Boots and Bullets

BJ Daniels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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“Are you sure you want to know the truth?”

He feared Kate Landon didn’t have any idea what she was getting into. Worse, how dangerous it might get.

“I’ve always wanted to know the truth.”

That feeling that he was meant to come here, meant to meet this woman, overwhelmed him. The answer was in this town, but so was the danger.

He was worried about her and not just because of his damned dream. She was putting her faith in him.

And he feared that if he kissed her, it wouldn’t stop there.

He couldn’t make Kate Landon any promises and she was the kind of girl who deserved promises from a man.

About the Author

BJ DANIELS wrote her first book after a career as an award-winning newspaper journalist and author of thirty-seven published short stories. That first book, Odd Man Out, received a four-and-a-half star review from RT Book Reviews and went on to be nominated for Best Intrigue for that year. Since then she has won numerous awards, including a career achievement award for romantic suspense and many nominations and awards for best book.

Daniels lives in Montana with her husband, Parker, and two springer spaniels, Spot and Jem. When she isn’t writing, she snowboards, camps, boats and plays tennis. Daniels is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, Kiss of Death and Romance Writers of America.

To contact her, write to BJ Daniels, PO Box 1173, Malta, MT 59538, USA, or e-mail her at bjdaniels@mtintouch.net. Check out her website at www.bjdaniels.com.

This book is dedicated to the Malta Quilt Club and all the other wonderful and amazingly talented women who are teaching me to have fun with fabric. Quilting keeps me sane when words fail me. Thanks ladies!

Chapter One

Cyrus Winchester opened his eyes and blinked in confusion. He appeared to be in a hospital room. From down the hall came the sound of a television advertisement for an end-of-season fall sale.

He told himself he must be dreaming. The last thing he remembered was heading to Montana to spend the Fourth of July with the grandmother he hadn’t seen in twenty-seven years.

Glancing toward the window, he saw a gap in the drapes. His heart began to pound. The leaves were gone off the trees and several inches of fresh snow covered the ground.

A nurse entered the room, but she didn’t look in his direction as she went over to the window and opened the curtains. He closed his eyes again, blinded by the brightness.

As he tried to make sense of this, Cyrus could hear her moving around the room. She came over to the bed, tucking and straightening, humming to herself a tune he didn’t recognize. She smelled of citrus, a light, sweet scent that reminded him of summer and driving to Montana with the windows down on his pickup, the radio blaring.

With a start, he realized that wasn’t the last thing he remembered!

His hand shot out, grabbing the nurse’s wrist. She screamed, drawing back in surprise, eyes widening in shock. What was wrong with her?

He opened his mouth, his lips working, but nothing came out.

“Don’t try to talk,” she said and pushed the call button with her free hand. “The doctor will be glad to see that you’re back with us, cowboy.”

Back with us?

Cyrus tried again to speak, desperate to tell her what he remembered, but the only sound that came out was a shh.

The nurse gently removed her wrist from his grasp to pour him a glass of water. “Here, drink a little of this.”

Gratefully he took the cup from her and raised his head enough to take a sip. He couldn’t believe how weak he felt or how confused he was. But one thought remained clear and that was what he urgently needed to tell someone.

He took another swallow of water, feeling as if he hadn’t had a drink in months.

“Sheriff.” The word came out in a hoarse whisper. “Get. The. Sheriff. I saw it. The nurse. Murdered. In the hospital nursery.”

Chapter Two

Cyrus tried to make sense of what his twin brother was telling him. “No, Cordell,” he said when his brother finished. “I know what I saw last night.”

His brother’s earlier relief at seeing him awake had now turned to concern. “Cyrus, you’ve been in a coma for three months. You just woke up. You wouldn’t have seen a murder unless it happened in the last twenty minutes.”

“I’m telling you. I saw her. A nurse or a nurse’s aide, I don’t know, she was wearing a uniform and she was lying on the floor with a bloody scalpel next to her just inside the nursery door.” He saw his brother frown. “What?”

“You’re in a special rehabilitation center in Denver and have been for the last two months. There is no nursery here.”

Cyrus lay back against the pillows, looking past his identical twin to the snow covering the landscape outside. “The hospital was a brick building. Old. The tiles on the floor were worn.” Out of the corner of his eye, he caught his brother’s surprised expression. “There is such a place, isn’t there?”

“You just described the old hospital in Whitehorse, Montana, but you haven’t been there for months,” Cordell said.

“But I was there, right?”

“Yes, for only one night. They were in the process of moving you to the new hospital the night you were … “

“You’re eventually going to have to tell me what happened to me,” Cyrus said.

“What’s important is that you’re conscious. The doctor said everything looks good and there is no reason you shouldn’t have a full recovery. As for this other issue, we can sort it out later when—”

“A nurse was murdered.” Cyrus swallowed, his mouth and throat still dry from lack of use.

“I’m sorry, but it had to have been a dream. You say you got up out of bed that night—”

“I buzzed for the nurse, but no one answered the call button, so I got up and walked out past the nurse’s station,” Cyrus said, seeing it as clearly as his brother standing before him. “The nurses’ station was empty, but I remember looking at the clock. It was two minutes past midnight. I could hear someone down the hall talking in whispers in one of the rooms. I walked in that direction, but as I passed the nursery windows—”

“Cyrus, this is the first time since your accident that you’ve been conscious,” Cordell said gently. “That night in the old Whitehorse hospital, you were hooked up to monitors and IVs. There is no way you got up and walked anywhere. I’m sorry. I know it seemed real to you, whatever you think you saw, but it had to have just been a bad dream.”

“Then how do you explain the fact that I can remember exactly how the old tiles felt on my bare feet or the way the place smelled, or that I can describe the hospital to you if I was never awake to see it?”

Cordell shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Then you can’t be certain that I didn’t see exactly what I said I did.”

“All I know is that if you had gotten out of bed that night in the old hospital, the alarms on the monitors would have gone off.”

