The hunt for justice…and love…begins

Jack French has had two long years of prison-ranch labor to focus on starting over, cleaning up his act and making things right. When he comes home to close-knit Beartooth, Montana, he’s bent on leveling the score with the men who set him up. The one thing he doesn’t factor into his plans is beautiful Kate LaFond.

With adventure-seeking in her blood, Kate’s got big dreams to chase and a troubled past to put to rest. And even though a red-hot connection to a woman with her own set of secrets isn’t part of Jack’s plans, he just can’t resist Kate and the gold cache she’s after…even if it comes at a price.

But when Kate is accused of murder, he realizes she’s not only a suspect, but a target. In the Montana wilderness, he’ll do whatever it takes to keep her safe from a killer on a quest to rob them of their chance of a new, passionate life with each other.

Dear Reader,

I couldn’t help thinking of my dad, Harry Burton Johnson, as I wrote this book. I grew up on stories of lost treasure. What could be more exciting than finding a river of gold hidden in the rocks on some remote mountain?

Dad loved to travel and believed it was the best education there was for children. Because of that, I’ve tromped around with him all over the West looking for artifacts and other lost treasures.

If there is anything I’ve learned it’s that the journey really is more important than what lies hidden at the end. I cherish those times with my father—and I love that we live in a world where there is still lost treasure.

B.J.

From Redemption

He had the most amazing smile. Kate figured the devil smiled like that. Mischief danced in his liquid blue eyes. Gold flecks flashed like sunshine on warm water as if inviting her to come in for a dip.

The calloused pads of his fingertips trailed down from her cheek to the corner of her mouth. This was no urban cowboy. He brushed his thumb across her bottom lip. His gaze followed it. At first she thought he didn’t feel the uncontrollable shudder that moved through her. But when he glanced from her lips to her eyes again, he gave her a knowing grin.

She’d had enough of this, she told herself, and, pushing her hands between them, put her palms against his hard chest.

She opened her mouth to tell him his kind of cowboy charm didn’t work on her, but when she parted her lips to speak, his mouth dropped to hers, robbing her of her breath and her senses.

Redemption

B.J. Daniels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This book is for my father,

Harry Burton Johnson,

the best storyteller I ever knew. He loved nothing better than treasure-hunting stories, after spending most of his life searching for

lost treasure of one kind or another.

Born in a time when women had few choices,

he encouraged me to live life to its fullest

and loved that I became a writer.

He taught me to dream that anything was possible. Thanks, Dad. I sure miss you.

Contents

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

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

JACK DIDN’T WANT ANY TROUBLE. He couldn’t afford any. That was why he decided to keep walking right past the Range Rider bar and the blaring Western music, through the darkness that shrouded the long-ago abandoned buildings of his hometown.

A sliver of moon hung over the top of the mountains among a plethora of stars in a midnight sky bigger than any he swore he’d ever seen. He could smell spring in the pines and on the snow-fed water as the creek rushed past town.

When he was a boy he used to imagine what Beartooth, Montana, had been like in the late 1800s. A gold-rush boomtown at the feet of the Crazy Mountains. Back then there’d been hotels and boardinghouses, a half dozen saloons, livery stables, assaying offices and several general stores.

Once the gold played out, the town died down to what it was today: one bar, a general store, a café, a church and a post office. Many of the original buildings still stood, though, ghostly remains of what once had been.

As isolated as the town was, Beartooth had survived when many Montana gold-rush towns had completely disappeared. Towns died off the same way families did, he thought, mindful of his own. His roots ran deep here in the shadow of the Crazies, as the locals called the wild, magnificent mountain range.

Over the years two stories took hold about how the Crazy Mountains got their name. Native Americans believed anyone who went into the frightening, fierce winds that blew out of the inhospitable rugged peaks was crazy. Another story was about a frontier woman who had wandered into the mountains. By the time she was found, the story went, she’d gone crazy.

Jack believed being this close to all that wildness could make anyone crazy. His great-grandfather used to tell stories about gunfights and bar brawls on this very street. Of course, his great-grandfather had been right in the middle of it.

Blame the mountains or genetics—this was his family legacy. Trouble was in his genes as if branded to his DNA. But hadn’t he proven tonight that he could change? He’d been tempted to stop in for just one beer at the Range Rider. Why not, since it was his first night back in town?

But a two-year stint at Deer Lodge, Montana State Prison, for rustling a prized bull, had made him see that it was time to break some of those old family traditions. Didn’t matter that he hadn’t taken the bull. He’d been living as wild and crazy as the wilderness around Beartooth and it had caught up with him. He’d just made it easy for whoever had framed him.

He’d had two years to think about who’d set him up for the fall and what he was going to do about it. Or whether he was going to forget the past and move on with his life. Not that prison had been that bad. He’d spent those couple of years on the prison’s cattle ranch, riding fence, chasing cattle, doing what he had since he’d been old enough to ride.

But now he was back in the only place that had ever been home.

A pickup roared past with a glow-in-the-dark bumper sticker that read: Keep Honking, I’m Reloading. Jack breathed in the night and the scent of dust along the narrow paved road, which turned to gravel just past the abandoned filling station and garage at the edge of town.

As the truck’s engine roar died off, he heard raised voices ahead, coming from the alleyway between the Branding Iron Café and the skeletal stone remains of what had been the Beartooth Hotel.

As his eyes adjusted, he saw a man standing in the ambient light of the café sign. At first he didn’t see the second figure. Jack caught only a few phrases, just enough to realize the man was threatening someone he had pressed against the stone wall of the café. It was too dark to see who, though.

“I’ve been looking for you,” the man said. “I just didn’t expect to find you here.” The voice didn’t sound familiar. Even after being gone for two years, Jack figured he probably still knew most everyone in this part of the county. Few new people moved here. Even fewer left.

Good sense told him to keep walking. Whatever was going on, it had nothing to do with him. The last thing he wanted to do was get involved in some drunken fight in an alley his first night home.

Earlier tonight he’d moved his few belongings into a small log cabin on the edge of town in the dense pines. The place was habitable and only a short walk from the café and the Beartooth General Store. It would work fine for the time being. He wasn’t sure he was ready to go out to the family homestead just yet.

Walking on past the alley, Jack congratulated himself on staying clear of trouble tonight. He would have kept going—at least that’s what he told himself—if he hadn’t heard her voice.

“Let go of me.” Definitely a woman’s voice. “I already told you. You have the wrong woman. But if you don’t leave me alone—”

Jack had already turned to go back when he heard a smack and her cry of pain. With a curse, he took off down the dark alley.

The man turned when he heard Jack’s boot soles pounding the hard-packed earth, coming fast in his direction. “Butt out. This isn’t any of your bus—” That’s all the man got out before Jack hit him.

The man was a lot bigger than he’d appeared from a distance. He had the arms of someone who’d spent a lot of time lifting weights. Jack caught sight of jailhouse tattoos on the man’s massive arms below the sleeves of his dark T-shirt, and swore. He was already thinking that getting beat up wasn’t exactly what he had in mind for his first night home. That was if he didn’t get himself killed.

The man staggered back into a slice of darkness, rubbing his jaw. He’d lost his Western hat when Jack had hit him. The hat lay on the ground between them.

“You just messed with the wrong man, cowboy,” the stranger said.

Jack couldn’t have agreed more as he braced himself for the man’s attack. He’d been in his share of fistfights in his younger days and figured at thirty-one he could still hold his own—at least for a little while. He just hoped the man wasn’t armed. That thought came somewhat late.

But to his surprise, the man looked past him in the direction of the woman, then turned, retreating into the pitch-blackness at the back of the alley. Odd, Jack thought, since the man hadn’t even bothered to pick up his hat. Was he going to get his gun? Jack didn’t want to find out. But a moment later, a vehicle door opened and slammed, an engine revved and the driver took off.

Jack leaned down and picked up the Western straw hat from the dirt before turning to the woman. “Are you all right?”

As she stepped away from the wall and into the diffused light from the café’s sign, he was taken by surprise. She appeared to be close to his own age, and definitely not someone he knew since she was dressed in jogging gear. No one in Beartooth ran—unless there was a bear after her. No one wore Lycra, either—at least not in public.

But that was the least of it. Dark hair framed the face of an angel, while ice-cold fury shone in her dark eyes. It took him a moment to realize that her anger was directed at him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I can take care of myself,” she said, snatching the hat from his fingers. “I didn’t need you coming to my defense.” She started to storm down the alley in the direction the man had gone.

Jack mentally kicked himself for getting involved in what now appeared to be a lover’s quarrel. He should have known better. Just as he should have known to let well enough alone and let the woman leave without another word.

“From what I heard, it sure didn’t sound like you didn’t need my help,” he said to her retreating back.

She stopped and turned to look back at him. Her eyes narrowed into slits as she stepped toward him, back into the faint glow of the café sign. “What you heard? What exactly is it you think you heard?”

He raised both hands and took a step back. “Nothing. I should have just left you alone to take care of yourself.”

“Yes, you should have.”

He nodded. “I won’t make that mistake again.”

With that, he turned and walked away, shaking his head at his attempt at chivalry. Still, he couldn’t help but think about the slash of red on her one perfect cheek where the man had obviously hit her. Well, whoever she was, like the man she’d been arguing with, she wasn’t from around here.

He told himself he wouldn’t be crossing either of their paths again—which was just fine with him.

“Welcome home,” he mumbled to himself as he headed for his cabin.

CHAPTER TWO

SHERIFF FRANK CURRY SHOVED back his Stetson as he watched the assistant coroner inspect the body. The sun was high and hot, another beautiful spring day in southern Montana. A breeze stirred the new leaves of the cottonwoods along the crystal-clear Yellowstone River. In the distance, the snowcapped peaks of the Crazy Mountains gleamed like fields of diamonds.

A fisherman had stumbled across the body in the weeds this morning after hooking into a nice-sized cutthroat. He was trying to land the fish when he’d practically fallen over the dead man.

From a nearby limb that hung out over the water, a crow cawed, drawing Frank’s attention away from the body for a moment. The bird’s dark wings flapped before it settled its black, beady eyes on him, as if to say he’d seen it all and could tell volumes if only Frank were capable of understanding a bird.

The crow cawed once more and flew off as Assistant Coroner Charlie Brooks stepped out of the weeds, rubbing the back of his neck. He was a short, squat man with timber-thick legs and a bald cue-ball of a head.

“I’d say he was killed sometime in the wee hours of this morning. Cause of death? Strangulation.” Charlie, like a lot of coroners, was a huge mystery fan. “The body hasn’t been here more than a few hours. Dumped, I would imagine, from up there.” He pointed to an embankment that led up to a gravel access road into Otter Creek. “Appears he rolled down, to come to rest at the edge of the river.”

Frank nodded—that had been his opinion as well. That was why he had one of his deputies up on the road making plaster casts of the tire prints closest to the edge of the embankment.

“Going to need to take some fingerprints once you get him to the morgue,” he told the coroner. “No identification on him that I could find.”

“We’ll put him on ice until you can get a positive ID and notify next of kin.”

Frank figured it shouldn’t take long. The man had spent some time in a penitentiary somewhere, given the array of prison tattoos on his arms and neck. His prints should be on file.

“What’s that he was killed with?” the coroner asked. “Appears to be some kind of fancy braided rope.”

“Hitched horsehair,” Frank said. “They make a lot of this up at Montana State Prison. That’s why around here, hitchin’ is synonymous with doing time. You ever heard the legend of Tom Horn? It’s said that he was hung with a rope he hitched while doing time in a territorial prison.”

“Horsehair dyed bright colors, huh? I’ll be damned.” A retired doctor, Charlie was new to Montana after living all his life in the big city.

Standing back, Frank watched as the assistant coroner and one of the local EMTs put the victim into a body bag and carried him to the fishing-access parking lot. In the distance he could hear the thrum of traffic on Interstate 90. Closer, a trout rose out of the water, the splash sending sparkling droplets into the morning air.

Frank watched the wavelets from the fish spread across the smooth surface. Murder had its own ripple effect. Shaking off the thought, he followed the path the body had made tumbling from the road. He hoped to find a wallet or something that might have fallen out of the man’s pockets.

