Sheriff Carter Jackson felt his breath catch in his throat as he started down into the ravine.

He raised his binoculars and felt his heart lift like helium. Eve Bailey rose from where she’d been hidden in the rocks.

“I’ve found her,” he said into the two-way radio. “Bring the horse to the top of the ravine.” Carter dismounted and, taking his pack with his rescue gear, started down the rocky slope.

As he cut off her ascent, he realised he was nervous about seeing Eve. This was crazy. It had been years. She’d probably forgotten that night in the front seat of his old pickup behind her parents’ barn.

Just then she looked up and he knew Eve hadn’t forgotten – or forgiven him.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BJ Daniels’s life dream was to write books. After a career as an award-winning newspaper journalist, she sold thirty-seven short stories before she finally wrote her first book. That book, Odd Man Out, received a 4½ starred review from Romantic Times BOOKreviews and went on to be nominated for Best Intrigue of 1995. Since then she has won numerous awards, including a career achievement award for romantic suspense.

BJ lives in Montana with her husband, Parker, two springer spaniels, Spot and Jem, and an ageing, temperamental tomcat named Jeff. When she isn’t writing, she snowboards, camps, boats and plays tennis.

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

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Sheriff Carter Jackson – Fate had given him another chance with the woman he wanted more than anything. Now if he could just keep her alive.

Eve Bailey – She was determined to learn the truth about herself – and what she’d found in a ravine south of her ranch.

Lila Bailey – She’d lived with more lies than anyone should have to.

Loren Jackson – He’d lost the woman he loved once, and he wasn’t going to do it again.

Bridger Duvall – What was this mystery man doing in Whitehorse?

Arlene Evans – The town gossip was clueless about what was really going on. Or was she?

Nina Mae Cross – She’d lost more than her mind. She’d lost the man she loved.

Errol Wilson – He had his reasons for being bitter.

Deena Turner Jackson – She wanted what she couldn’t have and she would do anything to get it.

Secret of Deadman's Ravine

BJ DANIELS

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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This is for Rob Myers, former coroner and

always a mystery lover. Thanks, Rob, for all your

help over the years. You are one of the few

people I can call and ask about dead bodies,

poisons and cool scary stuff.

Chapter One

A grouse burst from the sagebrush in an explosion of wings. Eve Bailey brought her horse up short, heart jammed in her throat and, for the first time, was aware of just how far she’d ridden from the ranch.

The wind had kicked up, the horizon to the west dark with thunderheads. She could smell the rain in the air.

She’d ridden into the badlands, leaving behind the prairie with its deep grasses to ride through sage and cactus, to find herself in no-man’s-land with a storm coming.

Below her lay a deep gorge the Missouri River had carved centuries ago through the harsh eastern Montana landscape. Erosion had left hundreds of ravines in the unstable soil, and the country was now badlands for miles, without a road, let alone another person in sight.

Eve stared at the unforgiving land, her heart just as desolate. She should never have come home.

The wind whirled dust around her, the horizon blackening with clouds that now swept toward her.

She had to turn back. She’d been foolish to ride this far out so late in the day, let alone with a storm coming.

Even if she took off now she would never reach the ranch before the weather hit. Yet she still didn’t move.

She couldn’t get the image of what she’d seen out of her mind. Her mother and another man. She felt sick at the memory of the man she’d seen leaving her mother’s house by the back door.

She shivered. The temperature was dropping rapidly. She had to turn back now. She’d been so upset that she’d ridden off dressed only in jeans and a T-shirt, and there was no shelter between here and the ranch.

A storm this time of year could be deadly for anyone without shelter. Turning her horse, she bent her head against the wind as the rainstorm moved in.

A low moan filled the air. She brought her horse up short again and listened. Another low, agonizing moan rose on the wind. She turned back to listen. The sound seemed to be coming from the ravine below her.

A gust of wind kicked up dust, whirling it around her. She bent her head against the grit that burned her eyes as she swung down from her horse and stepped to the edge of the steep ravine.

Shielding her eyes, she peered down. Far below, along a wide rocky ledge, stood a thick stand of giant junipers. As the wind whipped down the steep slope, the branches parted and—

There was something there, deep in the trees. She saw the glint of metal in the dull light and what could have been a scrap of clothing.

Goose bumps rose on her arms as she heard the low moan again. Someone was down there.

The first few drops of rain slashed down, cold and wet as they soaked instantly into her clothing. She barely noticed as the air filled with another moan. She caught sight of movement. From behind the thick nest of junipers, a scrap of faded red fabric flapped in the wind.

“Hello!” she called, the wind picking up her words and hurling them across the wide ravine.

No answer.

Common sense told her to head toward the ranch before the weather got any worse. Eve Bailey was no stranger to the risk of living in such an isolated, unpopulated part of the state. She’d been born and raised only miles from here. She knew how quickly a storm could come in.

This part of Montana was famous for extreme temperature changes that could occur from within hours to a matter of minutes. It was hard country in which to survive. Five generations of Baileys would attest to that.

But if there was someone down there, someone injured, she couldn’t just leave them.

“Hello!” she called again, and was answered by that same low, agonizing moan. Below her, the scrap of red cloth fluttered in the wind and, beside it, what definitely appeared to be metal glittered. What was down there?

