You mean she had an affair?”

Anvil buried his face in his hands and began to cry in huge body-shuddering sobs.

He waited until the farmer got control of himself again. “Do you know who?” Flint asked, thinking that was probably where Jenna had gone. That is, if Anvil was telling the truth and she’d actually left under her own power last night.

The recently mopped floor still bothered him, now more than before. Just as the destroyed Sheetrock in the hallway did. He feared the wall could have been busted before Anvil turned that rage on his wife.

Anvil wiped his face with his sleeve and took a few choked breaths. “She wouldn’t tell me.”

Flint let that sink in, hearing not just frustration in the farmer’s voice, but anger. “Did she say why she wouldn’t tell you who he was?”

He swallowed again and looked at his worn work boots. “She said she was afraid I would kill him.”

Great. So Jenna had already been aware of her husband’s temper.

Flint closed his notebook. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to give Jenna a little time to think. I’m betting she will call pretty soon or maybe even show up. If that happens, you call me right away, okay?”

Anvil nodded, looking relieved.

“She say how long she’d been...seeing this other man?”

He shook his head. “I got the feeling it had been going on for a while.”

“So you’d been suspicious?”

Anvil emitted a bitter laugh. “Hit me like a bolt of lightning out of the blue. Never saw it coming. Not in a million years.”

Flint had had the same reaction. Jenna Holloway just didn’t seem the type. Whatever type that was. He thought of his ex. Right, that type.

“How long have you been married?” he asked.

“Twenty-four years. She’s quite a bit younger than me.” Anvil seemed to grind his teeth. “I reckon the man is younger than me, as well.”

“I’m going to need the clothing you were wearing when Jenna left.”

Anvil looked up at him. “You still think I did something to her.”

“It’s protocol in a situation like this. I’m sure Jenna will call today and we can put all this behind us.”

The farmer rose slowly from his chair and disappeared into the other room. He came back with a pair of overalls and a T-shirt. “This is what I was wearing, but I washed them...since they were soiled.”

Flint met the man’s eyes. “How often have you washed your own clothes, Anvil?”

The man looked confused. “It isn’t how it looks.”

“It looks like you cleaned up after she left to hide something.”

“I did. When I slapped her, it made her nose bleed. There was blood on the kitchen floor.” He broke down. “I was so ashamed for losing my temper. I didn’t want anyone to see the place the way it was. I was going to fix the Sheetrock today, but the lumberyard was closed.”

“Anvil, I shouldn’t have to tell you how bad this looks.”

The man dropped his head. “I was just so ashamed.”

Flint waited a few moments before he said, “Anvil, if you did something worse that you regret, now is the time to tell me.”

The farmer raised his head. “I didn’t kill her. She drove away. I swear.”

“All right. Here’s what you do. Go about your usual daily work until you hear from her,” Flint said. “I know that’s a hard thing to ask. But these things often work themselves out. In the meantime, I’ll keep an eye out for her. If she just went to town, checked into a motel...”

Again Anvil looked relieved to think that was all she’d done last night as they stepped out on the porch.

“Give me the make, model and color of the car she was driving,” Flint said and pulled out his notebook again. He hoped he was right and Jenna was in some cheap motel in town deciding what she was going to do next.

“By the way, how much money did she have on her when she left?”

Anvil looked surprised by the question. “I don’t know. We live on a pretty tight budget. I suppose she could have saved back some from the grocery money, but it wouldn’t be much.” Clearly, this had never crossed his mind.

“She doesn’t have a checkbook or credit cards she could use to get a motel?”

The farmer scratched the back of his neck. “Don’t believe in credit cards. The checkbook’s only for the farm business. I always gave Jenna whatever she needed. Like if she wanted a new dress or had to get her hair done for some special occasion.”

Flint nodded. He figured a lot of the farmers and ranchers operated much the same, especially the older ones. The women seldom left the place except to go into town for groceries or church.

“What is her cell phone number?”

Anvil looked confused. “She doesn’t have a cell phone. We have the landline here at the house. That’s all we’ve ever needed.”

