She bought the book.
Three hours later, she was still in the wicker rocker, her ice pack warm and her coffee cold. Her heart raced, her finger hovered over the screen, impatient to swipe, and when she set her phone down at last, she felt like she’d run a marathon.
On the drive to Kalispell, though, when she’d had time to think, she realized that a lot of the story was ridiculous, especially Sawyer’s combat skills. Against multiple trained opponents, multiple times? Yeah, no. It was about as realistic as James Bond. But James Bond sold movie tickets, and so would this. Especially with Rafe Blackstone playing Sawyer, stripping off his wetsuit for that scene where he walked out of the sea. That would work.
You tended to believe, after a few years as a cop, that everybody lied. Or to put it more charitably, that everybody cast their story with themselves in the lead, and in the right. There were two sides to most stories. And all the same, Jace’s ex-wife had to be crazy. If she’d been in it for the money, she’d been nuts to leave, because that book had been good. And if she’d been in it for Jace, she’d been even more nuts. So he didn’t like going to parties. Paige would bet he could host a pretty good party right there on the couch, and that he’d be glad to do it. If the man could make a goat that happy, what could he do for a woman?
It was more than that, though. He was tough, he was tender, and he talked. What woman wouldn’t that work for?
Unfortunately, her chance was gone, so she’d better focus on now. She went to the electronics store and bought her monitoring device, then headed back up to Sinful. When she came around the last bend in the road before dropping into town, though, her phone rang.
She pulled over. After which the phone stopped ringing, of course.
The call was from her station. There was a voicemail, too.
She didn’t listen to it right away. Instead, she put both hands on the steering wheel, took some deep breaths from her belly, and focused on the view in front of her.
Anything more idyllic would be hard to imagine. Main Street, with its line of western-style storefronts, looking like a movie set. The ski mountain, with the rest of the peaks ranged behind and to either side of it, rising rugged and gray above the tree line, showing dark with forest below, with patches of white snow still clinging in the gullies. And the cottony sky hanging over all of it like an endless bowl, the air coming straight in from the north, crisp and clean.
Montana. Big Sky Country. Beautiful, and wild, too. A perfect town. A perfect place. Except it wasn’t, because no place was perfect. All you could do was find the place where you fit best. And since her bizarre mind had decided that her place was the SFPD, she needed to listen to her voicemail.
“Hey.” It was Arletta’s voice, and Paige took the disappointment all the way through her body. “Call me about those numbers.”
She did.
Arletta said, “OK. I finally got a chance to call you back. Your first number”—she read it off, and, yes, it was the source of Paige’s texts—“that’s a burner phone, or a burner app. Montana area code, but that’s as close as you’re gonna get.”
“I figured,” Paige said. “But good to know.”
“Yeah. Guess your boy went to Felon U with the rest of them. Watched The Wire, anyway. You’re with your sister now, anyway, got her back.”
“Yes. I do.”`
“OK. Second one’s a pay phone outside something called the Gas & Go in Sinful, Montana. This is an actual place, not my house when I make the mistake of letting Theodore choose the restaurant and he picks Mexican. Sinful would be the word, because, honey, what that man does with refried beans is a crime. Four-twenty-three South Main. Maybe you’ll get lucky, and your mutt’s been calling his threats in on his breaks from ringing up gas and filling up the hot dog cooker.”
The call had come from Sinful. She—Jace’s stalker had to be a she—was here, then. Or was driving here to do her stalking, but a local call and hand delivery? Staying here, or living here, Paige would bet. “Makes sense,” she said. “Sinful’s where I am. Where my sister is. And yeah, calling from the gas station was dumb. It’s a different person than the other one, then. Got to be.”
“Good news for you,” Arletta said. “Weakest link. Probably thinks he was real sneaky, too. Pay phone. Ooh. Sharp. The dumber they are, the smarter they feel. And seriously? Your sister lives in Sinful? Damn. Do people mail their dirty love notes from there, like your kid’s letter from Santa that comes from the North Pole?”
“Probably,” Paige said absently. “It’s a little bit of a tourist thing.” If Jace filled up at the same gas station every time? If he saw the same female clerk there? It would fit the “casual acquaintance” stalker pattern, she guessed. But calling from your workplace was probably too stupid to hope for.
“Hmm,” Arletta said. “Maybe I should get you to mail something from me to Theodore.”
“I can do better than that.” Paige pulled herself back into the moment. “How about a card that says ‘Thinking of You,’ and a nightgown from my sister’s lingerie store? Text me the colors you like and your size, and you’ve got it. Special delivery straight from Sinful. My treat. My thank-you.”
“Huh. You gonna choose it?”
