THEY STOPPED IN Grass Range at the café for breakfast as the sun was coming up. Tucker watched Kate put away a huge plate of eggs, hash browns, bacon and toast. He’d never seen a woman eat like she did—and yet every curve on her body couldn’t have been more perfect.
“What’s to the east besides Jordan?” she asked as she finished the last bite.
“Not much. Mostly badlands. Garfield County is one of the least populated in the state. Well, in the top ten, anyway. A lot of counties out this way have less than a thousand people.” Was that really what she wanted to know? Often he wasn’t sure what went on in that mind of hers.
As he looked into her face, though, he felt the pull that had left him off balance since the first time he laid eyes on her. This woman was such a contradiction. A privileged rancher and congressman’s daughter. An award-winning journalist. A sister determined to get justice for her brother. An independent woman hell-bent on finishing what she started even if it got her killed.
But it was the vulnerable side of Kate that played hell with his heart. Those moments when he saw the pain and the toughness that tried to counteract it. No woman could be stronger or more terrifying, he thought as he looked at her now. This was the kind of woman a man fell hard for. The kind a man spent a lifetime loving.
“Did you tell your brothers where we were going?” she asked as she pushed her plate away and he signaled the waitress for their check.
“So they could tell my brother the sheriff?” he asked.
“It crossed my mind.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “It would have been the smart thing to do. I know Flint is working day and night to find the Dunns.”
“Can he really throw us in jail for interfering in the investigation?”
Tucker sighed. “So you were eavesdropping last night. I should have known. I’m sure he could, but your father would bail you out.”
She looked away. “Maybe not.”
“They’re only trying to protect you.”
“I don’t want to be protected,” she said, turning again to meet his gaze. She lifted her chin, stubbornness making her blue eyes glitter.
“Did you ever consider the fact that your parents have already lost one child? What if they lose you, too?”
“My brother was the chosen one,” she said. “Anyway, my parents would forge on blindly. It’s what they do. Stiff upper lip. Head in the sand. They are both good at pretending ugliness doesn’t exist in their rarified air.”
“Seems their daughter is a lot like them.”
Anger flashed in her eyes. “I am nothing like them!” she snapped a little too loudly, making the other people in the small café turn to look at her.
The waitress came out to give them their check. Tucker paid and the waitress left them alone again.
Kate lowered her voice. “How can you even say that?”
He smiled at her. “The forging ahead blindly. It just rang a bell when it came to you.”
“It’s not blindly. I just don’t let anything stop me.”
Except for a bullet, he thought. But then, that was why he was on his way to Jordan, Montana, looking for possible murderers. He was just as crazy as she was since, if he got caught, he’d be behind bars again. Flint had let him off once. He wouldn’t again, he thought as they walked out to his pickup. But that was the least of his problems.
Earlier the sun had been shining to the east—over Jordan. But now dark clouds hunkered on the horizon, warning of a storm on its way.
But it would be nothing like the storm brewing back home when Flint found out that they’d taken off. He’d know they were after the Dunns. There would be hell to pay—if they survived whatever might be waiting for them.
* * *
FLINT COULDN’T BELIEVE it when he got the call from Hawk.
“Appears they took off in the middle of the night,” his brother told him. “Tuck left a note. They took his pickup. Her SUV is still in the yard so I would imagine they’ll be back.”
“The note. What did the note say?”
“Just said he and Kate had gone and not to worry.”
“Not to worry?” The sheriff let out an oath under his breath. “What is it about this woman? I swear, when it comes to women, Tucker doesn’t have the good sense of a rock.”
“This one’s different,” Hawk said. “He was a rutting teenager back when he fell for Madeline. Kate... Well, she’s special.”
“Not you, too.” Flint hung up. He’d been trying to find the last two Dunns—Melody and K.O. While Kevin had been arrested when he was twenty-two, he hadn’t had any other run-ins with the law since.
Nor did it appear that either one of them were gainfully employed, which he took to mean that they were either running cons or they were being paid under the table so they didn’t have to declare their income.
Right now they were like ghosts. Flint had to wonder what they were running from. At first he’d thought it was the discovery of the skeletal remains in the creek—a sure sign of guilt.
But he couldn’t find a record of them for almost the past twenty years. How had they lived underground all that time? Or was it possible they weren’t even still alive? He had a call in to a hospital in Wyoming about a patient who’d been admitted whose brother matched K.O.’s description now out on the wire.
Neither had gone by Dunn, though. But since it was about nineteen years ago, Flint thought it might be a clue. The patient had been a young blonde woman with severe brain trauma, so he knew he could be barking up the wrong tree. But it was the only tree he had right now.
If they were hiding out, the fact that Tucker and Kate had been rattling cages looking for them had probably forced them to go even deeper underground.
The question wasn’t why had Tucker and Kate taken off in the middle of the night? It was where had they gone? One of them must have found a lead to the Dunns. And hadn’t called him, he thought with a curse. Tucker had always been stubborn, wanting to do everything on his own. Just like all the Cahill men, he thought. What a bunch they were.
But he suspected that Kate Rothschild was even worse. He thought about putting out a BOLO on the two. But his brother was already in trouble with the law. Tucker didn’t need that kind of attention. Once he found him, though, Flint was going to lock him up and maybe Kate, too. He knew now it was the only way to keep them out of his investigation and keep them both safe.
His cell phone rang. He was hoping it was Tucker. It was Maggie. He quickly picked up, always pleased to talk to the woman he loved.
“Why don’t you come down to the hospital for lunch?” his wife said. “I’m at the hospital. These babies are so adorable.”
* * *
DEPUTY HARPER COLE resented that he hadn’t been one of the deputies put on the Dunn case. He was the one who’d found the shell casings that went with the slug in the woman’s skull.