Flint thought it probably wasn’t that unusual given that they seldom left the ranch. And cell phone service in these parts was scattered at best. It was the way everyone had lived not that many years ago, back when people didn’t need to be on call 24/7.

Still, no cell phone in this day and age? No credit cards? It meant no way of tracking her.

“What about a computer?” Flint asked, thinking that might be where Jenna had met this other man. But Anvil again shook his head.

“Never saw the need for one. Accountant takes care of the farm books. I want to buy somethin’ I can drive into town. Sure as the devil don’t need to be telling the world what I had for lunch on some blamed thing like Face Chat.”

Facebook. “Jenna spend any time at the library in town?”

“You’re thinking she met this man there?”

“They have computers and Wi-Fi service you can use at the library.”

Anvil frowned as if confused.

“Often people meet other people by chatting via computer. They get to talking, seem to have a lot in common, even fall in love without ever meeting each other in person.”

The farmer was staring at him. “That’s the craziest thing I ever heard.”

“Unfortunately, often the person on the other end of the chat isn’t telling the truth about themselves. Jenna could have been lured by one of these people. They call it catfishing.”

Anvil looked both horrified and completely out of touch with the world beyond this farm. Was Jenna more worldly?

“I’ll check at the library,” Flint said. “It’s a long shot, but you never know. She ever show any interest in learning to use a computer?”

“I thought her only interest was in old recipe books. She loved to bake. She was happiest in the kitchen. At least that’s what I thought.”

“I’ll get back to you if I hear something,” the sheriff told him. “Try not to worry.”

Anvil walked him out as far as the top porch step. “This isn’t like her. She’s always so sensible. She never asked for anything. Never seemed...unhappy.”

A thought struck Flint as he reached his patrol SUV. He turned back to the farmer. “You notice any change in her recently?”

Anvil seemed to think about it. After a moment, his expression changed. “Well, there was one thing, now that I think about it. I’m sure it’s not important. I feel foolish even mentioning it.”

“What’s that?” the sheriff asked when the man didn’t continue for a moment. He seemed embarrassed.

“Lately, she’s been wearing...makeup.”

* * *

TRASK WATCHED THE last of the day’s light dissolve behind the mountain. Darkness came quickly in the pines. He breathed in the cold sweet scent and thought of Lillie—as if she was ever far from his mind. At first he’d told himself that she could do better than him. That he was doing her a favor by staying away.

But getting over her had been impossible. A day hadn’t gone by that he hadn’t thought of her, yearned for her. Sometimes he felt as if he couldn’t breathe if he didn’t see her again. He’d had to come back to make things right no matter how it ended.

Trask threw another log on the campfire. Smoke rose into the twilight. Sparks flickered for a moment, then died off. Seeing her today had left him shaken. He’d expected Lillie to be angry. He’d practiced what he was going to say to her. He’d thought he’d been ready to face her.

What he hadn’t been ready for was her cool demeanor. This wasn’t the Lillie he’d left that night nine years ago. His Lillie was all fire and shooting rockets. His Lillie wasn’t like any woman he’d ever known. His Lillie...wasn’t his anymore.

He pushed that thought away, determination burning inside him. He’d get back what he lost. Lillie was at the bar tonight working. Tomorrow...

Trask tried not to get too far ahead of himself. Coming back here wasn’t just about facing Lillie. It meant facing his childhood and the man this town thought he was. Thought he would always be.

He’d grown up on the wrong side of everything. It wasn’t just that he lived out in the sticks in a dilapidated old house, that his father was never home because he was on the road with a traveling carnival doing cowboy rope tricks or that his birth mother had taken off when he was ten, leaving him with his father’s mother.

His grandmother had been nice enough, though too old to discipline him. He’d run wild. That hadn’t changed when his grandmother died and his father brought home Shirley Perkins to be his stepmother. Shirley had a son, Emery, younger than Trask, wilder than him too.