A gust of wind howled past, and another low moan rose from the trees. She glanced back at the ominous clouds, then down into the vertical-sided ravine as she debated what to do.

She was going to have to go down there—and on foot. It was one thing to risk her own neck, but there was no way she was going to risk her horse’s.

The ravine was a sheer drop at the top, widening as it fell to the ledge and growing steeper again as it dropped to the old riverbed far below. This end of Fort Peck Reservoir was dry from years of drought, the water having receded miles down this canyon.

Across the chasm the mountains were dark with pines. This side was nothing but eroded earth and a few stands of wind-warped junipers hanging on for dear life.

Eve loosely tied her horse to a tall sage. If she didn’t get back before the storm hit, she didn’t want her mare being struck by lightning. Better to let the horse get to lower ground just in case, even though it meant she’d have to find the mare to get home.

From experience she knew the soil into the ravine would be soft and unstable. But she hadn’t expected it to give under her weight the way it did. The top layer of dirt and shale began to avalanche downward, taking it with her from her first step off.

She slid, descending too fast, first on her feet, then on her jean-clad bottom. She dug in her heels, but it didn’t slow her down, let alone stop her. As she barreled toward the ledge, she realized with growing concern that if the junipers didn’t stop her, then she was headed for the bottom of the ravine.

The eerie sound again filled the air. The wind and rain chilled her to the bone as she slid at breakneck speed toward the sound. She swept past an outcropping of rock and grabbed hold of a jutting rock. But she couldn’t hold on.

The rough rock scraped off her skin, now painful and bleeding, but the attempt had slowed her down a little. Now if the junipers would just stop her—

That’s when she saw the break in the rock ledge. While the ledge ran across the ravine, a part of it had slid out and was now funnel shaped. Eve was heading right for the break in the rocks.

Just before the ledge, she grabbed for the thickest juniper limb she could reach and hung on. The bark tore off more skin from her already bloody palm as her hand slid along it and finally caught. The pain was excruciating.

Worse, her momentum swung her around the branch and smacked her hard into another thick trunk, but she was finally stopped. She took a ragged breath, exhaling on a sob of pain, relief and fear as she crouched on the ledge and tried to get herself under control.

Trembling from the cold and the fall down the ravine, she pulled herself up by one of the branches. She’d banged her ankle on a loose rock at the base of the junipers. It ached, but she was just thankful that it wasn’t broken as she stood, clinging to the branch, and looked down.

She’d never liked heights. She swayed, sick to her stomach as she saw how the ground dropped vertically to a huge pile of rocks in the river bottom far below.

Her legs were trembling, her body aching, hands bleeding and scraped, but her feet were on solid ground.

A jagged flash of lightning split the sky overhead, followed quickly by a reverberating boom of thunder.

Through the now-pouring rain, Eve looked back up the steep slope she’d just plunged down. No chance of getting out that way. She felt sick to her stomach because she had no idea how she was going to get herself out of here, let alone anyone else.

“Hello?” she called out.

No answer.

“Is anyone down here?” she called again.

She listened. Nothing but the sound of the rain on the rocks at her feet.

She couldn’t see the scrap of red cloth. Nor whatever had appeared to glint like metal from the top of the ravine. The junipers grew so thick she couldn’t see into them or around them. Nor was she sure she could get past them the way they crowded the ledge.

The wind howled down the ravine as the sky darkened and the brunt of the storm settled in, the rain turning to sleet. From deep in the trees came the eerie low moan.

Chilled to the bone, Eve edged along the rock ledge, clinging to branches to keep from falling as she moved toward the sound. The sleet fell harder, the wind blowing it horizontally across the ravine.

She hadn’t gone but a few yards when she heard a faint flapping sound—the cloth she’d seen from the top of the ravine! She moved toward the sound and saw the strap of faded red fabric, the edges frayed and ragged. Past the cloth, dented and dusty metal gleamed dully in the cloud-obscured light.

Her mouth went dry, her pulse its own thunder in her ears, as she saw what was left of a small single-engine airplane. With a shock, she realized the crashed plane had to have been there for years. One wing was buried in the soft dirt of the ravine, the rest of the plane completely hidden by the junipers as if the trees had conspired to conceal it.

The moan startled her as the wind rushed over the weathered metal surface of the plane.

It had only been the wind.

She clung to a juniper branch as the storm increased in intensity, lightning slicing down through the canyon, thunder echoing in earsplitting explosions over her head. Water streamed over the rock ledge, dark and slick with muddy soil.

She let out a sob of despair. She wouldn’t be getting out of here anytime soon. Even if she could find a way off the rock ledge, it would be slippery now, the soil even more unstable.

Holding a branch back out of her way, she moved to the edge of the cockpit and used her sleeve to wipe the dirty wet film from the side of the glass canopy.

Cupping her hand over her eyes, she peered inside.

Eve reared back, flailing to keep from falling off the ledge, as her startled shriek echoed across the ravine.

She was shaking so hard she could hardly hold on to the juniper branch as rain and sleet thumped the canopy and the wind wailed over what was left of the plane.

She closed her eyes, fighting to erase the image from her mind, the macabre scene inside the plane chilling her more than the storm.

The pilot’s seat was empty, and the strip of torn red cloth caught in the canopy was now flapping in the growing wind. The seat next to it was also empty, but there was a dark stain on the fabric.