“Maybe they did. There were no nurses around to hear them. I’m telling you the place was a morgue and there was no one at the nurses’ station.”

“Even if that was true, monitors were recording your vital signs. If you disconnected anything and walked down the hall there would be a report of it.”

“Maybe there is. Have you seen the records?”

His brother sighed. “You were moved to the new hospital the next morning. Don’t you think someone would have noticed you were no longer connected to the IV or monitors?”

“Maybe the nurses covered it up because they were down the hall killing a woman.”

“Cyrus—”

“I know what I saw,” he said with a shake of his head. What frustrated him even more than not getting anyone to believe him was that after all this time, any evidence of the crime would be gone.

“I’m glad you’re the same old Cyrus, stubborn as ever,” Cordell said with affection.

“Were there any other patients in the hospital the one night I spent there?” Cyrus asked as a thought occurred to him.

“One of the reasons the ambulance took you to the old hospital was because there was another patient who couldn’t be moved, so the hospital was still staffed for the night.”

Sure it was. “Another patient? Maybe that patient saw or heard something that would corroborate my story.”

“That patient was in his eighties. He died that night.”

Cyrus sighed and closed his eyes.

“Listen, the doctor said you shouldn’t overdo.”

“I want you to call the hospital up there and the sheriff,” Cyrus said, opening his eyes. “I’m telling you I saw a murder.” He gave his brother a detailed description of the female victim.

“Okay, I’ll check into it if it will make you take it easy for a while.”

Cyrus lay back against the pillows on the hospital bed, exhausted. How was that possible after sleeping for almost three months?

“Get some rest,” Cordell said, clasping his hand. “I can’t tell you how good it is to have you back.”

“Yeah, same here.” He was glad one of the first faces he’d seen after waking had been his twin’s. But he couldn’t help feeling helpless and frustrated.

He’d seen a murdered woman that night in the hospital and no one believed him. Not even his brother.

CYRUS WOKE to find his twin beside his bed. Through the open curtains he could see that it was dark outside. How long had he been asleep this time?

Cordell stirred and sat up, seeing that he’d awakened. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay.” Had he expected Cyrus to wake up and recant his story about the murdered woman he’d seen? Surely his twin knew him better than that. “What did you find out?”

From Cordell’s expression, he’d been hoping, at least. “I called the hospital in Whitehorse and talked to the administrator. She assured me there was no murder at the old hospital the night you were a patient there.”

“Someone moved the body.”

“She also assured me that you never left your bed. There were two nurses on duty that night monitoring not only you, but also the elderly gentleman in a room down the hall. One nurse was just outside your room the whole time.”

Cyrus knew that wasn’t true, but Cordell didn’t give him a chance to argue the point.

“I also called the Whitehorse sheriff’s department and talked to our cousin McCall, who has since become the sheriff. There was no murder at the old hospital that night. Nor any missing nurse because both nurses who were on duty that night are accounted for. Nor was there a nurse’s aide or orderly or anyone else working that night.”

Then she must have just been dressed in a uniform for some reason, Cyrus thought.

“There was also no missing person report on any woman in the area.”

She must not have been from Whitehorse.

He saw his brother’s expression and knew that Cordell would have thought of all of this and asked the sheriff to run a check in a broader area with the description Cyrus had supplied. He and Cordell were private investigators and identical twins. They could finish each other’s sentences. Of course Cordell would have thought of all these things.

“Sheriff McCall Winchester assured me that no unexplained vehicles were found near the old hospital nor has anyone in the area gone missing.”

Was it possible everyone was right and that he’d only seen the murdered woman in a coma-induced nightmare?

Cyrus didn’t believe that. But then again, he also couldn’t believe he’d been in coma for three months.

WITHIN A FEW WEEKS, Cyrus was feeling more like his old self. He’d been working out, getting his strength back and was now restless. He hadn’t been able to shake the images from the dream. In fact, they seemed stronger than they had the morning he’d awakened in the rehabilitation center.

He still had no memory, though, of what had happened to him in Whitehorse in the hours before the accident that put him in the coma.

Cordell had filled him in, finally. Apparently, he’d driven to Whitehorse in his pickup and stopped that night at the Whitehorse Hotel, an old four-story antique on the edge of town. He’d gone there, he remembered, to see his grandmother Pepper Winchester after receiving a letter from her lawyer giving him the impression that she might be dying.

Even now he couldn’t remember why he’d wanted to go see the reclusive grandmother who’d kicked her family off the ranch twenty-seven years ago, never to be heard from again—until now.

In Whitehorse, he’d taken a room on the fourth floor of the hotel, intending to wait until his brother joined him the next morning before going out to the Winchester Ranch.

Apparently he had barely gotten into his room when he’d either heard something outside or happened to look out the window. What he’d seen, Cordell said, was a child molester breaking the only yard light in the hotel parking lot and slashing the rear tire of a VW bug parked there.

Cyrus must have watched as the man went back to the dark-colored van, the engine running, and realized the man was waiting for the owner of the VW to come out.

He’d run downstairs in time to keep the young woman who owned the VW bug from being run down by the van and killed. While saving her, he’d been hit and suffered a blow to his head that had left him in a coma all these months.

“That’s some story,” Cyrus said after his brother finished.

It was like hearing a story about someone he didn’t know. None of it brought back a single memory. But it did fit in with his dream, since he’d spent a night in the old hospital.

During the weeks he’d spent getting stronger, he hadn’t brought up the so-called murder dream with Cordell because it upset him. Cyrus suspected he worried about his twin’s mental health. During his last checkup, even the doctor had questioned Cyrus about headaches, strange dreams and hallucinations. Clearly Cordell had talked to the doctor about his brother’s inability to let this go.

“I didn’t think coma patients dreamed,” Cyrus had said to the doctor.