Fortunately, they hadn’t stayed around long, either. By fifteen, he found himself on his own. No one even knew that his father had died in a vehicle accident while caravanning with the carnival in the Southern states. Trask certainly didn’t tell anyone for fear of where the authorities might decide to put him. The owner of the carnival had contacted Trask and had Wild Bill Beaumont cremated, the ashes sent to Trask in a cardboard box, which he’d buried up here on the mountain, not far from where he had spent most of last night and today.

Feeling like life just kept kicking him down, he’d developed a bad attitude that went well with his bad temper. The only good thing in his life had been Lillie. Not that most of her family wanted him anywhere near her.

It was easy to look back and understand why when he’d gotten in trouble nine years ago, everyone thought he was guilty. Also why he’d done the only thing he knew. He’d run.

But in those years he’d changed, he’d grown up, he’d come to terms with his earlier life, and now he was back. Back to show everyone, especially Lillie, that he’d changed.

That meant proving first that he hadn’t killed Gordon Quinn.

He looked out over the valley. This spot on the side of the mountain provided a great view. He could see if anyone was coming up the trail below him. Not that he expected anyone to come looking for him. He knew in his heart, in his soul, that Lillie wouldn’t have called Flint on him. At least that hadn’t changed about her.

Night was coming on fast now. A cold blackness puddled under the pines around him. Montana’s big sky deepened under a blanket of cloud cover.

He threw another log on the campfire and watched the sparks rise like fireflies into the night sky. He’d had years to think about who might have murdered Gordon. What he didn’t know was whether he was an easy scapegoat or if he had been purposely framed.

At the sound of a twig breaking, he picked up the rifle lying next to his bedroll.

“It’s just me,” came a voice from the darkness.

He relaxed but still held the rifle until his friend topped the rise. It was going to be a dark night, clouds hiding the stars and moon. There was just enough light to make out his friend Johnny Burrows’s silhouette as he walked toward the fire. He carried a heavy bag over his shoulder, which he laid down with a grunt.

“I forgot how far it was back in here on foot. I’m not as young as I used to be,” Johnny said. “I brought you groceries.”

“You’re sure you weren’t followed?”

“No one knows you’re back in town, right? So no one has any reason to tail me, but I took the usual precautions.”

When they were boys, they often took off for the mountains rather than go to school. Looking back, Trask knew that it was his fault that Johnny was in trouble with his father a lot of the time. He was the one who talked his friend into skipping school. Johnny was always afraid he would get caught—and often did.

It was only one of the reasons Johnny’s father, John Thomas “J.T.” Burrows, didn’t like Trask and didn’t want his son associating with him.

But Johnny had remained a good friend all these years despite some problems nine years ago.

Johnny stepped to the fire to warm his hands. “You sure this is a good idea?”

“The fire?”

“Coming back here like this.” Johnny had stayed in town after graduating from college and ended up working with his father in the construction company where he’d worked in high school. Gordon Quinn had been one of the original partners, along with J.T. and Skip Fairchild.

Thanks to Johnny, Trask had been able to keep in touch and had known what had been going on in Gilt Edge—and especially with Lillie.

“You have a better suggestion?” Trask asked, now surprised Johnny hadn’t been happy to hear that he’d come back to clear his name.

“Maybe you should go to the sheriff and turn yourself in.”

“Turn myself in to Flint Cahill? The hanging sheriff? Right. Just throw myself on his mercy. I don’t think so. Especially since we all knew how he felt about me dating his sister.”

“It was more serious than that with Lillie, wasn’t it?”

Trask said nothing for a few minutes as he picked up a stick and poked at the fire. “I’ve never been able to forget her. It’s the main reason I came back.” When his friend didn’t comment, he looked up at him. “What?”

Still Johnny hesitated.

“You aren’t going to tell me that she’s now seeing someone.”

“No, but Junior Wainwright has been trying to get her to go out with him for the past few years.”

A fist closed on his heart. “But she hasn’t gone.”

“No. She’s dated a little, not much, just like I’ve told you.”

Trask’s first thought was to find Wainwright and set him straight. But that was the old Trask. “She can date anyone she wants.”