The passenger in the back hadn’t been so lucky. Time and the elements had turned the corpse to little more than a mummified skeleton, the dried skin shrunken down over the facial bones, the eyes hollow sockets staring out at her.

Not even that was as shocking as what she’d seen sticking out of the corpse’s chest—the handle of a hunting knife, grayed from the years, the blade wedged between the dead man’s ribs.

Chapter Two

Sheriff Carter Jackson had a theory about bad luck. He’d decided that some men attracted it like stink on a dog. At least that had been the case with him.

His luck had gone straight south the day he found Deena Turner curled up and waiting for him in his bed. He’d been more than flattered. Hell, Deena had been the most popular girl in high school, sexy and beautiful, the girl every red-blooded male in Whitehorse, Montana, wanted to find waiting for him in his bed.

So Carter had done what any dumb nineteen-year-old would do. He’d thanked his lucky stars, never suspecting that the woman was about to take him to hell and back.

Finding Deena in his bed had only been the beginning of a string of mistakes over the next twelve years that culminated in Deena lying about being pregnant and the two of them running off and getting married.

It had been hard at first to admit he’d made a mistake marrying her. He’d seen marriage as forever and divorce as failure. So he’d hung in. Right up until he caught Deena in bed with his best friend.

That had been two years ago. Since then he’d gone through a long, drawn-out, painful divorce. Painful because he felt guilty that it hurt more losing his best friend than it did ending it for good with Deena.

But that was the problem. It hadn’t ended for good with Deena. Two weeks ago, she’d decided she wanted him back and that she would do anything to make that happen.

And she meant anything.

He pulled up in front of the house he and Deena had shared during their marriage. It was too early in the morning for this, but he just wanted to get it over with. Weighed down with dread, he climbed out of his patrol car, trying to remember a time when he’d looked forward to seeing Deena in the morning.

As he walked up the cracked sidewalk, he told himself this would be the last time. No matter what.

He grimaced at the thought, remembering how many times he’d left during their twelve years of marriage only to go back out of guilt or a sense of obligation. No wonder Deena just assumed he would always come back to her. He always had.

She opened the door to his knock almost as if she’d been expecting him. After what she’d left at his office for him, he didn’t doubt she was.

She was wearing one of his old T-shirts and, from what he could tell, little else. His once-favorite scent floated around her. Her blond hair was pulled up, loose tendrils framing her pretty face.

“Hello, Carter,” she said in that sultry voice, the one that had once been his undoing. “I had a feeling you’d be by this morning.” She shoved open the door a little wider and gave him “the look.” Boy, did he know that look.

Without a word, he reached into his pocket and took out the plain white envelope with her name and address neatly typed on it and handed it to her.

She took it, her smile slipping a little. “Something for me? You shouldn’t have.”

No, he thought, you shouldn’t have. All the surprise visits at work and at his house, the presents, the constant phone calls, the urgent messages. The more he’d tried to get her to stop, the worse she had become.

He waited as she opened the envelope, resting his hand on the butt of the weapon at his hip.

Her eyes widened as she took out the legal form and read enough that, when she spoke, her sultry voice was long gone. “What the hell is this?”

“It’s a restraining order. From this time forward you are not to contact me, send me any more letters or packages or come within one-hundred-and-fifty feet of me.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “We live in Whitehorse, Montana, you dumb bastard. The whole town is only a hundred and fifty feet long.”

“If you break the restraining order you will be arrested,” he said, hating that it had come to this.

He tipped his hat and turned his back to her as he headed for his vehicle, hoping she didn’t have a gun, because he was pretty sure she’d have no compunction about shooting him in the back.

“You just made the biggest mistake of your life, Carter Jackson!” she yelled after him. “You’re going to regret this as long as you live, you smug son of a bitch. If you think you can just walk away from me—”

The slamming of his patrol-car door thankfully cut off the rest of her words. This was not the morning to tempt him into arresting her for threatening an officer of the law.

It had taken him years, but he finally understood Deena. She only wanted what she couldn’t have. His allure was that he hadn’t been available. Just before he found her in his bed, he’d begun dating a neighboring ranch girl he’d known all his life, a girl he was getting serious with.

And that, he knew now, was why Deena had thrown herself at him. Deena had always been jealous of Eve Bailey and became worse after he and Deena married. Even the mention of Eve’s name would set Deena off. He’d never understood her jealousy, especially since Eve had left the area right after high school and hadn’t come back.

Until two weeks ago. Just about the time Deena decided she was going to get him back, come hell or high water.

As Carter drove away, he didn’t look in his ex’s direction, although out of the corner of his eye he saw that she’d come down the sidewalk in her bare feet and was now waving the restraining order and yelling obscenities at him.

“Good-bye, Deena,” he said, hoping his luck was about to change. Maybe she would meet an unavailable long-haul trucker who’d take her far, far away.

As he drove back toward his office in the large three-story brick county courthouse, his radio squawked.

“Lila Bailey just called,” the dispatcher told him. “She’s worried about her daughter. Says they had a big storm down that way last night. Her daughter apparently went for a horseback ride yesterday evening and didn’t return home last night.”

“Which daughter?” Carter asked, his heart kicking up a beat.

“Eve Bailey.”

The way his luck was going, of course it would be Eve. He’d grown up around the Bailey girls. Eve was hands-down the most headstrong of the three. And that was saying a lot. But she was also the most capable. She knew that country south of town. If anyone could survive a night out there, even in a bad storm, it was Eve.