Fortunately, in Montana, few people littered, so there were only a half dozen rusted beer cans, a couple of plastic water bottles and several pieces of dew-wet cardboard in the weeds. He was about to give up when he spotted what looked like a scrap of white paper caught high in the grass.

His hands still covered by the latex gloves he’d donned earlier, he plucked the scrap up, surprised to see that it was a photograph folded in half. Yellowed with age, the snapshot was also cracked down the middle because of the fold and worn at the edges as if it had been handled a lot. The people lined up in the shot appeared to be a family, the youngest still in Mama’s arms.

Frank turned the photo over and saw that something had been written on the back. The faded marks were impossible to read. But what made his heart beat a little faster was the realization that the photo hadn’t been in the grass long. It wasn’t even that damp from the morning dew.

All his instincts told him it had belonged to the unidentified dead man.

* * *

JACK WOKE TO POUNDING on his cabin door. He pulled on his jeans and stumbled barefoot to the door. “What in the—” He cut off his words with a grin as he saw who was standing there.

“Sorry to wake you so early, but I’m hungry,” Carson Grant said, smiling.

Jack reached for his friend’s hand, clasped it and pulled Carson into an awkward quick hug.

“It is so good to see you,” Carson said.

“You, too. Come on in.”

Carson had offered to come up to the prison and pick him up when he got out.

“Actually, the warden had my pickup released from Evidence and sent up here along with my horse and horse trailer, right after I was sent to prison. So I’ll be traveling in style,” Jack had joked about his old truck. “I will need a place to corral my horse, though, until I get settled.”

Carson had laughed. “That was awfully nice of the warden. Hell, Jack, you really do make friends everywhere you go. Just drop your horse at the W Bar G. I’ll tell my sister.”

“Give me a minute,” he said now as he snapped on his Western shirt. “I’ll get dressed and we can walk down to the café.”

“I was surprised to hear you weren’t staying out at your folks’ place,” Carson said as Jack pulled on his boots.

“Just needed a few days in town,” he said, hating to admit even to his best friend that he wasn’t prepared for the memories the homestead would evoke. He’d kept the property taxes up on the place, but still wasn’t sure he wanted to stay in Beartooth. “Ready?”

They walked down the mountainside through the pines, the morning sun shining through the branches to make golden puddles in the dried pine needles. A cool breeze blew down from the still-snowcapped peaks, but the sun felt warm as they walked to the Branding Iron. Jack swore he’d never smelled any air that was better than this.

Overhead, Montana’s big sky was a clear brilliant blue that stretched across the vast horizon. It was the kind of day that made a cowboy glad he was alive—and in Montana.

As Jack pushed open the café door, a bell tinkled overhead. The cook waved from back in the kitchen. Lou had been a permanent fixture at the Branding Iron for as long as Jack could remember.

“Sit wherever you like,” Bethany Reynolds called as she came out from behind the counter carrying a half dozen plates filled with food. Bethany, now close to thirty, had been waitressing at the café off and on since high school.

Jack breathed in the scent of coffee and crispy fried bacon as he slid into a booth across from Carson. “Bethany’s looking good,” he said.

“I wouldn’t let Clete hear you say that,” Carson warned. Bethany had married Clete Reynolds, a former football star. Clete owned the Range Rider bar and kept a variety of weapons behind the counter.

Jack was just marveling at how nothing in Beartooth ever changed when another woman came out of the kitchen. Her hair and eyes weren’t as dark as they’d appeared last night in the alley. Her slim body under her apron was tucked nicely into a pair of jeans and a Western shirt that set off her assets—something else he hadn’t gotten a good look at last night.

As she swept up to his table with two cups and a pot of coffee, she gave no indication that she recognized him.

“Good morning,” he said, studying her as he removed his Stetson and placed it on the seat next to him. She had a bruise on her cheek that she’d done a pretty good job of covering with makeup.

She put down the cups and filled them without looking at him or Carson, but Jack noticed that her hand trembled as she filled his. There was no doubt in his mind that she recognized him. Without a word though, she headed for a large table at the front of the café where a group of ranchers were seated.

Jack’s gaze followed her before finally turning back to his friend. “Who is that?”

Carson, who’d apparently also been watching the woman, gave a secretive smile. “You heard Claude Durham died a few months ago, right? That’s the new owner of the café, Kate LaFond. At least that’s the name she’s going by now. I swear I know her from somewhere and, wherever it was, Kate LaFond was not her name.”

“Really?” Jack said, letting his gaze return to the woman.

“Just saying you might want to stay clear of that one.”

Jack turned back to his coffee and took a sip. He figured that was probably good advice given what he’d seen last night, and yet his gaze strayed to her as she disappeared into the kitchen.

“So how are you settling in?” Carson asked after Bethany had taken their orders.

“It’s as if I never left.” Jack could feel his friend studying him.

“You aren’t still thinking about getting even with whoever set you up for the rustling fall, are you?”

Jack smiled and glanced toward the group of ranchers at the big table at the front of the café. He recognized all of them, including Hitch McCray. “Water under the bridge.”

Carson laughed. “If I didn’t know you so well, I might believe it. I just don’t want to see you end up back in prison.”

“That makes two of us.” Jack smiled as he leaned back in the booth and stretched out his long legs. “So how are you doing?”

“Gamblers Anonymous meetings in Big Timber once a week. Working the ranch the rest of the time.”

Jack nodded. He knew Carson had been through hell the past twelve years. First, the woman he’d loved had been murdered. Everyone in the county thought he’d killed Ginny West. To keep from losing his son to vigilante justice, Carson’s father, W.T., had sent him away for eleven years. Carson had ended up in Vegas, of all places, and gotten into trouble gambling.

Just recently he’d been cleared of the murder. But Jack knew that Carson was still paying off gambling debts and dealing with his father’s death. It didn’t matter that he’d never gotten along with W.T. Blood was always thicker than water, even when you wished it wasn’t, Jack thought, with his own regrets.

“So you’re sticking around?” he asked. Carson had sworn that the last thing on earth he was going to be was a rancher, and yet Jack knew for a fact that his friend was now wrangling on the family’s W Bar G ranch with his sister, Destry.

“For now,” Carson said. “Have you made any plans?”

Jack shook his head. He’d purposely not let himself think about the future, or the past, for that matter. Especially about how he’d ended up in prison. Or who might have put him there. Or maybe more to the point, what he intended to do about it.

“Interested in a job?” Carson asked.

“What do you have in mind?”

“Wrangling on the W Bar G.”

“Destry offered me a job when she heard I was getting out, but I thought she was just being nice.”

Carson laughed. “When it comes to the ranch, my sister doesn’t offer anyone a job just to be nice. If you’re serious about sticking around and staying out of trouble, I know she’d be happy to hire you on. Or maybe you’re planning to start ranching your folks’ place.”

“I’m not sure what I’m going to do, to tell you the truth.”

“Well, we’re going to be working the roundup the next few days and sure could use your help with branding if you’re going to be around.”

Jack considered Carson and Destry’s generous offer, then studied his worn but lucky cowboy boots for a moment. Was he staying? He knew it could mean trouble if he did and yet... He watched Kate LaFond walk past their table again.

“Thanks for the offer. I’ll give it some thought.”

“You do that.” Carson seemed to hesitate as if afraid to broach the subject. “Have you seen Chantell yet?”

Ah, Chantell Hyett. Jack knew it was just a matter of time before he crossed paths with his former girlfriend. “The only letter she sent me in prison made it clear she wouldn’t be waiting around for me.”

“You don’t sound all that broke up over it.”

He laughed. Chantell’s father was the judge who’d sent him up—and the only one who’d taken their relationship seriously. Maybe too seriously. Two years at Deer Lodge was a stiff sentence for rustling one bull that was returned unharmed within twenty-four hours after it had gone missing. Jack recalled the self-satisfied gleam in Judge Hyett’s eyes the morning he’d sentenced him. Jack had felt lucky he’d gotten only two years.

As the large table of ranchers paid and began to leave, Jack saw Hitch McCray headed for their table and swore under his breath.

“Jack French,” Hitch said, smiling around a toothpick stuck in the side of his mouth. The rancher was on the south end of his thirties. He ranched with his mother on land just down the road from the French place. Ruth McCray ran her son and her ranch with an iron fist. When Hitch could escape her, he sneaked away to chase women and drink, both to excess.

But none of those were the reasons Jack couldn’t stand the sight of the man.

“Hitch McCray,” he ground out through gritted teeth.

Jack had heard all the stories, even while in prison, including Hitch’s driving-while-intoxicated arrests. Not that he could blame the man for drinking. If Ruth McCray had been his mother, he would have tried to stay drunk, too.

Word around town was that Ruth was on the warpath over Hitch’s brushes with the law, as well as his drinking and his taste in women. Hitch chased after any woman he saw. But if he ever caught one, his mother wasn’t about to let him keep her. Ruth had never approved of any woman her son had brought home—and, no doubt, never would.

“So you’re back?” Hitch said, sounding surprised.

“This is where I was born and raised. Why wouldn’t I come back here?” Jack asked.

Hitch shrugged, his gaze sliding across the table to Carson. “Well, if you decide you want to sell your family’s place...I know it’s not much, but I might be interested.” He looked at Jack again. “You let me know. You two have a nice day,” he said, and laughed as if he’d said something funny.

“Don’t pay any attention to him,” Carson said as Hitch left. “You don’t know for sure that he had anything to do with you going to prison or what happened to your old man.”

Jack nodded. No, he didn’t know. Not yet, anyway.

Bethany brought out their breakfasts. They ate, talking little. Jack found himself watching the woman he’d met last night in the alley. Kate LaFond. At least that was the name she was going by now, apparently.

It wasn’t until he and Carson had finished their breakfasts and left that Jack could no longer help himself. He had to ask more about the new owner of the Branding Iron.

“I’ve been trying to place her since W.T.’s funeral,” Carson said. “I know I met her somewhere in the eleven years when I was away from Montana. But I’d swear her name wasn’t Kate LaFond.”

“You can’t remember where?”

“No, and it’s driving me crazy.”

“Why don’t you just ask her?” Jack suggested. When Carson said nothing, Jack eyed him more closely. “You think she was in some kind of trouble back then?”

“Or now. Why else change your name?”

Good question, Jack thought. “Maybe you have her confused with someone else.” Hadn’t he heard her say something like, “You have the wrong woman,” to the man in the alley last night? “She could just have one of those faces.”

Carson laughed. “Yeah, right.” Kate LaFond had the face of an angel. “But I suppose it’s possible,” he added doubtfully.

“Is that the rig she drives?” he asked as they walked past a newer model red pickup.

“Yeah,” Carson said and frowned. “Jack?”

“What?”

“I know that look. Don’t get involved with this woman.”

Jack nodded. Clearly the woman had secrets and some questionable acquaintances, considering the man she’d been arguing with last night. But right now he was more curious about what he’d seen in the bed of her pickup. A shovel covered in fresh dirt. Kate LaFond had been doing some digging—but not in the flower beds at the front of the café, which she’d let go to weeds.

“Where does she say she’s from?” he asked Carson.

“She doesn’t. No one seems to know anything about her. She just showed up after Claude Durham died and took over the café. Not even nosy Nettie Benton at the general store has been able to find out anything about her.”

“A woman of mystery,” Jack said, smiling with relish.

Carson swore under his breath. “Why did I bother warning you?”

How could Jack not be curious about her? He’d been warned to keep his distance by not only his friend, but also the woman herself.

* * *

KATE LAFOND WATCHED the two cowboys leave. She didn’t have to ask about the blond, blue-eyed handsome one who’d come in with Carson Grant. She’d already heard more than enough about Jack French.

“Just like his father,” one of the older ranchers had said, with a shake of his head, this morning before Jack and Carson had come in. She’d been busy refilling coffee cups at the large table of regulars who met in the café each morning. They’d mentioned they’d heard Jack had gotten out of prison and was back.

“Delbert French was one wild son of a bee in his day. He could ride anything and damned sure wasn’t afraid to try. But he couldn’t stay out of trouble for the life of him. The acorn didn’t fall far from the tree when it came to Jack.”