Johnny laughed. “When you told me that you’d changed, I didn’t believe it.” His friend eyed him. “Maybe you have changed. The old Trask—”

“Would have gone after him,” Trask said “I know. That’s one reason that the sheriff thinks I killed Gordon.”

“I had to put up with him at the construction company, so I can understand why you got into it with him.” Trask had been working for Gordon on his ranch when he’d caught him beating a horse with a two-by-four. He’d pulled the man off, taken the board away from him and warned him if he ever saw him treating an animal like that again, he’d kill him.

It had been a stupid threat, but he’d been so angry, so horrified by what Gordon was doing. Unfortunately, several of the other workers had overheard his threat to kill the man. Worse, when Gordon told him to mind his own business and fired him, Trask had told him what he could do with his job. Gordon called him a few names and Trask slugged the man and knocked him down.

He’d regretted it at once, but it was too late. Gordon threatened to have him arrested for assault and things went downhill from there.

“I would think things are better at the construction company with Gordon gone,” he said now. Johnny’s father had insisted his son learn the business from the ground up after college.

Johnny looked past the fire for a moment. “You know I never thought you killed him.”

“I appreciate that. Unfortunately, you were one of the few.”

“It was just bad timing. If you hadn’t gotten into it with him that day...”

“And run,” Trask said with a groan. “At the time, it seemed the only thing to do. Lillie had told me that Flint was looking for me. Even though I swore I didn’t do it, I didn’t even think she believed me. I was afraid I would get railroaded. Flint would have loved nothing better than to see me locked up in Deer Lodge. Anywhere away from his sister.”

“I just don’t understand what you hope to find out after all these years. If there was any evidence of someone else killing him...”

They’d had this discussion before over the years. But then it had just been talk. He realized now that Johnny hadn’t expected him to ever come back to try to find the real killer.

“I have to find out who killed Gordon. I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t stand Gordon or to have a motive for wanting him dead.”

“But enough to kill him?”

He knew what Johnny was saying. “Obviously, someone did hate him enough. I figure once I start digging into it, the killer is going to get nervous and then...”

“And then you’re going to get yourself killed. Trask, I really wish you weren’t doing this. If you left again, maybe—”

“I’m not leaving. I can’t keep running from this.”

Johnny looked worried. “I heard the sheriff has an eyewitness who swore they saw you leaving the stables that night right before Gordon’s body was found.”

“Since it wasn’t me, someone is either mistaken or lying. I’m going to look into Gordon’s friends, family, associates. Someone killed him and let me take the blame.” Gordon had been one of the original partners in Pyramid Peak Construction Company along with being a local rancher. “You were working at the construction company back when Gordon was killed. You would know if there were problems between the partners.”

Johnny shook his head. “Remember, I was just a grunt helping build the houses. I was hardly ever in the office.”

Trask nodded, knowing that this was a touchy subject given that Johnny was now one of the partners along with his father and Skip.

“When I got your call today, I was shocked. I wish you’d told me you were planning to come back.”

“So you could try to talk me out of it?”

His friend met his gaze over the glow of the campfire. “I guess I don’t have to tell you how dangerous this is. I don’t want to see you get yourself killed.”

Trask was touched. He hoped that was the reason Johnny was upset about his return. He and Johnny had had their problems nine years ago, but they’d been best friends for too many years to let one incident change that. “I have no choice. I have to clear my name. It’s the only way to get Lillie back. And right now it doesn’t look good.”

“You’ve seen her!” Johnny guessed, sounding both shocked and worried. “What makes you think she didn’t call the sheriff on you?”

“My charm?”

“Good luck with that. You are taking a hell of a chance. What if she’s already notified her brother?”

“She wouldn’t do that.”

“I don’t know, Trask. If I were you, I’d either get out of town or turn myself in. Better than Flint finding out you’re back and coming after you.”

“I just need a little time to follow a couple of leads.” He saw Johnny look at his watch. “You should get back to your fiancée. I’m looking forward to meeting her one day.”

His friend nodded. He didn’t look hopeful. It was clear Johnny thought he was making a terrible mistake by coming back. “If there is some way I can help...”