“What are you doing here on your day off?” the sheriff asked as he passed Harp in the hall.
“Just picking up my check.” Which was true. But he was also here to pick up whatever information he could. He heard Flint say he was going out for an early lunch and if his brother Tucker called, to patch him through at the hospital.
Marsha was in the break room where she always hung out before her shift. She was a gossip magnet. If anyone knew what was going on at the sheriff’s department, she did. She’s the one who’d told him about Tucker Cahill’s relationship with the deceased.
“What do you know about the Dunns?” Harp asked quietly as he took a seat at her table.
Marsha smiled and leaned forward as she filled him in. He was disappointed to realize that there wasn’t much new.
“So Misty Dunn killed herself within days of her sister being murdered on the river,” Harp said. “And the other one? Melody? The sheriff thinks she is with her brother, K.O., somewhere? There still aren’t any leads?”
Marsha shook her head. No news made her sadder than it did him. “Imagine three identical young women. I suspect the men never knew which one they were with.”
Harp nodded. “Or which one is dead. They all have the same DNA.”
“But they all didn’t have a broken leg that healed years ago,” Marsha pointed out.
Unfortunately, that information wasn’t worth anything unless he could find K.O. and Melody and find out which of the girls had broken her leg. It was the only way to make a positive identification on the bones that were found in the creek.
He stood up. “I’m going up to Clawson Creek and doing some snooping around.”
“I thought it was your day off,” Marsha said.
“Keep it on the q.t.—just between the two of us.”
She gave him a wink. “Call me later.”
Harp promised he would. In his car, he called Vicki and told her where he was going but not to tell anyone.
“Harp, be careful. This family sounds scary.”
He chuckled. “I can handle myself. You just take care of you and our son. Don’t worry. If anyone can find these con artists, it’s me,” he said confidently. “I’m going to make you proud.”
“You always have.”
He thought about her last words as he drove to Clawson Creek. The problem was that he hadn’t always made her proud. Last year he’d done something he shouldn’t have and he’d stupidly confessed it to her.
But since then he’d turned his life around, he reminded himself. He was becoming the man he never dreamed he could be. Even his father, the mayor of Gilt Edge, was proud of him. It was more than he’d ever had before. He was a husband, soon to be a father, a deputy who was helping solve cases. He was somebody—not just the mayor’s worthless son.
On the outskirts of Clawson Creek, Harp slowed. Someone in this town knew where the Dunns had gone. All he had to do was find that person and convince him or her to talk.
* * *
“WHERE’S THIS BAR we’re looking for?” Tucker asked as he drove his pickup into Jordan, Montana. Dark storm clouds blotted out the sun. The wind had picked up but so far it hadn’t rained. He looked for the main street of this small isolated town, hoping he hadn’t left the county—and faced going back to jail—on a wild-goose chase.
The area had become infamous some years ago because of a band of antigovernment militia who’d moved in and bucked the system, causing a standoff. Montana had become a hideout for the lawless—just as it had back in the Old West.
“Pull into that gas station,” Kate said. She jumped out and ran in the moment he stopped. A few minutes later, she hurried back out and slid into the passenger seat again. “It’s north of Jordan. Some place called Hell Creek.”
He shot her a look. “Hell Creek. How appropriate.”
As he drove through the tiny town of Jordan and headed north into rugged Missouri Breaks Country, he could understand why the Dunns might have chosen this area. It was miles from any other town, seriously in the middle of nowhere.
The landscape could have been that of the moon with towering spires of stone, deep gullies, wind-and water-scoured hillsides of eroded dust and stone. This had once been the home of dinosaurs, their bones still being excavated from the sides of the rugged bluffs.
The most visitors this area received came for Fort Peck Lake to fish or camp in the summer months or ice fish in the winter. In between, he doubted few people passed through except on their way to somewhere else.
They drove north for some miles, the dusty road getting rougher as they went. Not far from the lake, they saw several structures against the skyline. The first was a small gas station and convenience store with four rustic cabins behind it. The old-looking place sat on a rise overlooking the vast rugged country. Farther up the road sat the bar. Everything looked worn and seedy under the dark clouds overhead.
“Hell Creek Bar,” Kate said, looking around as if expecting to see the Dunns.
In the distance, Tucker thought he could see a slice of blue water where the marina must be. Around back was an old motel that looked as if it had been turned into permanent living quarters.
He pulled into the bar, next to the four pickups parked out front. “This is just a suggestion, but from the looks of this bar—”
“I’m not going to walk in and shoot anyone,” she said as she opened her door and was out before he could finish his lecture.
“That might be your best bet actually,” he said to the empty pickup. With a sigh, he followed, noticing the way she had a hand gripped over the top of her purse. He swore under his breath, but given how rough the bar looked, it probably wouldn’t be the first time it had seen gunplay. After all, this was Montana.
He caught up to Kate at the door. She’d hesitated as if hearing the raised voices coming from inside. It wasn’t even noon and it sounded as if a lot of patrons were already hammered.
Pushing open the door, he stood back to let her enter like any well-trained gentleman. Cool, dark air, thick with the smell of stale beer, rushed out. Old cigarette smoke still lingered in the furnishings as they stepped in. Montana bars had been smoke-free for some years now, except for Native American casinos, but in a lot of them, you couldn’t tell.
All the noise seemed to be coming from the back where a group of men were standing around a pool table, a game in progress.
Tucker steered Kate toward the bar stool closest to the door. The bartender extracted himself from the goings-on at the pool table and made his way toward them. When he was within a few yards, Tucker recognized Kevin “K.O.” Dunn from his mug shot. He was older but had one of those boy-next-door faces that never seemed to change. His hair was still blond but longer. The thing that couldn’t change was those eyes. Madeline-blue eyes, as Tucker now thought of them.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” Kate asked and reached into her purse.