“Sad what happened to ol’ Del,” another rancher agreed. “Wonder if his boy plans to keep the family place.”

Hitch McCray had spoken up. “Smartest thing Jack could do is clear out. His father never amounted to anything on that piece of land. I doubt Jack will take to ranching any better than his old man did. He’d rather be a saddle bum.” Apparently, it was no secret Hitch wanted to buy the old French place.

Kate remembered how the others had gone quiet with disapproval. Hitch was the youngest of the regulars. She got the feeling that they didn’t particularly like him but put up with him because of his mother.

“Jack has as much right to be here as anyone,” Taylor West had said into the silence. “He’s paid for his mistake. If he really was the one who took that bull to start with.”

“Why would you say that?” Hitch had challenged. “He was caught dead to rights.”

“If Jack did rustle that bull, he was either drunk or just foolin’ around,” Taylor said. “Either way, Judge Hyett went awful hard on him. I suspect if Jack hadn’t been dating Judge Hang ’Em Hy’s daughter he would have gotten off with jail time served.”

The table had gone quiet after that. Kate had finished filling the coffee cups and gone to pick up their orders. By the time she’d returned with their breakfasts, the conversation had moved on to the weather.

Overhearing the earlier discussion now made her more curious about the man who’d come to her rescue last night. She’d been angry that he’d thought she needed rescuing. She’d been taking care of herself for so long she resented any help. The last thing she wanted was to be beholden to any man—especially one like Jack French. And now the cowboy thought he’d saved her last night.

She’d seen how surprised he’d been when her attacker had taken off without a fight. What Jack hadn’t seen was the small gun she’d pulled. The other man had seen it, though. One look at her and the gun, and he’d hightailed it.

Kate shuddered inwardly at the memory. She’d hoped she would have more time before one of them showed up. But she couldn’t let it rattle her. She’d deal with it, the same way she’d dealt with everything else in her life. But it did make her all the more aware that she needed to speed things up.

Late last fall, she’d barely gotten settled in before winter had hit with a fury. She’d realized quickly that she would have to wait it out. But now that spring had finally come to the mountains, she wasn’t about to let anything stop her. Or anyone.

Kate watched Jack French and his friend Carson Grant meandering up the street. She saw Jack peer into the bed of her pickup, then turn to look back as if he knew she’d be watching. She quickly turned away. Across the street, she saw movement in the room over the general store and groaned.

Jack French wasn’t the only one who was too curious about her and her personal business. Nosy Nettie Benton had been spying on her for months.

CHAPTER THREE

NETTIE BENTON TURNED OFF the vacuum and surveyed the room. She’d been talking for years about turning the storage area over the Beartooth General Store into an apartment.

It had taken her husband leaving for her to do more than talk. Bob had been gone four months now after packing up his pickup and leaving for Arizona, with no intention of ever returning. Not that she would take him back if he did.

She hadn’t expected to hear from him, given the way he’d left, but a few weeks ago she’d received a postcard. It had a cactus in bloom on the front and the words Greetings from Arizona. She’d turned it over, easily recognizing the handwriting of her husband of thirty years.

Just wanted to let you know that I made it without any problems. Hope all is well with you. Sorry about everything— Bob

She’d stared at the scrawled words for a moment and then dropped the postcard into the wastebasket without another thought. She felt guilty enough that she hadn’t given him a thought all these months, let alone missed him. But she was through with Bob Benton and realized she had been for years.

Bob’s parents had given them the store as a wedding present. Well, they’d given it to her, since Bob had no interest in being a shopkeeper, or anything else for that matter.

She was the one who worked in the store seven days a week, short days on Sunday because she had to go to church first. She prided herself on having a general store that carried everything from canned goods to diapers, muck boots to fishing tackle.

Nettie also prided herself on knowing everything that was going on in the small community. Most days, with business slow, she would perch in the front window of the store and watch what life there was pass by. She learned a lot doing that and liked to brag that she knew more about the people of Sweetgrass County than they knew even about themselves.

The bell over the front door of the store sounded below her. Nettie glanced out the window, saw Sheriff Frank Curry’s patrol pickup parked out front, then hurriedly checked her short, dyed-red hair in the mirror on the wall before she went down the stairs.

Her pulse jumped as it always did at the sight of the sheriff, who was standing just inside the door. She straightened, fighting a ridiculous grin, and did her best not to fuss with her new haircut.

“Mornin’, Lynette,” Frank said, tipping his Stetson. He was the only person who ever called her by her given name.

A big, broad-shouldered man, he looked as if he’d stepped out of an old Western movie with his thick, drooping mustache. Now in his late fifties, like her, he was even more handsome than he’d been when the two of them were young and in love. There were tiny laugh lines around his eyes, his face tanned from working outside when he wasn’t working for the law.

“Frank,” she said, still trying to hide how happy she was to see him. After all, legally she was still a married woman and, while Frank had done his share of flirting with her since Bob had left, he hadn’t even gone so far as to ask her out. The fact that she’d broken his heart thirty years ago seemed to have made him leery of going back down that particular trail.

“What can I get for you?” she asked as she watched him head for the cooler. He took out his usual orange soda and popped the top before taking a long drink. He smiled at her as he swallowed and reached for his usual candy bar.

“Just needed somethin’ cold,” he said.

She suspected he’d stopped in for more than orange soda and a candy bar. She hoped it was an excuse to see her. That she could be wrong, though, kept her from calling him on it.

“Warm for spring,” she said, glancing toward the front window of the store, with its view of the sharp peak in the distance that had given the town its name. Closer, she caught sight of the café across the street and Kate LaFond. The young woman was like a burr under her saddle and had been since the day she’d shown up in town.

Nettie was about to ask the sheriff if he’d checked up on Kate, something she’d asked him to do before Christmas. She imagined that he’d forgotten, given everything that had been going on back then.

But when he spoke, all thought of Kate LaFond vanished.

“There’s something I need to ask you,” Frank said as he moved to the counter. He put down his soda can and with obvious reluctance took a small plastic evidence bag from a pocket. “I need you to keep this just between you and me, Lynette. I’m going to need your word on that.”

She nodded, wide-eyed. He knew her too well. People considered her a terrible gossip, Frank included. But she would do anything for Frank. Even keep a secret.

He flattened what appeared to be an old photograph inside the bag and pulled a magnifying glass from his other pocket. “I know it’s hard to see through the plastic, but I’d prefer the snapshot not be handled too much.”

Her curiosity piqued, Nettie took the magnifying glass he offered her and leaned over the photo. As it came into view, dread filled her.

“You know those people?” Frank asked.

She knew he’d seen her reaction. She suspected he’d had much the same reaction himself when he’d gotten a good look at the photo. “Where did you get this?”

“Can’t say.”

The fact that it was in an evidence bag meant it was part of an investigation. Her pulse pounded as she took another glance at the faces in the photo, turned the bag over to look at the back of the snapshot, then handed him the magnifying glass.

“Well?” he asked.

“You know as well as I do it’s the Ackermann family.” She couldn’t imagine what he was doing with that photo, let alone what it was doing in an evidence bag or why he was warning her she had to keep quiet about it.

“Who else have you shown this to?” she asked. All that awful stuff had happened more than thirty years ago. Only residents as old or older than her and Frank would remember. But it wasn’t as if everyone else hadn’t heard about what had happened up there in the hollow outside town.

“You’re the only person I’ve shown it to.” He shook his head. “I was hoping you’d tell me I was wrong.”

“I just don’t understand why you’d be asking about the Ackermanns. They’re all dead.” She saw his expression and her heart fell. “Aren’t they?”

“I don’t know what this photo means, if anything. I just had to be sure I wasn’t wrong. I need you to keep quiet about this, Lynette. I’m serious.”

“You don’t have to worry about me saying a word.” She shuddered at the memory of what Frank’s father, who was sheriff back then, and his deputies had found up in that valley more than three decades ago.

“I knew I could trust you. That’s why I brought it to you,” he said.

His words made her heart beat a little faster as he put both the evidence bag and the magnifying glass back in his pocket. She watched him finish his soda, seeing the weight of this on his broad shoulders.

“What’s that written on the back?” she asked.

He shook his head as he paid for the soda and candy bar. “It looks like hieroglyphics to me.”

“Or a map of some kind.”

He looked up at her, and for the first time, his gaze seemed to brighten. “A map? You know you really are an amazing woman.”

She wasn’t actually blushing, was she? Nettie quickly scooped up the money he’d put on the counter and busied herself putting it in the cash register.

“I’d better get going.” As he glanced toward the street, he let out a curse. “I promised you I’d check on your new neighbor.” The Branding Iron Café was directly across the narrow strip of pavement from the store. “I’m sorry, it completely slipped my mind.”

“You’ve had a lot on your plate with the Ginny West murder case.” The murder had gone unsolved for eleven years—until late last fall when some new evidence had surfaced.

“Still, that’s no excuse. I told you I’d do it and I will.” He frowned. “Did I see an Apartment for Rent sign in your front window?”

“You know I’ve been threatening for years to use that old apartment upstairs for something other than storage.” She and Bob had lived up there when they’d first gotten married, but only until their house on the mountain behind the store had been finished. “I know I can’t get much rent for it, but I thought I’d try. Would be nice to have someone living up there who can help keep an eye on the store,” she added quickly. She didn’t want him to think she needed the money. Nor did she want him to think she missed Bob.

“Good idea,” Frank said, but she could tell he was distracted. “Lynette, if you ever need anything—”

“You don’t have to worry about me. I’m fine, Frank.”

He smiled, the warmth in his eyes making her feel like a schoolgirl again. “Yes, you are fine. By the way, I like your new haircut.” Then he hesitated. “You won’t say anything about—”

“No.” She swallowed back the bad taste in her mouth at the mention again of the Ackermann family. She almost wished he’d never shown her the photograph. When she’d looked past the faces, she’d seen the cave behind the house, a thick wooden door covering the opening, and remembered what had been found in the cold, damp darkness behind it.

She shuddered, hugging herself, and said a silent prayer for all of them as she watched the sheriff leave.

* * *

JACK REINED IN his horse to look out across the wide, green valley. He breathed in the day, never more thankful than right now that he’d come back here. Next to him, the creek roared as it tumbled through large granite boulders. Farther away, calves bawled for their mamas in a field of tall, new green grass and wildflowers.

He loved helping with spring roundup on the W Bar G, gathering the cattle in order to tally the calf crop and getting ready to tag and brand. It was a big operation on this huge ranch. He’d been riding for two long days now, combing the breaks and coulees for cattle and heading them toward the central point where other riders kept the herd together until they could be moved down to the corrals for branding.

Each night he’d fallen dead asleep, saddle sore and exhausted, hearing the sound of lowing cattle even when he closed his eyes. The work had kept him from thinking about anything other than cows. But the spring roundup was now over, and he had to make a decision whether to stay on at the W Bar G, ranch his own place, or sell out and move on.

“You’re good with horses and cattle,” Destry Grant said to him now as they rode back down toward the main ranch house. “I need someone I can trust, and my ranch manager likes you. Not that Russell will go any easier on you than he does on the rest of the wranglers.”

He grinned at that as they dismounted. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Destry gave him a hug. “I’m glad you’re back. So is Carson.” Carson had been his best friend since they were kids. Jack had lied for him eleven years ago, knowing that Carson had nothing to do with the death of his former girlfriend Ginny West. He would do it again, since Carson was the closest to a brother he’d ever had.

But being under suspicion of murdering his girlfriend had been rough on his friend. Carson had enough to overcome after being raised by W. T. Grant, an overbearing, controlling father. Rest his soul in peace, Jack quickly added. W.T. had died late last fall, leaving the ranch to Destry instead of Carson.

“Carson’s doing okay, right?” Jack asked as they walked toward the big house her father had built.

“He’s not gambling and he’s paying back what he owes,” she said. “But I worry about him. I think he’s restless.”

“He just needs a good woman,” Margaret said, and smiled at Jack as he and Destry reached the kitchen. “Welcome back.” Margaret had been W. T. Grant’s closest friend as well as the cook and housekeeper. When he’d died, he’d left the house to her, since Destry preferred to live in the old homestead down the road, until her upcoming wedding to Rylan West.

