THE WIND BLEW all night. Not that Kate noticed. She’d been wrapped up in Tucker—quite literally. Now, lying on her side, spooned against his warm, hard body, she didn’t want to move. But she’d awakened to the sound of her phone. She’d turned it to Vibrate and left it on the small kitchen table three yards or so from the bed. The phone danced across the worn Formica top and finally came to rest.
It was the eighth time the phone had done that since she’d awakened. Her mother calling? Her father? Peter? Could be any one of them. Whoever it was they were quite insistent and that’s what worried her.
Tucker stirred behind her and pulled her even tighter against him. She lay back, warm smooth flesh to warm smooth flesh, wishing she never had to move from this position. She smiled as she felt the familiar representation of his desire. It stirred a need that she’d thought sated after everything he’d done to her last night. As if she could get enough of him.
Her phone went off again.
Tucker lifted his head to look at the table. “Is that your phone?”
“It is. I’m afraid something has happened. I probably should check it.”
“Hmm,” he said, lowering his head to her shoulder, where he began to leave a trail of warm kisses across her skin.
She moaned, closing her eyes. Never in her wildest dreams had she ever imagined that making love could be like this. The men she’d known had always been polite, tentative and boring as if they had a script to follow.
There had been nothing tentative or scripted about Tucker Cahill. He’d taken her with a wanton abandonment the first time. She’d clung to him, crying out with each release until gasping for breath, her nails digging into his back, and him arching in a howl of pleasure before collapsing with her in his arms.
The next time, he’d explored her body as if he needed to know every square inch of it—and the exact spots that made her crazy with desire. They’d laughed and played most of the night, with her exploring his body as well, until it felt as if they’d always known each other this intimately, before they’d collapsed into an exhausted satiated nightmareless sleep.
“I have to get that,” Kate said as the phone began to vibrate again. She rose from the bed. The cabin had cooled down after the woodstove had gone out. She rushed naked to the table, scooped up the phone and dived back under the covers, making Tucker laugh and pull her into his warm body again.
He held her as she checked her phone, kissing the nape of her neck and following her spine downward. “It’s my mother.” Her heart was in her throat as she listened to the voice mail. “Oh, no.”
“What is it?” he said, sitting up to look at her.
“My father’s back in the hospital. This time it sounds serious,” she said as she turned to look at him.
Without a word, he got up to go to the window. “It looks like the wind has dried things out.” He turned. Since the woodstove had gone out during the night, the only warm spot was in the bed under the covers where she now lay naked.
She saw desire burn like quicksilver in his gray eyes, then dim as he said, “I should get you home as soon as possible. But if you stay naked like that much longer...”
She nodded, as disappointed as he was that they had to leave here. She got up and padded across the icy cold floor to retrieve her clothing. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Tucker pull on his jeans. She wanted to lay her palm against the warm skin of his back, but she knew what would happen if she did. He was right. She needed to get home. She hurriedly dressed in the freezing-cold cabin, praying her father was all right.
* * *
“SO HOW DOES it work?” Billie Dee asked, trying not to get her hopes up after what Henry had told her. For so long she’d believed she would never see her daughter again.
“You can go online and send in your DNA, letting her know you want to find her,” Henry said.
“But what if she doesn’t want to see me?” she asked, her voice breaking.
“Tex, she wouldn’t have put her DNA into the system unless she wanted to find you.”
She nodded, tears blurring her eyes. “It’s so...scary. I’ve prayed that someday I would find her or she’d find me, but what if she can’t forgive me?”
“Would you tell her who her father is?” Henry asked.
“He’s still a powerful oilman in Houston. His wife died. He’s remarried to a younger woman much like his first wife.”
“You don’t have to tell her,” he said.
She got up and walked around the kitchen, her fear growing. “I don’t know what to do.”
“You don’t have to do anything right now. You can think about it,” he assured her. “It’s entirely up to you.”
She turned to smile at him. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”
“You’ll never have to find out.”