“You already have,” Trask said, seeing how uncomfortable all this was making his friend. “I don’t like putting you on the spot like this. I appreciate everything you’ve done. But I have it now.” He stepped to his old friend, took his hand and pulled him into a quick hug. “I’m going to keep you out of this from this point on.”

Johnny couldn’t hide his relief. “Gordon’s killer could still be around. If you start digging into the past...” He didn’t have to finish. For a moment, he looked guilty for not wanting to be involved. Trask knew how much his friend had to lose.

“Listen, if you need anything, call me on the burner,” Johnny said. “Don’t worry about getting me into trouble.” His old friend smiled. “You certainly tried to get me into trouble when we were kids.”

“And succeeded.” After he’d left town on the run, Trask had contacted his friend, needing to know what was going on with the murder investigation. He’d felt bad afterward, realizing he’d put Johnny in a tough position. It had been Johnny’s suggestion to use burner phones to stay in contact.

Now he realized just how worried his old friend was. But was it friendship? Or did Johnny know more than he’d told him? He hated the feeling that his old friend was hiding something.

“Thanks for the food, for everything.”

“Just be careful. I don’t want a bunch of trigger-happy deputies coming after you.”

Trask nodded. “Me, either.” He watched Johnny disappear over the horizon before turning back to the fire. The flames had died down, making the night seem darker. Clouds scudded past the moon, leaving a break in the sky to reveal the stars. The light painted the forest around him in silver.

He moved to his bedroll, thinking of Lillie. What if Johnny was right and Lillie was ready to move on with someone like Wainwright? Was he a fool for coming back here to clear his name? What if he couldn’t prove he didn’t do it?

Trask let out a long breath as he lay down. The embers in the fire flared in the breeze. He could still feel the heat. A narrow ribbon of smoke rose, wavering before it disappeared into the dark overhead.

He tried not to worry about Johnny and the feeling he had that all was not as it seemed. He closed his eyes, picturing Lillie earlier holding a gun on him. He smiled to himself. That was the woman he remembered. The woman he loved. The woman he didn’t want to live without any longer—no matter how much danger it put him in to come back here.

CHAPTER FIVE

LILLIE TOOK THE bottle of beer her brother handed her and put her feet up. It felt good to finally sit down after the bar closed for the night. They’d been busy all afternoon and evening, the time flying by. She’d hardly had time to think about Trask and speculate on where he might be. Or when he might show up again. A lie. He was all she’d thought about.

It had made for a tense day, fearing that he might foolishly show up at the bar any minute. He hadn’t. She figured he’d probably left again. If he’d been arrested, she would have heard by now.

“Does it ever bother you?” Darby asked as he joined her in their nightly ritual after the place closed. He took a drink of his cola and glanced out the window.

Lillie didn’t have to ask what he was referring to. She followed his gaze to the far pasture of the Cahill Ranch and the eight-by-eight metal fence around the missile silo.

“We don’t even know if there is a manned missile down there after the disarmament agreements,” she said.

“That’s just it, neither do the Russians or the Chinese or whoever else wants us all dead. So when they decide to destroy us, they will fire at all of the missile silos. It will be Armageddon.”

There were 450 active sites in Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota—two hundred of them in Montana alone. All of them were scattered around the state in pastures behind a chain-link fence much like the Cahills’. Their grandfather had been honored to do his part when it came to the nation’s security. He’d gladly given the military the land they wanted for the missile site.

Everything about the sites were top secret. And that was the problem. If there was a malfunction, not even the sheriff could get involved.

“Truthfully? I forget it’s even out there,” Lillie said, taking a drink of her beer. Today especially, since she had other things on her mind. She’d gone for a drive after leaving her father at his cabin. It had given her time to think about things. She’d felt better by the time she’d come back to work her shift at the bar.

Now hours later, she and her brother were relaxing together. It was her favorite time of the day normally. Sitting there, she kept thinking of Trask. Worse, she was keeping it from the brother she felt closest to. How could she pretend that nothing had changed?