Rylan was in the process of getting a home built for them. The W Bar G and the West Ranch, where Rylan worked with his father, adjoined, so they were building on a site in the middle.

“You two aren’t trying to line Carson up, are you?” Jack asked, seeing that they were.

“Lisa Anne Clausen has had a crush on him since grade school,” Destry said and crossed her fingers. “They’d be good together.”

Jack shook his head. “I’m not sure Carson is ready. Just saying...”

Carson seemed to be doing fine, though, Jack thought as he drove toward Beartooth and his cabin. It made him proud that his friend was finally taking responsibility for himself and his actions. It was his gambling and the murder charge that had made W. T.

Grant cut his son from the will. Carson got to live in the big house as long as he was employed. Fortunately, he seemed to have taken to ranching after years of fighting it.

The long days on the W Bar G had also kept Jack out of trouble and away from the Branding Iron Café. Which meant he hadn’t seen Kate LaFond again. But he hadn’t stopped thinking about her. As he pulled up in front of his cabin, it was early, but he was tired and couldn’t wait to lie down and put his boots up.

The knock at his door what seemed to be only a few minutes later brought him out of a deep sleep. For a moment, he didn’t know where he was. He’d come into the cabin and collapsed on the bed still fully dressed after the long day in the saddle.

He rose now and padded to the door, thinking Carson must have stopped by for some reason.

When he saw the sheriff darkening his doorway, Jack felt that old, familiar fear he’d grown up with. The law at your door was never a good thing.

“Sheriff Curry,” he said, fighting to fully wake up. Whatever the sheriff wanted, Jack figured he needed his wits about him. “Is there a problem?”

“Sorry if I woke you,” the sheriff apologized.

“Been working spring roundup,” he said, but figured the sheriff probably knew that. Sheriffs tended to keep track of ex-cons, and Frank Curry had watched him grow up so probably took a special interest.

“I heard you’re on the W Bar G now.” Frank pulled off his hat. “Just need a minute of your time, Jack. I’ve got something here I was hoping you might be able to help me with. Mind if I come in for a moment?”

Jack stepped back, wondering what the hell this was about. He turned on another lamp and offered the sheriff a seat.

“I won’t be staying that long. If you’d just take a look at this...” He pulled a plastic bag out of his jacket pocket. Inside was a coiled thin rope. Even from a distance, Jack could tell it was hitched out of horsehair. He’d watched enough of the inmates at Deer Lodge making everything from reins and ropes to belts and hatbands.

Hitching involved twisting three or four strands of dyed horsehair into what were known as pulls. The pulls were used with cotton cord and a wood or metal rod to hitch the horsehair in a circular pattern. A series of hitches created a variety of colorful patterns, most commonly diamonds and spirals.

What amazed Jack was how long it took—a couple of hours to do only an inch of hitching. When finished, the cord or rod was removed. The item was then soaked in water and clamped between two heavy plates of steel to dry.

A lot of the inmates sold what they made, getting as much as four to eight thousand dollars for bridles. Belts, hatbands and quirts were cheaper, because they were faster to make.

“Do you recognize the pattern?” the sheriff asked. “Is it one from Montana State Prison?”

Jack took the bag and held it under the lamplight. The colors were brighter and the pattern different from ones he’d seen in prison. “It’s not from Deer Lodge,” he said and handed it back. “At least it isn’t like any I saw up there.”

The sheriff nodded. He put the bag back in his pocket. “You do any hitching while you were up there?”

Jack laughed. “I was working the prison ranch, so I kept plenty busy. I’ve watched a lot of guys hitch, though. Takes more patience than I have.”

“Well, thanks for your time.” He started to leave, but stopped and turned. “Oh, by the way, while you were up at the state pen, did you happen to run across Cullen Ackermann?”

The infamous Ackermann. The sheriff had asked the question casually enough, but it still put Jack on guard. “I made a point of staying away from crazy old cons—especially that one.”

Frank Curry nodded. “Was he still preaching revolution and the Armageddon of this country as we know it?”

Jack nodded, a little surprised by the sheriff’s interest. But, then again, Cullen Ackermann was Beartooth’s most infamous charismatic crazy, even though he’d never been considered a true local since he wasn’t born here.

“I suppose he found an audience up there before he died,” Frank said.

“He definitely had his followers in prison,” Jack said. “Young, anti-government wannabe survivalists were big fans of his. A few of them bought into what he was selling.” To fill the silence that followed, he added, “I think most of them were more interested in Ackermann’s cache of gold he allegedly hid before he got sent up.”

“That tale still circulating, huh?” The sheriff shook his head and looked as if he wanted to ask more, but apparently changed his mind. “Well, you have a nice night.”

Jack followed him out onto the small porch in front of the cabin and watched until the patrol pickup headed toward Big Timber, then he went back inside. He hadn’t asked where the sheriff had gotten the rope or why he wanted Jack’s opinion on the hitching pattern. Nor had he asked about the dried blood that stained the horsehair in the evidence bag.

Jack had learned a long time ago not to ask questions where he didn’t want to know the answers.

* * *

NETTIE WAS STOCKING groceries, trying to keep her mind off what the sheriff had shown her, when the girl came into the store. It had taken Nettie a few moments to get to her feet from down on her knees. Most of the time, she didn’t feel her age—it was easy to tell herself that she didn’t feel a day over thirty.

That was, until she tried to get up from where she’d been sitting on the floor and her body reminded her that she was hugging sixty. It was an odd feeling. Her life had always been ahead of her. Now most of it was behind her.

The girl had stopped just inside the door and turned to look out the front window. She was a skinny little thing with long, pale blond hair that fell most of the way down her back.

As if deep in thought, the girl didn’t seem to hear Nettie’s approach. Which, of course, made Nettie wonder what she found so interesting out the window.

Looking past her, Nettie followed the girl’s gaze to where three men stood talking in front of the post office up the street. She recognized two local ranchers. The third man was Sheriff Frank Curry.

“Can I help you?”

The girl jumped and spun around, eyes wide. She was pretty, with big, dark eyes, and older than Nettie had first thought, still somewhere in her late teens, though.

“I’m sorry,” Nettie said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” But she had, and badly.

It took a moment for the girl to catch her breath and speak. “I’m here about the apartment?”

Nettie studied her. She’d hoped to get a man, preferably one who could watch the place. With her house on the mountain behind the store, Nettie lived far enough away that she wouldn’t hear if the store was being burglarized during the night. Last fall a grizzly had broken the back window. Thankfully, something had scared the bear away or it could have gotten in and made one devil of a mess.

“I was hoping to rent it to a man,” she said.

The girl’s disappointment was almost palpable. “It’s just that there aren’t any other places to stay in Beartooth.”

That was because few people had any reason to come here, Nettie almost said. Big Timber was only twenty miles away and had a lot more amenities.

Nettie glanced from the girl to her small, newer model compact car parked in front of the store. “I would need first and last month’s rent and a deposit.” She named a number, a little higher than she’d originally planned to ask. She figured that would put an end to it.

“Okay,” the girl said. “I have cash.”

Cash? “How long were you thinking of renting the place?”

“I’m not sure. I’d be happy to pay for six months in advance if you’d consider me,” she added quickly.

Six months? “Mind if I ask what brings you to Beartooth?”

The girl brushed a lock of hair back from her face and lifted her chin almost as if in defiance. “I’m applying to art school in the fall and I need somewhere to work on my portfolio.”

It sounded reasonable. Even possibly true. So why did Nettie feel as though the girl had practiced it?

“I really would appreciate it if you would consider renting to me,” she said, pleading in her tone.

All red flags. “Shouldn’t you see the apartment first?”

“Yes, of course.” The girl was visibly nervous, but Nettie reminded herself that she was young. This was probably her first apartment. No doubt her mother and father would be paying the rent and for her art school, as well. So Nettie wouldn’t have to worry about bounced checks anyway.

“Come with me,” she said. “There is a private entrance outside up the stairs, but you can also get to the apartment through here.” She led the way, with each step telling herself to pass on this girl.

But curiosity had always been Nettie Benton’s downfall. And there was something about this girl—and her desperation to live in Beartooth.

CHAPTER FOUR

SHERIFF FRANK CURRY had always prided himself on his patience. He was used to the state crime lab being backed up for weeks, if not months. Investigations took time. Some arrests weren’t made for months and didn’t go to trial for years. Justice moved slowly, as most of Montana wasn’t automated. Things were done the way they’d been done for years, especially fingerprints.

Only a few cities in Montana had the electronic system. Otherwise, prints were taken the old-fashioned way and sent to the crime lab. He had no doubt that the victim’s prints would be in the system, since he was betting the man had done prison time somewhere, possibly even Deer Lodge at some point. Which could explain how he had the photograph in his possession, if he’d crossed paths with Cullen Ackermann before his death.

“It looks like a map,” Lynette had said of the faded marks on the back of the photo.

Maybe at one time it had been a map, but the drawings were indistinguishable now. Still, before he died Cullen could have given the photo and map to one of the boys. If any of the boys had survived. And if these marks on the photo were a map, was it to the fabled hidden gold?

Frank had learned to live with the slow pace investigations often took.

That was, until this one.

He couldn’t help feeling anxious. He had to know what he was dealing with, starting with the dead man he had cooling his heels in the fridge down at the local mortuary.

It’s that damned photograph. His gut instinct told him that the man on that slab at the morgue was connected to the Ackermanns. Maybe he’d made Cullen’s acquaintance in prison. But why then was the rope, according to Jack, not one that was hitched at Montana State Prison, where Ackermann had been confined for the past thirty years?

Frank knew his fear ran much deeper than that. Hadn’t he been afraid for years that Cullen Ackermann would release his vengeance on Beartooth, just as he’d promised all those years ago?

Cullen’s dead. All the Ackermanns are dead.

Were they? He told himself that if any of the children had survived all those years ago, they would have turned up long before this. All four boys, and the little girl had been presumed dead more than three decades ago. But the remains of only one of the boys had ever been found back up in the Crazies. Who was to say that one or more of them hadn’t survived? And had just now turned up.

But if so, why now?

“Because their father died,” he said to his empty office. “Cullen’s death triggered whatever is going on.”

He knew he was jumping to conclusions, which also wasn’t like him. But Assistant Coroner Charlie Brooks had estimated the dead man’s age at somewhere around forty-five. The boys in the snapshot ranged in age from about twelve to seventeen. This photo had to have been taken about thirty years ago, which meant that the dead man could conceivably be one of the boys.

Frank felt as if a clock had started ticking the moment Cullen Ackermann died. He had to know who the dead man was. Or wasn’t, he thought as he studied the photo again.

When he couldn’t take it any longer, he picked up the phone and called a local artist he knew. “Have you ever done a sketch of a dead man?”

“You mean like a police artist’s sketch?” his friend asked.

“Exactly.”

* * *

NEWS OF THE BODY found by the river shot through the county like a high-powered rifle report. But since the dead man was found near the Yellowstone River twenty miles away and no one was missing from Beartooth, the news died down quickly.

That was until the sketch of the dead man came out Saturday in the weekly Big Timber newspaper asking if anyone could identify the man.

“Probably just some bum off the interstate,” Jack heard people saying. He hadn’t seen the paper. He’d been too busy on the W Bar G. Nor was he interested. All his attention Saturday morning at the café was on Kate LaFond.

“Some homeless guy. Or a hobo,” he heard people saying.

He smiled to himself. Were there still hoboes who rode the rails?

The Branding Iron Café was packed this morning. Not because of the news about the dead man being found by the river a few days ago, but because the Sweetgrass County Spring Fair was this weekend in Big Timber.

Everyone looked forward to the fair. It was a sign that spring had finally arrived. The fair had everything from a rodeo, cattle auction and carnival, to arts-and-crafts booths and a swap meet. Plus it was a great excuse come spring to see everyone you hadn’t seen over the winter.