“Lila said one of Eve’s sisters saw her ride out yesterday evening toward the Breaks. Eve is staying in her grandmother’s old house down the road from her folks’ place so no one knew she hadn’t returned until her horse came back this morning without her.”

Carter rubbed the back of his neck. There was nothing south of the Bailey ranch but miles and miles of Missouri Breaks badlands. Searching for Eve would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. “Tell Lila I’m on my way.”

IT WAS A SLOW NEWS DAY at the Milk River Examiner office. Glen Whitaker had come in early to work on a feature story he was writing about the couple who’d just bought the hardware store. This was news, since the population of the county had been dropping steadily for years now. While parts of Montana were growing like crazy, the towns along the Hi-Line were losing residents to more prosperous places.

Glen ran a hand over his buzz-cut blond hair and glanced out his office window past the park to the railroad tracks. A coal train was rumbling past. His phone rang. He let it ring a couple more times as he waited for the train to pass and the noise level to drop. “Hello.”

“One of the Bailey girls is missing.”

Glen groaned to himself as he recognized the voice of the worst gossip in the county. From the moment he took the job as reporter at the Milk River Examiner, Arlene Evans had been feeding him information as if she was Deep Throat.

“Missing?” Most of Arlene’s “leads” turned out to either be erroneous or the type of news he wasn’t allowed to print. He’d ended up at Whitehorse after working for several larger papers where he’d made the mistake of printing things he shouldn’t have.

He didn’t want to lose his job over some small-town gossip. But then again, he had printer’s ink in his veins. Working for a weekly newspaper, all he wrote about were church socials and town-council meetings.

Glen Whitaker was ready for a good story. “Which Bailey girl?”

“Eve Bailey. I just talked to Lila, her mother, and she said Eve rode out yesterday afternoon,” Arlene said with her usual relish. “Her horse came back this morning without her.”

Like the Baileys, Arlene lived south of Whitehorse.

The first settlement of Whitehorse had been nearer the Missouri River. But when the railroad came through, the town migrated five miles north, taking the name with it.

The original settlement of Whitehorse was now little more than a ghost town except for a handful of ranches and a few of the original remaining buildings. It was locally referred to as Old Town.

The people who lived there were a close-knit bunch to the point of being clannish. They did for their own, seldom needing any help and definitely not interested in any publicity when something bad happened.

But this could turn out to be just the story Glen had been waiting for—if Eve Bailey didn’t turn up alive and well.

Glen already had a headline in mind: Whitehorse Woman Lost In The Breaks, No Body Found.

“Her horse came back without her, so she’s stranded out there?”

Arlene clucked her tongue, her voice dropping conspiratorially. “Little chance of surviving that storm on foot. No shelter out there. And it got really cold last night.”

Whitehorse Woman’s Body Found Frozen.

Unfortunately, it was June and while it could snow in the Breaks any month of the year, the chances were good she hadn’t frozen to death. But hypothermia was a real possibility.

The problem was Glen knew about the Bailey girls, as they were called, although they were now young women. Attractive, but headstrong and capable. With his luck, Eve Bailey would survive. No heartrending story here.

He could picture Eve Bailey, so different from her sisters, who were blond with blue eyes. Eve had long dark hair and the blackest eyes he’d ever seen. But then he’d always been attracted to brunettes rather than blondes.

“Everyone is meeting over at the community center,” Arlene was saying in her excited high voice. “The women are putting together a potluck for the search party. It’s sewing day. We have to finish a quilt for Maddie Cavanaugh’s engagement to my son. With Pearl in the hospital with pneumonia we’re behind on the quilting. You know quilts are a tradition down here.”

He groaned inwardly. “I know.” Arlene had tried to get him to do a story on the Whitehorse Sewing Circle ever since he’d taken the reporter job. The group of women met most mornings at the community center and had for years. He suspected it was where Arlene picked up most of her gossip.

“I have to go. My pies are ready to come out of the oven,” Arlene said.

“Are you making one of your coconut-custard pies?” Glen asked hopefully. Arlene had taken a blue ribbon last year at the Phillips County Fair with her coconut-custard pie—and he’d been one of the judges.

“I always make the coconut-custard when there’s trouble,” Arlene said. “This could be your biggest story of the year.”

Arlene was forever hoping to be the source of his biggest story of the year. “My daughter Violet is helping me,” she said, shifting gears. “Did I tell you she’s quite the cook?”

Along with dispensing gossip, quilting and pie baking, Arlene Evans also worked at matchmaking, although she’d had little luck getting her thirty-something daughter, Violet, married off. From what Glen had heard Arlene had been trying to marry off Violet since she was a teenager.

The older Violet got, the more desperate Arlene had become. She considered it a flaw in her if her daughter was husbandless.

“Save me a piece of pie,” he said as he grabbed his camera and notebook, figuring it would probably be a waste of gas, time and energy. He was sure that by the time he reached Whitehorse, Eve Bailey would have been found and there would be nothing more than a brief story about her harrowing night out in the storm.

For a piece of Arlene’s coconut-custard pie he could even feign interest in her daughter.

BY THE TIME Sheriff Carter Jackson picked up his roping horse and trailer from his brother’s place and reached the Old Town Whitehorse Community Center, there were a dozen pickups and horse trailers parked in front.