Paige sighed. “My sister owns the store. She’s good at it.”
“I’m just saying,” Arletta said. “You got good qualities, but that’s not one of ’em.”
“I get it. I got it. You’ll get my sister’s best, not mine. And I’m not that bad.”
“Oh, honey,” Arletta said. “You are. That first hooker outfit you did? Still a legend. I laughed for a week. Born to wear a uniform. But we want you back anyway.”
Paige drove a few hundred yards, pulled into the lot of the Gas & Go, parked in one of the spots next to the square concrete-block building, and checked it out.
There was a pay phone around one side.
She wanted to go in and ask questions. Preferably review the security video. Bad idea, though. If the cops did check out the number, they wouldn’t be one bit happy that she’d been there first. Not to mention that she didn’t have jurisdiction. Or a badge. She could tell Jace and urge him to press the Sinful police to have the call traced, though, now that she knew where the trace would lead.
A gas station. Which always had security cameras. Could anybody actually be this dumb?
Short answer: Of course they could.
She’d just take a look. She got out of her car, headed over to the phone, checked for cameras, and didn’t find any. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t one, so she went into the tiny store, made up of a cashier’s counter and a few shelves that held snacks, drinks, and, yes, a hot dog cooker.
Cameras on the door, inside and outside, like you’d expect. If Jace’s stalker had come in before or after the phone call, they’d have her. Or if she’d filled her gas tank.
The cashier, a fortyish guy wearing a ball cap with a bear paw on it that was something to do with college football, said, “Hi. How’re you doing?”
Oh, man. This was why she’d kept her outings in Sinful to a minimum. Did he know Lily? She said, “Oh, pretty good. How are you?” in a generic sort of way as she grabbed a bottled water and put it on the counter.
“So,” he said as he rang it up, “I hear you’re selling your place for the new resort.”
Question answered. “No.” She pulled two bucks out of Lily’s wallet and put them on the counter. “I’m not planning to sell.”
“Oh.” He made change. “Really? I heard you were.”
Time to learn something. “I keep wondering,” she said, “why anybody cares. New resort, old resort. Does it really matter, in the scheme of things?”
He stared at her. “Well, yeah,” he said slowly, “it matters. Yeah, it does. It matters a lot.”
A woman came into the store, but the guy didn’t look around. Paige said, “Tell me why.” Don’t argue. You’ll learn nothing that way. Neutral face, neutral voice. You’re gathering information. You might be a little bit slow, so somebody has to explain very carefully. Sorry, Lily.
The cashier said, “My son’s sixteen. My daughter’s fourteen. Where are they going to get a job up here? And, OK, the station. I’m hanging on, but that’s about it. Why? Because we’re not big enough, and we’re not fancy enough, that’s why. Everybody wants Sun Valley, or Aspen, or whatever place. We’ve got to be something, or we’ll be nothing.” He nodded like that finished the discussion. Like it was a catchphrase.
“Something or nothing?” Paige probed.
“You really don’t know? Seriously? I mean, you haven’t even heard this?”
The female customer was over by the counter now, one hand on her hip and her fingers drumming. The guy behind the counter indicated with his head at her and said, “Raeleigh could tell you, I bet. Anybody could tell you.”
Raeleigh Franklin, Lily had said. Owns the Timberline Motel. “I suppose it would be more business for the motel,” Paige said to the woman, still going for neutral, “but if the resort put in a bigger lodge, wouldn’t people just stay there?”
“We’ve got to be something,” the woman said, “or we’ll be nothing.” There they went again. “The resort’s old, and it’s not good enough, bottom line. It’s not going to draw from anyplace farther away than Missoula. If we aren’t going to be fancy, we need to be family, or we’ll go right down the tubes. We’re going already.”
“And family’s a cross-country resort?” Family? Paige didn’t think a town named “Sinful” was going to find its best shot at success in the family market.
“No. It’s everything,” Raeleigh said. “More runs. Better lifts. A bigger lodge. More money to develop the shoreline along the lake for the summers. Mountain biking, too, especially on the cross-country trails.” She glared at Paige, and you didn’t need to be a mind reader to get that Lily was standing in the way of imagined hordes of eager mountain bikers anxious to sleep off their heroic efforts on the blissfully comfortable mattresses of the Timberline Lodge. “Brett Hunter can do everything we can’t. This is our best shot, and everybody knows he needs your twenty acres, or he won’t do it. Are you coming on Wednesday?”
She was all but in Paige’s face, but it wasn’t so much hostility Paige was reading as desperation. Was it really this bad, this important? Paige didn’t know, but that was clearly the party line. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll be there.”
No wonder Lily had wanted to run away.