Jack was finishing his coffee when Kate came by to refill his cup. It was the first time he’d been to the Branding Iron since he’d started work at the W Bar G. Since Destry had given everyone the day off to attend the fair, and he’d taken advantage of it, he decided to treat himself to breakfast. At least that was the story he told himself.

As Kate had done days before, she seemed to make a point of not looking at him. But when she came by to refill his cup, he pushed it closer to make her job easier and her fingers brushed his. She jerked back. Hot coffee sloshed onto the table and she let out an unladylike curse under her breath.

He reached for the napkins. “Here, let me—”

“I’ve got it,” she snapped, her gaze coming up to meet his. In the alley, her eyes had appeared dark, like her hair. Now, though, he saw with delight that they were wide set and the color of good whiskey. Her hair was the same color, with strands of gold woven through it, and fell to just below her chin.

He drew back his fingers and watched as she snatched the handful of napkins from him and cleaned up the mess. The shock of her touch still warmed his blood. She, on the other hand, appeared to be fighting hard to hide her reaction.

As the café began to clear out, she hurried to ring up patrons at the till and help Bethany clean the tables. He watched her. The woman could flat-out move when the café was busy. He had to admire her work ethic and her efficiency. He guessed she’d waitressed before buying the cafe.

“Ever been to a branding?” Jack asked as Kate came by a second time to refill his coffee. She shook her head, not looking at him. “There’s going to be a big one out at the W Bar G starting Monday. You should come. Get to know some of your neighbors, you know, socialize a little.”

She raised her gaze to his again. He saw anger spark like a Fourth of July firecracker.

“That’s right, you don’t need anyone.” He softened his words with a grin. “Especially the likes of me, huh.”

Some of the fire died back in her dark eyes. “Especially.”

“I just thought you’d like to see some of the real Wild West before you leave Beartooth.”

“Who says I’m leaving?” she challenged.

“Aren’t you?”

She looked away for a moment, then said, “I suppose I could bring out some cinnamon rolls. I heard neighbors bring food.”

His grin widened. “That would be nice and neighborly.”

She let out an amused chuckle as she left his table. He watched her, too interested in her for his own good.

As she started to gather up dirty dishes from a large table, he saw her freeze. Curious, he watched as she picked up what appeared to be a folded piece of paper that had been stuck under the edge of a plate.

She turned her back as she unfolded the note to read it. He saw her shoulders slump. She grabbed the edge of the table as if suddenly needing the support. For just an instant, he almost went to her. But she quickly straightened, tucked the note into her apron pocket and picked up the dirty dishes.

Jack tried to remember who had been sitting at that particular table. He couldn’t recall. He’d been too busy watching Kate to notice anyone else in the café.

So what could be in the note that would have had such an adverse effect on her? As she headed in his direction, she showed no sign of having been upset. He idly wondered where she’d learned to hide her feelings so well as she swept past him without a glance.

* * *

SHERIFF FRANK CURRY stepped out onto his porch. The morning was bright, the air brisk, the scent of the new spring growth on the breeze.

A member of the crow family who lived on his ranch called to him from the clothesline wire next to the house. A half dozen of the birds had gathered, only part of what he considered his extended family.

He’d made a habit of studying the crows and found them fascinating. This family had taken up residence on his ranch and included not only a mother, father and their “kids” but also some nephews, brothers and half brothers related to the mom and dad, he was guessing. Fifteen birds in all made up this little family.

Like some human families, the crows formed close nuclear families. Often the “kids” stayed around for more than five years. Sometimes the mother and family even adopted kids of unrelated neighbors.

The irony of crows easily forming a close-knit nuclear family unit, although he’d never been able to, didn’t escape Frank. He’d been married once a long time ago, after Lynette had broken his heart. He’d thought he’d gotten Lynette out of his system. But in truth, he’d gotten married on the rebound, a terrible mistake that he hadn’t had the sense to end even quicker than he had.

Poor Pam. She’d tried so hard to make him happy. Once she’d realized he was in love with Lynette, she’d turned his life into a living hell.

At least he’d been smart enough to end it, setting her free to find someone who loved her the way he loved Lynette. He doubted she would ever forgive him, though, not that he blamed her. Fortunately, she’d moved away after the divorce. He hadn’t seen her since.

But he’d lost his chance to have a family of his own. There was only one woman he’d wanted and Lynette had married Bob Benton. He wondered if she regretted not having a family or if he was alone in that.

One of the crows cawed at him. He smiled as more of them lined up along the clothesline as if coming to tell him good-morning. “Good morning,” he called back to them. After hours of studying the birds and their habits, he’d become somewhat of an expert on their behavior.

It was spring, so the birds had been busy building nests and courting. They were just like the cowboys and cowgirls who would be attending the spring fair today, he thought. They would preen, court and squabble, and there would be trouble. There always was.

He glanced at his watch and realized he had to get moving. He hoped he might see Lynette at the fair and mentally kicked himself for not inviting her. But he had to work, so he wouldn’t have made a very good companion anyway.

As he drove toward Big Timber, he thought about asking Lynette out on a real date. What was he waiting for anyway?

* * *

TUCKER WILLIAMS HADN’T read a book since high school and seldom even glanced at the local newspaper. But his wife, Mary, read it every morning to see who had given birth and who’d gotten divorced, died or been arrested, then passed on the goings-on around the county to him whether he was interested or not. This morning was no different.

“Some guy got murdered down by the river,” she said as she handed him a cup of coffee. She loved all those cop and forensic shows on television. “Didn’t have any identification on him, so they did a sketch and are asking if anyone knows him.” She turned the paper so he could see.

Tucker glanced at the sketch and let out a curse. “I saw him the other night. When I came out of the Range Rider, he was just getting out of his pickup. He asked me if I knew where he could find the woman who was running the café. I pointed him down the street....” He felt a chill.

“You were that close to him?” Mary asked, wide-eyed. “Then he ends up dead? You have to go to the sheriff.”

There were a lot of things Tucker had to do in his life. Work was at the top of the list. Tucker had been working construction for Grayson Construction Company for years—until recently, when his boss, Grayson Brooks, lost his wife, Anna, to cancer. Grayson had sold his construction business for pennies on the dollar to Tucker and left town. Now that Tucker was the boss, he couldn’t be late for work. “Maybe later.”

“Tuck, you can’t put this off. You might be the last person to see him alive—other than the killer.”

“Or Kate LaFond at the café was,” he said, and remembered seeing someone walking down the street that night as he’d driven past in his pickup. The cowboy had been right by the café—if he was the same person. Tucker hadn’t been paying any attention, just anxious to get home before Mary started calling the bar for him.

“You have to call the sheriff and tell him what you know.”

“I’m sure Kate’s already told the sheriff—”

“Tucker? Call the sheriff. Has anyone seen Kate since that night? What if something has happened to her as well?”

He sighed. “I’m sure if the café hasn’t been open someone would have noticed. But I’ll call the sheriff if it will make you happy, all right?”

* * *

SHERIFF FRANK CURRY had spent the morning at his office researching online for information about horsehair hitching, and waiting to see if the photo in the newspaper generated any clues.

Until it did, all he had to go on was the murder weapon—the length of hitched horsehair rope found about the victim’s neck.

Frank took out the evidence bag holding the horsehair rope. Could this length of hitched horsehair help him solve this murder? He sure hoped so.

Jack said he didn’t think the pattern was from Montana State Prison. Frank finally understood what Jack had meant. Apparently there were only four prisons where this old Western art form was practiced still: Deer Lodge, Montana; Rawlins, Wyoming; Walla Walla, Washington; and Yuma, Arizona; and each had their own designs and colors. The painstaking art was popular in prisons, where inmates had nothing but time.

From the bright colors used in the rope, it sounded as if there was a good chance the rope had been made in the Yuma prison. The colors apparently were the result of the Mexican influence at the prison there.

So if it was true that each prison had its own designs and colors and no two hitched ropes were ever identical, then the rope found around the dead man’s neck, along with his morgue photo, might be used to identify either him—or his killer.

Frank had just left a message for the Yuma warden when Tucker Williams walked into his office.

“You’re sure it was the man in the sketch?” the sheriff asked after listening to what Tucker had to tell him.

“Positive. It was right behind the bar under that outside light, so I got a good look at him.”

“And he was asking about Kate LaFond?”

“Not by name.” He took off his hat and scratched his head as if trying to remember the conversation. “The man described her and said he’d heard she was running the café. Now that I think about it, I don’t think he knew she owned it.”

Frank nodded. “So you told him where he could find her.”

“Yeah. I mean, I didn’t think anything of it, you know?”

He could tell Tucker felt badly about that.

“Is she all right? Mary’s worried.”

“She’s fine.” But now that he thought about it, he had noticed a bruise on her cheek that she’d tried to cover with makeup the morning the body was found. “Thanks for calling and letting me know. I appreciate your help.”

“I hope it helps.”

“It does.”

* * *

KATE COULDN’T WAIT until the café emptied out. She kept moving, afraid to stop, let alone reread the note in her apron pocket. She could feel Jack French’s gaze on her. Had he seen her pick up the folded sheet of paper from the table?

She’d felt him watching her all morning. But she couldn’t worry about that. She had much bigger worries than that long, tall cowboy. She had felt like such a fool when his fingers had brushed hers earlier. It had been a shock, like the time she’d gone swimming in the creek and had raced back to her father’s travel trailer. The moment her bare, wet foot touched the metal trailer step, electricity had shot through her. She’d felt that same kind of jolt when Jack had brushed her hand.

With relief she saw that he was leaving. As he walked over to the cash register, Kate motioned to Bethany to take care of him. She busied herself cleaning the last table until she heard the bell over the front door jangle.

She’d been threatening to get rid of that damned bell, but like the Branding Iron, it was apparently part of a long tradition started by the former owner, Claude Durham.

“Where are you off to in such a hurry?” Kate asked Bethany as they both took off their aprons, dropping them in a bin next to the washing machine by the back door of the café.

“Seriously, you haven’t heard? The Sweetgrass County Spring Fair is today and tomorrow. Everyone in three counties will be there. It’s the biggest event of spring.” Bethany was looking at her as if to say, Do you live in a cave? “Didn’t you hear everyone talking about it this morning at breakfast?”

Kate had quit listening to the café chatter when she realized all anyone around this part of Montana talked about most of the time was cows, crops and weather. “Well, have fun,” she said, shooing Bethany toward the front door.

“You should come.”

“And leave Lou in charge of the café?” she asked, joking about the cook running the place. Lou was more reclusive than she was.

“I don’t think you’d lose any money if you just shut down for the rest of the day. Everyone will be at the fair.”

Kate nodded, actually tempted. She could definitely use an afternoon away from this place. And if everyone was going to be at the fair, this would be a great time to do some exploring on her own.

She watched Bethany drive off, seriously considering locking the door and putting out the Closed sign. Lou wouldn’t mind having the afternoon off, she thought as she turned toward the kitchen to talk to him.

Behind her, the bell rang and a draft of cool spring air rushed in. She gave a silent curse and plastered on her welcoming smile as she turned.

“Hey, Kate,” bellowed a large blond woman wearing a Western shirt and jeans with a pair of new red cowboy boots and a straw hat. In the woman’s arms was a stack of brightly colored quilts.

Kate’s smile broadened. Priscilla Farnsworth or Cilla, as everyone called her, was a breath of fresh air. Loud, full of life and with a laugh that was contagious, Cilla was a member of the Beartooth Quilting Society. The group of women, ranging in age from thirty to eighty, came in every Thursday afternoon for pie and coffee. Often they would bring some of their latest quilts to show her.

Kate had been invited to attend one of their meetings when she’d first hit town. Cilla and Thelma Brooks had come into the café her first week one morning after rush to ask if she sewed, if she wanted to learn and if she would buy a raffle ticket for a quilt they were selling to raise money for the one-room schoolhouse down the road.

Both women had apologized for being so pushy. “It’s just that we get so little new blood,” Thelma had said, and Cilla had added with a laugh, “That makes us sound like vampires.” That was when Kate had fallen for the woman’s laugh. She’d bought a raffle ticket, said she didn’t have time right now to quilt—maybe later.

“We quilt and talk and eat!” Cilla had said. “Lord, how we eat. But what’s the point of getting together unless someone bakes something, right?”