“Actually, they retain non-cognitive function and normal sleep patterns. It’s their higher brain functions they lose, other than key functions such as breathing and circulation. You were in a deep-level coma caused by trauma to the brain. I’m sure that explains what you thought you saw.”

After his doctor’s appointment, Cyrus stopped by

Winchester Investigations, unable to put it off any longer. With each passing day, he had more questions—and more suspicions. He knew there was only one way to put his mind at ease.

“Hey,” he said after tapping at his brother’s open office door.

Cordell looked up and from his expression, he’d been expecting this.

“I have to go back to Whitehorse and check out a few things myself.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No, you need to stay here and do some work. We both can’t be goofing off. When I come back—”

“Yeah, I want to talk to you about that.”

“Is there a problem?”

“No, it’s just that, well, you’ve met Raine,” Cordell said.

Cyrus smiled. He’d been pleased when his brother had introduced him to the woman he’d been seeing for the last three months. Raine Chandler, he’d been surprised to hear, was the woman he’d saved up in Montana.

“So I brought you two together.” Cyrus had never believed in divine intervention. But as eerie as this was, he felt as if it had all happened for a reason. And that reason, he feared, was so he could be at the hospital that night and make sure justice was done.

But that surprise was nothing compared to realizing his brother had fallen head-over-heels in love with the woman. After Cordell’s horrible marriage and divorce, no one had expected him ever to consider marriage again—especially his twin.

But when he’d met Raine, he’d seen that she was wearing a gorgeous diamond engagement ring and Cordell was always grinning when he was around her.

“Raine and I made a deal back in Montana,” Cordell was saying. He looked uncomfortable. “She said she’d marry me only when you could be my best man.”

Cyrus was surprised. “She was taking one hell of a chance I was going to come out of my coma.”

“Raine has a lot of faith. I think she knew how much I would need you at my side on my wedding day.”

Cyrus laughed. “True enough. Congrats, Cordell, and I’d love to be your best man. So when is the big day?”

“We haven’t set it yet. We were waiting to see … “

If Cyrus really was going to be all right. That was the problem with being twins: sometimes you knew exactly what the other one was thinking.

“I’m fine, really. This is just something I need to do. I’m not crazy, no screws loose from the head injury. If you had seen what I did, you’d be doing the same thing. It was that real, Cordell.”

His brother nodded. “So go to Montana, do what you have to do and—”

“Set a wedding date. I’ll be there for you. This thing in Montana won’t take that long, unless you’re thinking of getting married right away.”

“No, we were considering a New Year’s wedding. Did I mention that our cousin McCall is getting married at the ranch at Christmas?” Cordell asked.

“You aren’t seriously considering—”

“Raine and Grandmother hit it off.” Cordell shrugged. “Grandmother thinks we should move our investigative business to Montana. I know,” he said quickly, putting up a hand. “I told her you’d never go for that.”

Cyrus had to laugh. Cordell was the one who had wanted nothing to do with his grandmother. He’d tried to talk Cyrus out of even going to Montana in the first place. Now he was actually considering another wedding at the ranch after Christmas?

“Hey,” he said, “whatever you and Raine decide. Count me in.” He hugged his brother and headed for the door.

“Call me when you get there and keep in touch,” his brother called after him. “If you need me, I’ll be there in a heartbeat. Or if I don’t hear from you.”

Cyrus stopped at the door to look back at him and laughed. “Stop worrying about me. I’ll probably be back within the week. By the way, thanks for taking care of my pickup.”

“Sure.”

Cyrus got the feeling there was something his brother wasn’t telling him. “You didn’t let your girlfriend drive my pickup, did you?”

“The way Raine drives? Are you kidding?”

He started to step out into the hallway.

“Cyrus!”

Turning, he looked back at his brother and saw more than worry on Cordell’s face. “Be careful.”

Cyrus felt that bad feeling he’d awakened with rise to the surface again. If the murder had been nothing more than a bad dream, then why did his brother look scared for him?

Chapter Three

His first morning in Whitehorse, Montana, Cyrus headed straight for the new hospital. The squat, singlelevel building sat on the east end of the small western town. There was an empty field behind it, the Larb Hills in the distance.

For a moment, he stood outside, hoping the cool October day would sharpen his senses. He felt off balance, confused and a little afraid that the blow to his head had done more damage than anyone suspected—and all because of what he believed he’d seen that night in the old hospital.

The doctor had said he might have some memory lapses, either short-or long-term. He’d been warned that he might not feel like himself for a while.

“There are things you might never get back.”

Like my sanity?

When he’d reached town last night, he’d returned to the Whitehorse Hotel on the edge of town and taken the same room he had planned to stay in more than three months earlier.

He hadn’t slept well and when his brother had called and he’d told him where he was, Cordell threatened to come to Montana. Cyrus had talked him out of it, assuring him he wasn’t losing it.

Now, as Cyrus stepped into the new hospital’s reception area, he wasn’t so sure. Maybe he was wrong. Who saw a murder that never happened?

It wasn’t just that no one believed him. They all made it sound as if it would have been impossible for anything he said to have actually happened. All of them couldn’t be wrong, could they?

Of course, his first thought was conspiracy. But did he believe that even his cousin was in on it?

The hospital was smaller than most, but then Whitehorse wasn’t exactly booming. Like a lot of small Montana towns, its population was dropping each year as young people moved away for college and better-paying jobs.

“May I help you?” The receptionist was in her early twenties with straight blond hair and a recently applied sheen of lip gloss. He stared at her name tag, not registering her name as he suddenly had a flash of his so-called murder dream. The woman lying dead in the nursery hadn’t been wearing a name tag. So maybe he was right and she wasn’t a nurse. Or maybe she’d lost her name tag in the struggle.

“Sir?”

Cyrus stirred, blinking the receptionist back into focus. He removed his Stetson. “I need to speak with your hospital administrator.” He realized he should have made an appointment. Had he been afraid the person wouldn’t see him once he recognized the name and knew what this was about?