He pulled into the lot, noticing that all of the trucks and horse trailers were covered in the gray gumbo mud that made unpaved roads in this part of the state impassable after a rainstorm.

Fortunately, the sun had come out this morning and had dried at least the top layer of soil because it appeared everyone had made it.

He’d always been proud that he was from Old Town and was sorry his family was no longer part of this isolated community. No matter how they were getting along at the time, the residents pulled together when there was trouble like a large extended family.

As he pushed open the door of the community center, he spotted Titus Cavanaugh at the center of a group of men. Titus had a topographical map stretched out on one of the women’s sewing tables and was going over it with the other male residents.

“Here’s the sheriff now,” resident Errol Wilson announced as Carter walked toward them.

“We’re putting together a search party,” said the elderly Cavanaugh, who was unmistakably in charge. If Old Town had been an incorporated town, Titus would have been mayor. He led the church services at the community center every Sunday, organized the Fourth of July picnic and somehow managed to be the most liked and respected man in the county, hell, most of the state.

His was one of the first families in the area. His grandmother had started the Whitehorse Sewing Circle and never missed a day until her death. Titus’s wife Pearl was just as dedicated to the group, although Carter didn’t see her. He’d heard Pearl was in the hospital with pneumonia. She’d always made sure that every newborn got a quilt, as well as every newlywed. It had been an Old Town tradition for as long as anyone could remember.

“Give me a minute,” Carter said to Titus. “I’d like to talk to Eve’s family before we head out.”

He gathered the Bailey women in a small room at the back of the community center and closed the door. Lila Bailey was a tall, stern-looking woman with long gray-blond hair she kept in a knot at the nape of her neck. At one time, she’d been beautiful. There was still a ghost of that beauty in her face.

With her were her daughters, McKenna and Faith, both home from college. Chester Bailey, Lila’s husband, was living in Whitehorse, working for the Dehy in Saco. Apparently, he hadn’t arrived yet.

“Any idea where Eve was headed?” Carter asked. The women looked to McKenna, the second oldest Bailey sister.

“I was just coming home when I saw her ride out late yesterday afternoon,” McKenna said, and glanced toward her mother.

Carter couldn’t miss the look that passed between the two women. “Was that unusual for her? To take a horseback ride late in the afternoon with a storm coming in?”

“Eve is a strong-minded woman,” Lila said. “More than capable of taking care of herself. Usually.” The last word was said quietly as Lila looked to the floor.

“Where does she generally ride?” he asked the sisters.

Both shrugged. “Depending what kind of mood she’s in, she rides toward the Breaks,” McKenna said.

“What kind of mood was she in yesterday afternoon?” Carter asked, watching Lila’s face.

Faith made a derisive sound. “Eve’s often in a lousy mood.” Lila shot her a warning look. “Well, it’s true.”

Faith and McKenna were in their early twenties. Eve was the oldest at thirty-two.

Lila apparently hadn’t expected to have any more children after Eve. Both McKenna and Faith had been surprises—at least according to Old Whitehorse gossip. The local scuttlebutt was that Lila’s husband, Chester, had been heartbroken they’d never had a son and their marriage strained to the point of breaking.

But Chester had only recently moved out of the house, taking a job in Saco. While as far as Carter knew the couple was still married, word was that Chester hardly ever came home. His daughters visited him up in Whitehorse.

One of the joys of small-town living: everyone knew everyone else’s business, Carter thought.

“You should tell him,” McKenna said to her mother in a hushed whisper.

The look Lila gave her daughter could have cut glass. “He’s not interested in family matters, McKenna.”

“On the contrary, I’m interested in Eve’s state of mind when she took off yesterday,” Carter said, looking from McKenna to her mother.

“It was nothing,” Lila said. “Just a disagreement. Why are we standing around talking? Eve could be injured. You should be out looking for her.” She shot Carter a look that said she wasn’t saying anything more about her disagreement with her oldest daughter. “Now if you’ll excuse me I have to see to the potluck. Everything needs to be ready for when the men return with my daughter.”

She left the room, Faith looking after her, plainly curious about what was going on between her mother and sister.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” Carter said. “I’d like a word with McKenna alone.”

Faith shrugged and left, but with obvious reluctance. When the door closed behind her, Carter asked McKenna, “Why don’t you tell me about the disagreement your mother and sister had yesterday and let me decide if it’s relevant.”

“You mean what they were arguing about? I don’t know. I heard them yelling at each other when I came home. Eve stormed out to the barn, riding off a few minutes later. When I asked Mother what was going on, she said it was just Eve being dramatic.”

He’d seen Eve angry on more than one occasion, but he’d never thought of her as the dramatic type. Deena on the other hand… “The last time you saw your sister, how was she dressed?”

McKenna shrugged. “Jeans, boots, a T-shirt. I don’t think she took a jacket. It was pretty hot when she left.”

“What color T-shirt?” he asked, attempting to keep his growing concern from his voice. Eve hadn’t been dressed for a night out in the weather—especially last night with that storm that had blown through. For some reason, she’d taken off upset, without even a jacket, and that alone he knew could have cost her her life.

“Light blue T-shirt,” McKenna said, sounding close to tears as if realizing that her sister might be in serious trouble.

