CHAPTER SIX
THE SENATOR GLANCED at the clock on the wall and swore. It had been hours, and no sign of his daughter or the cowboy who’d gone after her.
“Maybe I should call the sheriff,” he said more to himself than to his wife.
“I thought you promised to wait twenty-four hours before you did anything,” Angelina reminded him.
“Bo didn’t take the money,” he said, sounding as if he was trying to convince himself more than her. “It’s just...missing.” He realized it must have been missing for some time. He recalled his daughter Olivia’s engagement party. Bo had been throwing down the champagne. He’d been concerned then. Why hadn’t he talked to her about it?
“Even if she didn’t take the money, Bo’s responsible for it,” Angelina said.
Bo would know that, as the president of the foundation it was her job to make sure nothing was amiss. If word got out... He realized he was starting to sound like Angelina. She constantly worried about even the breath of scandal hurting his chances of being elected president.
Angelina lived in fear of what his daughters might do to embarrass them all. Now that he had thrown his hat into the presidential ring, he felt as if he was on a runaway train. He needed all his attention on the race. But there had been one problem after another on the home front.
Problem? Hell, a tornado had torn through their lives. He found himself second-guessing the decisions he’d made from the age of twenty-five when he’d met and married Sarah, not to mention what he’d done after her presumed death.
Friends kept saying the worst was behind him and Angelina. Really? So why did he feel as if he was merely waiting for the other shoe to drop?
“Stop pacing! You’re driving me crazy.” Angelina moved past him to pour herself a drink.
Buckmaster watched his wife in surprise. Angelina had never been a drinker other than an occasional glass to be social. “Pour me one, too.”
She turned to look at him but said nothing before turning back to make them both a drink. “I’ve been thinking about our future.”
Their future? “If this discussion is going to be about Sarah again—”
“It’s not.” She handed him his drink and took hers to the couch. She didn’t speak again until she’d sat down, run a hand down the length of her skirt and taken a sip of her cocktail. Her gaze was clear and steady as she looked up at him. “Are you going to withdraw from the campaign?”
It was the last thing he’d expected her to ask. He’d thought everything that had happened would have made the decision for him. Of course, it had come out that Sarah hadn’t braked before she drove into the river twenty-two years ago. He’d thought for sure his poll numbers would have plummeted to the point that it would be ridiculous for him to stay in the race.
But people actually felt sorry for him. They admired him for trying to do the right thing in a difficult situation.
“Your numbers are good, better than good,” Angelina said. “Even my brother’s actions only strengthened your platform.”
He shook his head, wondering how she could go on as if nothing earth-shattering had happened. What he hadn’t known—and the press still didn’t—was that Angelina wasn’t the only one being blackmailed by the now dead Drake Connors. Her brother, Lane, had tried to hide his affair with the man. Realizing Drake planned to expose both him and his sister, he’d agreed to pay the blackmail, only to meet the man along a deserted road nearby and shoot him twice in the back. To avoid a trial and likely a lifetime in prison, Lane hung himself in his jail cell.
“I don’t understand why we’re having this discussion now. I’m in the race. Angelina, what is it you’re so afraid of?” Buckmaster demanded.
Tears filled her eyes. “Other than you leaving me for Sarah?”
He opened his mouth to assure her but closed it. He cared too much about her to lie to her. He had no idea what the future held for the three of them.
“My other fear? That you’ll be like your father and back out of the presidential race at the last minute. Like you, he was in a position where he could have taken the presidency. And then he just up and quit without any real explanation.”
Buckmaster didn’t know any more than anyone else about his father’s sudden decision. “When my mother died, he must have felt as if he’d lost everything.”
“I’ve often wondered if Sarah didn’t get the idea to drive into the river from your father.”
“He didn’t try to kill himself. He’d been drinking, grieving, he was—”
“Brokenhearted over your mother’s death.”
Buckmaster sighed. The last place he wanted to go was down this particular trail. “Angelina, why do you keep digging up the past?”
“Why do you?” she shot back. “Oh, that’s right, Sarah dug herself out of her grave to force us all back into the past.”
“I thought this wasn’t going to be about Sarah,” he chided her.
“The past seems to have a way of repeating itself. There was a rumor that your father had another woman in his life, and that’s what killed your mother.”
He groaned. “A rumor. As far as I know, there was nothing to it. You know how these things get started. But I still don’t see what any of this has to do with us.”
“You don’t see the similarities? You are primed to become the next president. There is another woman in your life. Who says you won’t bail at the last minute like he did?”
“I’m not going to bail. You’re not going to die. I’m not going to get drunk and roll my pickup and end up in the Yellowstone River.” He stepped to her to place his hands on her shoulders. “Have a little faith that things are going to turn out fine.”
“I’m scared something terrible is going to happen,” she whispered as she looked up at him.