“Your name?”

“Cyrus Winchester.”

The receptionist picked up the phone. “Let me see … oh, here she is now.”

A woman in her sixties with short gray hair walked toward them. She was dressed in a suit and had an air of authority about her.

“This man needs to see you,” the receptionist said.

The hospital administrator gave him only a brief glance. “Why don’t you come back to my office.”

Cyrus followed her into a small, brightly lit room. The light hurt his eyes. Another side effect of the coma, this sensitivity to light?

“Would you like me to close the blinds?” She was already closing them, dimming the room a little.

“I’m Cyrus Winchester.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Winchester?” She didn’t introduce herself but the plaque on her desk read Roberta Warren.

“Were you also the administrator at the old hospital?” he asked.

“Yes. I’ve been the administrator for the last thirty-four years.” She clasped her hands together on her desk and seemed to wait patiently, although her demeanor said she had a lot to do and little time.

He kneaded the brim of his hat in his lap, surprised he was nervous. “You know who I am.”

“Yes.”

“Then you probably know why I’m here.” He realized he was nervous because he was sitting in front of a health care specialist who was looking at him as if he might be nuts.

“Your brother called us about an incident you thought you’d seen while at the old hospital the night you were there.”

“That incident was a woman murdered in the nursery.”

She shook her head. “There was no murder at the hospital.”

Another chunk of memory fell as if from the sky. “There were two babies in bassinets,” he said as he saw the nursery clearly in his memory. Why hadn’t he recalled that earlier? Because it hadn’t registered? Or because it hadn’t mattered when there was a dead woman lying just inside the nursery?

Now, though, he thought the fact that the two babies were there did matter for some reason. He tried to remember, but that only made his head ache and the memory slip farther away from him.

Roberta Warren was still shaking her head. “There were no babies in the nursery that last night the old hospital was still open. I’m afraid you’re mistaken about that, as well.”

He tried another tactic. “Do you know a woman with long auburn hair, greenish-blue eyes, tall, slim, maybe in her late twenties or early thirties?”

“As I told your brother, there is no one employed at the hospital who matches that description.”

“Do you know anyone in town who matches that description?”

She raised a brow. “I thought you said it was a nurse who you thought you saw murdered.”

“She wasn’t wearing a name tag when I found her. Maybe she was only pretending to be a nurse.”

The administrator looked at her watch pointedly. “I’m sure you’ve spoken with the sheriff. Had there been a murder—”

“I’d like to speak to the two nurses on duty that night,” he said.

“I won’t allow that.”

“Why not?” he asked, thinking he might be on to something.

“I’ve questioned both of them at length, Mr. Winchester. One was always at the desk that night. The sheriff also questioned them as well and looked at the monitor readings. You never left your bed that night. If you decide to pursue this, it will have to be with a subpoena and just cause.” Her tone said good luck getting either. “I won’t have you accusing my nurses of something that never happened.”

He rose to his feet. He wasn’t going to get anything from this woman. “Thank you for your time.”

She sighed and gave him a sympathetic look. “I’m sure your doctor explained to you that what you thought you experienced was a coma-induced hallucination of some kind, perhaps stemming from your line of work. There is no cover-up, no murder, no reason for you to waste your time or anyone else’s. I would think you would be glad to be alive and have better things to do with your time.”

“I am glad to be alive. Unfortunately, the woman I saw lying in a pool of blood in the old hospital nursery isn’t and for some reason no one cares.”

He saw that his words finally hit home because she had paled. But that gave him little satisfaction. He turned and walked out of her office and reception area into the bright October morning.

He was shaking inside. Where had that come from about the babies? But now that he thought about it, he was certain there’d been two babies in the nursery.

Just as he was certain there’d been a murder. Now all he had to do was prove it—against all odds, because his instincts told him he was right. If that woman was ever going to get justice, it would be up to him.

THE MOMENT the office door closed, Roberta Warren let out the breath she’d been holding. Her hands were trembling as she reached into the drawer for the small bottle of vodka she kept there disguised in a water bottle.

Taking a sip, she told herself that there was no reason she should be so upset. But when Cordell Winchester had called questioning whether or not there had been a murder more than three months ago at the hospital, she hadn’t thought anything of it.

That was because he hadn’t mentioned that the murder his brother thought he’d seen had been in the hospital nursery. Or that the woman had been found in a pool of her own blood. Or that there had been two babies in bassinets in the nursery the night of the murder.

Roberta Warren took another sip of the vodka and quickly put the lid back on the water bottle. Her hands were a little steadier, but her heart was still pounding. The man couldn’t have possibly dreamed any of this. Who dreamed a murder in such detail? But was he just fishing or did he know something?

She took a mint from her drawer and chewed it, debating how to handle this. The best thing was to ignore it. Cyrus Winchester would tire soon since he would keep running into dead ends, and he would eventually go back to Denver.

But then again, she hadn’t expected him to come all the way to Whitehorse to chase a nightmare. She’d heard the determination in his voice. The fool really thought he was going to get justice for the dead woman.

Calmer, Roberta picked up the phone and almost dialed the number she hadn’t called in thirty years. She put the phone down. She was overreacting. That was probably what he hoped she would do. But still she worried that this would get all over town, hell, all over the county, if he continued to ask questions.

If he didn’t give up soon, she would have to come up with a way to dissuade him.

She stood, smoothed her hands over her skirt and walked to the window, half expecting to see Cyrus Winchester standing outside her office, staring in as if he thought he could make her feel guilty enough to panic.

Well, he didn’t know her, she thought, but she was glad to see him drive off anyway.

THE OCTOBER DAY WAS sunny and blustery. Golden leaves showered down from the trees and formed piles in the gutters. The air smelled of fall with just a hint of the snowy winter days that weren’t far off.

He was driving down a wide, tree-lined street when he saw the single-level brick building. Even with the sign removed, Cyrus recognized the old hospital. The realization gave him a chill.