Kate didn’t sew and didn’t have a clue about quilting, not that she told them that. Every woman in these parts sewed, gardened and canned—except for Kate.

“I had this great idea,” Cilla said as she bustled in now and dropped the stack of quilts into an empty booth. “I was on my way to the fair and I just swung right in here. Now, if you hate this idea, just say so. You won’t hurt my feelings. What do you think about us putting up a few of our quilts in the café?”

Kate opened her mouth, not sure what was going to come out, but she didn’t have to worry. Cilla didn’t give her a chance to speak.

“Okay, you hate the idea. I just thought these walls could use some color. No offense. Oh, me and my big mouth. You probably had plans to change the paint color and now I’ve gone and—”

“No, I don’t hate the idea,” Kate said. And plans? Her life had been moving so fast that her only plan had been to get moved into the apartment upstairs and reopen the café. She’d needed the money and hadn’t given a thought to sprucing up the place. If it had been good enough when Claude was alive, then she’d figured it was good enough now.

Also the Branding Iron was the only café in Beartooth, and she knew if it didn’t open again quickly after his death, the townsfolk would start going down the road to Big Timber. They were creatures of habit. She didn’t want their habit of hanging out at the Branding Iron to change.

“Why don’t you show me what you brought?” she said, realizing the walls definitely could use a coat of fresh paint.

The women of the Beartooth Quilting Society had made the first and only friendly overture anyone had made toward her since she’d arrived in town. She knew only too well how these small communities were when it came to outsiders. Which was just fine. She preferred her privacy, and anyway, she wouldn’t be staying long, now, would she? She thought of Jack French’s comment earlier about her leaving. What was it Jack thought he knew?

“Aren’t you worried that the quilts will smell like grease before long?” Kate asked, the scent of bacon permeating the air as she spoke.

“We’ll rotate them in and out,” Cilla said. “And we’ll do all the hanging and taking down. You won’t have to mess with any of it.”

Kate considered the walls. “I was thinking about painting first.” Well, she was now. “What color would you suggest?” That was something else she didn’t have a clue about.

“A nice neutral. You know, I have some extra paint from when I did my downstairs. Why don’t the girls and I swing by with it Monday after you close? It wouldn’t take us any time at all.”

“Cilla, that is such a generous offer, but—”

“Not at all. We’re glad to do it. Now, come take a look at these quilts and see what you think.”

Kate felt swept along, as if she’d fallen into the roaring creek that ran by town and was now on her way to the Gulf of Mexico via the Yellowstone, Missouri and Mississippi rivers.

“I think they’ll do this place wonders, don’t you?” Cilla said after she’d shown Kate an array of intricate and beautiful quilts.

“I love them all,” Kate said. “And I appreciate you thinking of me.”

Cilla smiled, a twinkle in her eye. “I can’t imagine what brought you to Beartooth, but I’m glad you’re here. I hope you plan to stay.”

“Thank you,” Kate said, and glanced toward the Beartooth General Store across the street. As usual, Nettie Benton was watching from the front window, determined to find out the truth about her new neighbor. Kate feared Nettie wouldn’t stop until she uncovered everything about her.

Kate remembered the note and felt a chill run the length of her spine. She’d put the note in her apron pocket and dropped the apron in the bin by the back door earlier when she’d been visiting with Bethany.

After waving goodbye to Cilla, Kate locked the door, flipped the sign in the window to Closed and told Lou to take the day off. The moment he left, she hurried to the bin with the aprons in it. As she pulled hers out and reached into the pocket, her heart took off at a gallop. Frantically she dug in one pocket, then the other.

The note was gone.

CHAPTER FIVE

KATE WAS FRANTICALLY DIGGING through the aprons in the bin, searching for the note, when she heard a vehicle drive up in front of the café. She ignored it and the knock at the front door. The Closed sign was up. The person would eventually take the hint and leave.

She tried to tell herself not to panic. She didn’t need to find the note. She knew only too well what it had said. So why was she panicking?

Because she didn’t want the note to fall into anyone else’s hands.

With a jolt, she realized it probably already had.

“You must not have heard my knock.”

Kate whirled around to find the sheriff standing in the back doorway. A large, broad-shouldered man in his fifties, he blocked out the sun.

“Lose something?” he asked. He was good-looking, even for a man his age. His blond hair had started to gray, but it wasn’t noticeable except for a little in his thick, drooping mustache. He removed his Stetson as he opened the screen door and stepped into the back of the café, his gaze intent on her in a way that made her heart hammer even harder.

“My grocery order,” she said as she picked up the pile of towels and aprons she’d tossed on the floor in her search, and dropped them back into the hamper. “I thought I left it in my apron. Apparently, I left it somewhere else,” Kate said, pulling herself together. “I thought I’d drop it off on my way to the fair.”

She hadn’t planned on going to the fair. Quite the contrary—she had other, more important things to do. But if the sheriff thought he was keeping her...

“I won’t keep you long,” he said, taking the hint. He stood, turning the brim of his Stetson in his fingers as he looked toward the dining room. “Mind if we have a seat?”

“What is this about?” she asked. She’d seen him go to the general store the other day before coming over for his usual morning cup of coffee. Had Nettie put some bug in his ear? Everyone in the county knew he had a crush on Nettie Benton. Not that anyone could understand what he saw in the nosy old woman.

“Just need to have a little chat with you,” the sheriff said as he took a seat in one of the booths.

Kate tried to imagine what Nettie could have told him. It would be just like Nettie to fill his ear with some nonsense or other. Or even shades of the truth, which could be worse.

“Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

“No thanks, Ms. LaFond. I don’t want to keep you from the fair.”

She nodded. Bracing herself, she joined him in the booth, trying hard to hide how nervous he was making her. First the note, and now whatever this was.

“Have you seen this morning’s newspaper?” he asked.

She hadn’t had a chance and said as much.

He pulled a copy from his jacket pocket and shoved it across the table at her. “If you don’t mind taking a look.”

She flattened the newspaper, the sketch on page one practically leaping off the page at her—along with the headline: Do You Know This Man? Kate knew the sheriff couldn’t have missed her startled reaction.

“Have you ever seen this man before?” he asked.

Kate suspected he already knew the answer. The moment she’d seen the sketch, she’d given herself away. Not that it mattered. She couldn’t lie. Jack French had not only seen her with the dead man, he’d also punched him and bloodied the man’s nose.

“He’s dead?” She didn’t have to fake her surprise or the break in her voice.

“He was murdered.”

She leaned back against the booth seat and tried to catch her breath. “Murdered?” She’d heard some of the locals talking about a hobo who’d been found down by the Yellowstone River, but that was more than twenty miles away. There’d been no mention of murder.

The sheriff sat across from her, waiting—and watching her with that same intensity she’d noticed when he’d walked in. “How do you know the man?”

“I don’t know him. I’d never seen him before he accosted me the other night in the alley beside the café. Fortunately, Jack came along—”

“Jack?”

“Jack French. He ran him off.”

“And then what happened?”

“Nothing. The man left, I went upstairs to bed and Jack went on down the street.”

“You say the man accosted you?”

“I had gone for a run. He was in the alley by my apartment stairs. I thought he was drunk, because he obviously had me confused with someone else.”

“What did he say to you?”

“I don’t even remember.” But she feared Jack would, and would tell the sheriff. “Like I said, I thought he was drunk. He wasn’t making any sense. I’d never seen him before in my life.”

“Did you see what he was driving?”

She shook her head. “Maybe Jack did. It sounded like a truck when he took off, but I could be wrong.”

“Jack just happened to be walking by?”

“It was the first time I’d seen him, as well. It wasn’t until the next morning that I learned who he was and that he’d just gotten out of prison.” Why had she said that? She felt a stab of guilt for even bringing it up.

“Did Jack seem to know the man?”

“No. Jack just came to my defense, I guess, when he heard the commotion. He hit the man and ran him off.”

“This was after the man hit you.”

It wasn’t a question, but she nodded anyway and touched her cheek. “He slapped me when I told him to leave me alone or else.”

“Or else?”

“I like to think I can take care of myself,” she said, even more shaken as she realized that she and Jack might have been the last two people to see the man alive. Except for the killer. “I wasn’t very appreciative when Jack came to my rescue. I was too shaken by the encounter with the man,” she added, trying to cover for whatever Jack would tell the sheriff. “Now, though...”

He nodded as if thinking the same thing she was—that she’d been lucky. She glanced at the sketch of the dead man on the front page of the paper again and shuddered. She didn’t even want to think about who might have murdered him. Or why, because she feared the killer would be coming for her next.

The sheriff rolled up his newspaper and stuffed it into his pocket again. “If you think of anything else, please give me a call.”

“I’d be happy to. Like I said, I’m sure the man had me confused with someone else.” If only that were true, she thought.

After the sheriff left, she went upstairs and got the gun she kept hidden in the apartment. Claude had warned her. Apparently it was time to start carrying it.

* * *

I KNEW YOUR MOTHER.

That was the first thing Claude Durham said to her. Kate looked up to find a fiftysomething man standing next to her at the Nevada café where she’d been working, just outside Vegas.

At the time, she’d been standing at the pass-through waiting for her last order of the day to come up so she could leave. She’d been killing time, gossiping with Connie, the older waitress she worked with at the small dive of a café out in the middle of the desert.

“That’s quite the pickup line,” she said to the man. Her feet hurt and she was too tired for whatever he was selling. Not only that, he was also too old for her.

He gave her an impatient look. “You sure that’s the way you want to do this?”

She gave him a second glance. He was pale, balding. What little hair he had was short and gray. He had a belly on him and he was sweating profusely.

He’s sick, she’d thought. “Look, mister—”

“I don’t have a lot of time, so let’s cut to the chase,” he interrupted. “If we have to do this here, fine. I knew your mother in Beartooth.” When she didn’t respond, he added, “Montana. Where you were born.”

“My mother never was in Montana.”

“Not your adoptive mother, your real mother, your birth mother.”

“Meg was my real mother.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear it. Too bad she didn’t live longer—maybe she could have taught you to be nicer to your elders. I would have thought your adoptive father, Harvey, could have done better with you than he obviously did.”

“How is it you know so much about my life?” she demanded.

He ignored the question. “They told you that you were adopted, didn’t they?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Did they tell you how they came to raise you in the first place?”

A sinking feeling hit in the pit of her stomach. “What do you mean?”

“What did they tell you about your real...your birth parents?”

She’d asked a few times when she was younger. Her parents had hemmed and hawed. She’d quit asking. “What was there to tell? Obviously my birth mother didn’t want me. She might not have even known who my father was.”

His pale face colored with a flush of anger that surprised her. “That’s bullshit,” he snapped. “Your mother was a saint. She knew exactly who your father was and she loved you more than you—”

“Then why didn’t she raise me?”

“She died when you were eighteen months old.”

His words stopped her cold. It took her a moment before she asked, “What about my father?”

“That’s why I’m here. To tell you. Now, do you want to do this here, or can you tell your boss you’re done so we can get out of here?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but made his way out to an old pickup parked outside.

Her order came up.

“I’ll get that for you,” Connie said.

“Thanks.” Her hands were trembling as she took off her apron, tossed it into a booth, went outside to open the passenger-side door of the man’s truck, but didn’t get in.

“You look like hell.” She wasn’t sure why she said it. Maybe just because it was the truth and it seemed they were about to talk truths.

He laughed, a sick smoker’s cough following it. “I’ll make this quick,” he said when he finally quit coughing. “I’m dying.”

“So you decided to look me up and tell me...what?”

“Get in the truck.”

“First, tell me who you are and why you’re the one bringing me this news.”

He looked out the pickup’s sand-pitted windshield at the café. “What are you doing working in a dump like this? I’ve been watching you for the past couple of days. You’re a damned good waitress. You could do better.”

Anger rushed like a familiar drug through her veins. She’d been told once by a psychologist that she used anger as her go-to defense mechanism. No kidding.

“Thanks for the concern.” She started to slam the truck door, planning to walk away.

“Your mother gave me something to give to you, but I also have something I want you to have. Consider it your inheritance.”