He hated that he’d felt the same way for some time now. “Like what?”
Angelina shook her head. “I just have this feeling...”
He wished he could alleviate her fears and his own.
She stepped away from him, finished off her cocktail and straightened. “You are still in a position where you can have everything you’ve dreamed of.”
Not everything, he thought as he took a sip of his drink. The liquor burned all the way down. The only way he could have the presidency now was if he stayed with Angelina, and she knew that. He couldn’t win without her. He especially couldn’t win if he left Angelina for Sarah.
He felt as if he had made a deal with the devil.
* * *
“THE FBI DOESN’T seem to think there’s a problem with Sarah Hamilton,” Undersheriff Dillon Lawson said as he came into his boss’s office and closed the door.
Sheriff Frank Curry waved him into a chair. “So that’s it?”
Dillon shrugged. “They seem to agree with the media that she had an unfortunate accident and may have some mental issues, and they don’t really feel it’s necessary to put any manpower into finding out where she’s been for the past twenty-two years. The general feeling is that she might have had postpartum depression, and that’s what drove her attempted suicide. Her failure to end it all made her take off, possibly with help, and start her life over.”
“And how was she supposed to start her life over without any money or a place to stay?” Frank demanded. “She couldn’t even get a job without a Social Security number.”
“She could have gotten a false identity. You know it isn’t that hard. Maybe whoever helped her leave Beartooth also helped her obtain the documents,” Dillon said. “As for money...she must have had some help there, too. She doesn’t appear to have been cleaning motel toilets all these years.”
Frank knew he had a point. There were ways to get by, especially for a woman. “So why come back now? And why drop in the way she did?” When he’d investigated the spot where Russell Murdock had found Sarah, he’d walked back into the woods. The area was isolated—only one road, no houses, not even a nearby ranch or farm. What he discovered was a paratrooper-type parachute caught in the trees. Sarah’s DNA had been on the chute’s harness.
“Why now? That’s the million-dollar question and the one that has you worried, I suspect,” his undersheriff agreed.
Frank shook his head. “Not just anyone gets dropped out of a plane in the middle of nowhere without any memory of the past twenty-two years.”
“I’m sure you’ve considered that she might be lying about her...amnesia.”
Frank let out a laugh. “The press definitely has. As you said, they consider her an unhappy wife with mental issues. Women especially have turned against her because she left six young children behind, including two almost newborns. But Sarah Hamilton isn’t just anyone. She’s the first wife of Senator Buckmaster Hamilton, the man who, according to the polls, is going to be our next president.”
Dillon shrugged. “But if the FBI doesn’t think she’s a threat...”
“Then I shouldn’t, either.” Frank wished he could quell his concerns as easily. “Did they run an extensive background check on her?”
His undersheriff nodded. “Just like us, they couldn’t find anything. No arrests, not even a speeding ticket. They have no idea where she’s been.”
Frank considered what Dillon had said. He hadn’t been able to find any trace of Sarah in the past twenty-two years. She hadn’t had a job—at least, not one that didn’t pay under the table. Nor had she gotten another driver’s license in another state. And she hadn’t been arrested or had any reason that her fingerprints would have been on file.
Dillon hesitated at the door. “Once he’s president, he’ll have an army of secret service to protect him,” he said as if to reassure them both. “There’s a chance he might not even win. A lot of women out there could decide he drove his wife to suicide. No pun intended. Sarah might even disappear again, this time for good.”
Anything was possible. So why couldn’t Frank let it go? “An innocent woman would have gladly given us her DNA and fingerprints,” he said for the sake of argument. When he’d asked her, she’d declined.
“But we got both from the parachute harness and that coffee cup she had been drinking from,” Dillon pointed out.
Sarah had broken the cup. Frank was positive she’d done it on purpose, realizing that her prints would be on it. She’d been afraid that something would turn up.
“But neither her DNA or her prints came up on any criminal databases,” Dillon said. “Your gut instincts are still telling you something is wrong, though.” The undersheriff seemed to think for a moment. “We could put a missing persons out on her and see if it turns up anything.”
It was a long shot. If she’d been arrested, something would have come up when they’d run her prints and DNA. But cops somewhere across the country could have run across her and might remember that face. “Let me think about it,” Frank said.
For years, the Hamiltons had been the county’s most upstanding family. Sarah’s return had triggered something. Since she’d been back, there’d been blackmail, murder and a suicide in the family. While she couldn’t be blamed for any of that, it still seemed odd to him.
His wife, Lynette, Nettie as everyone called her but him, had put it best. “There is a dark cloud over the Hamilton family.” She’d shuddered when she’d said it. “I hate to think what will happen next.”
“Still no word on Bo Hamilton?” Dillon asked as if thinking the same thing.
“No,” Frank said, “and I’m starting to worry. The Crazies are such a large area to search. I hope it doesn’t come down to that.”
