Chapter Seventeen
Dylan hadn’t been able to sleep last night.
He’d changed the passcode on the gate the moment he got back to find Rowena’s car gone.
He told himself it couldn’t have been her driving his truck last night—unless she had help.
And that was what worried him.
According to Cat, the only time she saw Rowena away from the ranch was when she’d been talking to the man staying at the hotel.
The man Cat thought was FBI.
That man was now dead.
Who did that leave? Rowena, Patty Cooper Harper, Sharese and her brother Luca.
Any of them could have been driving the truck.
He knew Cat wanted to believe, as he did, that Patty had helped with his nephew’s delivery and taken the infant to protect him.
But then who had killed Athena? He hated to think that the woman who’d saved the baby would kill the mother.
There was something so cold blooded about that… So even Patty could have been driving the truck since Rowena had access to it thanks to him letting her stay at the ranch.
He reminded himself that his own wife had been in on this and had gotten killed in a car bombing along with his brother.
That was stone cold as well.
These were apparently the kind of people he and Cat were dealing with.
They could have both been killed last night.
Whoever had been driving the old truck had certainly tried.
His fear was that the group couldn’t find the document and without it, they were desperate because their lives were on the line.
Desperate people made desperate decisions.
Dylan thought of Cat, his concern for her growing.
She’d been taken off the case, put on desk duty.
But that didn’t mean she would be safe—even if she did her best to stay out of it.
Knowing her, he doubted she would be able not to follow a lead if one presented itself.
That’s why he had to keep her busy, he thought after hanging up from talking to the manager at the wrecking yard in Eureka.
They had the truck.
Forensics had finished with it.
Dylan didn’t hold much hope that they found any prints from last night’s driver.
But they could find his prints in the truck, possibly along with blood.
He’d really thought he had walked away from all of this.
This morning he’d searched the cottage looking for the document.
He’d assumed it would be on a thumb drive or something like it.
But it could be old school and printed out on plain old paper.
Either way, he had no luck finding it.
If Cat was right and Ginny had hidden it somewhere here on the ranch…why would she have done that? Once she had her hands on it, why not give it to her handlers? Unless she was trying to make a better deal.
Is that where his brother came in? Beau had contacts around the world.
He knew people.
Had they been trying to sell it?
A thought struck him.
What if she never had the list? What if Beau had contacted her with the list? Dylan didn’t want to believe his brother had gone that bad, but right now he had more questions than answers.
He feared he might never know the truth.
That and worrying about Cat had kept him from sleeping last night.
That he’d gotten this involved with her scared him.
It had been so fast, so intense, more real than anything he’d ever experienced.
He picked up the phone, needing to see her.
He didn’t know if they could survive this as a couple, but somehow, he had to get the two of them out of it.
Cat kept thinking about Athena Grant.
Pregnant and running scared, the woman knew she was going to die, but Cat knew in her heart that she would have done whatever it took to save her baby—even call someone she knew she couldn’t trust, someone who would kill her.
That was a love that Cat could understand better right now.
She’d gotten the call she’d been expecting first thing this morning.
She was on desk duty for the rest of her time in Fortune Creek.
She still had six weeks as acting sheriff and, while she had turned it over to DCI and the FBI, she didn’t want to just walk away.
She wanted to stop the people who had tried to kill both her and Dylan last night.
For her safety and that of her baby she’d needed to step back.
Which meant she would stay to take calls at the office, sit in her chair and watch Helen knit and try to stay awake.
Her daughter kicked her, reminding her that she’d wished for something to happen to keep her awake and look how that had almost turned out.
Well, she’d gotten more than she wished for.
What had almost happened last night had shaken her to her core.
It made her question if she could do this job even after she delivered her little girl.
Could she risk her life knowing there was no one to take care of her daughter without her?
She saw Helen take a call, then look in her direction a moment before her phone rang.
She picked up glad to hear Dylan’s voice.
“I’m at the wrecking yard in Eureka.
My pickup still runs.
How about your patrol SUV?”
It did.
“Can I buy you lunch?”
“That sounds wonderful.
Why don’t I meet you there.
I want to see the truck.”
Earlier she’d called the local hospitals to see if anyone had come in with a head injury.
No one.
If it had been Rowena, it was possible they would find her dead somewhere down in the trees along the creek.