“Don’t worry, we’ll find her,” Carter said, shocked to think that after all these years he would be seeing Eve Bailey again. He just hoped to hell he’d find her alive. But as he joined the search party, he feared they were now looking for a body.

Chapter Three

Lila Bailey busied herself arranging the food as it arrived from local residents. She had to keep busy or she knew she would lose her mind. The thought shook her, considering that her mother, Nina Mae, had literally lost hers and was now in the nursing home in Whitehorse.

The only way Lila could cope was not to allow herself even the thought that her oldest daughter wasn’t coming back. Eve could take care of herself. Eve was the strong one. Eve was a survivor. Even as upset as she’d been yesterday.

Lila had to believe that. If she gave in to doubts, she knew she wouldn’t be able to hold herself together and for Lila, losing control had always been her greatest fear.

More food arrived. She arranged it on the extra tables the men had set up for her. Everyone pitched in when needed. She recalled with shame how the town had offered help when they heard Chester had left her.

Her face flamed at the pity she’d seen in their faces. No one believed Chester would be back. And she was sure they’d all speculated on why Chester had left her.

Well, let their tongues wag. She had turned down their help. She’d pay hell before she’d take their pity. She’d show them all. Lila Cross Bailey didn’t need anyone. Never had.

Tears sprang to her eyes. She furtively wiped them away. The last thing she’d do was let one person in this community see her cry.

Not that there was much left. There were only a half-dozen houses still standing, most of them empty, in what had once been a thriving homestead town a hundred years ago.

Amid the weeds, abandoned houses and what was left of the foundations of homes long gone was Titus and Pearl Cavanaugh’s big white three-story house at the far end of the street. Next to it was the smaller house where Titus’s mother, Bertie, had lived before she’d become so sick she had to go into Whitehorse to the nursing home.

A couple of blocks behind the community center and near the creek stood the old abandoned Cherry house, which kids still said was haunted. Lila was eleven when she heard what sounded like a baby crying in the empty old Victorian house. She still got goose bumps when she thought about it.

At the opposite end of town was Geraldine Shaw’s clapboard house, a large red barn behind it.

Overlooking the town was the Whitehorse Cemetery, where residents had been buried from the time the original homesteaders settled here. The most recent grave belonged to Abigail Ames, Pearl Cavanaugh’s mother. Next to the cemetery was the fairgrounds where community summer events took place.

As Lila looked up, a tumbleweed cartwheeled across Main Street. Like many small towns across eastern Montana, both Old Town and Whitehorse were dying, the young people leaving, the old people heading for the cemetery on the hill.

The young people left for better jobs or to go to school and never return, glad to have escaped the hard life of farming or ranching such austere county.

Lila knew that Faith and McKenna had only come home for the summer because they’d heard that their father had moved out. She’d insisted they take jobs in Whitehorse to keep them out of her hair and make it clear that she didn’t need their help.

Not that there was much in Whitehorse to the north. It had a grocery, a newspaper, several banks, a handful of churches and a hardware store and lumberyard. The bowling alley had burned down but the old-timey theater was still open, showing one new movie three days a week.

Like other ranchers from around the county, Lila went into Whitehorse for supplies and to stop by the nursing home to see her mother.

Why Eve had come back was a mystery to most everyone but Lila. Eve moved into her grandmother’s house up the road and, from all appearances, seemed to be staying, which frightened Lila more than she wanted to admit.

As she gazed out the window, Lila knew it was just a matter of time before she’d be all alone in that big old rambling house with nothing but memories. And regrets.

“They’ll find her,” a deep male voice said behind her, making her jump.

She felt the skin on her neck prickle as she recognized the voice and realized he had her trapped in the corner between the long potluck table and the window.

Her back stiffened and she had to fix her expression before she turned around to face Errol Wilson.

“I know you must be worried, but we all know how strong Eve is,” Errol said. He was a short, broad man with small dark eyes and a receding hairline of salt-and-pepper hair that stuck out from under his Western hat.

As his eyes locked with hers, Lila felt her skin crawl. She nodded, unable to speak, barely able to breathe. Normally, she made sure she kept her distance from Errol at these community gatherings, never letting him get her alone, even with other people around. But nothing about the past few days had been normal.

“Eve’s a survivor,” Errol continued, standing next to Lila but not looking at her. So close she knew that no one else in the room could hear him. If anyone looked this way, they would think he was inspecting the dishes that had been set out for the potluck.

“Like her mother,” Errol added.

“Ready?” Frank Ross called to Errol. “You’re going with Floyd Evans and the sheriff,” Frank told Errol, and gave Lila a comforting nod before heading for the door.

Lila turned her back to Errol, but she could still feel him behind her, the scent of his aftershave making her stomach roil.

“Don’t worry, Lila,” Errol said. “We’ll find your daughter and bring her back to you. Wouldn’t let anything ever happen to her. Just like I’d hate to see anything happen to you.”

She gripped the edge of the table, shaking violently with anger and fear and enough regret that she thought she might drown in it.

Please, God, let Eve be all right. Don’t punish her for my mistakes. Give me a chance to make things right with her.

But even as she prayed it, Lila Bailey knew there was no way she could make any of this right with Eve.

CARTER SADDLED up with the search party. After the storm, there would be no passable roads to the south. There were few roads to begin with. A couple of Jeep trails when the weather was good. One road that petered out a couple of miles out near his family’s old place.