* * *
HARP OPENED HIS EYES, surprised and confused to find himself in a hospital bed. For a moment he thought it was last year when he’d almost died after doing something incredibly stupid and that his whole year of working to prove himself had all been nothing but a hopeful fantasy.
So when the sheriff walked in, he hadn’t known what to expect. Flint had wanted to fire him from day one. The only thing that had kept him employed was the fact that his daddy was the mayor.
“How are you feeling?” Flint asked. He sounded concerned, more concerned than he had in the past, that was for sure.
Harp licked his dry lips. The sheriff poured some water from a pitcher by the bed into a cup with a straw and handed it to him. He took a long drink before handing it back.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice froggy.
Flint grimaced, a familiar expression the sheriff used when Harp had done something that wasn’t according to protocol. “You don’t remember?”
He held his breath, feeling his career and all his dreams slipping away.
“You dug up a grave on your day off,” the sheriff said.
Harp let out the breath with a sigh of relief. It wasn’t last year. It hadn’t all been a dream. He’d saved the day a few times since then. He wasn’t a total screwup. Also, his memory was coming back. “Misty Dunn’s grave,” he said. “I just had this feeling...”
“Turns out that your instincts were correct.”
“It wasn’t her body in the wooden casket, right?”
Flint smiled. “No, it wasn’t. It was her father’s. According to the coroner, he’d been murdered. Sonny sent the slugs to the lab but he’s betting they will turn out to be from the same gun that killed the woman we thought was Madeline. Turns out the bones found in the creek were Misty’s.”
Harp frowned. His head hurt. “So someone killed the old man, and everyone thought it was Misty’s body in the grave... Wait, why would anyone do that?”
“The popular theory is that Misty was the woman Tucker met on the bridge that night and Madeline was the person waiting for her downstream. They possibly argued, and Misty ended up dead. But how did she explain what had happened to Misty when Madeline went home? Maybe another argument ensued, the father is killed and buried in the old cemetery and everyone is told it was Misty who died. No one sees Kell, the old man, and the family has left. No one knows the truth.” Flint looked at him. “Until you decided to dig up Misty’s grave.”
“How about that,” Harp said. “So where is this Madeline I keep hearing so much about?”
“That’s the million-dollar question,” the sheriff said.
“We have to find her,” Harp said, trying to sit up. “She’s the only one who can clear your brother.”
The sheriff gently pushed him back down. “You aren’t going anywhere. The doc says you’re here at least until tomorrow. You have a nasty bump on the side of your head. Fortunately, no concussion, though the blow must have been enough to knock you out.”
“Wait, how did you find me?” Harp asked, surprised he wasn’t still lying in that grave. He now remembered the feel of the dirt being shoveled over him. The thought made him shudder.
“Some old man named Ray said he met you at the bar. He got worried about you when you didn’t return his shovel and drove out to the cemetery.”
“I remember hearing the sound of a vehicle.”
“Ray must have scared your would-be killer away and saved your life. He took his shovel back. Said if you need it again, to let him know.”
Harp smiled, glad the sheriff was finding the humor in this.
“Once Ray called the sheriff you were brought by helicopter to the hospital here in Gilt Edge. By the way, Tucker found K.O. and one of the sisters, Melody.”
“Is that who hit me and knocked me into that grave?”
The sheriff shook his head. “They were miles away. We’re looking into who attacked you while you were grave robbing.”
Harp heard the chastisement in his boss’s words. He should have known a lecture was coming. “Probably should have let you know where I was.”
“You think?”
“But then again, you would have tried to stop me,” Harp said.
Flint nodded. “Something about protocol, yes.” But he smiled. “Good work, Deputy. Now, get some rest. Vicki is outside in the hallway and anxious to see you.”
“You tell her I’m a hero?” Harp joked.
“I figured you’d take care of that yourself,” Flint said, but he was still smiling. “I thought you’d like to meet your son.”
* * *
AFTER TUCKER DROPPED Kate at her SUV on the ranch, he showered and changed before calling the sheriff’s department. His brother answered as soon as the dispatcher put the call through.