Her brother sighed. “Dad thinks something is going on out there.”

“It’s those aliens. They just won’t leave him alone,” she joked.

“It’s because he is such a fine human specimen at nearly seventy.”

She suddenly felt like crying. “What if it’s real?”

“The air force has admitted that trained military men witnessed what they believe was a flying saucer hovering over some of the missile silos in March of 1967. Hell, whatever it was, it shut down the missiles, sent them off-line. If we’d been attacked during the more than twelve hours the missiles were inoperable...”

Lillie sighed. “If that really was an alien spaceship from some other planet, then we have more to worry about than the foreign invaders and the rest of our country’s enemies on this earth.”

Darby nodded. “I think it’s what Dad saw all those years ago. Maybe he really was abducted by aliens, as crazy as it sounds. He wouldn’t be alone. Aren’t there hundreds of people who make that claim elsewhere in the world?”

“Maybe not hundreds.” She could tell that he wanted to believe it. Or more than likely wanted other people to believe their father and quit treating him like a nutcase. “Or maybe what happened to him is more like a flashback from when he was in the Vietnam War. Let’s not forget what he’s been through before any of this alien talk.”

Darby nodded and took another drink. Their father was a war hero. He’d been shot down and captured, spending months in a prison camp before being rescued. “So you don’t think there is anything going on at the missile silo?” Darby asked.

“Is that one of the reasons you want to leave here?” Lillie had to ask.

“You have to admit, it’s unsettling to think that an enemy country could nuke us at any time.”

Did he really live with that fear every day? Not everyone had a missile silo in his backyard. But a whole lot of people they knew around here did. “Then I think I should find a way to buy you out and you should leave.”

He looked at her in surprise. “Are you serious?”

“Aren’t you?”

Slowly, he shook his head. “I don’t know what I want. I just feel...antsy.”

That was a feeling she knew well. She’d always blamed it on Trask. She’d lied to herself that she hadn’t been waiting for him all these years.

But after this morning, she wasn’t sure what she wanted. For years she’d wanted Trask. She’d played the fantasy of his return in her head. He would come back and beg her to forgive him, tell her what a fool he’d been, sweep her off her feet and... That was where she would stop imagining his amazing return.

There could be no happy ending. Not with a warrant out for his arrest. Even if there hadn’t been, he’d never wanted to stay in Gilt Edge and run a bar. And she didn’t want to leave. He’d known that. Maybe it was another reason he’d left her waiting that night nine years ago. They’d been at a stalemate. Nothing had changed.

Nothing except for the fact that they weren’t those lovesick twentysomethings anymore. And if Flint got word that Trask was back, it would be only a matter of time before he was behind bars. Would Trask put up a fight? Would it end in gunfire?

She shuddered at the thought.

“You okay?” her brother asked.

“Just a chill,” she said and took another sip of her beer. Through the open window, she could hear the frogs in the creek and the breeze whispering in the pines outside. She loved the peace that fell over the land in this isolated spot after the bar closed.

But tonight they’d closed early because business had been slow. Even so, she had too much on her mind to feel much peace. She finished her beer and got to her feet. “I’m tired. I think I’m going to call it a night.”

Darby was looking at her as if he was trying to read what was really bothering her. “I’m not going to force you into anything on this place. I promise. I’m just talking.”

She nodded, since that was the least worry on her mind right now.

“The old man is probably as fine as he can be, so there is nothing to worry about with him, either.”

Lillie met her brother’s gaze and considered telling him what was really bothering her. What would he suggest she do if she told him that it hadn’t been a bear but Trask she’d seen earlier? Neither of them would call Flint, she assured herself. And yet Darby was more straight-arrow than her and the others. Darby would want nothing to do with harboring a criminal. That much she knew. She told herself she wouldn’t put the bar in jeopardy.

But was she already risking everything by not telling someone about Trask’s visit?

* * *

FLINT HAD SPENT a long day dealing with one small crisis after another, waiting for Anvil to call and say he’d heard from his wife. Now it was late and he realized there was nothing at home to eat.