* * *
RAY TURNED IN the saddle to look back at the woman. He was having misgivings about capturing her. His old man was going to kill him. Maybe he should end this now. The one thing he couldn’t do was let her go. His only other option was to kill her and her horse and make sure no one found either body.
Not that it would keep people from searching these mountains for her. Better to shove her and her horse off a cliff.
She sure was pretty, though. Classy, too. He’d never had a woman like that. There was one other option, he told himself. He could keep her.
But fer how long afore she takes an ax handle to yer head and takes off? His father’s mocking voice demanded. Or are ya plannin’ to keep her tied up the whole time like some mutt ya ain’t able to trust?
He scowled and turned back around, knowing his father was right. A woman like her would never want a man like him. She was so small and delicate, so different from him. He was lumbering and awkward.
When he was younger, he was always taller and bigger than the rest of his classmates. He used to hate the way they gave him a wide berth as if afraid of him when he did nothing to scare them. They made him feel even bigger and clumsier.
He hated them for it, because he would have given anything to fit in. Once he realized he could use his intimidating size, he started taking whatever he wanted.
He heard the woman stumble and almost fall again. The rope he had her tied up with grew taut and slowed the horse. Even so, he would drag her if he had to.
As he reined in, he wondered what she saw when she looked at him and scowled at the thought. He told himself he didn’t give a damn, but for the first time he did. It made him furious with himself.
His daddy always said that if you gave a woman any power over you, she’d destroy you. Bo made him feel inferior. Even if he forced himself on her, he knew he wouldn’t feel that he’d had her.
* * *
BO DIDN’T KNOW how long she’d been walking. Her legs and feet ached. Her clothing was torn, her skin scraped and bleeding from the times she’d fallen down and Ray Spencer had dragged her screaming behind her horse until she’d found her feet again.
“Please,” she said now. “Can’t we stop? Just for a few minutes?” He’d given her a drink of water back down the mountain, but her throat was dry again, her mouth dusty, lips cracked. “I need more water.”
“Ya need to keep walkin’. Ya said people’ll be comin’ lookin’ for ya. If ya don’t want ’em dead...”
Was someone looking for her yet? She couldn’t bear to think about spending days up here with this man. Nor could she stand the thought of what would happen once they stopped and made camp.
She’d pleaded with him to let her go. “I won’t tell anyone.”
He’d laughed at that. “That’s what they all say.”
Her blood had curdled at his words. “I have money.”
He’d seemed interested until he’d realized she meant back at her father’s house.
“I’m worth money,” she’d heard herself say. “My father will pay for my return unharmed.” She had known what she was suggesting was more than a little dangerous. But it was the only thing she could think of that might keep this man from killing her. If he knew that she was worth more alive than dead...
“Oh, yeah?” Ray had seemed only mildly interested. “How much do you think you’re worth?”
She had no idea. “A million?”
He’d laughed again, harder this time. “Sure ya are. Anyway, I don’t need no money up here in the mountains. A woman, though, I been hankerin’ for one for weeks. And now I got you.”
Those words had sent a shudder through her, and she’d shut up. There was no negotiating with this man. She had nothing to negotiate with.
Even as the sun set and twilight turned the mountainside to silver gray, Ray kept going, urging her horse on from high in her saddle, jerking at the rope he’d bound her with and half dragging her deeper into the mountains.
She could barely see where to step as daylight vanished and the trail filled with deep shadows. She stumbled and almost fell again.
“Ain’t far now,” Ray said. “Got jest the spot.”
* * *
DARKNESS CAME QUICKLY in the dense pines of the mountains. Once the sun set, a cool breeze had moved through the trees. The shadows grew longer and blacker.
Jace had been following Bo’s trail for hours. The going was slow because he’d often lose it in the thick bed of dried pine needles and have to find it again. He’d seen the remains of other campsites. Telltale blackened rock rings with the remains of a campfire marking the sites. None of those had been used in the past twenty-four hours, though.
Which meant Bo hadn’t wanted just a night of camping. She’d been set on total isolation farther back in the mountains. Knowing that gave him no peace of mind. More and more, he thought Bo Hamilton had looked to get away from civilization. But was it because of a guilty conscience and saddlebags full of loot? Or was there more to it?
He could understand wanting to escape a situation. Many times he hadn’t been able to deal with his sister. He’d wanted to turn his back, run away from the problem. But he hadn’t, and neither would Bo Hamilton when he found her.
Jace realized he wouldn’t be able to track Bo much longer. He needed to make camp before it was too dark to see.
But just as he started to look for a spot to spend the night, he saw the footprints in the dirt. The tracks were man-size, large, moving in a scraping manner that dislodged a lot of dirt.
What caught his eye, though, was the fact that the tracks crossed Bo’s horseshoe prints. Someone had walked past after she’d ridden up into the mountains.