Unless her injuries weren’t life threatening.
Dylan had called her last night to tell her that when he’d returned to the ranch after the two of them had given all their information to the DCI team and FBI, he’d found Rowena gone—just like his truck from one of the old barns.
Everyone was anxious to talk to her.
Last night Cat had gotten only a glimpse of the truck just before it had gone off the road and disappeared.
She was anxious to see it as she drove into town to the wrecking yard.
Dylan was standing over by the truck when she got there.
She parked, got out, and immediately felt off-balance at the sight of the big green truck with the wooden stock rack.
Even from a distance, she could see how the front was caved in from hitting a tree and putting the driver’s head into the windshield.
She had no idea what year it was, what make or model, just that it was made before seatbelts.
The closer she got to the truck, the more she felt the tiny hairs on her neck stand on end.
Cat couldn’t believe what she was looking at.
It was an old farm truck, exactly as her husband described it to her and the cops in the hospital before he died.
The rusted door panel on the driver’s side.
The faded green body but with a yellow hood that had apparently been replaced but never painted to match.
The metal-reinforced wooden stock rack right down to the almost unreadable sticker on the back of the large side mirror from a local café that was no longer in business.
The truck was the one that had killed her husband.
Her heart threatened to burst from her chest.
She looked over at Dylan, the weight of it pressing on her chest.
“You’re sure this is your truck?”
Her voice sounded odd even to her.
She could feel Dylan next to her.
“It’s mine.
I found it in the barn when I bought the place.”
Cat felt sick.
She didn’t want to believe it, but this was the truck.
There couldn’t be two of them exactly alike.
Not with that old café sticker on the back of the driver’s side mirror.
Not with the metal added to the wooden stock rack.
She stepped around the truck to look at the left-hand side.
The dent was there, along with the spot where the paint had been scraped off, leaving the telltale white paint from the vehicle her husband had been driving.
No wonder the truck hadn’t been found after the accident.
It had been in Dylan’s barn.
This was the truck that had killed her husband.
“It’s so old.
It doesn’t even look like it would run,”
she said, wondering what it was she wanted him to tell her—anything that could stop her thinking the worst.
“Surprisingly it still runs like a top.”
“When was the last time you took it out for a drive?”
she asked, her voice breaking.
She could feel Dylan’s intent gaze on her.
He was standing so close that she could also feel the heat radiating off his body.
“I didn’t know you had an interest in old farm trucks,”
he said, studying her.
“It’s been months since I even started it up.”
Bile rose in her throat.
She started to step away. “Cat?”
Dylan reached for her arm to stop her.
She let him since she felt as if she might crumble to her knees, her body felt so weak.
For months since she took the job, she’d been unconsciously looking for a truck just like it.
But she hadn’t seen one, not like this one.
She’d thought she would never see the truck that hit her husband, that killed him, that left her pregnant and a widow.
Her gaze came up to Dylan’s.
“This is the truck that hit and killed my husband six months ago.”
He stared at her, shock turning his handsome face into a pale mask of disbelief.
“You said he was killed in a car wreck but—”
He shook his head.
“You can’t think that I—”
He let go of her to take a step back.
“Cat, I swear I’ve never taken the truck off the ranch.”
She felt tears burn her eyes.
This is what she’d wanted to hear, wanted desperately to believe.
She’d trusted this man.
Trusted him with her body, her baby, her heart.
“Then who?”
Dylan looked lost as he shook his head.
“I don’t know.
The key was in it when I discovered it in the barn.
I never took it out.
Someone could have stolen it, I guess, and…”
Cat shook her head, fear crushing her chest.
“They wouldn’t have brought it back.
They couldn’t have unless they knew the code to get back in the gate.”
He looked sick.
“When was your husband—”
She told him the date and he let out a relieved breath.
“I didn’t come out to the ranch until three weeks after that.
I remember the date.
It was my birthday.
Cat, I can prove I wasn’t in Montana.”
She stared at him still stunned and upset.
“If it wasn’t you, then…”
She met his gaze and held it.
“Didn’t you say your wife was out here six months ago getting the house ready?”
He nodded slowly.
“But why would Ginny take the truck out? What possible reason would she have?”
Cat looked at the truck with its huge wooden stock rack on the back.
“Maybe she had to haul something.”