His father had sold out a while back. Carter’s brother Cade hadn’t had any interest in ranching and Deena had flat out refused to live on a ranch. She thought Whitehorse was the end of the earth as it was.

So his father had sold the homestead. Not that Loren Jackson had ever had any interest in ranching. He’d always leased the land. No, Loren had wanted to be a commercial pilot, but for some reason hadn’t left Phillips County so he’d ended up crop dusting with his father, Ace Jackson.

That was until he’d up and decided to move to Florida.

Carter had never understood his father. Loren Jackson had always seemed…unfulfilled.

So it felt odd to be here and realize that the old place stood empty just up the road. The Cavanaughs had bought the land, but no one had a use for the house, so it had been boarded up.

Carter rode east to avoid seeing the place, going past Bailey property and the house where he’d heard Eve was staying. One of the search party checked to make sure Eve hadn’t returned.

She hadn’t. And McKenna had come along to get a change of clothing for Eve to wear when they found her. Then they all rode south, leaving behind farm and ranch land for cactus and sagebrush.

Titus had divided the men into groups, each armed with a two-way radio. Ward Shaw had brought along a saddled extra horse for Eve to ride when they found her. Everyone was optimistic they would find her alive.

Or at least they pretended to be.

The thunderstorm the night before had wiped out any trace of her tracks, but her horse had returned this morning, leaving deep gouges in the wet gumbolike mud that were easy to follow.

The sheriff rode with Errol Wilson and Floyd Evans. The others fanned out, hoping to catch sight of Eve’s footprints since she would be on foot.

Although Carter had grown up here and known Errol and Floyd all his life, the three rode in silence with little to say to one another. Both men were older by at least twenty-five years and while Errol and Floyd lived within miles of each other, Carter had never known them to be friends.

In fact, few people in and around Old Town particularly liked Errol Wilson. There was something about the man that put Carter off, as well. Something behind the man’s dark eyes that seemed almost predatory. Errol radiated a bitterness for which Carter had never known the source.

As a boy, Carter remembered overhearing some of the men talking about Errol. There was some concern that Errol might be a Peeping Tom. Carter hadn’t known what that was at the time. And he’d never heard any more about it. He just figured that men like Errol Wilson generated those kind of stories because they didn’t fit in.

Carter gave no more thought to either man as he rode. His mind was on Eve and the argument she’d had with her mother. What had sent Eve riding deep into the Breaks without food or water or proper clothing? Her horse coming back without her was a very bad sign. He was worried what they would find. If they managed to find her at all.

The sun moved across Montana’s big sky, drying the mud, heating the air to dragon’s breath. No breeze moved the air. Nothing stirred, but an occasional cricket in a clump of brush.

An hour later, Carter reined in as he lost Eve’s horse’s tracks in a rocky area. “Let’s spread out. Holler when you pick up the tracks again,” he told the two men.

Errol rode off to the west while Floyd went east, kicking up a bunch of antelope. Carter watched the antelope run across the horizon, disappearing as the land began to drop, funneling forward to the riverbed.

To the west Carter saw one of the other groups from the search party had stopped to clean the mud from their horses’hooves. A hawk soared overheard, picking up a thermal, and nearby a mule deer spooked, rising up from a rocky coulee, all big ears as it took off, kicking up clumps of dried earth. No sign of Eve Bailey.

Carter rode straight south to where the flat, high prairie broke into eroded fingers of land that dropped precariously to the river bottom. He kept to the higher ridges in hopes of seeing Eve’s blue T-shirt. The problem was that too much of this land looked exactly the same. That made it extremely easy to get lost. During the storm, Eve could have gotten turned around. If she’d tried to walk out on foot last night she might be anywhere.

At one point, he stopped and realized he could no longer see either Errol or Floyd. He hoped to hell the search party didn’t have to find them before the day was over.

He’d just reined in his horse on a narrow ridge, the sides falling dangerously toward the old river bottom when he caught sight of something light blue in the rocks far below him.

REPORTER GLEN WHITAKER couldn’t believe his timing. He made it to the Whitehorse Community Center just as Arlene Evans was unloading the pies from the front seat of her pickup.

“Let me help you with those,” he said.

Arlene was a gangly woman with an elongated horsy face and laugh that was more donkey’s bray. That alone would have put off most people, but there was also a nervous energy that at best made him jittery and at worse made the hair stand up on his arms.

“Violet, say hello to Glen,” Arlene ordered.

“Hi, Glen,” said a shy and bored voice behind him.

He turned to see Arlene’s daughter, Violet.

While better looking than her mother, Violet was still plain to the point of pitiful. Next to her mother, Violet seemed almost catatonic. “Hey,” he said.

He’d always suspected that Arlene fed off other people’s energy because, like her daughter, Glen found that after a matter of minutes around Arlene he barely had enough energy to escape. And right now escape was exactly what he wanted to do.

“Violet and I can get the pies if you’ll open the front door,” Arlene said, handing off a pie to her daughter then picking up another before kicking the pickup door shut in one smooth movement.

He had to almost run to get the community center door open before Arlene. They both had to wait for Violet, who moved like sludge.

“Violet, why don’t you get Glen a piece of the coconut-custard right away,” Arlene said. “He looks like he could use it.”