As he pulled to the curb, he saw that apparently the movers hadn’t completed the job of removing the furnishings, because there was a large panel truck parked out front and both front doors of the building were propped open.

Getting out of his pickup, Cyrus walked along the sidewalk past the truck. The back was open, a ramp leading into the cavernous, dark interior. He glanced in and saw a dozen old wooden chairs, some equally old end tables and several library tables.

As he passed, he saw that on the side of the truck were painted the words Second Hand Kate’s. Under that in smaller print, Used Furnishings Emporium.

“Hello?” he called as he stepped through the open front doors of the old hospital. The interior still had that familiar clinical smell and that empty, cold feeling he remembered. He reminded himself that it had been empty now for more than three months.

“Hello?”

No answer.

He walked down the hallway, his boot heels echoing on the discolored worn tile. He hadn’t realized where he was going until he reached the nursery windows.

His breath caught in his throat as he shoved back his Stetson and, cupping his hands, looked through the blank glass. The cribs and furnishings were gone, the room bare, but he could see it as the nursery had been in his memory.

A half dozen bassinets, but only two babies. Both boys with little blue blankets and ribbons on the bassinets, he recalled with surprise.

He touched his fingers to the pane, then quickly pulled them away as a memory moved through him like a spasm. With a jolt, he remembered seeing the murdered woman right before she was killed.

He had stood in this very spot and watched her switch the babies in the bassinets.

“CYRUS, DO YOU REALIZE what you’re saying?” He’d had to go outside to get cell phone service. “I saw her purposely switch the babies. Cordell, she stood there for a long moment as if making up her mind.”

He could almost hear his twin’s disbelief.

“I know how crazy it sounds, but when I saw this place as I was driving by, even without the sign, I knew it was the old hospital because I recognized it. Cordell, I walked straight to the nursery. When I touched the glass—” He shuddered at the memory. “I felt something so strong, I can’t explain it.”

“Okay, let’s say you saw this woman who was later murdered after switching the babies,” his brother said finally. “It should be easy enough to find out if there were two baby boys in the nursery while you were there.”

He sighed. “I already asked the hospital administrator. She swears there were no babies in the nursery that night.”

“So you think she’s lying? The whole town is lying? Why would they do that?”

Cyrus had no idea. He was more concerned with how he was going to prove it. “The hospital administrator won’t let me talk to the nurses who were on duty that night without a subpoena.” He heard his brother sigh. “I have to go see the room I was in. I’ll call you later. Stop worrying about me. I know what I’m doing.”

He disconnected and walked back into the hospital. He felt scared as he entered the long corridor of worn tile. He’d heard the fear in his twin’s voice. Maybe he couldn’t trust his own judgment. Or maybe it was just that no one else trusted it.

Cyrus heard someone singing from one of the mazelike hallways deep in the building. At least that was real, he thought. The woman had a good voice and he recognized the country-western song. It was one of his favorites.

Past the nursery, he walked down to what he was certain had been his room. It was right beside what had been the nurses’ station. Didn’t this prove that he had regained consciousness at some point while still in this hospital that night?

He started to step into the room when he saw her. She came out of a doorway at the end of the hall and started toward him, a pair of iPod buds in her ears. She was singing along with the song, completely lost in the music.

As she came closer, Cyrus felt all the air rush out of him.

It was her!

The woman he’d seen switch the babies in the hospital nursery. The woman he’d found murdered right here in this old hospital more than three months ago.

Chapter Four

Cyrus stared at the woman as if she were an apparition. Everyone was right. He was losing his mind. Fear turned his skin clammy. He told himself he was seeing things, imagining her the same way he had the murdered woman.

As the young woman looked up then and saw him, she appeared startled. She slowed, looked unsure. He half expected her to vanish before his eyes.

“Can I help you?” she asked, frowning, as she walked toward him. Was it possible she recognized him? Or was she just surprised, thinking she was alone in the building?

As she drew closer, he saw that either his memory was in error or this wasn’t the woman. But she looked enough like the murder victim to be her sister. Her hair was more copper than auburn, her eyes emerald rather than aquamarine and she was shorter than the murdered woman, although about the same age.

She had a small wooden nightstand in one hand and a slat-back wooden chair in the other and she wore blue denim overalls over a white T-shirt, sneakers on her feet. The logo on the overalls read Second Hand Kate.

“Are you all right?” she asked as she plucked out the earbuds.

He knew he must have lost all color. While he’d been getting stronger every day, the shock of seeing her had left him feeling weak and shaky.

He realized how bad he must look when she asked, “You know the hospital moved, right? Do you need someone to drive you up to the new one?”

He could hear the murmur of the music coming from the iPod in her overalls pocket. He shook his head and finally found his voice. “Sorry, I called out as I came in … “

She smiled. It seemed to light up the old building and the sweet innocence in the gesture tugged at his heart. This wasn’t the woman he’d seen murdered in the nursery, but she had to be a relative. Wasn’t it possible she’d seen him at the hospital?

“Do you know me?” he asked.

She looked at him as if he might be joking. “Should I?”

He shoved back his Stetson and smiled sheepishly. “You look familiar. I thought … You don’t happen to have a sister, do you?”

“Sorry.” She was smiling again as if she thought this was a bad pick-up line.

She was definitely not the woman he’d seen. This woman, while the spitting image of the murder victim, lacked the darkness he’d felt in the dead woman. This woman was all sunshine and rainbows.

“Is this for the secondhand shop?” he asked, motioning to the furniture and then to the logo on her overalls, desperately needing to say something that didn’t come out stupid.

She nodded, clearly pleased with the items. “They don’t make furniture like this anymore. I can’t wait to refinish some of these pieces,” she said, her enthusiasm bubbling out.

“So you must be Kate.” Not a nurse. Or even a nurse’s aide here at the hospital.