Like a body.
Or furniture.
Or load of machine parts she was taking to Canada to sell before bringing back drugs.
Cat had no idea.
“I’m going to have to get forensics to check out the bed of the truck as well as the cab, Dylan.”
“Make the call.
We need to know who was driving that truck not just last night but six months ago.”
As she started to pull out her phone, he stepped to her, pulling her into his arms and holding her.
“I’m so sorry, Cat.
So very sorry.”
She nodded into his shoulder, thinking again of life’s curves.
Leaving the truck and the information with DCI, Dylan insisted on taking her to lunch.
“I know you’re not hungry, but maybe your daughter is.”
She’d smiled at that.
“I’m sorry I suspected you yet again,”
she said as they drove to a café.
He shrugged.
“How could you not? All of this seems to have landed on my doorstep.
No coincidence there.
I’m tangled up in this every way but loose.
My deceased wife, her friends, my brother.”
He shook his head as he parked.
“I still can’t fathom Ginny driving that truck the night your husband was killed.
I married her, lived with her a short time.
I realize now that she was a liar and probably a cheater, but to be so cold-blooded as to crash into your husband’s car and not stop to help.”
“I suppose it would depend on why she was driving the truck to begin with,”
Cat said after they’d gotten out and were walking toward the front door of the café.
“I doubt she wanted anyone to know what she was doing out that night in the truck so close to the Canadian border.
I’m just glad that Taylor was able to make a call for help or I wouldn’t have gotten to say goodbye to him.”
“Or learn about the truck that hit him,”
Dylan said as he opened the door, and they stepped inside.
Once seated, he said, “I’m so sorry.
If I’d never married Ginny—”
She reached over and put a hand on his and shook her head.
“This isn’t your fault.
No one can control fate.”
He turned his hand over to take hers.
“So true.”
She looked lost in thought for a moment before she said, “Are you sure Ginny was out here alone?”
Frowning, he said, “You think Rowena or one of the others was with her?”
“I was thinking more like your brother.”
He stared at her in surprise, realizing that he’d never questioned how long Ginny and Beau had been…what? Conspiring or just simply having an affair behind his back? The waitress approached, took their orders and left before he dared speak or, worse, cuss.
“You think he was driving the truck that night?”
Cat seemed to wince.
“No, I hadn’t been thinking that, but if he was out here with her and they were hooked up in this scheme…”
“Scheming,”
he repeated.
“Why not? He could have been driving.
I’ll see if I can find out if he was in the states during that time.”
He had no idea how long Ginny and his brother had been, as Cat put it, scheming.
Or even if they had been.
He made the call, quick and to the point, and disconnected.
“I’m sorry,”
she said as if it was a foregone conclusion that his brother had been in the states six months ago.
He still held out hope that he was wrong.
“You have no reason to be sorry.
I never cared what their story was.”
He laughed scornfully.
“Probably because whatever it was would only make me feel worse.”
“That’s why I hate bringing it all back up.”
“The investigation is bringing it back up.
Rowena, Athena’s death, her missing baby…”
His gaze softened as he looked at her.
“I’ve been hiding out here in Montana from the truth, but it’s going to come anyway.
It’s time I faced it.”
His cell rang and he quickly picked up.
He listened for a few moments.
He could feel her watching him, trying to see by his expression how bad it was.
He wished he could hide his feelings better.
He used to be good at it.
He didn’t want to be anymore. “Thank you. I appreciate this.”
He disconnected and looked at her.
“Beau was in the states.
Want to bet he was in Montana?”
Cat ate as much of her salad as she could, the two of them having fallen silent as if both were lost in their own thoughts.
“This doesn’t mean Beau was driving the truck,”
she said after a while.
“Nor does it mean he was on the wrong side of this.
I’d like to take a look inside his lake house.”
“No problem,”
he said after paying for their lunch and leading her outside to his pickup.
“Want to pick up your SUV or go in the truck?”
“Let’s take your truck.”
They climbed in before he asked, “Anything special you’re looking for?”
“Just a thought,”
she said.
“Let’s say Beau was trying to help Ginny get out rather than joining her.
Let’s say they weren’t alone out here.
Ginny didn’t get the list from you.
Maybe she wasn’t the one to get it at all.
Maybe she took it from Rowena, flew out here and met Beau asking for his help.”