Swinging out of the saddle, he studied them in the waning light. Seeing the man’s boot prints in the dirt, he decided he wouldn’t build a fire tonight. He staked his horse some distance away from where he’d rolled out his sleeping bag.
The last thing he wanted was to become the hunted, because if he was right, Bo Hamilton was on the run—and she wasn’t alone.
* * *
WHEN RAY FINALLY quit dragging Bo up the mountainside in the dark, she collapsed on the ground in tears. Her wrists were rubbed raw from the rope cutting through the duct tape he’d bound her with. The fabric of her shirt was torn at both elbows, the skin beneath it scraped and bleeding.
“Get up,” Ray ordered as he swung down from her horse. “And stop yer blubberin’ or I’ll give ya somethin’ to cry about.”
She couldn’t move, couldn’t walk another step. Nor could she stop crying. The sobs racked her body, generated by fear and exhaustion and the bitter taste of defeat. She was at this man’s mercy, and he had proven he was merciless.
He took an intimidating step toward her. She closed her eyes and curled into a tight ball, bracing herself for the kick. To her surprise, he bent down close to her.
“Ya done good,” he said, his voice sounding both surprised and pleased. “Yer tougher than ya look.”
She didn’t feel tough as he dragged her to her feet. As he untied the rope from her wrists and peeled off what was left of the duct tape, she flinched at the damage that had been done.
“There’s water in that creek over there. It’ll make ya feel better if ya clean up.” The tenderness in his voice suddenly frightened her more than the gruff ruthlessness she had come to associate with him.
Before she could protest, he swept her up in his arms and carried her over to the water. It was full dark now, the sky overhead lit with stars and the gleam of a full moon as it rose up behind the pines to the east. The creek’s surface shimmered in the silken light.
Easing her down on the creek bank, he pulled off her boots and her socks. When he reached for the buttons on her jeans, she tried to pull away.
He slapped her hard enough to snap her head back. “Don’t fight me. Don’t ever fight me.”
She swallowed, her skin stinging from the slap. Closing her eyes, she felt him fumble with the buttons of her jeans before he jerked them down to her ankles, then off. She pressed her eyes closed more tightly, expecting him to remove her panties, as well. Tears leaked from beneath her lashes, but she was sobbed out.
Instead, she felt his fingers on her shirt. The snaps loudly clacked as he jerked her shirt open then eased it off one shoulder, then the other. She hugged herself, praying he wouldn’t try to remove her bra.
“I’ll help ya into the water,” he said next to her ear a moment before he lifted her into his arms again. Wading out into the creek, he lowered her slowly into the icy water.
The cold took her breath away as she balanced precariously on the smooth silken surface of the rocks beneath her, the water up to her thighs. He let go of her. She wobbled there in the middle of the stream, water rushing around her. The freezing water made her lower body ache.
“Wash yerself,” he ordered, taking a step back, but not so far that he couldn’t reach her if she tried to scramble out of the creek and up the adjacent bank.
* * *
RAY FELT DESIRE curl in his belly as he watched her. He didn’t know how much longer he could contain himself. He wanted her, and it didn’t help that he could take her so easily. There was no one around to hear her screams. No one around to be the wiser. Once he disposed of her body...
And what a body it was. His ache had a choke hold on him, and yet something inside him wanted more from her. He’d had women, but none like this one. He wanted this to be different from the others, most of them women he hadn’t even had to force himself on. But they’d all left him feeling empty. This one, he thought, would be different. But only if she came to him willingly.
The thought almost made him laugh. Women didn’t find him...attractive. Especially one like this. He wasn’t bad looking for such a big, hulking guy. That was usually what reeled in the desperate women he’d known. It was when they’d seen his temper or got a glimpse of the darkness inside him—that’s when they wanted nothing to do with him.
He couldn’t hide that part of himself. At least not for long. He would end up hurting this woman. He always did. He would see the change in her eyes—just like he had the others. One minute they were fine with him. The next all they wanted was to put as much distance as possible between him and them.
But they never got away easily. He was too big, too strong, too fast for that. Even hurting them, though, hadn’t given him the satisfaction he so desperately wanted, needed. Ultimately, they all left him, and he ended up feeling empty and alone.
For once, he wanted a woman to want him—with all his faults.
He stared at little Bo-Peep. She was different. She was the kind of woman he would never have stood a chance with off this mountain. Hell, she dressed like she had money. Even her horse looked expensive. Didn’t she say her daddy would pay a million dollars for her?
He’d laughed at the time, but now he wondered if she hadn’t been telling the truth. What had she said her name was? Bo Calder. The name didn’t ring any bells. She’d probably been lying about the money as well as her name. Not that it mattered. For all his dreaming of her coming to him willingly, he doubted she would last the night.