She studied him through the open door of the truck. “If you’re going to try to tell me that you’re my father or some—”

“Just get in and listen to what I have to say. I own a café in Beartooth....”

She didn’t remember sliding into the pickup seat. She did remember telling him to go to hell.

* * *

NETTIE’S NEW RENTER was an enigma. While she looked sweet and innocent, there was an edge to her that told a different story. When Nettie had shown her the apartment, the girl had gone straight to the window that overlooked the paved street running through town. To the southeast, the highway went to Big Timber. To the north, it turned to gravel just out of town before breaking off into dirt roads that turned to 4x4 trails as they headed up into the Crazies.

Beartooth was the end of the road, so to speak. Not the kind of place a young girl would want to hang out.

But that wasn’t the only thing about the girl that bothered Nettie. There was something that seemed almost familiar.

I must be getting old. The other day, I was thinking that Kate LaFond reminded me of someone, she thought now.

She shook her head. Good thing Bob wasn’t here. If she had voiced these suspicions around him, he would have shaken his head and told her she was losing her mind.

“So, what do you think of the apartment?” Nettie had asked the girl when she showed it to her.

She hadn’t even turned from the window as she’d answered. “It’s exactly what I was looking for.”

Nettie had tried not to let the girl’s lack of enthusiasm hurt her feelings. She had decorated the apartment and felt she’d done a remarkable job in making it homey and nice. But apparently her efforts had been wasted on the girl, who cared more about the view.

Curious again about what was so interesting outside, Nettie had moved up behind her to look out. The girl’s gaze had seemed riveted on the Branding Iron. Or maybe it was the large table of local ranchers who met there every morning.

Nettie had tried to make out who was gathered there, but someone inside the café had been blocking her view. With a start, she’d recognized that broad back.

Sheriff Frank Curry had stood with his back to the window, talking to the group of men. A moment later he’d stepped out of view.

The girl had turned then, clearly startled to find Nettie right behind her. “I’ll take the apartment. That is, if you’ll rent it to me. I hope you will.” There had been that desperation in her tone again.

Nettie had told herself that it didn’t matter why the girl was so set on renting the place. It wasn’t as if anyone else had been around offering to rent it. Let the girl have it. She’d planned to require references but figured this was the girl’s first apartment, so what was the point? Anyway, it would be her parents who would be footing the bill.

“I’ll need your name, address and a phone number in case of an emergency,” Nettie had said, handing the girl a piece of paper and a pen. She’d watched her quickly jot down the information, then pull out a wad of hundred-dollar bills.

“You did say you would take cash for first and last month’s rent, plus six months’ rent deposit, right?” the girl had asked, looking worried.

It must have been because of Nettie’s surprised expression. “Sure, cash is great,” she’d said as the girl had counted out bills and handed them over, along with her information.

“You sure you didn’t rob a bank?” Nettie had asked in jest as she took the money.

“I cashed in one of my stocks.”

One of her stocks? “Well, I hope you enjoy the apartment....” Nettie looked down at the sheet of paper the girl had handed her and read the name. “Tiffany Chandler.”

“I will. It’s perfect,” the girl had said again before returning to the front window.

Nettie’d had a sneaking suspicion even then that it wasn’t art—but someone in the café across the street—that had made the apartment so perfect.

* * *

AFTER HIS TALK with Kate, Frank stood for a few moments on the broken sidewalk. The spring sun felt warm and smelled of pine and water from the nearby creek.

He turned his face up to the warmth and closed his eyes, breathing in the familiar scents and enjoying the feel of the sun on his face. His mind, though, mulled over what he’d learned.

According to Tucker, the man had described Kate and known she was running the café. No mistaken identity. But the man apparently hadn’t asked for her by name, so maybe he did have the wrong woman. Maybe.

As Frank opened his eyes, he was startled to see a face framed in the upstairs window of the general store. He felt a jolt, not used to seeing anyone up there, let alone a waif of a girl.

She looked ghostly, so pale, with straight blond hair that appeared almost white in the morning light. She was wearing a pale colored top that seemed to shimmer in the breeze from the open window. As if she’d spotted him watching her, she faded back from the window—gone in the blink of an eye, almost as if she’d never been there at all.

“Nettie’s new renter,” he said under his breath, surprised by the turn the girl had given him. Nettie had certainly rented the place quickly. It had only been the other day that he’d noticed the sign in the store window.

He thought about walking across the street to the store, but he didn’t want Nettie thinking he was worried about her—or her new renter.

Also, he was anxious to talk to Jack French. He’d called out to the W Bar G and learned that Jack had the day off but had been out to the ranch and was on his way back into Beartooth.

He thought about when he’d questioned Jack about the horsehair hitched rope from the murder scene. Of course there was no reason Jack would connect the man he’d chased off down the alley the night before—with the murder weapon, right?

* * *

JACK HAD JUST driven up in front of his cabin when he saw the sheriff sitting in the shade of his porch.

He felt that old sinking feeling he always did at the sight of a lawman. Maybe that too was genetic.

While in prison he’d learned that crime and violence ran in some families. He knew he should feel lucky that it was only trouble that coursed through his DNA. But then maybe trouble was like a gateway drug, and violence was only one misstep away.

Either way, he had a sheriff sitting on his porch waiting for him.

He shut off the engine and climbed out of his pickup. “Howdy, Sheriff,” he said. “Glad to see you made yourself comfortable.”

“I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“Nope, sure don’t,” Jack said as he climbed the steps. Too late, he thought about the note in his pocket, the one he’d sneaked out of Kate’s discarded apron. If it was found on him— “Can I get you a cold one?”

He wasn’t surprised when the sheriff shook his head. “Just need a few minutes of your time. The fair opens today. I would imagine that like everyone else in the county, you’re headed there.”

Jack nodded and leaned against the porch rail. He was too antsy to sit. He hadn’t forgotten being hauled off to jail by the sheriff in the wee hours of the morning two years ago for something he hadn’t done. He didn’t need to remind himself that it could happen again. Innocent men really did get arrested sometimes and sent to prison.

“You want to take this inside?” he asked the sheriff.

“Out here is fine. It’s such a beautiful day.”

Wasn’t it, though? Jack wanted to say, “Get on with it,” but he held his tongue. The old Jack French wouldn’t have been able to.

“I don’t know if you’ve seen today’s newspaper or not,” the sheriff said and reached into his jacket pocket.

What the hell? Jack thought. How long was this going to drag out? He reached for the paper, unrolled it and stiffened as he glanced at the sketch of the man he’d seen the other night in the alley.

He could feel the sheriff’s gaze on him. “Recognize him?”

Frank Curry wouldn’t be sitting on his porch unless he knew that Jack did.

“This is the man who was bothering Kate LaFond a few nights ago in the alley by the café,” Jack said, and he saw the sheriff sit up a little in the old rocker.

“I understand you hit him.”

“Only after I heard him hit the woman. I didn’t know who she was. It was my first night back and I really didn’t want to get involved, but...” He shrugged.

“She said she wasn’t very gracious about you coming to her rescue.”

Jack smiled at that.

“You didn’t know the man from prison?”

He thought of the hitched rope the sheriff had shown him with the blood on it. “Never seen him before in my life. This the man I heard was found down by the river?”

“Murdered,” Frank said.

That didn’t come as a surprise, given the blood on the rope.

“So you never crossed paths until a few nights ago,” the sheriff said.

“Nope.”

Frank got to his feet. “Remember that horsehair hitched rope I showed you? You said Montana State Prison’s cons hadn’t hitched it.”

Jack waited.

“You were right. I checked. Seems only four prisons in the West are known for hitching horsehair. Deer Lodge, Montana; Yuma, Arizona; Walla Walla, Washington; and Rawlins, Wyoming. Each one has its own designs and colors. I’m thinking it might be from the Yuma prison. But I suspect you probably already knew that.” He was eyeing Jack, waiting.

Jack shook his head. “Like I said, I never hitched in prison. Too busy working the ranch. It just didn’t look like any pattern I’d seen up there.”

The sheriff rubbed a hand over his square jaw. “You know I never figured you for rustling that bull. I always had the feeling there was more to it.” His gaze locked with Jack’s. “But if you’re innocent as you said you were that night I arrested you, then I can’t help but wonder who would do something like that to you and why.”

Jack didn’t move, didn’t breathe. He’d realized as he was being dragged out of his house that morning two years ago that he’d been set up, but he’d saved his breath after his initial cry of innocence. When there is a world-class bull in your corral that doesn’t belong to you and you’ve been pissing in the wind for much too long, well, you just have to figure that you’ve practically been asking for it.

“It cost you two years of your life, any way you look at it,” the sheriff said. “That would make an innocent man pretty angry. Might even make him want to get retribution. ’Course there’s no way to get back those years, no matter what a man was to do.”

Jack held his tongue.

“I’ve always liked you, Jack,” the sheriff said as he tipped his hat. “I’d like to see you stay out of trouble.”

Jack let out the breath he’d been holding along with a chuckle. “Me, too, Sheriff. Me, too.” Right now retribution was the furthest thing from his mind.

His thoughts were with Kate LaFond and her conversation with the man in the alley, the now dead man.

“I’ve been looking for you. I just didn’t expect to find you here.”

What had the dead man meant by that?

“Let go of me. I already told you. You have the wrong woman. But if you don’t leave me alone—”

You’ll end up dead?

Maybe it had been a case of mistaken identify, just as Kate had said. Or maybe not. His gut told him there was a whole lot more to it. Just as there was more to the woman herself.

He didn’t dig the note out of his pocket until the sheriff had driven away. Earlier, he’d stopped by the post office to pick up his mail. Something had made him circle to the back of the café. Lou, the cook, had been out by the garage, smoking a cigarette.

Jack had stepped into the café kitchen without anyone seeing him. Kate was busy out front with Cilla, talking quilts. Jack had seen the worn aprons in the bin and on a hunch had looked in the pockets.

At the time, he’d just been curious after seeing Kate’s first reaction to the note. Now with a growing feeling of dread he stared down at the block letters printed with a dull pencil on a half sheet of plain white paper.

One down. Two more to go, though. Better hurry, Kate. Ticktock.

Next to the words was a kidlike drawing that at first glance resembled a game of hangman. But if the rope the sheriff had shown him was what Jack thought it was—the murder weapon—then whatever Kate was running from... It had found her.

CHAPTER SIX

AFTER TALKING TO BOTH KATE LaFond and Jack French, the sheriff returned to his office. The Yuma prison warden had returned his call, asking for photos of the dead man and the rope used to kill him.

That done, Frank found himself at loose ends. All his deputies were at the fair, keeping the peace. With nothing to do but wait, he was reminded again of his promise to Lynette to find out more about Kate LaFond. He’d always trusted her instincts—except when she’d married that fool, Bob Benton.

Frank shook his head. All these years later he was still mentally kicking himself for not storming that wedding and taking her hostage until she came to her senses.

But then Lynette wouldn’t have the general store. She loved working in that store. He wouldn’t have taken that away from her even if he could turn back the clock.

Things had a way of working out as they were supposed to, he thought with a smile. Bob was long gone and wouldn’t be coming back.

He turned his attention to the new café owner. Kate LaFond was a mystery, Frank had to admit. On the surface, she seemed like a perfectly fine young woman, hardworking, likable. So what if she kept to herself? So what if she didn’t want to share her past?

But Frank had a niggling feeling there was definitely more going on under the surface with the new owner of the Branding Iron.

He called a friend who was a local Realtor.

“I’m curious about the Branding Iron Café up in Beartooth,” he said when his friend answered. “It sold so quickly after Claude died, I guess he must have had it listed long before then.”

“It was never a multiple listing and I can’t remember ever seeing it listed anywhere. You’re sure it wasn’t willed to the new owner?”

Frank had thought of that, but quickly kicked aside the idea. Seemed unlikely since the old bachelor had never had a family. At least not one Frank had ever heard about. And yet according to public records, Kate LaFond owned the Branding Iron.

Picking up his keys, he headed for his patrol truck. Ten minutes later, he was knocking at the door of Claude Durham’s friend and local attorney Arnie Thorndike.