“That’s a whole lot of supposition,”
he commented as he drove toward Flathead Lake.
“Then Ginny and Beau were killed in the bombing, but they didn’t have the list with them.”
He nodded.
“We know Rowena came out here looking for something.
What if Beau and Ginny left it in his lake house so you would find it and take it to the right people.”
“That really is a long shot,”
Dylan said, but she could tell he wanted to believe it.
He wanted to believe in his brother—and maybe that there might have been something good in his deceased wife.
“Then who was driving the truck not just last night but six months ago?”
She shrugged.
“We have a lot of suspects.
I’d put Rowena at the top of the list, but I doubt she can drive a stick.”
“Something tells me you can, Sheriff,”
he said grinning over at her.
“I’m a Montana girl.
I can put my own worm on a hook, catch and gut a fish and fry it up for dinner.”
He laughed.
“My kind of woman.”
His look sent a bolt of heat right to her center.
She felt her face flush as she thought of him between her legs.
“So not Rowena,”
Dylan said.
“Let’s not forget Sharese and her brother Luca.”
“Or that Rowena visited Sharese in Libby before we were run off the road,” he added.
“Just curious,”
Cat asked.
“Did Ginny know how to drive a stick shift?”
Dylan had no idea.
He couldn’t believe how little he’d known about the woman he’d married.
He also realized, as he pulled up to Beau’s lake house, that Cat still thought Ginny might have been driving the truck six months ago.
The house felt colder than it had the last time they were there.
He thought about how he’d brought Cat here wanting her desperately.
That feeling hadn’t gone away; he had a feeling it never would.
There was something about her, her strength and yet her compassion that had him falling for her.
He reminded himself that he’d fallen this quickly for Ginny and look where that had left him.
“Did you know your brother was buying this place?”
she asked as he snapped on the lights.
“Not until he’d already purchased it and invited me out.”
They split up and began to search the house.
It wasn’t large, but it was nice.
As he moved through it, seeing some of his brother’s things, he hoped Cat was right and that his brother hadn’t gone to the dark side.
But for the life of him, he couldn’t imagine where his brother would have left the list.
It made no sense that Beau was involved at all—unless he added in Ginny.
Was Beau in love with her? Or was it a business deal? It would have been just like his brother to want to save the femme fatale in distress.
When he finished his part of the search, he found Cat back in the living room.
“If your brother got his hands on the document and realized what it was, why wouldn’t he have just handed it over to you?”
Dylan shook his head.
“We’d been at odds for a while before his death.
I didn’t like the way he was living.
He didn’t think I was doing such a great job of my life either.”
He shrugged.
“Brothers, they disagree.”
“But he was at your wedding.”
“Apparently busy with Athena,”
Dylan said with a curse.
“Did he like Ginny?”
she asked.
Dylan had to consider that.
“He was wary.
I got the impression he thought I jumped into it too quickly.”
Cat nodded and looked around the room.
“Did you spend any time here in this house with him?”
“I did when he first bought it.”
He saw that she’d walked to a shelf full of board games.
“Did you play any of these?”
He had to think.
“Monopoly.
Beau loved to make his own money, refusing to touch his inheritance.
So he especially liked to take every penny I had in the game.”
“I think we should take a look at the game,”
Cat said.
“We’ve looked everywhere else.”
She reached for it but was too short to take it off the shelf.
Dylan stepped over to her, pulled down the game from the top shelf and took it over to the table.
“Is that where he normally kept the game?”
she asked as she joined him.
He frowned.
“I don’t think I ever paid any attention.”
He lifted the lid and looked down at it, remembering their last game.
He and Beau had fought tooth and nail, Dylan not about to let him win.
“He always wanted the top hat,”
he said picking up the piece and turning it in his fingers.
“And you?”
Cat asked sitting down before digging into the game box.
“I usually had the dog.
Better than the wheelbarrow or the iron.”
She chuckled at that.
“I like the car.”
She picked up one stack of money and thumbed through it, then another, putting them aside.
Dylan took out the land titles and the Chance and Get Out of Jail Free cards.
Nothing.
He was ready to give up when Cat lifted the cardboard bottom up.
He heard the sound she made.
Her gaze shot to him as she moved the cardboard aside and he saw the envelope taped to the floor of the game box.