He was also second-guessing his decision on Jenna Holloway as he pulled into the grocery store lot before it closed for the night. Earlier he’d been hesitant to start treating the Holloway farm like a crime scene. He told himself he would give it twenty-four hours. It was that long before he could put out a missing person’s report on an adult female. That would give Jenna time to have second thoughts and come home.

If she was still alive.

That was what haunted him. By then, Anvil would have had plenty of time to cover his tracks even more than he already had. Flint knew that appearances could be deceiving. Anvil was definitely distraught. It was probably because of their argument, his wife’s infidelity and absence, his guilt for having slapped her. But it could also be because he’d killed her.

He decided as he pushed open the door to the grocery store that he’d put out a missing person’s BOLO on her and her vehicle first thing in the morning. He was still hoping that by tomorrow morning they would have news of her.

Tired, he put a frozen dinner, some eggs and a quart of orange juice into his cart and looked up to see his ex-wife, Celeste. That was the problem with living in such a small town. Fortunately, they somehow avoided each other for months at a time. Just his luck that tonight wasn’t one of those times. He was in no mood for her and the feelings she evoked.

“Flint?”

Her voice alone was enough to bring it all back. Bitter memories tainted the sweet ones from his youth. Celeste was still a stunner, her blond hair cut in a perfect bob that framed a perfectly made-up beautiful face. Diamonds glittered at her throat, her ears, and the big one weighed down her ring finger.

“Celeste.” He noticed that her grocery cart was filled with party food for a crowd. His own was nearly empty, making both it and him seem pathetic.

Her gaze scanned the contents of his cart before returning to him. She confirmed what he already figured she thought of him. The food in his cart practically announced it to the world. Here he was, the poor jilted ex struggling to survive. He wanted to say, “I’m doing just fine. Better than fine. Yes, you hurt me. We hurt each other. But I’m happy enough right now. Except when I run into you.”

Instead, he asked, “How’s Wayne?” and could have mentally kicked himself for it. He really didn’t give a damn how her husband was doing. There were at least two reasons to dislike Wayne Duma. A rancher, philanthropist, all-around good guy, Wayne wallowed in his family’s wealth. Wayne had also been sleeping with Celeste when she was still married to Flint.

“Wayne’s fine. Busy. I try to get him to slow down... We’re having a few people over tomorrow night. As you know, I don’t like waiting until the last minute to shop.” She motioned to her cart, looking as uncomfortable as he felt.

He recalled those late nights she went out for groceries and had really been meeting her future husband. A bitter taste filled his mouth at the memory.

When her green eyes locked with his, he remembered the two of them together, bodies glistening with sweat. It was a memory he would have preferred to forget.

“How are you, Flint?”

“Couldn’t be better.” Even to his ears, it sounded angry.

“I heard you’re seeing someone.” She frowned as if the name hadn’t been on the tip of her tongue. “Midge. No, Maggie. Maggie Johnson, no Thompson.” She smiled as if pleased that she’d remembered.

Flint felt his stomach roil. He didn’t want to talk about Maggie with Celeste, hated that she knew any of his business. But he especially hated that she knew he and Maggie were dating. Crazy as it sounded, he felt he needed to protect Maggie from Celeste, as if his ex might do something to hurt her. He doubted Celeste gave a minute’s thought to either of them.

“I should get going before my dinner thaws.” He’d lost his appetite and wished he hadn’t stopped by the store. But he had no choice now but to head to the front, where the checker appeared anxious to close soon.

Celeste looked disappointed that he was going. He’d seen her interest spark when she’d mentioned Maggie. It made him angry. She’d dumped him for Wayne Duma. She had no right wanting to know anything about his life, anything about Maggie, especially since Maggie was the best thing that had happened to him in a very long time.

He felt her gaze on him as he’d tried not to hurry to the checkout. That Celeste wanted to know more about Maggie worried him for reasons he couldn’t put his finger on. Just curiosity, he told himself.