No one would ever take Thorndike for an attorney. Half the time he looked homeless. Like this morning, when he opened his door to find the sheriff standing on his stoop.

Barefoot, dressed in a pair of worn jeans and a flannel shirt that had seen better days, Thorndike raked a hand through his unruly head of blond hair and grinned.

“It’s been too long since I’ve awakened to a sheriff on my doorstep,” Arnie said. “Hell, I must be getting old. I’m not even going to put up a fight.” He held out his wrists, pantomiming letting the sheriff put the cuffs on.

“This is a friendly visit,” Frank said with a chuckle. Arnie Thorndike was an old hippie who’d caught the tail end of the “flower power” movement in California before returning to Beartooth and getting his law degree. “I need to ask you about Claude.”

The grin left the man’s weathered face. “Then I guess you’d better come in. I just made coffee.”

“I need to know about Claude’s will,” Frank said as he followed Arnie into the cluttered kitchen. “He did leave a will, right?”

Thorndike dug out a couple of mismatched coffee mugs, filled both, then motioned the sheriff to a small room off the side of the cabin.

It wasn’t until they were both seated in threadbare recliners, the morning sun coming through the dusty window, that Arnie spoke.

“I miss the hell out of Claude,” he said and took a slurping sip of his coffee. He seemed to relax, his eyes misty. “There wasn’t a day at the café that he didn’t have some joke or story to share. Didn’t matter if the story was true, Claude could spin a yarn like no one I’ve ever known.”

“Did he have any family?” Frank asked.

“Not that I knew of.”

“So he never married? I know he left Beartooth only a few times over the years, but he wasn’t gone long. The café apparently was his family, his entire life.” But Frank had learned over the years of being a sheriff that even a man who appeared to have nothing to hide often had secrets. For all he knew, on those few occasions when Claude had left Beartooth for several months at a time, he had a family hidden away somewhere.

“Any idea where he went the few times he did leave Beartooth?” the sheriff asked. “Claude never seemed to want to talk about it.”

“You know he wasn’t all that healthy.”

That was putting it mildly. Nettie over at the store used to nag Claude like crazy, telling him to quit eating off his own menu. It was no surprise when he’d dropped dead.

“Are you telling me that’s why he left Beartooth those times? Because of his health?”

The attorney took a sip of his coffee. “I think he had a surgery or two.”

“For his heart?”

Thorndike shrugged. “He didn’t like talking about his medical problems.”

“Or any personal ones,” the sheriff said. “Which brings me back to his will, if he had one. I talked to a friend of mine who’s a Realtor. He told me that, to his knowledge, the café was never listed for sale. So how is it that Kate LaFond ended up owning it?”

“Claude left it to her.”

Frank couldn’t have been more shocked. “Why?”

“He just did. It was clear he had his reasons. He didn’t share them with me.”

“What do you know about her?”

“Other than the fact that she is no Claude? The woman doesn’t tell dirty jokes or bitch about anything. The Branding Iron just isn’t the same.”

Frank took a sip of his coffee, pretending not to hear the break in Thorn’s voice. The man had lost his best friend and was clearly struggling with that loss.

“Her coffee isn’t as good either, but I’m adjusting,” Thorndike said, lightening his tone and the mood. “If Claude wanted her to take over the place he loved, he must have had his reasons.”

Frank nodded. But like Nettie, he was even more curious about Kate. What was the connection between Claude Durham, a confirmed cantankerous old bachelor, and Kate LaFond, a young woman no one knew anything about?

* * *

KATE HADN’T PLANNED to go to the Sweetgrass County Spring Fair. But after the sheriff’s visit, she didn’t feel she had a choice. She couldn’t be sure he wasn’t keeping an eye on her, and staying home—or worse, taking off for the hills—would only make her look more guilty. As if that was possible.

One down. Two more to go, though. Better hurry, Kate. Ticktock.

Who’d left her the note? Someone who knew what she was doing in Beartooth, that much was clear. One down. Two more to go, though. Did the writer, like the sheriff, suspect she’d killed the dead man found by the river? Or had the letter writer killed him?

She shuddered as she realized that the note had been taken while she’d been busy with Cilla. Maybe the letter writer had taken it back. But then that meant he’d been watching her and had seen her put it in the apron pocket and later deposit it in the bin.

She realized anyone who’d been in the busy café that morning could have stuck the note under a plate as they were leaving.

As she drove out of town, Beartooth, while darned close to a ghost town on its good days, felt eerily deserted. As much as she hated to admit it, she felt spooked and realized she was glad to be driving into Big Timber.

On the twenty-mile drive through rolling ranch and farmland, she could feel time slipping through her fingers, though. The author of the note was right. The clock was ticking. With winter over, the ground finally thawed and the equipment ready, there was nothing stopping her.

The thought made her laugh. Nothing stopping her? There were so many roadblocks thrown in her way.... She pulled into the fair’s parking lot and killed the engine, pushing away the thought of two more men after her who might be out there right now, watching her and waiting.

She climbed out into the warm spring day, telling herself she could handle whatever was thrown at her. Or at least she hoped she could. She’d had a few curveballs thrown at her in her life, but nothing like this.

The spring fair was everything she’d heard it was. There were barns filled with prize-winning cows, pigs, horses, sheep, rabbits and even chickens. Other buildings held homemade clothing and baked goods, some sporting blue ribbons.

As she moved through the crowds—the men in their jeans, boots, fancy Western shirts and Stetson hats, the women just as duded out—she felt as if she must stand out like a sore thumb.

This was a world apart from where she’d grown up. Everything about Montana, especially Beartooth, felt alien to her and had since she’d arrived. She did what she could to blend in, even wearing boots and boot-cut jeans, Western shirts with snaps instead of buttons, and spending most Sunday mornings on a hard pew at church with the rest of the community.

She laughed at the regulars’ jokes and kidding each morning. She’d learned to drive a stick-shift four-wheel-drive pickup as well as run a café. Last fall, she’d cut firewood for the coming winter and, once the blizzards hit, she’d shoveled snow and stoked the apartment woodstove just to keep warm as if she was a local.

Since moving to Beartooth, she’d done what she had to to survive.

But now with time running out, she felt discouraged. It had taken longer than she’d thought it would to get the café up and running and to settle into this new, strange life. But she couldn’t afford to hire anyone to run the place for her.

Then winter had set in too soon. She hadn’t gotten a feel of the land before the snow had started, the temperature dropping, the ground freezing, making finding what she’d come for impossible.

All she’d been able to do was bide her time. Get the lay of the land, as her father would have said. She thought of Harvey Logan, the only father she’d known. He would have loved Montana. It was rich in history, with lots of stories of outlaws and gold miners, homesteaders and hard winters, along with buried treasure, strongboxes from robbed stages that were never found. Hidden miser’s gold, nuggets the size of her fist, turning up when foundations were dug for one of the many towns that had sprung up overnight.

But what a hard life early settlers had faced. She thought of last winter and couldn’t imagine how anyone had survived a hundred years ago without modern conveniences. She’d wanted to throw in the towel more times than she could count on those days when winter blizzards had rattled the café windows and whirled snow into icy drifts as the temperature plummeted.

She couldn’t help but question if all of this was worth it.

At the thought, she drew on the granite-hard determination that had gotten her this far in life. She deserved to get what was coming to her—no matter what. One day it would all be worth it, she assured herself as she walked past tables of baked goods and handcrafts and women hawking their wares.

The sun beat down on her. She could hear shrieks coming from the carnival rides as she passed a line of canvas tents offering everything from tamales to tractor parts. The smell of cotton candy and corn dogs permeated the air, making her feel a little nauseous.

Kate started to turn back the way she’d come, having had enough. She knew she was still upset over the note and the sheriff’s visit. She was pushing her way through the crowd when she saw him.

Jack French didn’t appear to have seen her, though. At least she hoped he hadn’t, as she quickly ducked into the nearest tent.

The tent was small and dark inside. She froze just inside the door. The strong scent of incense filled her nostrils. She blinked, surprised to find an old woman staring at her with the darkest eyes she’d ever seen.

The woman reached out her bejeweled hand.

It took Kate a moment to realize what she’d stumbled into. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to come in here,” she said, turning back toward the canvas door she’d just stepped through.

“There are no accidents,” the old woman said in a voice as grating as a rusty hinge but strangely captivating. “Don’t you want to know your future?”

She turned back to the woman, shaking her head as she smiled. “I believe in making my own future.”

“Then you have nothing to fear, do you?” The elderly woman beckoned with gnarled fingers.

Kate knew that if she stepped back outside right now, there was a good chance of running into Jack, and it was cool in the tent. Even the scent of incense was better than that of fried food.

What the heck? Humor the old woman, pay her a few dollars. By then the cowboy would be gone and she could sneak out of the fair and back to Beartooth.

“Sit. Give me your hand.”

Kate sat, taking in the dark velvet drapes that lined the small canvas tent. The old woman wore a caftan of equally dark jeweled colors. Her once dark hair was now splintered with lightning bolts of gray, but it was her dark eyes that held Kate’s attention.

She gave the woman her hand, felt the icy-cold, thin skin as the gnarled hand closed around hers.

Kate was instantly startled by the alarm that flashed in the woman’s black eyes. A rattled breath escaped the fortune-teller’s lips. Horror contorted her features.

Kate tried to pull back her hand, but the woman’s grip was like a vise.

“There is something dark. It’s all around you,” the seer said as if the words were being pried from her. “It’s like a curse that has followed you since birth. I see a man, several men—” Her voice broke as the clawlike fingers released hers so quickly Kate’s hand dropped to the small makeshift table. She felt the cool velvet of the table covering as she pushed away from the table and the crone’s distressed look.

The old woman blinked, her eyes seeming to clear. She appeared upset to see Kate still there. Not half as upset as Kate, though.

“You could have just told me I was going to meet a tall, dark stranger who would fall madly in love with me,” Kate snapped as she got to her feet. She hadn’t even wanted to come in here. She certainly didn’t need some dire fortune, let alone that accusing tone.

The woman shook her head. “You have already met him. He is tall. Not so dark.”

Kate thought of Jack French with his blond hair and pale blue eyes.

“But the love affair is cursed because of the danger surrounding you.”

“What kind of fortune-teller are you?” Kate demanded.

“I can only speak what I see.”

“If you think I’m paying for that lousy fortune—”

“I don’t want your money.”

Insulted, Kate opened her purse, threw down a twenty and stalked out. Before the canvas curtain closed behind her, she saw the old woman cross herself.

Kate let the tent flap snap shut behind her as she stepped out into the sunlight, needing warmth to chase away the pall the old woman had cast over her.

But as she stepped into a shaft of warm, golden sunlight, she saw the man she’d been trying to avoid earlier. Jack French was leaning against one of the tent posts, clearly waiting for her.

“Bad news?” he asked. He wore a blue-checked shirt that brought out the blue in his eyes. His jeans, like his boots, looked as new as the Stetson cocked back on his blond head.

She glared at him and had the wild notion that he’d had something to do with what the old woman had told her. She knew she shouldn’t let the cowboy or the fortune-teller upset her. Neither knew anything about her. But she had already been on edge from earlier.

“Were you listening to what she told me?” she snapped.

He shook his head. “Just saw you come out scowling,” he said as he pushed off the tent post to join her.

Obviously she’d wasted her time trying to avoid him. He must have seen her duck into the tent.

“I thought fortune-tellers weren’t supposed to tell you anything bad about the future,” he said.

“She must not have read the fortune-teller manual. Or maybe she foresaw you waiting outside the tent for me.”

He grinned at that and shoved back his hat. “So she did mention me?” He studied her a moment. The grin faded. “You really are upset. Over what some carnival charlatan told you? I thought you were smarter than that.”

She knew her face gave her away. She was upset. It was foolish. Had she really let what the old woman said shake her composure? She was angry with herself for even stepping into the tent to begin with. Of course, that was all Jack’s fault.

“Or are you upset over the sketch of the dead man in today’s newspaper?” His eyes had narrowed, his gaze intent on her.

She unconsciously lifted her chin, bracing herself. “I was shocked.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, still studying her.

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