“Are you headed back?” Flint asked.
“I’m at the ranch. I’d come down to the sheriff’s department but—”
“I’ll be right over.”
Good to his word, Flint pulled up not five minutes later. Tucker met him downstairs in the living room. He hadn’t seen Hawk or Cyrus, both apparently out working on the ranch. He felt guilty that he hadn’t done an honest day’s work since he’d been home.
“I called over to Hell Creek Bar,” Flint said without preamble. “Both K.O. and Melody cleared out this morning.”
That didn’t surprise him, though he had wondered if maybe K.O. was tired of running. What bothered Tucker was who exactly Madeline’s brother was running from. Was it her? Was she that evil? Or was there more to the story?
“By the way,” Flint said. “Where’s Kate?”
He told him about her father being admitted to the hospital. “She’s gone to Helena.”
“I have news,” Flint said after they’d sat down in the living room.
Tucker listened, not surprised that Deputy Harper Cole hadn’t found Misty Dunn in that grave up north. “It was the father?”
“Murdered. Slugs were found in the coffin as if he hadn’t been dead when he’d been put in there and was finished off.”
“Tell me it wasn’t my pistol,” he said.
“The slugs match your pistol, but that’s the good news,” Flint assured him. “You had no reason to kill Kell Dunn. Also, you have an alibi. You were still on the ranch before the Dunns buried who they said was their sister Misty. Apparently whoever had killed the father thought his body would never be found.”
Tucker couldn’t believe this. “What do you mean whoever? Who was left in that house? K.O. and Melody had already cleared out. Misty was dead. The way I see it the only person left was Madeline.”
“Except Madeline couldn’t have killed her father, built him a coffin, put him in it and buried it at the old cemetery all by herself.”
“So there has to be someone else involved.” Just as Kate had been saying all along. The mysterious accomplice that she was determined to find.
“You sure K.O. didn’t stick around long enough to help Madeline?”
Tucker shook his head. “I honestly believe he’s afraid of her.”
“Sounds like he has good reason.”
“How are you going to find her?” Tucker asked.
Flint met his gaze. He looked upset. “I think she’s going to come looking for you—that’s why I’m going to lock you up. If Kate comes back still determined to play detective, then she’s going behind bars with you.”
“I like the sound of that,” Tucker said.
“Not with you. Just in the same jail.” His brother gave him the eye. “Something happen in Hell Creek?”
“I’m in love with her.”
Flint lifted a brow. “That was quick.”
“Not with this woman. She’s...” He shook his head. “She’s so much that I can’t even list all the things about her that drive me crazy, that make me laugh, that make me want her like I’ve never wanted anything or anyone in my life. She’s...everything.”
His brother laughed. “You do have it bad. That’s another reason you should be locked up for a while.”
“Flint, if you really want to find Madeline Dunn and end this, then you have to let me go. Like you said, she will find me—but not if I’m locked up in jail. Also, you can’t prove I left the county.”
“Are you serious? You called and told me—”
“I was drunk.”
His brother rolled his eyes. “If we’re right, then Madeline already tried to kill you once. You know what this woman is capable of.”
He nodded. “But she doesn’t know what I’m capable of. I used to be putty in her hands and her sister Misty’s, as well. I’ve grown up. You need to let me do this.”
“I can’t lose you again,” Flint said. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I do. It’s my neck on the line. Madeline tried to frame me for murder. She’ll show herself with me free and you know it. Otherwise, why would she come forward?”
His brother raked a hand through his hair, a gesture all the brothers shared, he realized. “You see her, you even get a glimpse of her, you call me. Is that clear?”
“Absolutely. I have your number on speed dial. But there might be one problem.”
“Kate,” Flint said.
“She can’t be in the picture. Right now she’s in Helena at her father’s bedside.”
“The moment she heads this way, I’ll have her picked up.”
Tucker hated to do that to her, but he had to know she was safe. And now more than ever, he wanted this over. He couldn’t live without Kate. But first he had to deal with his old girlfriend.