Violet nodded as she wandered off to do as she’d been told. Already trained to obey, she’d make someone the perfect wife, Glen thought. Just not him. At forty, he’d never married. His mother said it was because she’d spoiled him.

“Any news on Eve Bailey?” he asked.

“Apparently not,” Arlene said, as she shot a look at the somber group of women waiting in the community center.

All the women looked in his direction, then went back to visiting among themselves or occupying themselves with the needlework in their laps. Glen had never understood it. He was nice enough looking, but for some reason people didn’t seem to pay any attention to him.

Feeling like the invisible man, he drew out his notebook and pen as he and Arlene took a seat in a quiet corner and waited for Violet to bring the pie.

“It’s a shame,” Arlene was saying in a hushed voice so the others couldn’t hear. “She has been through so much and now this.”

“Eve?” Glen asked, wondering what was keeping Violet.

“Lila,” Arlene whispered, glancing in the woman’s direction. Lila was cleaning the sink near the back door, stopping periodically to look out, as if she hoped to see her daughter.

Glen wasn’t interested in Lila Bailey. No story there.

“Her husband left her, you know. Oh, she tells everyone he moved into Whitehorse to be closer to his job, but we all know the truth.”

Arlene took a breath and Glen jumped in, hoping to get some background material, “So what brought Eve Bailey back here?” He watched Arlene shift gears. Apparently she was just getting warmed up on the Lila and Chester Bailey story.

“A man,” Arlene said flatly. “It’s the only thing that brings a woman her age back to the ranch. You know she’s thirty-two. Just two years younger than my Violet.”

An old maid in Arlene’s eyes.

“I heard she became an interior designer.” Arlene lifted a brow as if to say what a waste of time and education that was. “You can bet some man broke her heart and she came running home with her tail tucked between her legs.”

Glen wrote on his notepad a new headline: Jilted, Whitehorse Woman Returns Home Only To Die Alone In Missouri Breaks.

Violet slid a plate with a large piece of coconut-custard pie in front of him and sank into a chair as if the chore had spent all of her energy.

He glanced at her as he picked up the fork. “Thanks.” She stared back with large, liquid, colorless eyes, but with just enough expectation in them to make him nervous. It hit him then that she would want to get married even more than her mother wanted her to. Marriage would be the only way to make her mother stop trying to hoist her off on men. Any man.

As he took a bite of pie, he noticed Arlene had stopped talking and was staring toward the front door.

A man in his early thirties who Glen had never seen before stood in the doorway as if looking for someone but not seeing them, turned and left, letting the door close behind him.

“Who was that?” Glen asked, seeing Arlene’s obvious interest.

“The fella who’s renting the old McAllister place,” Arlene whispered. “Bridger Duvall. Sounds like the name of an actor. Or a name he just made up. No one knows anything about him. Or why he rented that old farmhouse, since he hasn’t shown any interest in raising a thing. He was downright rude when Violet and I went out there to welcome him to the area.”

Glen could well imagine what Arlene’s welcome visit was all about—and no doubt the man had, as well, the moment he laid eyes on Violet.

“I wonder,” Arlene said slowly. “You know he showed up about the same time Eve returned to town.” Her eyes widened. “What if he’s the man who broke Eve Bailey’s heart?”

And this, Glen thought, was how rumors got started.

SHERIFF CARTER JACKSON felt his breath catch in his throat as he stared down into the ravine. The spot of light blue hadn’t moved and, from this angle, he couldn’t tell what it was but he had a bad feeling it was Eve Bailey.

He raised his binoculars. The light blue moved. He felt his heart lift like helium. Eve Bailey rose from where she’d been almost hidden in the rocks. He watched her work her way slowly up the slope head down, oblivious to him standing high above her. She climbed the rocks with fluid if exhausted movements.

Carter found himself grinning, overjoyed that she was all right, glad he would be able to take good news back to the Whitehorse Community Center.

Now that he knew she was alive, though, he wanted to wring her neck. What the hell had she been thinking riding out like that yesterday afternoon? Maybe more to the point, what was she doing down in that ravine to begin with?

“I’ve found her,” he said into the two-way radio. “She looks like she’s all right. I’m going down to get her out. Bring the horse to the top of the ravine.” He gave a reading from his GPS.

Titus Cavanaugh came back over the radio an instant later, sounding equally relieved. “We’re not far from you. Glad to hear the good news.”

Carter dismounted and, taking his pack with his rescue gear, started to work his way down the rocky slope. His earlier exhilaration at seeing that she was alive was dampened at the thought of what her reaction would be to seeing him. It had been years, but he doubted she would have forgotten the way things had ended between them.

Eve had taken off for college right after high school graduation and he hadn’t seen her since. He knew she’d come back for holidays to see her parents and sisters, but she’d made a point of avoiding him. And since he lived in Whitehorse, he’d had no reason to go out of his way to see her.

In fact, the way even the mention of Eve set Deena off, he’d stayed as far away as he could from Old Town—and Eve Bailey.

He was pretty sure Eve hated him. Not that he could blame her. Or maybe she hadn’t given him a thought since the day she left.

He wished he could say the same.

As he cut off her ascent up the rocky ravine, he realized he was nervous about seeing her. This was crazy. Hell, it had been years. She’d probably forgotten that night in the front seat of his old Chevy pickup behind her parents’ barn.

Just then she looked up and he knew Eve hadn’t forgotten— or forgiven him.

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