“The Kate in Second Hand Kate’s.” She set down the chair and wiped her free hand on her overalls and held it out to him. “You aren’t interested in used furniture, are you?”

“I might be,” he said, realizing he was flirting with her. He held out his hand. “Cyrus Winchester.”

“Winchester? You’re not related to—”

“The sheriff is my cousin and Pepper is my grandmother.”

“Oh.” She chuckled. “I see.”

“You know them?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I just moved here, but I’ve heard stories. Your grandmother is pretty famous around here. I’ve always wanted to meet her.”

“Infamous, you mean.” The Winchesters had always provided fodder for good gossip. His grandmother had been a recluse for the past twenty-seven years, his grandfather had ridden off on a horse one day forty years ago and never been seen again—until recently—and one of his uncles had only turned up after a gully washer had washed up his remains.

She turned her smile on him again. “Kate Landon.”

Cyrus felt a gentle shock run through him at her warm, strong touch.

“So you just happened to stop by the hospital to … “

“Return to the scene of the crime.” She laughed and he added quickly, “So to speak. I was brought in a few months ago by ambulance and spent a night here. I

don’t remember much about it. They tell me I was in a coma.”

She instantly sobered. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“I’m fine now.” Sure you are. You thought this woman had been murdered just down the hall in the nursery. Or at least her sister had. Except she doesn’t have a sister. “I’m just going to take a look around, if that’s okay.”

“Sure. Just do me a favor, if you don’t mind. This is my last load. Close the doors when you leave? There’s a chain with a padlock on the outside that loops through the door handles.”

He’d forgotten how trusting people were in small towns. “I’d be happy to lock it on my way out.”

“Thanks.” She seemed to hesitate, her green eyes darkening. “Take care of yourself.”

Cyrus knew he was being paranoid, but her words seemed to echo in the still, empty hallway like an omen.

KATE CARRIED the end table and chair out to the truck, put it in the back with the last of the furniture, pushed in the ramp and slammed the rear doors, smiling to herself.

It had been a while since a man had openly flirted with her—let alone a very handsome cowboy. At the memory of the man she’d met inside, her gaze felt pulled back to the old hospital. The interior was deep in shadow, but she thought for a moment she saw movement in the darkness behind the open double doors.

Her friend Jasmine, a Whitehorse native, had kidded her about watching out for ghosts at the hospital. “Seriously, the nurses used to tell stories of feeling something in that old hospital when they worked the night shift and this one nurse swore she saw the ghost of this woman coming down the hall toward her.”

Kate had laughed, figuring Jasmine was just fooling with her. She’d felt a little creepy in the old building alone earlier, but had just turned up her music. Now though, she would have sworn she saw a figure just beyond the doorway.

But when she’d turned to look down the long side of the building, she’d seen a set of white metal blinds flash open at a window in a far room.

Cyrus Winchester peered out for a moment, then closed the blinds again.

She felt a chill, remembering the feeling that someone had been watching her from just inside the hospital doors. It couldn’t have been Cyrus. Had someone else been in there?

“It’s the ghost of that woman,” Jasmine would have said.

Fortunately Jasmine wasn’t with her.

You’re just imagining things. But she decided she would swing by later and make sure no one had gotten locked inside the old building.

As she climbed behind the wheel of her truck, she forgot all about ghosts. It was Cyrus Winchester she couldn’t get off her mind. He had startled her earlier when she’d looked up and seen him standing in the hallway. Blame Jasmine for her darned ghost stories.

Cyrus Winchester had looked nothing like the legendary ghost woman standing there so tall, dark and exceedingly handsome.

Yet there had been something haunting in his eyes …

She shivered at the thought, remembering that when he’d seen her he’d looked as if he was the one who’d seen the ghost. Probably just recovering from his injuries. Still, it was odd, him wanting to return to the scene of the crime, as he’d said. Who visited his old hospital room?

She looked again at the windows where he’d peered out just minutes ago. With the blinds closed, she could see nothing but white metal.

Turning the key, she started the engine and a Christmas song came on the radio. It was too early to be thinking about Christmas. She was still gearing up for her annual Halloween haunted house. She turned the radio dial until she found country and western and turned her thoughts to Halloween.

She planned to transform the basement of Second Hand Kate’s into a haunted house. She’d only been in town for a few months and it was her way of welcoming the community into her new store. The basement of the old two-story, once-a-library building with all its nooks and crannies was the perfect place for chills and thrills.

Fortunately, she’d managed to make a couple of friends who’d offered to help her. Jasmine was sewing some of the costumes and backdrops while Andi preferred working with the blood and guts, turning perfectly normal food into something gross and frightening.

Kate couldn’t wait to hear the children’s shrieks and screams, giggles and gags. She hoped for a good turnout Halloween night. But she still had a lot of work to do and was glad she’d finally gotten the last of the furniture out of the old hospital. There had been no hurry, but she hated leaving anything undone.

As she drove away, her cell phone rang.

“I found the most perfect fabric for the ghost in the pit of horror,” Jasmine said, making her laugh.

“Of course you did. I was just thinking of you.” She’d met Jasmine soon after she’d come to town at where else? A garage sale. The two had realized how much they had in common when they’d both tried to buy the same ugly chair.

“Oh, yeah?”

“I was just leaving the old hospital with the last of the furniture.”

“You saw the ghost.” Jasmine sounded excited. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“What I saw was no ghost. I just ran into Cyrus Winchester.”

“Who?”

“Pepper Winchester’s grandson. You’ve never met him?”

“No. So what is he like?”

“Gorgeous.” She almost added, “and a little strange,” but chastised herself for even thinking it. The man had just come out of a coma.

“Sounds like a Winchester. Black hair and eyes?”

“Uh-huh. Tall with broad shoulders and slim hips that look great in Wrangler jeans.” Kate remembered how good-looking he’d been standing there in his Stetson and boots. Even now she couldn’t put her finger on what it was about him that had left her feeling afraid for him.