But a part of him wondered if Celeste was regretting the choice she’d made. That thought made him laugh. Wayne had given Celeste everything she’d ever wanted. Everything Flint had sorely lacked. And when he was being honest with himself, it still hurt like hell.

* * *

“DARBY?” LILLIE HESITATED. She wanted to tell him the truth about Trask, but she realized she couldn’t involve him. For all she knew, Trask was gone again. End of story. The back door was propped open to let in the night breeze. It chilled her as she looked at her brother. “It’s just been a long day, since it began so early and at the sheriff’s office.” She smiled to take the edge off her words. She really hadn’t minded getting their father out.

“You want me to take a look out back in case that bear came back?” Darby asked, finishing his cola and getting to his feet.

“No. I’m sure it’s long gone.” The last thing she wanted was for Darby to go out and possibly run into Trask. She honestly didn’t know what would happen. All of her brothers knew that Trask had broken her heart. At the very least Darby would want to kick the crap out of him. She’d often wanted to do the same thing herself.

“Be careful driving home. Deer will be on the road. Don’t want to have to bail you out of jail in the morning for speeding or what Flint might see as reckless driving.”

“After drinking one cola?”

“Convince Flint that’s all it was,” she joked. Darby had been sober for three years and attended the local Alcoholics Anonymous meetings faithfully.

“An alkie owning and running a bar? What is wrong with this picture?” Cyrus had wanted to know.

“I still love bars,” Darby had said. “I just won’t be drinking.”

“There is something totally messed up in that,” his brother Hawk had said. Cyrus and Hawk loved ranching. They didn’t understand why Darby would choose standing behind a bar over chasing cattle from the back of a horse.

Darby had merely shrugged.

“You’re sure about this?” Lillie had asked him later.

“Positive. Watching other people drink too much, talk too much, argue and fight too much because of booze makes me glad I made the choice I did. Anyway, these are my people. I have a pretty good handle on who should drive home and whose keys I should take and get them a ride.”

She’d been skeptical, but Darby had stayed sober and seemed happy. Except when he talked about leaving.

“I’ll lock up, sis. Sleep well.”

She started toward the back of the building and the stairs that would take her up to her home over the bar.

“I love you,” Darby said behind her.

She stopped to look back, but he had already turned out the lights. “I love you too,” she said, not sure if he’d already left, since he didn’t answer.

As she reached the stairs, she made a quick detour and stepped outside. A crescent moon hung in the midnight blue sky along with trillions of twinkling stars. Out here there were no streetlights to wash out the view. She loved being able to see the stars.

Tonight, the mountains were etched deep purple against the night sky. The white snowcapped tips gleamed silver. Nearer, silhouetted pine trees swayed in the breeze as if in a slow dance.

“You are such a romantic,” Trask had once told her. “Are you sure you want to open a bar? You should be writing poetry.”

She’d laughed. “How do you know I don’t?”

His eyes had locked with hers. “You are such a mystery to me. I want to spend the rest of my life unlocking all your secrets.”

Lillie shook off the memory as she searched the pines and the hillside beyond for any sign of him. She caught the sweet scent of spring grass and pine. She heard an owl hoot off in the distance. She felt her heart beat slow in disappointment. Maybe he really was gone again.

She told herself it was for the best.

Going back inside, she locked the door and headed up the stairs. She thought of Darby and what he’d said before he’d left. They weren’t the kind of family that said they loved each other. It was a given.

So what was up with that? Was he having trouble staying sober? Would he tell her if he was? Also doubtful.

Or maybe, she thought, slowing as she reached her apartment door, maybe there was something else going on with him. She wished he would find someone to love. But her brother rarely dated. Cyrus and Hawk both said Darby was too particular. Like either of them dated much. Maybe they were all doomed to be alone.

She got ready for bed, worrying about her family, determined Trask wasn’t going to occupy her thoughts anymore this day. Climbing into bed, she closed her eyes. For only a moment did she wonder where Trask was sleeping tonight or if he was on the road miles from there, which was more than likely the case.

Lillie woke to darkness an instant before a large warm hand clamped down over her mouth.

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