“Wait a minute, is he the one who was in the hospital with the coma?” Jasmine and Andi always knew more of what was going on than Kate ever did. Jasmine worked at City Hall so she heard all the good stuff and Andi was the local newspaper reporter.

“Uh-huh.”

“He and his brother are private investigators in Denver. I heard he’s drop-dead gorgeous and that he and his brother are identical twins,” Jasmine said.

“Really?” She felt a chill at discovering Cyrus was a private investigator, but tried to hide her reaction from her friend. She’d never told anyone in Whitehorse about her past.

“What was he doing at the old hospital?” Andi asked.

“He stopped by to visit his room.”

“Seriously? Don’t you think that is a little macabre? Maybe he died there, you know, went toward the light but was pulled back and now he’s trying to call up the other side.”

“Or maybe you’ve been spending too much time planning the haunted house,” Kate suggested.

Her friend laughed. “Swing by and I’ll show you the fabric. I also have some old white curtains I can use for the ghosts, but I want your opinion first.”

Kate was tired and dirty from hauling dusty old furniture, but she agreed. “See you in a minute.” She hung up and on impulse, circled around the block and made a point of driving back past the hospital.

The pickup with the Colorado plates that had been parked behind her truck was still there, which meant Cyrus Winchester was still inside the hospital.

What was he doing in there?

THE HOSPITAL ROOM was exactly as he remembered it. Cyrus had quit asking himself how he knew that. Obviously he hadn’t been unconscious the entire time.

When he’d opened the blinds, he’d seen Kate Landon sitting in her truck. Was she worried he wouldn’t lock up? She couldn’t be worried that he’d steal anything, since clearly there was nothing left in the building to steal.

He’d dropped the blinds and searched the room, not sure what he was hoping to find. Of course there was nothing either in the room or the bathroom but dust. How quickly the building was falling into disrepair.

When he peeked out the window again, the Second Hand Kate’s truck was gone. He had wanted to question her further, but had warned himself not to ask too many questions that would scare her.

She looked too much like the murder victim not to have some connection. He would have to find out what he could about the Landon family.

Leaving his former hospital room, he walked down the hall, his boot heels echoing. The place had taken on an eerie feel. He stopped to listen as if he thought he could tap into the building’s history, feel all the lives that had traveled through here from birth to death and all the broken bones and illnesses in between.

But of course he couldn’t. He wasn’t psychic. He’d seen someone switch two baby boys in the nursery and then become a murder victim. That was a far cry from being able to tell the future.

He thought about calling Cordell and telling him about Kate Landon. But he knew his brother would try to come up with some reason Kate looked so much like the murder victim.

“You must have seen her before you were attacked, before the coma, and unconsciously put her in your dream,” Cordell would say.

Unfortunately, everything that had happened between his last memory of driving to Montana and waking up was lost. Except for what had happened that one night in the old hospital. He knew that alone should be proof the murder was just a bad dream.

At the nursery, he paused. It was just inside there that he’d found the dead woman. He walked a few feet down the hall, found the door into the nursery and stepped in.

Fortunately the power company hadn’t turned off the electricity yet. He snapped on the light and studied the room, trying to picture where the bassinets and other equipment had been in this room that night.

At the back of his mind, a thought nagged at him. Why was the equipment still here that night? Why were there two babies still here if most everything had been moved to the new hospital?

He shoved the thought away. It didn’t make any sense, but then again none of it did.

Cyrus moved to within feet of the spot where he believed the body had been sprawled. The woman had put up a struggle. In the semi-soundproof nursery and the near-empty hospital, it was no wonder no one had heard it.

Crouching down, he studied the worn tile. There were scuff marks, dust, some dirt and a scrape where something heavy had been dragged out. He wondered if the blood would show up in the thin cracks between the tiles with the luminol crime labs used?

Unfortunately, there was little chance of getting the crime lab involved, since the sheriff’s department wasn’t even investigating the murder.

Because there was no murder. No switching of babies in the nursery. No way you could have seen a dead woman because you were in a coma tethered to your bed by tubes and monitors. All this was just a coma-induced bad dream.

Sometimes he wished he had dreamed all of it so he could just quit this. As he started to push himself to his feet, he was blinded by another flash of memory. The woman lying in a pool of blood, him leaning over her, something on her wrist.

A string of tiny silver sleigh bells. A bracelet. One of the bells had come off and lay on its side in the blood next to her clutched fingers. The woman had put up a fight.

HEAD ACHING and even more mystified, Cyrus left the old hospital and drove down to the main drag. He parked in front of the Milk River Examiner, the local weekly newspaper, and climbed out, breathing in the crisp Montana air. The detailed images that kept flashing through his memory were starting to worry him.

Why hadn’t he remembered all of it the moment he’d awakened? Why did it keep coming to him, little pieces that were so clear …. He shoved his worry away and entered the newspaper office.

It was small and sold paper supplies as well as putting out a weekly edition.

He took a current newspaper—and one from three months ago that would have come out the week he was taken to the hospital and the week after that. From the young clerk behind the counter, he also borrowed the phone book long enough to look up the last name Landon.

The nearby towns along the Hi-Line were all small enough that they’d been put into the same phone book. There was only one Landon in the entire the directory. Kate. What had he been thinking? If she had any female relatives here, they could be married and have different last names.

Returning the phone book to the clerk, he paid for his newspapers and stepped outside. Across the street was a small park next to the railroad tracks. He sat down at one of the picnic tables and opened the first newspaper.

The paper had a lot of local news about who was in town visiting and who had a birthday or anniversary. He paused on an ad for Second Hand Kate’s, complete with an address and news about her recent opening—and her first annual haunted house to be held there Halloween night.

Cyrus realized Halloween was only a few days away.

There wasn’t anything else in the paper that caught his eye, so he picked up one from three months ago. Under the sheriff’s department reports he found the incident that had put him in a coma. It was brief, only a few words about a deputy responding to a call at the Whitehorse Hotel where a man had been attacked and taken to the hospital. The suspect was still at large.

He scanned through the rest of the four-page paper and found the obituary for the man who had died in the hospital the same night Cyrus was there. The man’s name was Wally Ingram.

On impulse Cyrus called 411 on his cell and was put through to Wally Ingram’s home number. He was surprised when it rang. He’d been half expecting to hear the line had been disconnected following the man’s death.

“Hello?” The woman sounded young.

Cyrus quickly explained that he’d been in the hospital the same night as Mr. Ingram and wondered if any of the family had also been there.

“My mother stayed with Grandpa that night.”

He felt his pulse quicken. “I’d like to talk to your mother if possible. Is she around?”

“Martha’s gone to Great Falls and won’t be back until late tonight, but you could probably catch her tomorrow morning.”

He left a message to have Martha Ingram call him and hung up, feeling hopeful. Someone else had been in the hospital that night, someone not connected to the staff.

The answer was in this town, Cyrus thought, and felt a strange sense of apprehension. Little scared him, but he knew at the back of his mind, he was beginning to question his own sanity.

CYRUS CHECKED the newspaper from a week after his accident and read about his brother and another private investigator from California, Raine Chandler, catching some child molesters, one of them responsible for putting him in the hospital.

As he walked back to his car, he felt antsy. The air had cooled down some, the day not quite as beautiful as it had been. He wondered if a storm was coming in.

Sliding behind the wheel of his pickup, he didn’t kid himself about where he was going or why as he drove down the street to the address that had been listed in the newspaper for Second Hand Kate’s. He was relieved to see the Open sign in the window.

Getting out, he climbed the steps of the large, old brick building. Over the door, he could make out the faded letters of the word Library. She’d put her shop in an old library building.

The door opened, a bell tinkled and he caught the scent of orange and cinnamon. He breathed in the sweet, rich smell, glad of the warmth inside the shop as the door closed behind him.

He’d expected piles of old furniture—not this decorated, attractive shop.

“Be right with you!” Kate called from somewhere above him. He noticed a beautiful, wide stairway that climbed to the second floor. There was a small sign that read Private.

As he walked around the lower floor, he saw that each room had its own setting, each unique and charming. It felt almost magical, the lighting, the tapestries, the overstuffed chairs, the colors and textures, trinkets and curios. He remembered what she’d said about refinishing the furniture she’d gotten from the old hospital and could see her handiwork throughout her shop.

He could well imagine the condition many of the old items had been in before she’d worked her magic. It surprised him what wonders she’d achieved with a collection of what most people would have discarded as worthless. He could feel Kate’s energy in every room. It was like walking into the woman’s home rather than a shop.

At a rustling sound, he turned to see Kate Landon come down the wide flight of stairs. She’d showered and changed since he’d seen her at the old hospital and now wore a colorful skirt and top with black ballet slippers.

Her hair was still damp and hung around her shoulders, a coppery wave that framed her face and set off her wide green eyes. She was so stunning he stared, completely enchanted with this woman who could turn trash into treasure. As he stared at her, he realized that before, all he’d seen was her resemblance to the dead woman, now …

“Hello,” she said in a lyrical tone. She seemed amused to see him again.

“After meeting you, I decided I’d better see your shop,” he admitted honestly.

She smiled, opening her arms to take in the expansive rooms. “It’s still a work in progress. I haven’t been open all that long. I bought the building at an auction four months ago.”

So she had been in town before his coma. Which meant he could have seen her, just as his brother would have suggested, and that was how she became part of his nightmare.

“Your shop is amazing. You’ve done wonders with it,” he said glancing around although all he really wanted to do was look at her.

“Halloween night the basement is being turned into a haunted house,” she said. “You should come. If you’re still in town.”

“I just might do that.” His gaze locked with hers. “Do you have plans for dinner tonight?” The invitation came out of nowhere, surprising them both.

Her eyebrows shot up.

“I realize we just met and you know nothing about me.”

She smiled. “In a town this size? Are you kidding? Everyone in town knows your life history by now.”

He returned her smile. “I hope what you heard wasn’t all bad.”

“Not all of it,” she teased. “I’d love to have dinner with you, but I’m afraid I have other plans tonight.”

Of course she would have a date, a woman like this.

“I have to help my friend Jasmine sew some props for the haunted house. She sews, I help by providing the food and moral support. But I am planning on stopping by the Fall Festival later this evening. Maybe I’ll see you there if you’re going. There’s going to be frybread. I never pass up frybread.”

“Great.” Cyrus wondered if this woman was why he was supposed to come back to Whitehorse. Maybe it hadn’t been about a murder at all. Maybe he’d been destined to return to meet this woman. He liked the idea much better than the alternative.

It made more sense than any other explanation he could come up with. Which would mean there was no murdered woman in the nursery. No switching of babies. No wandering down an empty hospital hallway. None of that had happened.

Instead Kate Landon had happened. He smiled to himself, desperately wanting to believe she was the reason he was in Whitehorse as he shoved off the doubts that had plagued him, the things that made no sense.

He told that nagging little voice demanding a logical explanation for everything to shut up. It didn’t matter why he’d walked right to the old hospital nursery earlier today, why he’d been able to find his room, why he knew how the tile felt on his bare feet, or the big one, why Kate Landon looked so much like the murdered woman that he’d thought she was the victim’s younger sister.

Couldn’t it be possible that he’d had the dream just to get him back here to meet Kate?

Cyrus felt as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He was freer than he’d felt since he’d awakened from his coma. He told himself that he could let it go.

Those months would always be lost, but he had come out of the coma with apparently no long-lasting side effects. He’d been lucky. He was alive. It was time he started enjoying that fact. Just as Roberta Warren, the hospital administrator, had told him.

But as he turned to leave, Cyrus saw something in a glass cabinet that changed everything.

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